Leading Horses to Water
Ancient Greeks began the way of
thinking originally known as natural philosophy but which we now call
science. Science emerged as we know it during the Renaissance, in
an age dominated by fear, superstition, injustice, and brutality.
In other words, pretty much like the present. These musings are
aimed at explaining how science works, and how science can serve even
nonscientists in their efforts to make sense of the world. I can
try to explain things but it’s up to you to decide whether or not you
wish to drink from these waters.
#32 - A Misplaced Equality
American Heathen:
aired: 21 April 2013
The USA was founded on the principle of equal opportunity for all
people, as well as freedom and liberty for all people. In the
USA, everyone is equal – in the sense that they’re free to have (and
express and act on the basis of) their ideas and opinions, provided the
process does no harm to others. I should point out that “doing
harm” includes overt adverse actions against someone: doing
bodily harm, causing someone to lose their job for having a contrary
opinion, etc. This does not include causing someone to be
offended, though! There’s nothing in US law that forbids anyone
from being offensive. The basic idea behind these principles is
that we benefit
collectively from the clash among ideas, and no one should be
punished just for having unpopular ideas and beliefs. The US
Constitution was designed to prevent (or at least limit) the tyranny of
the majority.
This is an
important cornerstone for our science, as well as our
society. However, in science, there are limitations on the
freedom of scientific expression – the limits are established by the
mechanism of peer review.
This limit on completely free expression has been introduced because it
turns out that not all opinions in science are equal. Please
allow me to elaborate:
As noted in my discussion of peer review, this could be seen by some
people as a sort of elitist principle – that the ideas of some people
are, in fact, superior to the ideas of others. The reason that
it’s not an elitist position is due to the concept behind the rule of
peer review: to be worthwhile contributions to the discourse
among scientists, the opinions must be supported by the twin pillars of
logic and evidence. As one might expect, when arriving at a
conclusion about the validity of a particular idea, it isn’t always a
black-and-white conclusion – there can be disagreement among peers
about such a conclusion. This might seem disturbing to
non-scientists, because it could be said that if scientific ideas are
just a matter of opinion, how is science any different from a barroom
argument? To answer this, consider the following:
There are many really important scientific questions before our society
today: the role of fossil fuel consumption in contributing to
global warming, the possibility of adverse side effects from childhood
vaccinations, the clash between fundamentalist religion and science in
guiding the content of education in our schools, the possibility of
side effects from genetically-modified animals and plants, the use of
embryonic stem cells in medical research, the use of pesticides and
herbicides in agriculture, the need for alternative energy sources, the
role of race in establishing human capabilities, … . This list
could go on, but the point is that our society must make choices in
moving toward the future. Making no decision (and, hence,
taking no action) on these and other topics is still a decision:
a choice for the status quo.
I see arguments involving science topics on Facebook now all the
time. Someone posts a meme pertaining to some topic associated
with a scientific issue, and there’s an avalanche of comments,
typically from non-scientists. These folks weigh in according to
their personal beliefs and opinions, arguing for their point of view,
all too often in truculent tones. And in the USA, they’re
certainly entitled to their ideas and opinions. But when the
issue involves science, the opinions of non-scientists count for little
or nothing. To equate the opinions of non-scientists with those
of scientists regarding scientific topics is a misplaced equality!
There’s an objective reality in the natural world (that can never be
known perfectly), so no matter what some people might believe about, say, the use of
childhood vaccines, the scientific community has a position – sometimes
referred to as the consensus
– that has a vastly more credible basis than that of some non-scientist
citizen. Occasionally, the scientific consensus changes, usually
as a result of new evidence,
so the scientific consensus should never be seen as “absolute
truth”. But at any given moment, it has survived peer review and
so has more than just personal opinions behind it. The fact that
the consensus can change isn’t some sort of black mark against science
that justifies equating just anyone’s opinion regarding a scientific
topic. The consensus is there because there’s been an
accumulation of evidence for it, not because there’s some sort of conspiracy among
scientists to perpetrate fraud on our society. Non-scientists
are vulnerable to drawing conclusions based on small samples, for
instance. Non-scientists may be unable to recognize ideas that
are wildly illogical, or impossible according to well-established laws
of the natural world. Non-scientists are likely to be unable to
penetrate the fog of obfuscation (sometimes, to the point of using
bogus mathematics) that pseudo-scientists and crackpots use to disguise
their nonsense. Non-scientists can be fooled when irrational
ideas are cloaked in pseudo-science arguments that seek to use the
credibility of science to support profoundly unscientific ideas.
In the usual scientific discourse (in the form of articles in refereed
journals and scientific conferences), there’s some minimum standard of
evidence that must be met before an idea is deemed validated to the
extent that is becomes worthy of inclusion in that discourse.
That standard is determined by the peer reviewers, who are recognized
scientific contributors within the subject matter of the
research. Incorrect ideas abound in science, of course, and peer
review isn’t perfect in excluding them all while rejecting only
incorrect ideas. Only
time will judge whether an idea will survive to become part of the
consensus. The scientifici discussion need not waste time and
energy on those ideas that can’t pass muster via peer review. Let
the proponents of those ideas do the hard work to validate their ideas
to the satisfaction of their peers. The rejection by a journal
article because it fails to survive peer review is not the denial of
free speech, however. There are other avenues for those ideas to
exist (Especially on the Internet these days!), but science depends on
the exclusion of ideas that are unable to meet scientific
standards. Without being able to exclude unworthy content,
science becomes just another “Tower of Babble” (No, that’s not a
spelling error!) like Facebook.
We in the USA are aggressively protective of our freedoms (Provided we
don’t succumb to fear-mongering demagogues who would seek to take away
our freedom in the name of security!), and we certainly should all be
equal under the law. But to assert a universal validity of
opinions regarding science has no factual basis, any more than equality
under the law means that all humans are equal. Look around you –
people have widely diverse capabilities in sports, mathematics,
artistic expression, etc. To claim they’re equal is demonstrably
false. It’s a similar recognition of reality that the opinions of
scientists are more credible than the opinions of non-scientists, when
it comes to topics involving their scientific expertise. To
believe otherwise is to take the notion of equality too far.
Science
is not a religion but rather a tool for those who wish to think for
themselves about the natural world. Its primary characteristic is
its willingness to entertain questions from those who wish to obtain
believable answers.