Some more failed Doomsday Scenarios

Just to prove that scientists (and scientific journalists) can end up with egg on their faces when they put their minds to it...

There was the unfortunate - ahem - miscalculation with the date when the Himalayan glaciers would be 20% their current size.

There was the "cyanogen" scare with the 1910 visit of Halley's comet.  Incidentally, the Rational wiki page I'm quoting puts the "Young Earth" theories of comets in their "Comet woo" section (correctly) but not the cyanogen scare. Presumably because everyone dying in 1910 was based on good solid science.

There was the Newsweek article that complained governments weren't doing enough about Global Cooling.

There was the Y2K or Millennium Bug (although all proper programmers knew there was no problem - the Millennium changed over a long New Year weekend, so there was plenty of time to put in the long shift needed to sort it).

There was the fear that splitting the atom would destroy the world because the atoms wouldn't start splitting - and for this I quote from that seminal scientific work, "Right Ho, Jeeves" (Wodehouse, PG, 1934):

I was reading in the paper the other day about those birds who are trying to split the atom, the nub being that they haven't the foggiest as to what will happen if they do. It may be all right. On the other hand, it may not be all right. And pretty silly a chap would feel, no doubt, if, having split the atom, he suddenly found the house going up in smoke and himself torn limb from limb.

And I'm wondering whether the scientific community's way of dealing with these things is essentially very similar to the Protestant wing of the Church when it has a disagreement. Inasmuch as neither grouping has one central body - but rather has centres of excellence, people that are respected, and bodies with more-or-less authority scattered around the world. The reaction to a scientific theory is to examine it, check it, make sure the maths work, try to reproduce the experiments if any, and - if it's the wilder end of the spectrum, say a perpetual motion machine - mock it. (I love Wiki's optimistic belief that it is undisputed that such a machine would break the 1st and/or 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics. I bet you could find somebody, somewhere, calling himself a scientist that would dispute it). But that's how we move knowledge forward and find truth.

Which makes me realise that the problem with Harold Camping's theory wasn't the wishful thinking, the bad maths, the even worse original premise (so now the Rapture and Tribulation, those central parts of his theology, are optional?) - it wasn't the conning of gullible, innocent believers into sponsoring this utter eyewash. It wasn't the appalling power- and ego-trip involved (and the double think he has displayed since).

No. The only trouble with Mr Camping was, he hadn't been peer-reviewed.