These posts make more sense when read in order.
Please click here for the first article in this series to enter the rabbit hole.
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| © John Richard Stephens, 2024. |
If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying “End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH”, the paint wouldn’t even have time to dry.
—Terry Pratchett in his book, Thief of Time
A survey of more than 2,200 Americans found that one out of four didn’t know the earth revolves around the sun, which is a surprising amount.[1] Then there are those who, during the pandemic, insisted bacteria and viruses don’t exist, some of whom were killed by the Covid virus. These false beliefs did not arise from a lack of information. While part of it is from ignorance, oddly many intelligent people reject science. One research paper identified four basic reasons for this: 1) these people think scientific sources lack credibility, 2) they identify with groups that are anti-science, 3) scientific ideas or evidence conflicts with their beliefs, and 4) a person’s style of thinking doesn’t match how a scientific message is presented to them.[2]
While you’d think most people agree on common-sense questions, a rather extensive study from the University of Pennsylvania found that what people consider common sense varies considerably and that age, politics, and education don’t factor into it, with intelligence only having a very minor effect. There’s even little variance across different types of people, but overall it varies quite a bit. They concluded, “With regard to people, we find much less variation in individual commonsensicality, but still find little evidence that more than a small fraction of beliefs is common to more than a small fraction of people. In the extreme, the totality of what appears common sense to any individual person may be unique to them alone.”
While most people would agree that it’s not a good idea to poke your friend in the eye with a stick or to leap out of a moving vehicle unless you really have to, common sense quickly frays when you get to other important questions, such as when you’re in quarantine, should you remain in isolation or is it fine to go on vacation with a group of careful friends. Or perhaps even to go to some parties, as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson apparently did.[3]
Even though science is vital to economic growth and dealing with threats like climate change, many politicians are anti-science. In 2022, of 536 members of U.S. Congress, only three were scientists, while 194 were lawyers.[4]
While understanding the law is probably very useful in politics, lawyers are taught that issues have sides and disagreements are something to win—a net-zero game, when it rarely is.
Courts are designed to be adversarial. Each side fights to prevail over their opponent. Ideas like truth and reality, or even actual innocence and guilt, don’t factor in. They’re considered relative and dependent on one’s point of view. The defense has to presume innocence and the prosecution has to presume guilt. They each present evidence and testimony that conflicts with the other’s, along with experts that give alternate explanations. It’s not really a quest for truth, it’s more like a debate or a game. In fact, the lawyers aren’t required to tell the truth—only witnesses are. Lawyers can, and do, lie to the jury. They’re not supposed to withhold evidence, but sometimes they do when it would hurt their case. The judge then takes something that’s hazy and turns it into black and white.
A person is innocent until the court decides they’re guilt, and once the court finds someone guilty, then they are considered guilty, whether they committed the crime or not. It’s one reason why judges are often hesitant to reopen cases where new DNA testing can prove a prisoner didn’t commit the crime. To them it’s like giving the losing side a second chance to win the championship. And when everything is considered to be relative, nothing can be proven anyway. Also, saying a prisoner was wrongly convicted can affect the careers of prosecutors and judges, along with opening the government up to multi-million dollar lawsuits.
Science takes a very different approach. Most scientists assume there’s a reality out there and we can learn about it through tests and experiments. Some people wrongly think of science as a belief system, but it’s not. It’s based on evidence that can be verified and its ideas and interpretations follow the evidence. Knowing something is true because of evidence is very different from believing something is true. Belief implies a lack of evidence, even though people attempt to gather evidence that supports their beliefs. When there is evidence, it becomes science.
While scientists do have beliefs that are usually based on or inspired by the evidence and a large group of them promoting their belief can sometimes come to dominate a field, all it takes is one Einstein to come along with a rebellious new idea, and if the evidence backs him up, the group is eventually forced to give in to the evidence. While such revolutions are rare on the large scale, they do happen and they’re exciting, interesting, and revelatory. But once the new idea dominates, another Einstein might come along with something better. This is not a flaw in science—it’s how it improves and becomes more accurate.
When you view things as relative and your doctor tells you you have a fatal disease, you might feel your fate has caught up with you. Scientists, on the other hand, focus on cause and effect. They will conduct experiments to discover what it is, how you got it, where it came from, how it works, and how to combat it. Most don’t believe in fate, although we will look at some alternate ideas to this later. In ancient times people believed diseases were caused by the gods. In the past couple centuries science has discovered it’s usually microbes or genetics and this has enabled us to develop cures for many of them.
Scientists do make mistakes and experimental results sometimes turn out to be wrong. Probability guarantees it. This is why replicating experiments is so important. If results can’t be replicated, then something is wrong and it needs to be reexamined. That’s part of the verification process. Eventually errors come to light and we make corrections. In other words, science is self-correcting.
But this leads to a peculiar way scientists view the world that most people don’t understand and can cause problems when scientific results reach the general public through the media. In science, a hypothesis cannot be proven. No matter how much evidence there is, you can’t verify a hypothesis, because no matter how unlikely, there’s always the extremely remote possibility that a single observation will arise that shows the hypothesis to be false. Since science is very good at disproving hypotheses, scientists like to be extra cautious.
When writing for the general public, this doesn’t come across well, so you often see things presented in more absolute terms. That applies to parts of these posts as well, although I’ve tried to restrict it to those bits that have the most evidence.
But it is why scientists don’t normally talk in absolutes, as most people are used to. People like information that is definite. They want yes or no answers—not probably or most likely answers. Even with such a thoroughly tested idea as evolution where there’s mountains of evidence and no viable alternative, scientists still prefer to leave a little wiggle room. It’s remotely possible that someday someone might discover a fossil that’s not in the proper timeline, such as finding a chicken before the age of the dinosaurs. Since chickens evolved from a dinosaur, finding a chicken older than the dinosaurs would be hair-raising. Even though the possibility of that happening is so vanishingly small as to be nearly non-existent, scientists leave their options open as a general policy. That should definitely not be taken as a lack of knowledge or uncertainty.
We need to remember that science is behind most of our most amazing accomplishments in medicine, exploring the solar system and out to the furthermost visible galaxies, understanding microbes and subatomic particles, and technology, from our computers to our smart cars to our smart phones. You can even find it to a lesser degree in the arts. You can find it behind almost every aspect of our modern lives.
It’s very important to understand science. As Carl Sagan put it in his book, The Demon-Haunted World:
We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements—transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting—profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.[...]
Science is an attempt, largely successful, to understand the world, to get a grip on things, to get hold of ourselves, to steer a safe course. Microbiology and meteorology now explain what only a few centuries ago was considered sufficient cause to burn women to death.[...]
Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves. I worry that[...] pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us—then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.
“The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.”
[1] Agence France Presse, “One in four Americans unaware that Earth circles Sun”, Phys Org, February 14, 2014, https://phys.org/news/2014-02-americans-unaware-earth-circles-sun.html.
[2] Ohio State University. “The four bases of anti-science beliefs—and what to do about them: Politics have potent effects on attitudes, researchers say,” ScienceDaily, July 11, 2022, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220711163156.htm, citing Aviva Philipp-Muller, Spike W. S. Lee, Richard E. Petty, “Why are people antiscience, and what can we do about it?”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022; 119 (30), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120755119.
[3] “Partygate: A timeline of the lockdown parties”, BBC, March 21, 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-59952395.
[4] “Membership of the 117th Congress: A Profile”, Congressional Research Service, September 30, 2022, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46705.
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