John Gertz
He is president and CEO of Zorro Productions and a longtime SETI Institute board member, having chaired its board for three terms.
“His eponymous equation, the Drake equation, is absolutely ready for the ash heap of history. It's completely worthless from beginning to end.”
The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss · Ideas & Essays · September 2026
Context
Gertz had just called Frank Drake a dear friend and a lovely man, then dismissed the formula Drake is remembered for. He and Krauss were working through why nobody has heard from anyone; Gertz's answer is that the field's founding equation is a sacred cow that survives on sentiment. The longest chapter of his book is about taking it apart.
Transcript
situation and stay right in your own solar system. And you said you're going to get there, so I'll let you do that. Yeah, yeah.
…which calling it an equation, it seems to me, is an insult to equations because it's more a mnemonic. It's not a mnemonic. And it doesn't really allow you to calculate anything. It just make it allows you to make wild estimates that anyone can make and come up with vastly different answers.
It's worse than that, Lawrence. I mean, I should say that Frank was a dear friend and close colleague. And a lovely man. Lovely, lovely person. You know, knew him as well. Lovely man. His eponymous equation, the Drake equation, is absolutely ready for the ash heap of history. It's completely worthless from beginning to end. And
you call it a sacred cow, and I was reminded of the
longest chapter in my book called And it's great because it
allows you to codify the problems. That's why I want to go through it because I think it's really informative. But it did remind me when you talk about Drake of the famous statement, you didn't come to praise Caesar, but to bury him. That's the way it is about the equation. So the equation, the…