Scientists live in a topsy turvy world of theory, doubt and questioning. We learn to observe evidence and seek it out through careful experimentation. We take our observations and, with meticulous care, we weave each new strand of information into the tapestry of a theory. It is beautiful and ordered and strands mesh together with wonderful ease.
Except when they don’t.
Which is most of the time.
The reality is more like a maypole: the evidence stands there rigid and unmoving while the strands of the theory are woven tightly around it by people in funny clothes whirling past each other. If they are lucky, they end up with something beautifully ordered that covers all the evidence. They then carry out the whole process in reverse so as to understand how they got there. More often though, a person slips over, the one behind falls over them and someone going in the opposite direction steps on their head.
To make it harder, the pole itself has twists and branches and loops and every so often someone will come along and bolt on a new arm. As the pole becomes more complex, the dance you designed when it was straight stops working. To stand any chance of making it to the end unscathed you must be able to change the steps of the dance in an instant, spin on a sixpence and go back the other way, or away form the pole, or up in the air. Nothing is certain, everything is constantly changing and the dancers have to constantly bend and flex around the evidence and around each other.
Humans are not particularly well set up for scientific research. We aren’t logical and we aren’t particularly mentally flexible. We invent our pet theories, and then we defend them even when the evidence shows quite clearly we are wrong. We are biased and only look for the things that back us up and we don’t even know we are doing it. Scientists are better than most, but then we’ve had practice. From the day we embark on our scientific career, almost all of our training is about learning to cope with our own failings. We do negative controls to ensure we aren’t interpreting something as an interesting result that would have been there anyway, we blind as much of the process as possible to eliminate bias and we debate everything. If we don’t adhere to these results, mistakes in theories pass unchecked and whole houses of cards are built on rocky foundations. We are aware of most of the pitfalls of logic and we still all fall into them with monotonous regularity.
The White Queen counselled Alice to “believe six impossible things before breakfast”. Scientists must be able to conceive of six impossible things before breakfast but we must believe nothing[1]. Nothing is ever completely settled, because we can never be completely certain that we have all the evidence. Even the most basic ideas that are almost impossible to conceive of ever being upset must be viewed with caution.
It is no coincidence that the vast majority of scientists are strong agnostics. It is quite possible to conceive of a god outside of creation, unaffected by the physical rules of this universe and unknowable by scientific research, but in the absence of any evidence for such a being, scientists brains are just not set up to believe in him. I don’t even really believe that I am currently sitting at my computer typing this entry, the best I can say is that the preponderance of evidence suggests the truth to be so. For someone unable to believe the evidence of their own eyes, sky fathers are a huge leap too far.
This can cause problems when it comes to communicating with non-scientists. I saw a wonderful example at the recent Paliamentary Science and Technology Select Committee enquiry into the licensing of homeopathic medicines and their use in the NHS. A non-science trained committee member asked one of the scientists on the panel whether she was 100% certain that homeopathy was no more effective than placebo. There was a brief pause, while she stared blankly at him and then asked him to repeat the question. There was a bit of back and forth while they sought to understand each other’s language and eventually she said “I am uncomfortable with the idea of 100% certain”. He rolled his eyes and asked her if she was as certain as she was capable of being and she was able to answer that, yes, she was as certain as she was of anything in this world that homeopathy doesn’t work better than placebo. Of course, when the homeopath giving evidence was asked the same question he had no trouble what-so-ever with answering with certainty that his snake oil cures everything.
I have to admit, it is entirely understandable that, when faced with one person unable to give their view as undeniable fact, and another confidently stating the opposing case with certainty, a layperson will tend to be convinced by the latter. The problem is, it is usually the wrong call.
It is the nature of a scientific theory that it starts out as a crude approximation (“the earth is flat” is a perfectly acceptable first guess when all you care about it how to catch that deer for supper tonight). As time goes by and evidence mounts, theories are revised and added to (whatever direction we head off in, if we sail far enough, we get back to where we started: the earth must be a sphere). The revisions get smaller and smaller until you end up with something that is as close as it needs to be to fit the available data and does everything we need it too (in fact, the earth is very close to an oblate spheroid, or a squashed globe). For the most part researchers move on to new more promising fields of research, but there are always a few who hang around trimming the edges of the theory and taking it down to polish it and put it back on the shelf once in a while (we still don’t know whether the circumference of the earth around the equator is a circle, some believe it is actually an ellipse). At this point, for all intents and purposes, a theory can be considered as proven and we slip into talking about it as if it is a fact.
At the back of every scientist’s mind however is the spectre of the undiscovered evidence that will turn everything on its head, so we never update the name. We still talk about the earth going around the sun as the “heliocentric theory”, it doesn’t mean anyone with any sense thinks the idea is likely to be overturned; it’s a hang over from the days when it was still controversial and it shows how unwilling researchers are to ever claim certainty.
Adding the misnomer “theory” to the previously mentioned reluctance to ever state a solid position all adds up in the eyes of non-scientists as some exceedingly shady behaviour.
All of this makes academics exceedingly easy targets for those with nefarious intentions. All a someone needs to do to convince the public that a scientist is wrong is lie with absolute certainty in a place where everyone will see it. It doesn’t matter how much evidence we place at the feet of the issue, we will not be heard because a simple lie is always more compelling than a complex truth, especially when that truth is one we don’t want to hear.
Am I certain that anthropogenic global warming is real? No. But I am as certain of it as I am of anything.
1. Not even that the creamy yellow spread we have just put on our toast is not butter.
*Ahem. To the best of my knowledge, based on the current available evidence, the majority of scientists of my acquaintance have not, in my presence, expressed certainty on any topic of discussion. Yet.
Somewhere, possibly in a field , there may be a sheep of which at least one side is white. There may also be a polar bear. If so, the situation is almost certainly not stable.
There are perhaps two or three people for whom the above paragraph will be hilarious. I suspect none of them read my blog. Ho hum.
Brilliant, I thoroughly enjoyed that.
But I must add that in my case, I believe that God’s existence can be neither proved or disproved, so I will conform to a 50/50 chance.
50% is good enough for me, so therefore I declare myself as being an un-agnostic Scientist. Quite like the idea of an old chap with a white beard floating along in the cosmos
Best wishes