Author Archives: Victor Dominocielo

About Victor Dominocielo

I graduated from Fordham University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Experimental Psychology. After college, I worked as a social work assistant for the Visiting Nurse Service for two years in Harlem and the South Bronx. I came to California and got a BA in Physical Education, a teaching credential and a specialist credential in Adapted Physical Education. I worked in Special Education at Alpha Training Center for 10 years during which time I got credentials in Biology, History, Health Education and Severely Handicapped Education. I moved on to Devereux School for 12 years during which time I earned my MA in Education. Sixteen years ago, after my son graduated from Santa Barbara Middle School, I became the 8th grade Science teacher there and the Medical Coordinator for the school and their extensive Outdoor Education Program. While I was in NYC, I was part of the first class of EMT’s, working for 5 years at Lenox Hill Hospital on their 911 ambulance and in their emergency room. When I came to SB, I worked in the Cottage ER for a year and I volunteered on the Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Team as an EMT and Rescue Technician for 12 years. I have been an EMT, in and out of certification, for over 40 years. Along with teaching Human Biology and Health, this is another reason why I write about medical and health issues.

New Community Science Standards

New Community Science Standards

 

This is actually not about Common Core or Common Snore or Apple Core (because of Bill Gates funding) or even Obamacore as some have called this latest cycle of Federal Education Programs.  However, I will digress for just a moment to mention this latest in a long line of Federal Education Programs.

Every president wants to be the “Education President”.  Unfortunately, centralized planning reform in our gargantuan public education system always falls short which creates the need for reform and further reform during each presidential cycle. Every president has millions of education budget dollars to reform their predecessor’s reforms.

President G.W. Bush uttered the now famous words, “In return for Federal Dollars…” the states would sign on to his No Child Left Behind program.  Bush’s comments explain how presidents get compliance on their signature programs.  If the states don’t endorse the President’s program, they don’t get the money.  This explains why the 45 states who appear to be “Racing to the Top” for Obama’s efforts are not giving Common Core a rousing endorsement because it’s a great educational program.  The states are endorsing whatever program Washington is producing because they are being blackmailed with federal extortion/education dollars: “In return for Federal dollars…”  “Common Obamasnore” is just the latest incarnation of the States’ struggle to get Federal education dollars.

The real test of Common Core by education professionals would be for the Federal government to disperse education funds to the states with no strings attached.  Then we would see which states and educational institutions would endorse Common Core without the threat of losing money.

Now on to the new community science standards.  These are personal science education standards which have to do with how well our high school and college graduates are doing in applying science in everyday life in our society.  What is our Scientific Literacy Index?  I propose that we open up the online phone book and look at how many psychics there are in town.  Then we look at how many bookstores cater to Bigfoot and UFO investigations.  We might also include sales of sensationalistic “National Enquirer” type papers in our standards.  Certainly, looking at the number of ghost hunting and alien autopsies shows on the Discovery and National Geographic channels would also be an indicator of how well we are training our science students.

If we find that the community has a lot of these supernatural outlets then we know that the science education in that community is lacking.  I’ve gone to beautiful Sedona, Arizona many times and when I visit the grocery store, there is a giant bulletin board filled with every imaginable psychic expression.  From the famous humming vortexes, to energy pyramids, crystalline matrix light healing, Star Families, Tarot, astrology readings and chakra balancing, these people have you covered.  So the science educators in Sedona should be having a field day with all the readily available examples of differences between fantasy and scientific methodology.

Locally, our very own Ojai, while not having quite the reputation of Sedona, is noted for its variety of interesting practices.  If you pick up a copy of the, “Ojai Quarterly” (Fall, 2014, pages 134-5), you will be amazed.  They have all the normal, healthy yoga and massage practices but they also advertise Chrystal Light Healing developed by John of God (or JOG, as I like to call him).  JOG practices psychic surgery in Brazil and calls himself a healer.  He sticks sharp objects up peoples’ noses and into their sinus cavities and then claims that this mother of all distraction techniques cures everything from migraines to cancer.  You can watch him stick a 7 inch hemostat way, way up into a person’s sinuses as he performs his “psychic” surgery here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYF0SWma000.  (The clip is about 9 min.  Skip to 4 min to see the distraction technique)

Continuing on, there is advertising for chakra balancing, shaman dream weaving, crystal healing, miracles, psychics, Tarot, channeling and past life trauma release.   The absolute top of the heap, though, has got to be the person who does energy healings for humans and animals…with Jesus of Nazareth…over the phone!  You could go to the website and for $125 (paypal) you get a 30 minute phone consultation with Jesus.  This is sort of “upping the bar” on the common psychic claim (psychic John Edward also “talks” to the dead and does phone consultations) of being able to talk to dead relatives: who ya gonna call, Uncle Bob or Jesus of Nazareth?

My interest in all this activity is that someone is actually paying these people.  Having a strange belief, (for instance, that you can talk to dead), is one thing.  Creating a business out of it and taking money from emotionally vulnerable people is something else entirely.  Many people in our complex society need professional psychological help at one time or another during their lives.  There is a robust psychological/medical care system where people can get professional help.  However, being emotionally vulnerable and needing psychological help is not the time to consult a psychic, Tarot reader, or energy healer who will use a simple “cold reading” procedure to tell you what you want to hear and charge you major bucks for something that any 12 year old could do.  Anyone can learn the 10 easy steps to performing a psychic reading here: http://www.skeptic.com/downloads/10_Easy_Psychic_Lessons.pdf.

The clients of these psychics graduated from high school and college and their science teachers completely and utterly failed them.  Somewhere along the educational line, their science teachers didn’t give these psychic clients, alien autopsy people, Bigfoot believers and ghost hunting specialists the common science sense that evolution gave a gnat.  If you can listen to a Homeopath (or health food store clerk) tell you that diluting a solution makes it stronger, then your chemistry teacher failed to teach you the simple mechanics of serial dilution.   If your biology teacher didn’t explain evolution by natural selection as the fundamental theory of all biology and how all living things change and evolve over time, then your biology teacher failed.   If you can look at this Star Trek “transporter” in the mall video and believe that scientists invented teleportation and didn’t tell anyone, then your physics teacher failed to teach you scientific methodology and how to examine evidence for scientific plausibility.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4RbF2tjTt0)

So let’s get science educated so that we, as a society, don’t pay people to connect us to Jesus of Nazareth over the phone.  Let’s get our collective scientific literacy and understanding to the point where we can easily recognize parlor tricks, scams and frauds in everyday life.

Victor Dominocielo, M.A. 11/12/14

Victor Dominocielo, M.A., a California-credentialed teacher for 37 years, is the human biology and health teacher at a local middle school.  He earned his Master of Arts degree in Education from UCSB.  The opinions expressed are his own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How A Folk Medicine Gets Started

How a Folk Medicine Gets Started:

A Sugar Cube and a Drop of Kerosene

The following is a family story from my wife’s friend, Janice, whose father lived in Ojai during the 1918 Flu Pandemic. The 1918 Spanish Flu/Swine Flu was by far the most deadly disease in history, surpassing even the infamous Black Death of 1347 – 1351. Janice’s father was about 5 when the flu moved through his family home in Ojai and he’s still alive at 99. There were about 10 people living in his home and they heard that a drop of kerosene on a sugar cube would “cut the phlegm” and help victims to survive. (The kerosene would probably make users gag and cough up mucus, providing a few minutes of temporary relief). All the family used this folk remedy except one young mother and her two very young children. In tragic happenstance, all the family members became sick with the flu and survived… except the young Mom and her two children. Compounding this terrible incident, the community required their home to be burned immediately along with all their clothes – as was often done during smallpox epidemics (a virus) and during the time of the Bubonic Plague (a bacterial infection carried by fleas on rats). Despite these tragedies, this family survived and thrived and I shook the hand of the 99 year olds daughter a few weeks ago.

The obvious false association was made, that a drop of kerosene on a sugar cube would help you survive the deadly flu virus. Family members gave heart rending anecdotal testimony of the lifesaving practice, convincing others in this desperate time. People compounded the falsehood by their own confirmation bias, looking for confirming examples and discounting contrary information. The placebo effect made people who took this remedy feel confident that they were doing the best practice for their health.

All countries have their folk medicine practices which come into and out of vogue in different historical time periods. Often, people from one country become enamored of a folk medicine from another, more exotic, country. In America, many people are currently captivated by Chinese folk medicine and Indian Ayurvedic folk medicine. German folk medicine, Homeopathy, still attracts millions of followers who spend billions of dollars worldwide, on their pills and potions. The greatest folk medicine of all time, spanning 3,000 years (up until the 1870’s) and several civilizations, from the ancient Egyptians to the Greeks, the Romans, throughout the European countries, to India and even to the Americas, was bloodletting. It is still practiced today as a folk medicine in India and other countries.

All these folk medicines get started and have the same effect (the placebo effect) as the kerosene on the sugar cube remedy. But why does generation after generation, the best and the brightest of so many civilizations, continually make these wrong associations? There are two simple and straightforward reasons:

1. After we get sick, we get well for the same reason that all living things get well: we are the beneficiary of 3.4 million years of non-random, “survival of the fittest” selection (more recent information suggests that our Ardipithicus ancestors split from chimps about 5-6 million years ago). So while our bodies are naturally fighting off disease and recovering from injuries, any folk remedy or “snake oil” can step in and claim that it was their potion or procedure that made us better. This is why the tribal “medicine man” and “witch doctor” were tolerated: people tended to remember their successes (hits) and forget their failures (misses).

2. We have a pattern forming brain that is subject to consistent and continual human error. Sometimes we see patterns that are not there (sugar/kerosene) and sometimes we don’t see patterns that are there (survival of the fittest).
People who believe in the various folk medicines often say, “…but it works for me!”
What is actually working is millions of years of evolutionary benefits which are misunderstood with personal false associations, post hoc thinking, confirmation bias and the patient generated placebo effect.

The only way to insure that a particular remedy is producing a medical improvement is to do repeat, double-blinded, placebo controlled experiments at different research centers over several years. Then the results of the placebo control group have to be subtracted from test group to produce the evidence based improvement of the specific drug or procedure. That’s evidence based medicine and that’s the only medicine there is. As Harriet Hall, M.D. has written:
“We frequently criticize the media for gullible reporting of pseudoscience and inaccurate reporting of real science. But sometimes they exceed our fondest hopes and get it spectacularly right. On December 25, 2008, the Wall Street Journal gave us all a Christmas present: they printed an article by Steve Salerno that was a refreshing blast of skepticism and critical thinking about alternative medicine.”
“Salerno points out that 38% of Americans use ‘complementary and alternative medicine’ (CAM) and it is being increasingly accepted in hospitals and medical schools. He says this should be a laughing matter but isn’t because of the huge amounts of money being spent on ineffective treatments. Not to speak of the huge amounts of money being wasted on implausible research at the NCCAM. He highlights a painful irony: the same medical centers that once fought quackery are now embracing it, not because they think it will improve patient care, but because it will increase their revenue.”
“Salerno quotes Dr. George Lundberg, one of the many who have said there is no such thing as CAM…’There is only medicine that has been proven to work and medicine that hasn’t. If science showed that an alternative treatment really worked, it would be promptly and enthusiastically incorporated into standard medical practice and would no longer be considered alternative’. So the very term is misleading.”

“‘Alternative medicine’ is not a scientific concept. It is a political, ideological ploy intended to raise public respect for a mishmash of untested, unproven, and even disproven treatments that are rejected by the scientific community” – Dr. Harriet Hall, M.D.
Victor Dominocielo, M.A.

Victor Dominocielo, M.A., a California-credentialed teacher for 36 years, is the Human Biology and Health teacher at a local middle school. He earned his Master of Arts degree in Education from UCSB. The opinions expressed are his own.

The Placebo Disclaimer

The Placebo Disclaimer

 

This legal disclaimer is usually found in a tiny box, written in almost microscopic print, on all sorts of supplements that claim fantastic health benefits.  You’ll see it on your multivitamin, mineral supplements, food extracts and concentrates which will claim to end pain and suffering and boost your health to near Olympic levels.  I call this a “placebo disclaimer” because after making amazing claims for their product, the last sentence states quite clearly that the product doesn’t do anything worthy of the money you’re spending on it.

A translation of this standard placebo disclaimer is useful.   The first sentence should be read as, “This product has not been evaluate by the Food and Drug Administration…or the TSA, The Department of Transportation, NASA, or the Army Corps of Engineers…because the ingredients are…FOOD!”   The ingredients of many these miracle and wonder supplements are usually on the GRAS list (Generally Recognized As Safe) because humans have been consuming them as part of their regular diets for decades.  Vitamin C is the obvious example: it’s contained in almost everything we eat, it’s good for us and it’s part of a normal healthy diet.   We can synthesize it chemically or extract it from plants and concentrate it into mega doses in pill form but such mega doses have not proved to be better than consuming vitamin C as part of a healthy diet.  So the FDA may decline to waste time and money testing a normal food, mineral, vitamin, raspberry concentrate or green coffee beans for which miraculous health claims are made.

On the one hand, while the FDA doesn’t want to waste time on frivolous claims for common food items, there are outlandish claims for some products that the FDA would like to restrict but they are prevented by senators protecting the advertising language of the supplement industry.

Recently, Dr Oz was “scolded” by a congressional committee for his deceptive language and British comedian, John Oliver, took that opportunity to highlight some of the problems with the supplement industry’s ability to continually make outrageous claims for normal food products.  That video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA0wKeokWUU.

Also in the video, two long time senators, Orin Hatch – R and Tom Harkin – D, were mentioned as top recipients of the supplement industry’s political donations and the leaders of efforts to prevent any restrictions on the language of claims made by the supplement industry.

The second sentence of the placebo disclaimer can be read as, “This product is not intended to treat, diagnose, cure or prevent any disease…even though we have just spent the last 15 pages in our brochure trying to convince you that it will perform health miracles.”  Hampshire Labs in Minneapolis, MN markets a product called “Marine 4X” and their brochure claims that their seaweed/algae/ kelp will “… lower blood pressure, increase circulation, fix cholesterol trouble, speed weight loss, invigorate metabolism, create younger skin, boost immune function, relieve aches and pains and beat back aging”.

Yowza!  And I thought there was no such thing as a magic pill.  What’s the magic ingredient in this seaweed pill?  “Fucose”.  Sounds a bit like glucose and, sure enough, it’s a type of sugar.  Marketing a sugar pill as a magical medical cure all…  Don’t they know this could be copyright infringement on homeopathy?

Next thing you know, they’ll attempt to market water as a cure all.  Sorry, that’s homeopathy again.  How about a drinkable, magical sunscreen?  Surely no one would fall for such an unscientific claim.

It may be hard to believe, but there are ads for Osmosis Skincare’s “UV Neutralizer Harmonized H2O” with a supposed 30 SPF rating.  Their advertising states, “The product is made by manipulating the radio waves that occur naturally in water in order to give them UV-canceling properties and then duplicating that same process hundreds of thousands of times.  Vibrational waves in the water isolate the ‘precise frequencies’ needed for the protection from UV rays”.     Dr. Johnson, M.D., the founder, says that once people drink the water those solar-ray-canceling characteristics are shared with the water already in the body and sunlight is repelled at the skin level with the sun neutralized before it actually hits the skin.  $30 bucks a bottle!  Sure enough, included on the bottle is the placebo disclaimer.

Magical sunscreen water?  Hogwash.  There is no known physical, chemical or biological mechanism for ingested water to neutralize the rays of the sun before they even touch the skin.  This type of language about “manipulating radio waves”, “vibrational waves” and “harmonized water/nano whatever” is an attempt to use scientific jargon to deceive and is the typical language of all sorts of gimmicks and alternative health claims designed to separate you from your money.

The final bit of ambiguous language usually found along with the standard placebo disclaimer is the sentence, “Supports a healthy immune (liver, brain, digestive, circulatory, etc) system”.  Consider for a moment that everything you do that isn’t overtly bad for you supports your healthy body systems.  Eating, drinking, breathing, exercising, hugging your children, etc, all support health.  Advertising that you should buy expensive raspberry extract, vitamin C or miraculous green coffee beans because they support a healthy organ system is as valid as recommending breathing for your continued good health.

In sharp contrast to the expensive marketing of food, water and sugar as placebos, Science Based Medicine and its pharmacology is intended and even required to diagnose, treat, cure and prevent disease.

 

Victor Dominocielo, M.A.  7/1/14

Victor Dominocielo, M.A., a California-credentialed teacher for 36 years, is the Human Biology and Health teacher at a local middle school. He earned his Master of Arts degree in Education from UCSB. The opinions expressed are his own.

 

 

 

 

 

The Placebo Effect: It’s not just a little white pill

The Placebo Effect:

It’s not just a little white pill

The typical scientific definition of a placebo is, “The placebo effect is the measurable, observable or felt improvement in health or behavior not attributable to a medication or invasive treatment that has been administered.” – The Skeptics’ Dictionary (Skepdic.com).  The reason that the placebo effect is scientifically measurable is because the gold standard of any research on human beings includes a placebo control group, which is given a sham treatment or pill identical to the pill/procedure being tested but without the active ingredient or actual procedure.  The difference between the placebo group improvement and the actual procedure/drug being tested can then be measured.  This is the description of the placebo effect from the research point of view when a placebo is compared to an actual therapeutic procedure. There are a number of excellent articles on the placebo effect at Sciencebasedmedicine.org.

However, the placebo effect takes place whether or not you are comparing it to or measuring it against another pill, potion or procedure.  From the patients’ point of view, the placebo effect is a constellation of patient generated responses to the stimulus of a motivational story and a possibly therapeutic procedure.  The more dramatic the story and the more invasive the procedure, the greater the potential placebo effect that is produced. There is even a placebo continuum of sorts: sham surgery has a greater effect than a placebo injection; injections have more of an effect than placebo pills; brand name placebo pills have a greater effect than blank white placebo pills and taking placebos four times a day has a greater effect than taking placebos two times a day, etc.

Almost any procedure can have a beneficial effect if it is part of a “therapeutic” story.  What’s going on is a self-fulfilling prophecy: the healer is telling you that this procedure will make you well and you very much want to be well, so your body ralleys, physically and psychologically, to that end and a placebo improvement occurs.

The placebo pills, potions and procedures do not actually affect the intended illness and the particulars of the various placebo procedures are incidental to any improvement.  Test subjects given sham alcohol will demonstrate the effects of being drunk; asthmatics given water in their inhalers will show improvement in their asthma symptoms and subjects who are not lactose intolerant and who are told that they are will produce symptoms of lactose intolerance.

All medical procedures produce a patient generated placebo effect.  Science based medicine, complementary, alternative, integrative, folk medicine, ridiculous snake oil remedies, etc, all produce a placebo effect.  Surgery, stitches, acupuncture, aromas, magically energized water and sugar, alcohol, a cold shower, a slap in the face, cranial massage, rearranging invisible bio-fields, etc, will all produce a placebo effect if the “healer” tells the patient that the placebo will be curative.  Even harmful procedures, like swallowing a long, thin cotton sheet and gagging as you pull it out, bloodletting, sticking pins in your skin or frequent enemas will produce a beneficial placebo effect if it is tied to a therapeutic story that gives the patient hope for relief of their symptoms.

So, how does the patient generate this placebo effect?   Here are the elements of the constellation of events that produces the patient generated placebo process:

  1. Being sick, injured, miserable and in pain causes our natural skepticism to be replaced by suggestibility and hope as we seek any method to relieve our illness or injury. We quickly become willing to abandon the Germ Theory of Disease for invisible energy, magical vibrations and other “forces”.
  2. We listen to the anecdotal testimony of others who were “cured” by some interesting potion, procedure or exotic folk medicine from another country. Personal success stories are colorful, emotional and we tend to trust the storyteller.
  3. The process of treatment behavioral conditioning from childhood tells us that if we go to a healer, take a pill and/or subject ourselves to a healing procedure that we will get better. This is a, “If it worked before, it will work again”, type assumption.
  4. Many illnesses and injuries heal naturally but we make a false association between the potion/procedure and our improvement. In a classical Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc thinking situation, we imagine that just because our improvement came after the folk remedy, that the improvement happened because of the folk remedy.
  5. The drama effect: the procedure or ritual may be painful, risky and spectacular: surgery, bloodletting and stitches are very dramatic. So is acupuncture, moxibustion, enemas, induced gagging and vomiting.
  6. The physical insult/rally effect: if the procedure includes a physical insult like induced vomiting/gagging, purgatives, bloodletting, needles, surgery, stitches, etc, then the body normally is stimulated to heal itself and overcome the insult.
  7. The distraction effect: the greater the bodily insult, the more potential there is to distract the patient from their pain and condition. For example, induced vomiting and gagging will temporarily distract you from a headache.
  8. Once our condition improves, even temporarily, we fall prey to confirmation bias, looking for supporting examples and discounting scientific evidence contrary to our personal experience (“…but it works for me!”). This self-fulfilling prophecy makes us habitually prone to finding what we want to find.
  9. The confessional effect: speaking to a “healer” for 60 – 90 minutes who genuinely accepts you and all your bodily ills and is so concerned about you returning to good health feels wonderful.
  10. Actual placebo improvement: the above process generates some improvement, not because of the particular procedure, potion or pill but because of the effects that this thinking and feeling process has on our bodies: adrenalin release, endorphins, stress reduction, memories of being taken care of by Mom, etc.

So, the next and obvious question, harped on ad infinitum by non-science based medicine promoters is, “What’s the harm?”  Well, if ALL medical procedures produce a placebo benefit, wouldn’t it be better to use science based medicine that subtracts the patient generated placebo effect and actually produces additional patient improvement?   Charging patients for their own patient generated placebo effect is harmful.   Claiming that patient generated placebo effects are produced by invisible and magical forces is untruthful and harmful.  Wasting patients’ time, energy, money and delaying and distracting them from obtaining often critical, science based medical care (as in the unfortunate case of Steve Jobs) is very harmful.  That’s the harm.

 

By Victor Dominocielo, 4/12/14

Victor Dominocielo, M.A., a California-credentialed teacher for 36 years, is the human biology and health teacher at a local middle school. He earned his Master of Arts degree in education from UCSB. The opinions expressed are his own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Science Makes Mistakes Too…

Science Makes Mistakes Too…

 

When I talk about a scientific explanation of events and cause and effect, I am sometimes told that, “Science also makes mistakes”.

True enough: Science makes mistakes.  However, it would be more accurate to say that Science makes mistakes and then, as part of the scientific process, vigorously and even viciously purges those mistakes from its system by experimentation, repetition and peer review over time.   This adversarial element of science to its own body of work is exemplified by the “null hypothesis” or, more colloquially, “What you said is wrong”.  If your hypothesis can withstand the onslaught of professionals in your field trying to shred your work and prove you wrong, then your idea/hypothesis wins provisional and temporary acceptance.   It is a brutal performance standard.

Einstein said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong”.  This is a very high bar of legitimacy to maintain and it is the reason why Science holds a respected place of authority in our society.  When Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905, he was immediately ridiculed.  He remained a patent clerk for four more years.  Gregor Mendel, the founder of genetics, was complete ignored when he presented his work…for 40 years!  Charles Darwin was petrified about publishing his work and offending the prevailing religious/professional establishment of his day and so he waited for 23 years after his famous voyage.

Many people who question scientific findings still think their beliefs and ideas have the same weight as scientific theories.  This may be a semantic misunderstanding between the use of the term “hypothesis” (a proposed explanation with no evidence at the beginning of the scientific process) and a scientific “theory” which is usually the result of years of research, evidence, experimentation and peer review.  As an example, our personal ideas and beliefs about Evolution are hypotheses.  Darwin’s work is a scientific theory which has withstood the test of time: generations of experts trying to prove the “theory” of evolution wrong with no success.

If you Google up the ten worst mistakes of science, (http://www.sciencechannel.com/strange-science/10-science-mistakes) you get a very interesting list.  From Galen’s faulty idea of the circulatory system and Ptolemy’s earth centered solar system in the second century to the theory of the four humors and spontaneous generation and on to alchemy and astrology, it appears that Science has made some incredible mistakes.

Except that when these events took place, there was no Science as we know it today.  In the second century, Ptolemy watched a few sunsets and without any theoretical astronomy framework and only rudimentary tools, wrongly concluded that the sun revolved around the earth.  Galen was dealing with the incorrect medical framework of the Four Humors when he proposed a completely wrong idea for circulation.  To be sure, throughout history there have always been scientific individuals and in our more recent past there were local, coordinated groups of scientists.  However, Science as we know it today, as civilization’s organized, worldwide, multicultural network of research based, experimental explanations of cause and effect, did not exist until the 1870’s.  By that time, travel and communication between global research institutions allowed knowledge to be standardly measured and reliably repeated with the process of experimentation, data collection and repetition insuring that mistakes were purged from the system over time.

We, as individuals, have no such performance standard.  We consistently and continually make mistakes with no idea that we even made a mistake.  We claim to be our own expert but we are a completely biased, anecdotal story of one.   Science, over time and repetition, is a process that points the way to an ever more accurate picture of reality.  Individuals, over time, can continue to make the same mistake generation after generation after generation.  For millennia we continued to fabricate emotionally pleasing philosophical and spiritual explanations for natural events instead of adopting the very simple procedure of scientific methodology: observe, measure, propose an explanation, test it and have someone else check your work because we are all prone to mistakes.  Why was this simple approach so elusive?  Why couldn’t communities from 500, 1000 or even 2000 years ago process observations and information in a scientific manner?   Humanity needed a tool to prevent us from making these individual and then collective false associations, generation after generation.

Mathematics seems to have escaped the disuse that has plagued Science through the millennia and a comparison may suggest a reason for the reluctance to accept and use scientific methodology.  Mathematics offends no one and its logic is impossible to refute.  Science on the other hand, has an inverse relationship with one of the other pillars of our society: religion.  As Science explained more and more of the natural world, mystical/spiritual explanations were less and less necessary.  This process may have inadvertently offended many religious people and slowed the acceptance of various scientific theories.

Science is humanity’s method for not fooling itself.  It’s not an opinion or a belief.  It is not my way against your way.  Science is a tool for collecting repeatable evidence: a tool that insures that beliefs, opinions, individual false associations and prejudices are purged from our collective understanding of the natural world.  In the words of Carl Sagan:

“Science is not perfect.

It is often misused.

It’s only a tool, but it’s the best tool we have.

Self-correcting, ever-changing, applicable to everything;

With this tool, we vanquish the impossible”.

 

Victor Dominocielo, M.A.

 

Victor Dominocielo, M.A., a California-credentialed teacher for 36 years, is the Human Biology and Health teacher at a local middle school. He earned his Master of Arts degree in Education from UCSB. The opinions expressed are his own.