Too Good A Story

"Fear and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it."
Samuel Johnson

Here's a story you might have heard. Back in the 60s, NASA wanted a pen that astronauts could use in space, so they could write in zero gravity. They spent millions developing the technologically sophisticated and expensive "space pen." Meanwhile, the Soviet space program came up with their own solution. They used pencils.

It's a perfect story in its own way. It cheers those who are against government spending and feel that government always wastes money and screws things up. But it also cheers those who have experienced bureaucracy in any organization, and who are suspicious of high tech solutions for everything. And it cheers people who want to believe that scientists are buffoons, out to trick everybody for their own benefit.

So it gets repeated, in print and on the air, and in clever emails. It also happens to be untrue in almost every detail.

Both the Soviet cosmonauts and American astronauts started out using pencils. Both space programs worried about the hazards of keeping the pencils sharp and the lead breaking off and floating around in the weightless space capsules. They used grease pencils for awhile. Meanwhile, an entrepreneur named Paul Fisher independently designed and produced what's known as the Fisher space pen. NASA didn't spend a cent on developing it. And eventually both the U.S. and Russian space programs adopted the Fisher space pen.

There are many other untrue stories that get prominently and endlessly repeated, many of them much more pernicious, told often enough by deliberate liars and retold by people predisposed to believe them. This alarming trend is growing. Sometimes it's because it's a good story--even if it's too good to be true. But more often these days, stories are accepted because they are sensational, or because they support a prejudice and a worldview, while they feed hatred and fear: everything from death panels to a conspiracy of scientists on the Climate Crisis. It leads to contempt, intimidation and violence, and terrible politics. If this is viral communication, we as a nation capable of dealing with the future and the real world are in danger of dying of it.