Pseudo-Skepticism and Anti-Science:

 “There’s just so much we don’t know…”

 

Skepticism is a questioning attitude and doubt in the face of unsupported evidence.  There may be a large amount of unsupported evidence gathered over many years, such as the fuzzy flying saucer pictures or Bigfoot footprints, but no tangible, corroborated, repeatable, scientific evidence.  In scientific circles, the general rule is, “The plural of anecdotal stories is not evidence”.

Pseudo-Skepticism is a questioning attitude and doubt in the face of overwhelming, supported and converging scientific evidence.  For example, in discussing telepathy, a pseudo-skeptic might say, “There’s just so much we don’t know…about the human brain/mind/psyche, etc.”  Nonsense.  Telepathy/clairvoyance has been continually disproven during routine experimentation in university psychology programs since the introduction of Zener cards in the 1930’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zener_cards).

Pseudo-Skepticism is a way of pretending to have reasonable and logical doubt about a scientific subject.  “There’s just so much we don’t know…about the stars and the universe and their influence on our lives here on earth…so I will continue to think that astrology produces a real effect on my life”.  While astronomers are only just beginning, in the words of Carl Sagan, to touch, “…the shores of the cosmic ocean” and there is a “universe” of information to be learned about astronomy, we do know that astrology has a lot more to do with wishful thinking and personal psychology than it has to do with the stars.

In our society, today, there are three major pseudo-skeptical and anti-science movements: creation “science”, climate change pseudo-skeptics and the anti-vaccination movement.

Young Earth Creationists (YEC) say that the earth is around 6000 years old and that the Bible should be taken as literally true with no metaphor, symbolism or mythology involved.  Absolutely nothing wrong with these beliefs except that, for some reason, the YEC people also want their religion accepted as accurate science and taught in public school science classrooms.      Creationism should have a respected place in our society just as all other religions are respected.  Creation “Science” and Intelligent Design, however, are political movements, disguised as science and designed to circumvent our American ideal of the separation of church and state. This obvious deception is not working: the Supreme Court has twice struck down attempts to have the Creationist/ID religion taught in public school science classes.

Twenty years ago, having questions about global climate change being influenced by humans and their technology might have been reasonable.  However, climate science has been around for over 40 years now and the last 20 years has seen an incredible amount of scientific focus, money and excellent research in this relatively new field of study.  The result is that there is a preponderance of evidence and multiple lines of converging evidence that the earth is in a warming period and a certain percentage of it is human caused.  “The scientists examined 4,014 abstracts on climate change and found 97.2 percent of the papers assumed humans play a role in global warming (ClimateWire, May 16, 2013).”  Yet there is a significant portion of the population (approx 32%) who are skeptical about human caused climate change and are distrusting the massive amounts of scientific evidence on this issue.  Why?

The science is good, in fact, it’s damn good.  The problem is not the science: it’s the politics.  The American public can easily tell that climate science is being misused to further a political agenda.  The politics of climate change has a very real potential to control and over control every person and organization in our society.  The real start of our current focus on climate change began with the inception of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988.  This “marriage” of science and political advocacy has been a disaster for science: politicians seduced scientists with an amount of money and media attention for their work never before seen in the halls of academia.  Scientists were now partners in a political cause célèbre and gradually became advocates.  During this process over the last twenty years, many scientists lost their impartiality.   Scientists made a deal with the devil to their detriment: if science is not impartial, it’s not science.

Where does this leave us?  The planet is warming and repeatable evidence can identify that the source of a certain percentage of the warming is human caused.  There’s no denying it with pseudo-skepticism.  However, what we do with that information and how much we should spend for how much temperature change are political questions.  Scientists should stay far away from politicians (and the IPCC) and sever all connections with advocacy lest they trade the respect and impartiality of science for political expediency.

Vaccination began as a documented, modern medical procedure in 1796 with Edward Jenner’s use of smallpox vaccine.  There are reports of earlier use of inoculation technique in India and China dating back to the 12^th century.  Vaccination, since 1796, is arguably the best medical technique ever devised and its use has come close to wiping out or greatly reducing several horrible diseases (polio, smallpox, typhoid, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, measles, mumps, hepatitis A/B, chickenpox, meningitis, pneumonia, HPV/cervical cancer and influenza ) and prevented the suffering and death of millions upon millions of people worldwide (the lives of six million people saved every year).  The article below by WHO, details the benefits of vaccinations: http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/2/07-040089/en/

The anti-vaccination movement is a tribute to how much damage one MD’s fraudulent study (ex MD Andrew Wakefield), media frenzy and one celebrity mom’s misconceptions (Jenny McCarthy) can do to hundreds of years of beneficial medical science.

In 1998, ex Dr. Wakefield published a fraudulent study of only twelve test subjects.  He concluded, based on this too small sample size, that the MMR vaccine demonstrated a connection to autism.  Not only was the sample size to small to draw this conclusion but he manipulated the data.  There was zero connection between the vaccine and autism but his fraudulent “research” in The Lancet medical journal played into the fears that mothers naturally have for the health of their children.  The media whipped up frenzy and Jenny McCarthy jumped on board.  Her 11-year-old son, Evan, was diagnosed with autism in 2005.  After that, McCarthy publicly suggested that vaccinations may have triggered his disorder.  Wakefield published a book in 2010, “Callous Disregard”, attempting to justify his fraud and McCarthy wrote the forward praising him repeatedly.

During this time, vaccination rates began to drop due to the efforts of the anti-vax movement and some illnesses like whooping cough and measles, held in check by our “herd immunity”, began to make a resurgence.  The LA Times front page story on 9/3/14 describes how parents are seeking vaccine exemptions for school attendance requirements at twice the rate (8%) then they did seven years ago.

The Anti-Vax movement continues to play on the fears that vaccines cause autism and the conspiracy theory that pharmaceutical companies and the government can’t be trusted to produce or administer a beneficial medical product.

Pseudo-Skepticism in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence is willful ignorance.  In addition to this personal willful ignorance, these larger Anti-Science movements have the potential to harm many people in our society.  Question everything, learn the science and find out where the preponderance of evidence points.

 

Victor Dominocielo, M.A., 9/4/14

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.  Leave a comment here or a question at, “Scienceeducator.org”.  The opinions expressed are his own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Scientific Manufactroversy

 

Take an issue on which almost all scientists agree, find the few and rare proponents of an alternate position and have an attention getting disagreement between science and belief.  Often the scientific experts will be pitted against a “man on the street” opinion or well known personalities in other scientific fields of study or even completely different fields such as politics or religion.

The media is mostly responsible for creating this type of “news structuring” or manufacturing a controversy.  News stories on which almost all experts agree are considered kind of boring information and only of interest to a narrow segment of the population.  So the media will go out of its way to find odd, rare and exotic views.  People tend to pay much more attention when an emotional argument is taking place and reporters convince themselves that they are only trying to fairly portray both sides of the story.

Also, the construction of doubt (where there is none) helps to generate larger audiences.  This is why National Geographic has “Chasing UFO’s” in their program line-up and the History Channel has “Cryptid: the Swamp Beast” and “Bigfoot Legends”.  Most unfortunately, the Science Channel has programs on “The Russian Yeti”, Voodoo Zombies”, “Life After Death” and “Shadow People” (i.e. ghosts) all designed to entice the viewer of the “possibilities” of this nonsense.  The History Channel even has this ridiculous byline in their Cryptid Faq Section, “That’s part of the fun!…You don’t know where the truth ends and superstition begins.”  This is History?  Really?

Another problem in the age of Google is the “My Expert verses Your Expert” dilemma.  You can always find an expert to support your point of view no matter how improbable.  There‘s always a seemingly rational argument on the other side.  Kurt Weis has a PhD in geology from Harvard University…and thinks that the earth is less than 10,000 years old!  Talk about mixing Science with belief and opinion and creating…well, creating a Young Earth Creationist.

Most of these Manufactroversies can be dismissed by looking at the preponderance of scientific evidence for both sides of the issue.  How many Harvard educated geologists are there who believe that the earth is about 10,000 years old?  One?  OK, maybe two?  Most all other geologists agree on the evidence, definitive since 1926, that the earth is about 4.55 billion years old.  So, there is no scientific controversy about the age of the earth.

Likewise, there is also no scientific controversy about Evolution.  Since Darwin published in 1859, all biologists have come to agree with Russian geneticist, T. Dobzhansky, “Nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution”.  There are a lot of theological arguments against evolution, various beliefs about the origin of life and an unending number of contrary opinions…but no scientific evidence.  In fact, the process of evolution is so essentially intertwined with the existence of life, that evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins observed in his book, “The Blind Watchmaker” that, “I want to persuade the reader not just that Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence….A good case can be made that Darwinism is true, not just on this planet, but all over the universe wherever life may be found.” (ix – x).

So, where does the preponderance of scientific evidence lie?  One hundred fifty six years of evidence demonstrating that small changes from generation to generation (microevolution) accumulate over millions of years to produce new species or… the beliefs and opinions of certain religious groups.  Everyone is entitled to their beliefs and opinions, but just don’t make the mistake of calling those ideas scientific.

Anti-Vaccination proponents have a particularly difficult scientific case to make: vaccinations have been used since the time of Dr. Edward Jenner in 1796.  In the last 219 years, vaccinations have proved to be the best and most effective medical technique ever devised, saving more lives than any other medical procedure by significantly reducing and eliminating many diseases that have been the scourge of the human race (smallpox, polio, malaria, measles, rubella, to name but a few).  WHO estimates that 6 million lives are saved each year, worldwide, due to vaccinations.  Where does the preponderance of evidence lie?   Against over 200 years of scientific evidence, there is one fraudulent study by disgraced, ex-physician, Andrew Wakefield, Jenny McCarthy’s musings about autism and a group of vocal conspiracy theorists who are very upset that Big Pharma is making money and poisoning us all.  Go figure.

Another recently manufactured scientific controversy within the medical establishment is due to the attitude, among some physicians, of “clinical supremacy”.  That is, some doctors can get so good at their clinical practice that they might eschew the scientific research on a treatment and pursue their own methods of treatment.  There is currently no better example of this than some doctors designating themselves as Lyme Literate MD’s (LLMD).  Instead of following the research in infectious disease and instead of adhering to the standards set by the Infectious Disease Society of America and the CDC, these few doctors treat patients according to their personal clinical results.  In doing so, they are subject to the bias and placebo results that scientific research is designed to eliminate.

Our human tendency towards confirmation bias almost guarantees that we will find whatever proposition or idea that we go looking for because, even if there isn’t any evidence, we will reliably manufacture it.  Scientific methodology is the only way out of this slavery to our personal biases and beliefs and a guide to how the natural world works.

It sometimes happens in Science that an Isaac Newton, an Einstein or a Hawking comes along with game changing discoveries that rock the scientific establishment.  However, Science usually just plods along, incrementally building on what has gone before and making small discoveries and changes that slowly improve our world.  It is a fair certainty that Creationists, Anti-vaxers and Lyme Literate MD’s are no Einsteins.  In these cases of manufactured scientific controversy, looking at where the preponderance of evidence lies resolves any questions about the proper direction of Science.

 

Victor Dominocielo, M.A. 3/6/15

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tooth Fairy Science

(term coined by Dr. Harriet Hall, M.D.)

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/tooth_fairy_science_part_1

 

“Tooth Fairy Science” is postulating an improbable, outlandish explanation ( or hypothesis) for routine data when much more reasonable hypotheses are available.

This technique, while harmless for the Tooth Fairy, Santa and the Easter Bunny, is very wasteful of investigatory time and research money when applied to scientific subjects.  “Tooth Fairy Science” short circuits five basic principles of scientific investigation:

1. In Science, the simplest explanations of events with the fewest assumptions are usually     correct (Occam’s razor).
2. The “What’s more likely?” question has to be asked when considering a hypothesis.
3. The “Where does the preponderance of evidence point?” question should be answered to keep the investigation on track.
4. The principle of “Prior Plausibility” must be met: hypotheses must be in line with the basic understandings of physics, chemistry and biology.
5. The Null Hypothesis: Science must take the orientation that the hypothesis is not accurate and try to disprove the evidence presented. Tooth Fairy “Scientists”, on the other hand, are always trying to prove that their improbable hypotheses are correct.

Hypothesizing farfetched explanations of events that are unreasonable and then collecting real world data, does not confirm the unreasonable explanation.  In the case of Tooth Fairy Science, the data only confirms the data.  A tooth fairy researcher might ask: How much money was left?  Coins or dollars?  More for the first tooth?  Was the money left on top of the pillow or underneath?  This type of data can also be collected for Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.  The more probable cause of the data (parental gift giving) is intentionally not considered.

A researcher could spend years examining the vast amount of anecdotal data collected on Bigfoot and ghosts.  For Bigfoot, there are noises in the woods, fuzzy pictures and thousands of anecdotal stories which confirm that there are, without a doubt, noises in the woods, long distance, fuzzy pictures of mammals and that people will say anything.  Reports of ghosts are either dead relatives who refuse to leave or… the result of the powerful “sensed presence” effect and “sleep paralysis” that is fairly common among human beings.  What explanation is more likely?  (http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/01/20/ever-wake-up-and-think-see-ghost-here-what-happening/?intcmp=features).

There is data since the 1940’s on UFO sightings and, more recently, Crop Circles. Unexplained lights in the sky are either alien visitors or high altitude test flights (http://www.newsweek.com/cia-behind-ufo-sightings-1950s-and-1960s-295939).  Crop circles are, most certainly, proof that an advanced civilization spent years of its time and most of its wealth to fly to our planet and… cut the grass…or farmer John got drunk one night and took the tractor for a spin.  What explanation makes the fewest assumptions?

Most of these Tooth Fairy beliefs involve thousands of anecdotal stories which are mistaken by their believers to be significant evidence.  However, “The plural of anecdotal stories is not scientific evidence”, says Michael Shermer, columnist for Scientific American.  Unfortunately, these personal stories, testimonies, reports, etc, are influenced by emotion, bias and faulty perception.  We all tend to focus on and see what we want to see and hear what our biases want us to hear.  This human pre-disposition to self-delusion is the rationale for the existence of Science.  Without Science, self-delusion rules.

Perhaps the worst example of the self-delusion inherent in Tooth Fairy Science comes from the C.I.A., that is, the Complementary, Integrative and Alternative folk medicine people.  The situation is so unscientific that, “Tooth Fairy Folk Medicine”, might be a more accurate term.   Why do we continue to propose fantastic, immeasurable and supernatural mechanisms for such a well studied area of human biology as is our disease process?  It’s understandable that thousands of years ago we explained the natural and normal disease process as mystical.  It’s understandable that we looked to the supernatural five hundred years ago or even two hundred years ago…but for how long are we going to continue to explain the natural process of getting sick and getting well by immaterial energies and invisible body parts?

 

Alternative folk medicine practitioners have constructed a magical world in which, “Anything Cures Everything”.  Pick any brand of folk medicine, its practitioners will perform some type of theatrical display and then claim to cure everything from headaches to cancer.  The therapeutic environment is ripe for this type of self-delusion: most illnesses get better on their own, the placebo effect is reliably generated by every conscious patient in any therapeutic environment, the patient desires to get well and the practitioner wants to heal.  Self-delusion is rampant in these circumstances.

If a sugar pill, the white lab coat and the stethoscope around the doctor’s neck can induce a patient to produce a placebo effect, then anything can.  Every society and culture on earth has been proving this, continuously, since the beginning of recorded history.  At different times and in different places, human civilization has marveled in the amazingly “curative” powers of witchcraft, bloodletting, auras, energy attunement, vibrations, iridology, nano particles, reflexology, snake oil, homeopathy, voodoo, balancing the four humors, invisible meridians, releasing evil spirits from the blood, moxibustion, ear candling and, lest we not forget that contemporary paragon of human gullibility and confirmation bias, Tong Ren doll tapping.  Either all these manifestations of magical energies and invisible body parts are true and “work” or…it’s the placebo effect combined with doctor and patient biases.  What explanation is more likely and where does the preponderance of evidence lie?

Tooth Fairy Folk Medicine also violates the scientific concept of prior plausibility: their belief based mechanisms do not operate according the basic laws of physics, chemistry and biology.  There is only one way to counter the self-delusion that is inherent in the therapeutic environment: medical practice and protocols have to follow researched based, scientific experimentation.

All these manifestations of human belief and cultural expression, from the Tooth Fairy to Bigfoot and on to alternative folk medicines, provide a rich and varied history of our civilization…but please, just don’t call them Science.

Victor Dominocielo, M.A. 1/26/15

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vaccination Rates Dropping in SB County

 

Kelsy Brugger in “The Independent”, 9/11/14, writes that SB County Health Department figures show a rise in vaccine exemptions from 2.9% in 2011 to 4.7 % in 2013.  Herd immunity begins to rapidly deteriorate after 5% of the population does not vaccinate.  National trends show that vaccination rates often drop within pockets of affluent and highly educated groups and that national high exemption rates hover around 25%.  Following that trend, 27.4% of students at Montecito Union School filed exemptions as did a whopping 41.7% of students at El Montecito School, according to SB County records.

Using data from the CDC, “The Hollywood Reporter” did an excellent article showing that vaccination rates in wealthy school districts in Los Angeles are as low as those in Southern Sudan!  There is even a new term going around calling this phenomenon, “affluenza”, suggesting that the affluent/wealthy think that they don’t get sick like the rest of us (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hollywood-vaccination-fail-why-la-731815).

PBS/Nova has just released an excellent, science based video called, “Vaccines: Calling the Shots, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATcs0qhzfek  that every parent should see.   This anti-vax trend in Santa Barbara is significant, very disturbing, and potentially harmful to many of our children.

Parents are asked by their physicians to have 28 vaccinations for 14 different diseases within their child’s first two years.  That s a lot of shots and many parents might naturally question if so many are necessary.  However, all the shots are necessary, simply because that is the number of serious and life threatening diseases that children are susceptible to and which vaccinations can eradicate if everyone maintains herd immunity.  Research since the 1950’s has shown that after millions upon millions of vaccinations, worldwide, that fears of autism, multiple sclerosis, SIDS, heart failure, etc.  are completely unfounded .  Vaccinations have extremely rare side effects (about one serious side effect for every one million vaccinations) and enormous benefits (over six million people saved, per year, from painful suffering and death).  Finally, research over many years has demonstrated that the number of vaccinations and the CDC recommended vaccination schedule is safe and effective.

Many parents avoid vaccinations because they follow a naturalistic ideology and consider vaccinations an unnatural substance in their body.  Well, there is nothing more natural than measles, whooping cough and smallpox.  In fact, we live in a “soup” of natural air born particles of disease and our body’s immune system stays strong and keeps us healthy by continually fighting off these diseases.  Vaccination exactly mimics this natural process by selectively exposing our immune systems to a very weak form of a debilitating and deadly disease. Our immune systems are then triggered and prepared to fight off that particular disease.  The only difference between the normal, natural and continuous operation of our immune system and a vaccination is that medical science picks one of the many diseases that our immune system is continually fighting.
In the PBS video, a group of Moms are watching their children play and they talk on camera about their confusion over vaccinations.  “There’s just so much information, I don’t know who to ask”.  “There’s no such thing as an unbiased source”.   “Who am I supposed to trust?”  One Mom relates a story that sometime after her child had a vaccination that she had a seizure and the Mom blames the vaccination.

You don’t know who to ask?  How about asking your M.D. pediatrician?  Ask ten different pediatricians and see if their recommendations agree.  They will agree because they follow the CDC guidelines and also because it is their difficult task in life to sometimes watch children die of these preventable diseases.  For that reason, every pediatrician is going to recommend the absolute best and safest procedure and schedule available.   Who to trust?  How about trusting the M.D.’s four years of medical school, two to five years of residency training and State Medical Board certification?

These Moms are practicing the worst and most dangerous form of anti-science, pseudo-skepticism with their child’s health.  It goes something like this: “Let’s see.  I have to make this life-and-death medical decision for my child.  Should I go with the over two hundred years of science based medical research, experimentation and practice, with millions of people saved, horrible diseases wiped off the face of the earth or…should I go with Betty Sue’s opinion who’s sitting next to me on the park bench?  I don’t know.  I’m not sure.  Betty Sue goes to the health food store…She eats all organic…She’s so natural…I want my kids to be like hers…”

I want to know who these Moms had for Science teachers in high school and college.  How did they pass any of their Science classes without knowing the difference between scientific research and Betty Sue’s opinion?   How could they possibly equate 200 years and millions of positive outcomes with Betty Sue’s emotional story?  Why didn’t that other mom not understand that just because her child had a seizure sometime after her vaccination, that she did not necessarily have the seizure because of the vaccination (post hoc thinking).  Why wasn’t she taught these simple cognitive fallacies when she learned how to examine scientific evidence in high school?

Because vaccinations work so well, each generation of educated parents may try to second guess their physicians.  “Why should I vaccinate against smallpox?  No one in the U.S. gets smallpox anymore.”  The same could be said for measles in 2000 but now measles is coming back.  Cases of whooping cough/pertussis have tripled in California and SB County considers our 81 cases part of the statewide epidemic (8000 cases).  These horrible diseases return when we think Betty Sue’s opinion is equal to or better than medical research.

There is also a significant parent resistance to HPV vaccine which is recommended for the prevention of cervical/anal cancer and genital warts.  Many religious parents feel that their message of abstinence is somehow subverted by the vaccination.  This does not logically follow: a vaccine that prevents cervical cancer has nothing to do with religious instruction.  This situation is particularly frustrating since HPV vaccine actually prevents cancer.  Wait.  Wait.  Let me say that again: we have a cure for this cancer.  The medical community doesn’t get to say that very often.  It’s not a treatment.  HPV vaccine prevents cervical cancer!  Still, some parents have developed pseudo-skeptical and anti-science views on the subject.  Unbelievable.

The Complementary, Integrative and Alternative (C.I.A.) crowd appears to be divided on the issue of vaccinations with some realizing that the scientific evidence for vaccination is so overwhelming that they refer their patients out to M.D.’s and some who still actively preach anti-science and anti-germ theory of disease nonsense.  D.D. Palmer, the founder of Chiropractic, said this, “It is the very height of absurdity to strive to ‘protect’ any person from smallpox and other malady by inoculating them with a filthy animal poison… No one will ever pollute the blood of any member of my family unless he cares to walk over my dead body…” (Palmer, DD. “The Chiropractor’s Adjustor”, 1910).  Even in 1910, Edward Jenner’s documented, modern medical vaccination procedure for smallpox (1796) had been successful for 114 years.  Alternative medicine may be tolerable when they treat conditions that are going to get better anyway, like colds and flu, but actively preaching against vaccinations is shameful and will only result in the increased suffering of children.  Again, I find it amazing that people follow these placebo/belief-based practitioners when their child’s health is at risk.

A few minutes into the “Vaccines: Calling the Shots”, video, you will see a seven week old baby suffering from whooping cough.  I mean on the verge of death suffering.  It’s heart wrenching.  I spent five years as an EMT on a 911 ambulance in Manhattan, N.Y.  I’ve seen some pretty raw damage.  Yet this little baby’s distress really got to me.  Prepare yourself.

This mother’s tears and the tiny infants struggle to breath is something that children no longer have to suffer.   If you can watch that little seven week old baby struggle for his life’s breath and then go play Russian roulette with your child’s health, you have been misled with false information from the naturalistic, anti-science, medieval medicine crowd.  Don’t do that.  Your child deserves better.  Don’t listen to Betty Sue and the other pseudo-skeptical, mumbo jumbo apologists.  Listen to your M.D. and follow their vaccination schedule.

Victor Dominocielo, M.A. 9/16/14

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Why is Science better than our individual observations and opinions or even thousands of observations and opinions over thousands of years?  The short answer is that you and I can be completely wrong and pass those wrong explanations down through the centuries.  Several different cultures throughout history looked at the night sky and concluded that it was a dome and that the stars were pinholes of light from heaven on the other side.  For three thousand years we explained bloodletting as helping to balance the four humors in our bodies and return us to good health.  Even today, every single one of us makes the same mistake Ptolemy did in the second century when we say, “The sun is setting”, which implies that the sun is moving around the earth.

Scientifically minded individuals worked in isolation when our species began farming and ranching some 10,000 years ago.  As villages became cities, science minded people were able to experiment and learn together in small groups and as universities were established in different cultures, various scientific standards were produced.  These different scientific standards had to deal with the prevailing politics and religions of their cultures and this remains true even today.

So it was only about 150 years ago when global industrialization, travel and communication (telegraph, telephone and radio) became reliable and routine enough that scientists were able to begin a network of standardization for the scientific process.  Experiments by Pasteur in France were communicated, replicated and verified in around the world as the germ theory of disease finally displaced the defunct theory of the four humors.  Marconi in Italy shared the 1909 Nobel Prize for wireless telegraphy with Karl Braun of Germany.  As the world became a smaller place, scientists increasingly shared their work and a standard methodology for scientific investigation developed.  As Neil deGrasse Tyson said at the beginning of the new “Cosmos” series:

“Test ideas by experiment and observation.

Build on those ideas that pass the test;

Reject the ones that fail.

Follow the evidence wherever it leads and

Question everything.”

 

This worldwide, multi-cultural standard of a well controlled scientific experiment is used when anyone wants their explanations for cause and effect to go beyond their personal beliefs and whimsical suppositions.  Experiments and the repetition of experimental results is the key to this scientific standard.  Experiments, and especially experiments involving people, must be arranged with specific controls in order to get reliable results.  For example, in testing a new drug, experiments would have to include a significant group size and randomly chosen subjects.  Ideally only one variable would be tested.  There would have to be a placebo control group and, since subjects often improve on their own, an additional “spontaneous remission” group.   The results of the placebo control group and the spontaneous remission group are subtracted from the results of the test group in order to find out the actual scientific effect of the drug.  Also, the test would have to be double-blinded, meaning that the subjects and the experimenters would not know who was receiving the test drug and who was receiving the placebo.

Amazingly, some scientists don’t always adhere to these rules.  Some experiments are not blinded.  Some peer reviewers don’t carefully read the studies they are supposed to read.  Papers are published with “non-randomized” subjects and insignificant group sizes.  Fortunately, over time, these poorly designed studies are exposed and discarded.  So, while a single experiment does not usually produce significant advancement, repeat experimentation, over time, does produce the correct direction for continued scientific investigation.

This leads us to the next level of scientific reliability: “multiple lines of converging evidence” (MLCE).  In addition to the Scientific Method and rigorous experimental design and implementation, when different branches of science all point to and support a common explanation of the natural world, a Scientific Theory, explaining a broad range of natural phenomena, is usually the result.  For example, the Theory of Evolution is supported by years of experimental findings from the fields of geology, genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, bacteriology, virology and ecology.  While there is no absolute proof in Science, multiple lines of converging evidence point to the best explanation of cause and effect in the natural world.

“Science is a cooperative enterprise spanning the generations.  It’s the passing of a torch from teacher to student to teacher…a community of minds reaching back to antiquity and forward to the stars.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson, “Cosmos”.

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.

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.