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something to say, but because their livelihood often depends upon their ability to put their names into print. This unfortunate system has spawned an army of men whose academic credentials are sound enough but who indulge in quasi research. Some even manage to acquire a considerable reputation by publishing a steady stream of unread books. Professor Mote's remark about 'the concoctions of a charlatan seeking notoriety! is revealing, because scientists are painfully aware of the many charlatans in their own midst who thrive on such notoriety. Over and over again in the past, leaders of the scientific community have proven mere charlatans or, at best, competent organizers and administrators, while their less notorious contemporaries made the real contributions to their field. This spills over of course into other fields such as literary criticism, where a man will write a critical essay of a famous author, and then others will write critical essays of the original critique. Soon the little literary magazines are actually feeding upon themselves, and the professors are quarrelling about their interpretations of said famous author. Velikovsky became the most prominent victim of this system. If he had written a book about psychiatry {his own field) or sex and sold a million copies, no one would have cared. But when he invaded the turf of others, presented unpopular ideas in a logical and successful manner, and got the book published... well, he had gone too far. To the scientists of the 1950s he had to be a ‘charlatan seeking notoriety", like Herr Horbiger of another era, they chanted, 'Ether you believe in us, or you must be treated as an enemy.* Astronomers were dead certain in 1950 that both Jupiter and Venus were elderly planets, and after much peering through their telescopes, they had constructed some fanciful facts about both bodies. These facts were taught, as usual, to generations of school students as. the gospel. Assorted studies had "proven* that the surface temperature of Venus was somewhere between 25° C, and 30° C making it a relatively cool planet and possibly an inhabitable one. Dr Velikovsky's theory was that Venus was actually an ex-comet and had been in solar orbit for only thirty-four centuries. If he was right, the surface of Venus would have to be considerably hotter. In 1961 Dr Frank Drake and other radio astronomers turned their equipment on Venus and discovered that its temperature based upon its radio emissions was at least 600° F, or 315° C. later the United States and the Soviet Union sent unmanned space probes to Venus and confirmed that it was a mighty hot place and that there might be some source of surface heat other than solar radiation. Venus is the second planet from the sun after Mercury. Even the side turned away from the sun radiates considerable heat. Another interesting discovery was that Venus rotates slowly in a retrograde - that is, clockwise - direction and has movements, which are in sharp contrast to the other planets in the solar system.* 'Maybe Venus was created apart from the other planets,' scientists at the Goldstone Tracking Station muttered in 1962, ‘perhaps as a secondary solar explosion or perhaps in a collision of planets.’ There were other factors, such as the heavy hydrocarbon atmosphere of the planet, which seemed to confirm Dr Velikovsky's 1950 speculations. Venus is definitely an oddball among the planets, but the astronomers of 1950 didn't know any of this. A decade later the main dish served at many a scientist's table was crow.