{"id":100874,"date":"2023-07-04T19:26:17","date_gmt":"2023-07-05T01:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=100874"},"modified":"2023-07-04T20:12:57","modified_gmt":"2023-07-05T02:12:57","slug":"in-which-i-attack-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2023\/07\/in-which-i-attack-science.html","title":{"rendered":"In which I attack science!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Is<\/a>
This scientist \u2014 note his white coat, which confers unquestionable authority on him \u2014 is either weighing the literary quality of Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cKing Lear\u201d or using spectral analysis to determine right and wrong in a moral quandary. Hung up on an ethical question? Ask a scientist to count it for you!
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

First of all, I wish a happy fourth of July to everybody out there and a Happy Independence Day to my fellow yanquis<\/em>, and, to my English friends, I offer this chirpy little ditty<\/a> from no less a personage than King George III himself.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And now, that done, I want to share a few passages from Michael Guillen,\u00a0 Believing is Seeing: A Physicist Explains How Science Shattered His Atheism and Revealed the Necessity of Faith<\/em> (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Refresh, 2021).\u00a0 Dr. Guillen, who grew up in East Los Angeles (not too terribly far from where I myself was raised, although he\u2019s a few years younger) before studying mathematics, physics, and astronomy at UCLA and Cornell, taught physics for eight years at Harvard University before becoming the chief science editor for ABC News:<\/p>\n

In Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking the Truth in the Sciences,<\/em> Ren\u00e9 Descartes \u2014 the seventeenth-century French philosopher and co-formulator of the SM [scientific method] \u2014 describes the scientific method as consisting of four basic rules:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Be open-minded:\u00a0<\/strong> Approach science without any preconceptions or prejudices.\u00a0 Accept as true only those things that reliable experiments reveal to you.<\/li>\n
  2. Be systematic:<\/strong>\u00a0 Tackle the simplest mysteries first.\u00a0 Then systematically work your way up to the most vexing ones.<\/li>\n
  3. Be analytical:<\/strong>\u00a0 Break down every complex phenomenon to its simplest elements.\u00a0 Then, one by one, study each element.<\/li>\n
  4. \u00a0Be exhaustive:<\/strong>\u00a0 When doing an experiment, take into consideration every relevant variable.\u00a0 Leave no stone unturned.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Descartes\u2019s four-step SM sounds quite reasonable.\u00a0 Yet search online for \u201cscientific method,\u201d and you\u2019ll be served up scores of authoritative-looking websites explaining that the SM has five, six, seven, eight, or more steps \u2014 or even that it has no hard-and-fast steps at all.<\/p>\n

    Also, you\u2019ll find that the SM varies by discipline.\u00a0 Astronomy is done differently than biology is done differently than zoology, and so forth.\u00a0 Lab experiments, which happen in controlled environments, are done differently than field experiments, where variables are difficult to control.<\/p>\n

    Percy Bridgeman, the Harvard-trained physicist and Nobel laureate, summed it up rather bluntly:\u00a0 \u201cIt seems to me that there is a good deal of ballyhoo about scientific method,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cScience is what scientists do, and there are as many scientific methods as there are individual scientists.\u201d\u00a0 (90-91, bolding in the original)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Non-scientist though I am, I couldn\u2019t agree more.\u00a0 It seems obvious to me that there is no single Scientific Method, engraved somewhere in stone.\u00a0 Inquiry in a chemistry lab is quite a different thing \u2014 and not merely because of the obvious difference in subject matter \u2014 than astronomical inquiry using a telescope or geological inquiry clambering down into the Grand Canyon with a pickaxe.\u00a0 Smashing subatomic particles with a massive accelerator is a distinct method of investigation from counting caribou in the Canadian Rockies.<\/p>\n

    Dr. Guillen cites the eminent comparative religionist Huston Smith (1919-2016) to make another important point, as well, though Dr. Smith (whom I came to know and to hold in high affection during a summer spent with him in a small seminar in Berkeley many years ago) refers to a singular \u201cscientific method\u201d:<\/p>\n

    The scientific method is nearly perfect for understanding the physical aspects of our life. . . .\u00a0 But it is a radically limited viewfinder in its inability to offer values, morals and meanings that are at the center of our lives.\u00a0 (97)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    And then there is this important implicit caveat from Dr. Guillen:<\/p>\n

    Scientists in every discipline are now far, far removed from the reality they claim to explain.<\/p>\n

    Paleontologists routinely draw extravagant, global conclusions about an entire species, based on the study of a single jawbone from a single individual dug up at a single location.<\/p>\n

    Astronomers make excited claims about the possibility of extraterrestrial life, based on exoplanets they cannot actually see but believe exist based on ever-so-subtle variations in the orbits and brightnesses of stars quadrillions of miles away.<\/p>\n

    Psychologists come to lavish conclusions about human nature and all people \u2014 young, old, rich, poor, rural, urban, educated, uneducated, black, brown, and white \u2014 based on studies primarily of white, college-age, paid volunteers.\u00a0 (98)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    But there\u2019s more:<\/p>\n

    Designing an experiment begins with identifying some relatively simple part of a complex phenomenon \u2014 one that can realistically be measured.<\/p>\n

    Take Earth\u2019s climate, for example.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very, very complicated affair, with countless moving parts.\u00a0 To make sense of it, we must start by thinking small and simple<\/em> \u2014 like measuring air temperature or sea levels or solar insolation (the amount of sunlight striking the ground) or cosmic radiation (yes, cosmic rays do affect the climate).<\/p>\n

    After deciding what<\/em> to measure, we must figure out how<\/em> to do it.\u00a0 Measuring air temperature sounds easy enough, but it isn\u2019t.\u00a0 Do we use an old-fashioned mercury thermometer?\u00a0 A digital thermometer?\u00a0 An infrared thermometer?<\/p>\n

    And where<\/em> do we make the measurements?\u00a0 Near asphalt, which heats up easily?\u00a0 Near water, which stays cool?\u00a0 On the ground?\u00a0 From space?\u00a0 You get the idea \u2014 there\u2019s nothing simple about designing even an experiment as seemingly straightforward as measuring temperature.<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s no wonder, then, that so many scientists get it wrong.<\/p>\n

    A team of investigators led by Malcolm Macleod, a neuroscientist at the University of Edinburgh, evaluated the design of 2,671 experiments that involved testing promising new drugs on animals.\u00a0 These studies have life-and-death consequences for human patients worldwide.<\/p>\n

    Macleod\u2019s team found that the vast majority of these experiments failed \u2014 failed<\/em> \u2014 in four key design areas: sample size, randomization, blinding (making sure neither scientist nor subject knows who\u2019s getting what), and conflicts of interest.<\/p>\n

    When the team focused on only those experiments done in the United Kingdom, the results were even worse.\u00a0 \u201cIt is sobering that of over 1,000 publications from leading UK institutions, over two-thirds did not report even one of [the] four items considered critical to reducing the risk of bias, and only one publication reported all four measures.\u201d\u00a0 (98-99, emphasis in the original)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Please note that, in citing Michael Guillen to this effect, I\u2019m not attacking Science\u2122 or scientists.\u00a0 I\u2019m merely passing on a fact that should be obvious \u2014 that science, like other academic fields, isn\u2019t infallible, and that scientists are actually human beings, prone to error, pride, bias, blindness, overenthusiasm, prejudice, distracting ambition, dogmatism, and all the other factors that led Puck to observe to Oberon, \u201cLord, what fools these mortals be!\u201d (William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em>, III.2.117).<\/p>\n

    The prestigious British journal Nature conducted a survey of 1,576 scientists and discovered that \u201cmore than 70 percent of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist\u2019s experiments [one or more times], and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments.\u201d<\/p>\n

    This colossal failure \u2014 now called the reproducibility crisis<\/em> \u2014 afflicts research published in the world\u2019s most respected, peer-reviewed journals.\u00a0 (100, italics in the original)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    And then, of course, there is the old temptation of dishonesty, to which scientists are presumably just about as vulnerable as are ordinary mortals.\u00a0 There is, so far as I\u2019m aware, no evidence suggesting that bad character never surfaces among those in scientific careers:<\/p>\n

    A study by Italian scientist Daniele Fanelli discovered that an alarming 72 percent of scientists knew of colleagues who had resorted to \u201cquestionable research practices.\u201d\u00a0 And 14 percent knew of colleagues who had outright falsified data.<\/p>\n

    Worse still, these results were based on self-reporting.\u00a0 So \u201cit appears likely,\u201d Fanelli says, \u201cthat this is a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of scientific misconduct.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    \u00a0<\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u00a0 \u00a0 First of all, I wish a happy fourth of July to everybody out there and a Happy Independence Day to my fellow yanquis, and, to my English friends, I offer this chirpy little ditty from no less a personage than King George III himself. \u00a0 And now, that done, I want to share […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":41970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36380,14689,36377,243,10546,126],"class_list":["post-100874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-daniele-fanelli","tag-descartes","tag-malcolm-mcleod","tag-science","tag-scientific-method","tag-scientists"],"yoast_head":"\nIn which I attack science!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    First of all, I wish a happy fourth of July to everybody out there and a Happy Independence Day to my fellow 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