Robert L. Park (Op-Ed, Dec. 30) asserts that the work of futurists is pseudoscientific. Why so? Futuristics is not a mystical practice; it is simply the analysis of the state of a social system, together with the forces acting upon it, with the aim of identifying possible system changes and their probabilities.
Mr. Park, in citing Herman Kahn's doomsday scenarios and the colonization of Mars, seems to suggest that because predictions of human social behavior and organization are inevitably imperfect, they are pointless.
Let's examine just one issue.
It seems certain that our projections regarding the demographic composition of the United States in 2050 will need correction over time. Would Mr. Park propose that statisticians, policy analysts, legislators and social planners abandon efforts to project the rapid aging of our population and its implications?
Social data are always incomplete. Still, it seems the much wiser course to predict and plan for our future rather than to resign from the field.
The writer is a health communications consultant.