By David Robb ——Bio and Archives--March 8, 2023
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We hear it all the time these days. "Believe the Science" and "If you don't believe, you're just anti-Science". Proponents of various causes use Science as a bludgeon to attack anyone who disagrees with them. Most of the ones I encounter are on the political Left and accuse those on the Right as being anti-science because they dare question the dogma being presented as Science.
The astute reader will note that I have capitalized the word "Science" at several points above, because Science, with a capital "S" has become the new source of revealed Truth that must simply be accepted without question. Believe, they demand, and you shall be saved! Unbelievers must be punished!
As a practicing scientist with several decades of experience, I can say with some justification, that the words "science" and "belief" should not be tied together the way they often are today. What was once a process for systematic exploration and a way to answer the question "how do we know what we know?" has become an authoritarian tool to use against dissent in a new form of Inquisition.
The climate is changing and human use of fossil fuels is causing it! Science tells us so and anyone who questions that is a climate denier! Only those who believe are real scientists. Vaccines are always good for you, and if an experimental biological agent is called a vaccine then you must Believe! Mr. Science himself, Dr. Fauci, says so! Green energy will save the planet! The list goes on and on, each claim supported by Science with a clear and definite absolute position. The Science is settled and is no longer to be questioned.
Except ....
Every one of those claims is disputed by real scientists practicing real science with valid arguments supported by good data and careful analysis. It is the nature of real science that nothing is settled. Some things may be widely accepted as likely true, but everything is always open to question. The history of science is filled with things that were commonly accepted as true, even as incontrovertibly true, that were later proved wrong.
For centuries, it was believed that planets moved in perfect circles around the Sun. Given the importance to navigation of accurate knowledge of the positions of planets at various times, the interest in planetary motion was more than academic. As it was demonstrated, the idea that planets moved along perfectly circular paths didn't agree with observation. The theory was embellished with cycles and epicycles--circles on circles--in ever increasing complexity. It wasn't until Isaac Newton looked at the data collected by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe that the idea that planets moved in elliptical orbits was formulated. This new theory replaced the old theory of circles on circles that had been accepted as settled truth before.
Likewise with the germ theory of disease. From its earliest proposal by Girolamo Fracastorio in 1546 to Louis Pasteur in the late 1850s, the theory encountered extreme resistance from the "settled" theories dating back to the times of the ancient Greeks and Romans, if not earlier.
Gravity was long considered to be proportional to the mass of an object so that heavier objects would fall faster than lighter ones. After all, a rock would fall faster than a feather, so it must be true. It wasn't until Galileo that his explorations in science led to the more correct understanding of gravity that would hold until the time of Einstein.
While some might dismiss these examples as ancient history and we don't make such mistakes now, that would be false. The very recent controversies we have seen around the operation of mRNA biological agents, the current demonstrations of the relatively minor role of CO2 in climate change and the large effect of the Sun, are but two examples of the real conflict between competing theories that characterizes the operation of real science.
Recently, especially in the domain of climate science, some parties have suggested that consensus be used to determine which of several competing theories is correct. This suggestion illustrates a profound misunderstanding of how science operates. Consensus is the result of a political process, general agreement is a result of science. From the outside, the two look much the same, but are actually radically different.
In consensus, the various parties meet, discuss, and arrive at a mutually acceptable position. Essentially it is a majority choice process where the participants agree to accept the consensus position. Conversely, in science, individual scientists can look independently at the available data and proposed explanations and decide for themselves if they find the explanations satisfactory. If the data is good and the explanations address objections, a majority of scientists might express the opinion that they consider the explanation to be true. This commonality of opinion is not consensus, although it may look like it. The difference is between a position arrived at independently based on thoughtful consideration of objective data, and a position arrived at through a democratic process which may be independent of objective data.
I have had the bemusing experience of being accused of gathering at conferences with fellow scientists to decide what is to be the nature of reality through some sort of consensus, as though we met to agree on such things as what should be the speed of light, much as the Indiana Pi Bill proposed in 1897 tried to establish the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter by fiat. I can assure you, that unlike the Postmodernists of the Left, we are not attempting to define reality, but rather to discover it.
Prior to the Second World War, science was mostly the province of wealthy individuals, monks in monasteries, a few academics, and some in industry. Funding was seldom tied to specific results. Given the success of scientific contributions to the war effort in WWII, notably the Bomb, governments recognized the value of the fruits of scientific investigations.
At that time, funding for science became a national priority, and politicians began directing the sorts of results they hoped to see. That progressed to where politicians began directing scientists to produce the results that would support their particular policies. Funding became a tool of politics used to get the desired answers. Today, nearly all research is government funded through various agencies issuing grants and research contracts.
We now see grant offerings along the line of "This grant is to support research showing the effect of CO2 in promoting climate change, with particular interest in policy recommendations for mitigation." The same sort of direction exists in medicine, physics, biology, and every other field of science. There is little support for actual discovery. The emphasis now is on proving a point.
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It has been said that the worst thing that happened to science is that it became a profession. I see too many young scientists entering the field with the intention of "proving" some predetermined position, usually in some currently popular area. Even those who enter to explore freely are confronted with the fact that most of the available funding is targeted.
Someone who has spent nearly twenty years of schooling, and often endured significant competition for choice positions is often faced with a difficult career choice. Unless they conform to the accepted dogma and produce the desired results, they risk not getting funding, academic appointments and even complete loss of career. Hmmm... compliant researcher or cab driver.... tough choice.
Even well established researchers share that same career risk. Numerous good scientists have been forced out of even tenured positions for expressing the "wrong" position on subjects such as climate change, Covid treatments, and even basic physics. Money is a powerful tool and flows to those who can best discern which side of their bread has the butter. Fame and position follow.
We often hear the term "peer reviewed results" tossed out as though the particular work has received the blessings of some supreme arbiter of Truth. Well... not really. Peer review is the result of the need for editors of scientific journals to decide which of the many submissions they receive should be published. Every journal has limitations on the number of pages it can support, and consequently on the number of articles it can accept. The commonly applied solution is to send candidate papers off to volunteer reviewers for examination and comment.
The reviewer, generally a scientist working in the field, is tasked with examining the candidate paper for accuracy, presence of errors, correct reasoning, spelling, punctuation, and other critical measures. They then return the paper with their comments to the editor who will then make the final determination to publish or not. Typically, an important paper may be sent to as many as three reviewers, although only one is more common. At that point, the paper may be said to be "peer reviewed".
Aside from ensuring a certain level of validity, the process also has the effect of promoting a conformance to orthodoxy. Papers that challenge conventional wisdom in a field are more likely to receive negative reviews and be denied publication than those expressing more popular positions. Papers with results that challenge the orthodoxy have often been denied publication for years until sufficient evidence has accumulated to vindicate them.
Recently, a new form of publication has been established where papers can be posted in an online archive with only minimal review. Besides being faster to publish, it allows the entire body of researchers in a field to view the research, evaluate it for themselves, and offer their own comments. These archive publications allow a much more comprehensive form of peer review that is only beginning to be appreciated. It is also less prone to abuse by reviewers who might have personal reasons to have a paper rejected.
It is an old saying that physics advances obituary by obituary. Scientists are also people with all the concerns for status, position, career and promotion that everyone else shares. Those who have achieved a high level of status in their field often have much to lose if their positions are shown to be in error. It takes considerable courage, honesty, and dedication to truth to recognize and acknowledge they may have been wrong in the very area of their fame.
While not a complete explanation, by far, we now see why science is not a matter for belief. When someone makes a statement demanding we "believe the science", or claiming "the science says", they are making a theological statement, reflecting a lack of understanding of actual science. They have merely substituted one god for another, and one dogma for another. You now know better.
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David Robb is a practicing scientist and CTO of a small firm developing new security technologies for detection of drugs and other contraband. Dave has published extensively in TheBlueStateConservative, and occasionally in American Thinker.