They Blinded Me with Science
Trusting Science Often Requires a Leap of Faith; And it's Not Always as Accurate as You Might Think
He had gathered the collective geniuses of the world at the time and knew he was in for a lot of naysaying. While everyone in the building knew where he stood and the consensus within the scientific community largely disagreed with him, he was certain of his experiments, his science and the data. And so it was Louis Pasteur disproved Spontaneous Generation and proved Pasteurization in the same conference. But people often forget that first part.
The consensus within the scientific community largely disagreed with him up until that point.
We tend to consider them just as stupid, ignorant people. BUT THESE WERE SCIENTISTS OF THEIR DAY. The most studied, erudite elite of the intelligentsia of their time. They worked with the methods and resources they had. They formed hypotheses and theories based on what they could observe and re-create over and over again. They had taken the accumulated knowledge of those that came before and expanded on it without refutation or reassessment. It wasn’t until the advent of additional technology, in this case the microscope, that caused Pasteur to reassess everything. Once the environment was more controlled, and Pasteur developed a more sound theory and proved it repeatedly, did he feel confident to call bullshit on the rest of the established community that assembled there that day.
So when people say “Trust the science” I kind of cringe a little. Science has tended to replace religion to a certain extent, even though it has the capacity to change against orthodoxy when proven incorrect. However, science is not always correct and those that are proven inaccurate rarely tend to admit such errors. Want more examples?
Clair Patterson tried meticulously to date the how old the Earth was. Using the new atomic techniques related to the nuclear degradation of uranium to lead1, he went to work. He had used meteor samples and the strictest of standards to prevent contamination from altering the analysis. In 1956, Patterson published his number in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. Critics bristled. “I had some of the best, most able critics in the world trying to destroy my number,” he said. Each time they tried to prove it wrong, they failed. At one point, one knocked on Patterson’s door to kindly inform him that he was going to Hell.
The initial coining of the term “Big Bang” was used in derision by an opponent at a debate mocking the theory. Since then, the Big Bang has been used as the standard theory and most science has been geared towards accepting that as true.2
When Einstein made several of his theories, they openly contradicted aspects of science that dated back to Sir Isaac Newton. Of course, such a discovery would be accepted and would blow the minds of every scientist around the world! Nope. They were published in obscure journals as the more authoritative ones wouldn’t touch them and were quickly forgotten. It wasn’t until after World War I when the focus came back to the growing atomic science and technology advanced far enough that researchers rediscovered Einstein’s theories, and began proving them correct.
Don’t even get me going about psychology and psychiatry, two fields where such “sciences” and methods as phrenology, eugenics, electroshock and lobotomy therapies were considered humane and sound science at one point or another.
I could go on. Science is ever evolving. In more cases than not, revealing new truths about the world goes ignored or outright ridiculed. So why do such geniuses condescend and choose to be intentionally obtuse about such discoveries? Well, a number of reasons:
The biggest reason is money. Science is expensive. To do it, often you need rich benefactors writing grants or funding the research. They tend to give this money when the results are pre-determined and what they are looking for is not an outcome but supporting evidence. Think of the way that the Tobacco Companies financed their own scientific studies for decades. That’s the most extreme example but it’s far more common than you think.
Hubris. Many scientists spend their entire lives working in a particular field, fashioning a particular mindset. and building up a reputation at the head of of this particular worldview. They’ve achieved fame among their peers and maybe not a fortune but at least a comfortable living. Now imagine some other scientist standing up and calling their life’s work bullshit. It usually doesn’t go over well. A.J. Wakefield, for instance, achieved a certain level of attention by “proving” that vaccinations may cause autism for various reasons. His paper, which shook up the medical community, was printed in the esteemed medical journal “The Lancet.” As more data became available, Wakefield was quickly found to be incorrect and often and easily disproven. Only after substantial evidence was presented and proven that The Lancet issued a retraction of the journal article, a rarity for a medical journal. However, Wakefield continues to stand by his research.
Relevance. “Publish or perish” is a common axiom in scientific research. All this money and time and effort has to result in something. The problem here is is that more often than not the study doesn’t really provide anything new or insightful. Other times, experiments go bad; biases aren’t found until half way through the study invalidating results, study participants drop out or invalidate their own data, or other factors change the dynamics of the study altogether. It happens. Nonetheless, you still have to publish. So what happens? Scientists hedge a little with their results; they use statistical methods to pump up the p-score,3 narrow the margin of error by reducing the confidence level and other methods for making the numbers look better than they are. In any event, the study isn’t as reliable as the authors and publishers claim, but that’s not as important as putting out something.
Politics. In March 2020, COVID shutdown the world. Data was scarce, intensive care units were overwhelmed and people were dying. Politicians around the world responded with prudence and caution. Absent any good data, the safest method to prevent the spread of the deadly disease were to wear a mask and to socially distance and go out in public rarely. Infection rates went up and down over the next 2 years depending on how much things were opening back up. The scientists were often employed not for their expertise, but to supplement a politician’s predetermined position. Trump wanted the answers he wanted to hear, and even threatened firing of the Doctors if they strayed too much in their gloomy predictions. Scientists can only do so much without contradicting themselves. Dr. Anthony Fauci usually couched his statements with “We’re working on getting the data,” or “we don’t yet have the data” and Dr. Deborah Birx usually was more permissive but hesitant, giving ambivalent messaging. Once vaccines became readily available, they promptly supported mass distribution to the population, including multiple doses and boosters. Even though by now COVID was endemic, people could live with a COVID diagnosis and treatment was available. But over time, this has opened up criticism, even though Fauci and Birx were primarily concerned with slowing the spread and hospital capacities, in hindsight, people now believe we might have been better off not closing everything down.4 “Scientists” come down on both sides of the issue, depending on what they choose to focus on.
Arbitrariness. In August, 2006, the International Astronomical Union downgraded Pluto as a planet. What prompted this was the discovery of ANOTHER astronomical body out beyond Pluto named “Eris.”5 Eris was larger than Pluto, and was similar to other bodies past Pluto’s orbit. So the question became, will we accept these other bodies as “planets” or just downgrade Pluto to whatever category they want to put these new bodies in? Now, Pluto had been a “planet” since 1930, and nothing prevented it from remaining so. In fact, nothing changed what we knew about Pluto at all at that point.6 It was the exact same body on the next day as it was before. Nothing prevented us from calling these other bodies planets either However, the IAU collectively chose to redefine how we categorize “planets” with the inevitable outcome to exclude Pluto and group it with the others in a separate category. Instead of using this as an opportunity to expand the family of planets in the Solar System and get people further interested in what was out there, the IAU chose the petty, and frankly lazy, option. Ask a scientist and Pluto isn't a planet, based only on the arbitrary definition.
None of this is to say science is untrustworthy. Just the opposite. Over time and over considerable scientific study and analysis, accuracy tends to bear out. In addition, some theories and science are so accurate that it does gain widespread acceptance and even taken for granted over time. But that doesn’t mean we need to accept science as the end all/be all that many in the world automatically do without condition. Since none of us are omniscient, there is always an article of faith involved in it. We have to listen to what some people study and say, and its not always right. Perhaps the old political axiom “Trust but verify” should be a better way to look at it.
It’s enough to make you think about what “facts” and “ideas” that we readily and unquestioningly accept today will be disproven tomorrow or in the years to come. What theories that the scientific community holds up as nearly irrefutable will be disproven? Who will be the next giant to stand up to the scientific establishment and call bullshit?
PurpleAmerica’s Recommended Stories
A few of my favorite books often highlight this dynamic.
Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” is a favorite of mine. It goes into history and discovery and how we learn what we do, but mostly its the history of science. It is a fascinating book and a real page turner.
Some other great books are by Sam Kean. I am a big fan of his, and from The Disappearing Spoon (about chemistry), The Violinist’s Thumb (about DNA), The Tale of the Dueling Neuroscientists” (about the Brain) and “The Bastard Brigade” (a narrative about a group in the US military concerned about the German A-Bomb program and their goal to get as many scientists out of Europe for our own purposes), you really can’t go wrong. But the one that is most on point with what was written in this post is his book, “The Icepick Surgeon,” about those occassions when science got it wrong in a big way, for a host of issues.
https://a.co/d/4sAc8MZ
PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day
An anecdote from Sam Kean’s “The Bastard Brigade” focuses on Werner Heisenberg. Heisenberg was one of the world’s greatest nuclear scientists and had developed “the uncertainty principle” which redefined quantum physics. Unlike most other German scientists though, Heisenberg chose to remain in Germany during World War II and was the head of the German A-bomb program (you know, the one Einstein and others wrote to FDR about which led to the creation of the Manhattan Project).
Much of Kean’s book focuses on how little each side knew about the progress of the competing programs. Heisenberg was exceptionally proud of the scientific progress he had made during the war years, and was certain the world would marvel at his brilliance once the war was over. After the war, the Allies detained ten German scientists in England for six months. Hoping to learn about the German bomb program, they secretly taped the scientists' conversations and were shocked to discover that compared to the Manhattan Project, they had barely even gotten to first base. Heisenberg thought his minor and flawed creation of a chain reaction would be held up by the community as a huge accomplishment completely unaware the U.S. had done this three years earlier in 1942, with much better results.
In August 1945, the scientists were told about the US dropping a nuclear bomb on Japan. Otto Hahn (the discoverer of nuclear fission in 1944 which resulted in his Nobel Prize) was completely shattered by the news and said that he felt personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, as it was his original discovery which had made the bomb possible. He repeatedly contemplated suicide when he realized the terrible potentialities of his discovery and he felt that now these had been realized and he was to blame. With the help of considerable alcoholic stimulant he was calmed down and we went down to dinner where he announced the news to the assembled guests.
Heisenberg and his peer German scientists were brought into a room where they listened to radio reports of the devastation and were then shown pictures of the leveled cities. Heisenberg’s reaction?
He thought it was a lie. It must have been allied propaganda.
He could not comprehend that the United States was able to create it without his help, nor that U.S. scientists were capable of the advances in science necessary to create such a weapon.
Eventually, his skepticism was replaced with horror, knowing the United States not only created it but used it. This is how he described the shocking news:
“There is a great difference between discoveries and inventions. With discoveries one can always be skeptical and many surprises can take place. In the case of inventions, surprises can really only occur for people who have not had anything to do with it.”
Footnotes and Parting Thoughts
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A no small feat at the time. Leaded gasoline has become so prevalent in its use at the time that it was in the air and on clothes and people which contaminated the samples. After he calculated the age of the Earth, he went to work eliminating the use of lead in gas, which he was ultimately successful at.
More to the point, to date it has not yet been disproven. Given that we can’t go back in time 13.8 billion years, it seems somewhat unlikely to be disproven anytime soon. Nonetheless, it seems like a pretty handy theory that explains a lot of science when it comes to cosmology and describing events in the universe.
P-scores are calculated metrics that define whether something is statistically significant or not.
This is debatable. I tend to believe Fauci and Birx had it right, as the spread and hospital capacity and treatment were serious concerns at the time, particularly with limited resources and data available. However, how various states responded to the epidemic and the timing of when different locations opened has called into question how necessary shutdowns to the level and length were.
The discoverers of Eris immediately recognizing the problem this was going to cause named it so after “The Goddess of Discord.”
The New Horizons spacecraft which provided the most detailed data and photos of Pluto was still years away.