Part II: Why Science makes us fight so much.
In Part I, I first described what science is not and then provided my definition of science: Science is the pursuit of understanding that requires successful and verified prediction of outcomes.
This doesn’t seem so controversial, does it? Then why does science make us fight so much?
Many of the great advances of science have caused great discord. It seems unnecessary to provide examples. Climate change. Vaccination. Gun violence. Most recently, the science of epidemiology (“pandemic science”). Yes, there are scientific studies about gun violence, and no, for the vast majority of people, owning one doesn’t make you safer.
So why do we fight so much about science? Here are a few reasons.
- Science is not a natural way of thinking. While the value of prediction as a form of proof may not be surprising, the verifiable aspect is. Verification requires repetition and most often statistical analysis. Even though we live in a statistical world (something I hope to address in a future post) statistical thinking is not part of our inborn toolkit. Instead, our brains are natural story tellers and we easily connect events that follow closely in time or space. When a child gets sick shortly after receiving a vaccine it seems natural to blame the vaccine. It is hard to allay this fear by referring to statistical analyses of thousands or millions of unknown “others” using mathematical tools that themselves sound like voodoo. Moreover, people are born with an amazing capacity to learn from other people. When our concerns are validated by the concerns of others, e.g. an online community of vaccine deniers, we are not likely to listen to an impersonal plea to data.
- Bad science education. Science education is universally bad. It turns most people off at a very young age. Few people have any real understanding what is takes to be a working scientist. Only those who pursue science post-college ever get to experience what working in science is actually like. Although my college education was excellent, nothing I did in college even approximated what I did in graduate school and beyond. The most important thing I learned after college was how to ask the right question. Doing this is hard but also thrilling. High School and College lab experiments are nothing like asking a question that has not been asked before and figuring out how to answer it. Science is not dry or boring at all.
- Scientific methods are poorly understood. It goes without saying that, once the right question is asked, answering it often requires somewhat arcane methods that few people have the education to understand. Accepting something you don’t understand is an act of faith, not dissimilar to other beliefs. In practice, this means that for many people, accepting scientific results feels no different than accepting other unproven beliefs, e.g. religion. Lawyers work within the law, even when it seems to outsiders to be unfair, because they trust in the system. I have often asked lawyers how they can, in good conscience, defend terrible people and the awful things they have done. Without exception their answers are always along the following lines. We have the best system of justice yet devised. Our system is adversarial and requires that everyone be provided with an adequate defense. I believe in the system so I must provide a defense, even if doing so occasionally produces a poor result.
Science is no different. Scientists learn to trust in the system even when the results are surprising and counterintuitive. Occasionally science produces a poor result but the system is self-correcting (over time). We would all be better off if more of us trusted in the system of science. - Verifying that predictions are accurate and reproducible often requires statistics. Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman describes in his book Thinking Fast and Slow how people (even mathematicians!) make wrong assumptions about probabilities and risks. Statistical thinking does not come naturally to people. The canard that “there are three kinds of lies, damned lies, and statistics”, often attributed to Mark Twain, does nothing to help.
- False depictions of science in popular media. Most depictions of science in media are ridiculous. The mad professor. The evil genius. Most inaccurate is the lone and lonely scientist working by herself. This last example is almost hilariously wrong. While it is true that some science can be done by lone individuals, most science is highly social, and science can be thought of as the first implementation of crowdsourcing. In fact, most great science requires many people working together. Even when an advance is made by a single person, all working scientists understand that the fellowship of scientists is necessary for the validation and further advancement of their work. Obviously, giving scientists a bad name does nothing to promote the understanding or acceptance of science.
- Ancient ideas and cognitive dissonance. Science advances because people overturn previous misconceptions. Many of these misconceptions have been passed down for generations or even millennia. We have been taught them from birth to the point that they are accepted like mother’s milk. ( A quick example: the origin of morality. Most people, at least those living in Western cultures, believe that morality was taught to us by a Devine being. If true, it follows immediately that atheists are immoral. Research shows us that this is not true.) People who grow up with a set of beliefs base part of their identity on them. Contradicting these beliefs threatens personal identity and creates stress (dissonance) that can be relieved only by rejecting the new (and better) information.
- Unlike many professions, scientists thrive by disagreeing with each other. People who have not experienced the fellowship of science cannot easily understand how it works to ensure that, over time, science is self-correcting and therefore reliable. The fellowship of science can be exciting. It can be brutal. Why is this important? Scientists make their reputations by asking great questions and by answering them. One does not advance to the heights in the community of scientists by simply agreeing with everyone else. Demonstrating a new and fresh way of looking at a problem, overturning a beforehand-accepted way of understanding the world is the path toward scientific fame. Yes, scientists are humans and most seek fame and the approbation of their respected peers, just like everyone else. This makes the concept that scientists collaborate in perpetrating a hoax impossible. Remember this the next time anyone tries to convince you that climate change is just hoax that scientists use to get money. Sure there are a few scientists who are willing to sell their souls. But the vast majority of scientists care about the truth and it is virtually impossible for thousands of them to collaborate in a hoax. They spend their time searching for ways to disagree!
- Bad science. Most scientists know how to recognize this. Sometimes this is easy. Other times it is harder. Scientists learn, as do many people whose work involves assessing the quality of information, a set of guidelines that are useful for an initial “quality check”. How much scrutiny has the new science been subjected to? Did the scientist violate rules of thought in generating it, such as suggesting that observation is tantamount to proof? Did the scientists use proper verification methods to successfully predict outcomes (for example, double-blinding their studies, use proper statistical methods)? Are there alternative explanations for the results that the authors did not consider? What predictions have been proven by the science? How well were the tests (experiments) conducted? Did more than one group of scientists use the new idea to successfully predict an outcome?
Here are some other useful criteria for assessing new scientific ideas: Does it come from a scientist who has a long record of reliability? Has the new idea been published in a journal that is known to have high standards and subjects submitted papers to intense scrutiny? Has the new idea come from someone who has a financial stake in it? Are the arguments plausible? None of these methods are infallible but they do reduce the likelihood of being fooled.
Here is a good example of how this works. In 2003 friends asked me what I thought about a new company that was claiming great advances that would disrupt the field of medical testing. I looked into the company and found that it was created by someone who was not scientifically trained. Its board of directors had no scientists on it and it had never published any scientific results and therefore its claims could not be subject to scrutiny or verification. I recommended staying away until their claims could be better evaluated. Of course, we know what happened next. The charismatic leader of Theranos raised hundreds of millions of dollars but the enterprise collapsed in a cloud of fraud.
To be sure, sometimes new and great ideas come from an unexpected source. The best example might be the idea that time was not invariant. This idea radically changed our concept of the universe. Of course, the idea was put forth by an unknown Swiss patent clerk who later became known to all as Albert Einstein. So the best scientists learn to consider new ideas even if they are surprising and their source unknown and untested. - Sure, scientists make mistakes. Sometimes, the community of scientists are wrong. Oh, you might say, for millennia scientists believed that the earth was flat. But, remember that science was invented fairly recently and the flat earth idea perished long before science was invented. Well, you might ask, what about the confusion over nutrition? One day we are told that low fat diets are healthful, the next day we are told the opposite! Doesn’t this show that science and its practitioners cannot be trusted? The answer is no, but the reason is a bit more subtle. Biology is complex and our understanding of nutrition and medicine is rudimentary. Scientists working in this field are well aware of this limitation. Doctors provide the best information they have but scientists working in this area (I am one of them) know that their knowledge is limited. The science of nutrition is much less advanced than the science of genetics. Most nutrition “science” is epidemiology. Epidemiology is a form of observation and is used to develop new “stories” or suppositions (hypotheses) but is incapable of proving them. Remember, science is a process of verifiable prediction and for much of nutrition and medicine this has not been possible.
The arguments and disagreements within the scientific community can be very disorienting to people looking in from the outside. If scientists can’t agree, why should I believe any of them? Furthermore, to non-scientists it appears that science “changes its mind” so often that there is no reason to accept any scientific conclusions. Good scientists know that new science should not be taken as gospel until it has survived many challenges. Most of the arguments and disagreements are about new results that have not yet achieved that status. The germ theory of disease, Mendelian genetics, thermodynamics and so much more are well tested; it will take a lot of strong evidence for any of these to be overturned. - Lots of scientific confusion is caused by people just trying to make a buck. Best example: books providing new diets and nutrition advice. It is easy to prey on non-scientists, especially those who want to loose weight (something science has proven to be very difficult). Diet books will often take one study, or a few pieces of information, and expand it into an entire book all the while pretending that the proposed diet has been proven beyond doubt. With a few notable exceptions, truly great scientists don’t write books for the public (perhaps they should) and leave bookshelf space available for the charlatans. When true experts do state their opinions they are often less declarative and therefore less satisfying to a public looking for simple answers.
- Confirmation bias. This term was coined by psychologist Peter Wason in the early 1960’s and formalized a concept known for centuries before that. People tend to accept information that confirms previously held beliefs and discard new information that contradicts these beliefs. (See also #5 above.)
- Tribalism. Recently, this word has been overused but it is no less important. Holding certain beliefs, at least publicly, is one important way that people demonstrate to others in the group to which they strive to belong that they are themselves members in good standing. This is one important mechanism by which climate denialism became a signature feature of the modern GOP. There is a lot more to say about this (stay tuned) but you get the idea.
Ok, one more important point and it has to do with where people today get their information and their perceived truths, as opposed to all of human history prior to 1980. The rise of talk radio, and more recently, the internet, has given platforms and credence to people and corporations who amplify ideas that are easy to digest. To many people in the 21st century truth is often what Google and Facebook , or Alex Jones say it is. The algorithms used by these behemoths reinforce our previous ideas and misperceptions and make it harder for new ideas and concepts to take hold. For a great discussion of this please read “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” by Shoshana Zubboff.
Next up: Do You really Understand the Theory of Evolution?