“Facts” and “fads”
March 17th, 2005Yikes. A ranty postivist article in this week’s Guardian Life supplement: “Believe in facts not fads”, says Dick Taverne. Taverne argues that the public (bless ‘em) have diverged away from scientific fact in favour of “fads” like homeopathy and organic food.
The word “fact” gets bandied about a lot in this article as if that’s what science is all about. But science is not about “facts” as such. Science is concerned about theory. Theories in science are more strictly defined than in life, what is often called a theory in a normal context is more like a hypothesis, backed up with no evidence; a scientific theory has to have some “proof”, via evidence and observations to back it up. But proof does not mean truth. The evidence, the means of gathering it, and whether the proof is conclusive, are subject to dispute and disagreement about whether they accurately reflect what’s happening.
(It’s a wonder anything gets done in science, once you actually start to investigate how science is actually carried out - I’m reminded of the quote attributed to Niels Bohr about science being like the washing up - dirty plates, dirty water, dirty dishcloth, and yet out of it we get nice clean plates - it’s almost like magic).
Anyway, after having a go at the usual target of homeopathy, he plumps for organic food, which he says has no scientific evidence for benefiting human health, and therefore the public are being fooled. This is only partially true - there is evidence showing organic produce has higher levels of vitamins and minerals essential to health, and fewer toxic pesticides; what is disputed is whether they actually do make you healthier. Pro-organic people will say of course it makes you healthier as it naturally follows, while the sceptics will wait for conclusive (in their minds) evidence that definitely linking organic produce and wellbeing (proving anything is good for you to others’ satisfaction is pretty hard, as there are so many other mitigating factors such as environment and lifestyle - this is why the Daily Mail will permanently flip-flop between “Will tomatoes kill you?” and “Could tomatoes save your life?” every other day).
Taverne asserts that as there is no proof organic food is better for you, then it’s a fact that conventional foods are equally good. Through this leap of logic, he is denying scientific knowledge’s disputable nature; ironically, he does so by taking advantage of its disputability and amiguity and interpreting it as he sees fit. By doing this, he becomes as dogmatic as those he decries.
To be fair, this accusation can be levelled at both sides of the debate, and indeed any debate where cutting-edge science is involved - GM organisms, global warming, the origins of the universe, etc. By focusing on the “science” as if it was “fact”, a separate discipline of pure truth, that neatly rises above other less “rational” concerns, ignores the wider contexts of science. Science and politics are inevitably bound together in a modern society - decisions are often made with both, and other interests, in mind. Under his logic, people who buy organic food are irrational fools, even if they do so because they like the taste, or don’t want the countryside covered in pesticides; those who destroy trial crops of GM plants are scientific philistines without reason, even if they are concerned about the economic & moral implications of seed patents.
Taverne blames past crises in science such as BSE on the “government experts”, as if politics somehow contaminated the purity of science; in fact at the time what caused BSE was openly disputed, by both government and independent scientists. Ten years later, the link between BSE and vCJD was pretty thin and open to question. There never was a straight answer, a single truth that got covered up or corrupted.
If scientists cannot agree amongst themselves about what the right answer is, how can they possibly expect the public to either? Before bemoaning the poor “public understanding of science”, a little introspection into “science’s understanding of science” would be helpful.
I hope I’m not boring/baffling too many readers with all these recent treatises on the sociology of science and technology. I can go back to posting links to b3ta and BoingBoing if you like.
Seriously, feedback on what I wrote is welcome. I would like to provide hyperlinks to some of the claims above, but they’re mostly out of journal articles I’ve read and are not publicly accessible on the interweb - I’ll try and update the above article with some links if & when I can find them. Right, back to the essay writing…
March 18th, 2005 at 10:42:16
Thanks for these science posts, oh and for the groovy new look. I see that Mr. Lewellyn-Bowen has been at it (making sure it was zusy enough).
I too get annoyed when people misunderstand the nature of scientific knowledge, or should I say scientific belief. I think that a large amount of self-awareness and honesty is required (debunk your own arguments or others will do it for you) - most people aren’t 100% rational and self-consistent, but have a foundation that’s justified via “I just believe it, OK?”, even the most atheist and materialist people.
This particularly gets my goat during science / religion debates - just as you describe in your post, people have this idea that science is only about objectivity, truth, facts and so on, and also has a monopoly on these things. Oh, and that both disciplines try to ask the same kind of questions to get the same kind of answers - they don’t. (When I kiss my wife, physics can describe the deformation of our lips, biochemistry can describe how nerves signal this to our brains, but what science can describe our love for each other, and how the kiss is involved in that?)
Don’t get me wrong; I see that science is the only way to understand the mechanics of the world and I don’t believe that the world was created in 4,004 BC with fake fossils in rocks etc. But science is full of doubt, conflict, personalities, arrogance - the dirty dishwater of Bohr’s analogy - and also isn’t the answer to every problem.
March 18th, 2005 at 12:23:22
The biggest problem with science related ‘journalism’ is that now everyone expects to get a solid answer to any random question, and the likes of the Daily Mail see this as an opportunity to throw a hissy fit if it doesn’t. A basic understanding of probability would help.
On thing that gets me with all this is the whole “MMR is giving our kids Autism” yarn. Study after study fails to find any useful link, but somehow “balanced reporting” means you have to give credence to any old shite. Autism is essentially undetectable in children until they are just past their first birthday. i.e. just after they’ve had their MMR jab. So it isn’t surprising that parents who have been barraged by constant Daily Mail claims that all scientists are evil wierdos in hoc to Government are trying to kill their kids.
In fact, it’s like blaming the Breakfast News for traffic jams, because the roads are always bad around that time. “Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc”, as West Wing fans say.
March 18th, 2005 at 14:27:53
The primary difference between the athiest and the religious man is not their beliefs (e.g. the ‘universe just is’ vs. ‘god created the universe’) as such, since both are in fact beliefs. The difference is their attitude to thier beliefs. The best athiests (Camus, for example) doubt their own opinion, knowing that they don’t (and indeed can’t) know everything. This is where athiesm and good science overlap. The religious person, on the other hand, cannot sustain doubt about his belief. They are afraid of doubt, uncertainty, chance. We all are to an extent, but the realist accepts their inevitability.
The idea that it’s *science* that suffers from a preoccupation with absolute truth and attempts to hold it in a monopoly seems slightly incongrous to me. That’s what religions do.
Heavy ;)
March 18th, 2005 at 14:53:17
Chris; have enjoyed your recent forays into the philosophy of science; we’ve had many of these conversations in person and you’re well aware of my view that sadly, most people are idiots, and that’s the essential problem…
Slightly more seriously, people aren’t generally aware that science has a sociology; more people should read Thomas Kuhn than do…. (and Paul Feyerabend).
Would you blog differently about it if your loyal fan-base reacted badly? I guess there’s a big difference between your kind of blog and mine (which no-one reads that diligently and which I haven’t updated in months). I say no! It’s your personal bit of cyberspace and you should rant about what you feel like…
March 20th, 2005 at 09:32:10
Adam - I wouldn’t doubt that religion also claims to deal in absolute truth; I’m just saying that science (just as religion does) sometimes thinks it has a monopoly on it. I think humility is required on both sides.
I also would question the doubt/faith statement you make. I think doubt is healthy in every intellectual area - science, religion, politics, etc. and its absence is almost always unhealthy - again, in science, religion, politics etc.
As you may have already gathered, I’m a Christian (and also a scientist). A good Christian would take to heart what Paul wrote about what we know now being partial (seeing a dim reflection in a mirror - through a glass darkly), and only having full knowledge in heaven. It follows from that that even the best theologian has it at least partly wrong, and so a Christian has to continually monitor and evaluate to see what needs changing in the hope of always improving their approximation to the truth.
You could say that this is still a bit phony as the Christian position isn’t allowing doubt to lead to a complete rejection of God. I would counter with the question - would the doubt of someone like Camus ever lead to a rejection of atheism?
March 20th, 2005 at 09:32:40
Homeopathy and organic food are hardly fads! Homeopathy has been around for a very long time and is well established - you may not believe in it but that is another matter (and it does work whatever you may believe : how or why it works is another issue) The organic food movement has been around for not as long as homeopathy but still has a long and respectable history.
March 20th, 2005 at 14:35:12
Bob, it’s an interesting discussion. I think there’s a bottom level of doubt, where you try and take nothing for granted - as such you can’t really doubt your way out of existentialism. But there is still a difference because, by virtue of his doubt, if a majestic angel appeared and turned Camus’ cigarette into a cigar, he wouldn’t have much difficulty reappraising his ideas about the world and religion. He would still be open to persuasion, and proudly so.
Clearly I’m going to say this because I don’t believe in god, but if Christians were as open to evidence as that, they probably wouldn’t be Christians for very long :) Please don’t take offense though, my best friend is an evangelical christian who spent three years with me on a psychology degree. If you can take that to heart and keep your faith you take anything.
March 20th, 2005 at 15:47:56
No offence taken, Adam. Psychology and Christianity, eh? Quite a combination, much less common than e.g. physics and Christianity. Queens’ College seems to have had academics in both combinations: Fraser Watts and John Polkinghorne.
I found my faith very helpful when I did relativity at college. All the foundations that I hadn’t questioned since I was about 2 - space and time - suddenly were unruly and strange. Fortunately I had something else (God) that was a foundation that was staying in place, and at the end of it all I thought God was even more baffling than before. I also had respect for my atheist friends who had to go through all that without a faith to rely on. I suppose friends, music etc. - something that was familiar and unchanging - could have helped instead.
A few zillion miles away from facts and fads, I suppose. Sorry Chris. To echo Xman’s point, organic food is hardly new even if the name is. What my grandfather ate was organic, not because he read the Guardian and drove a 2CV, but because that’s all that was around then. I.e. before the invention of artificial agro-chemicals, all food was by definition organic.
I also agree with Iain. Autism and MMR was due to poor science (a sample size of about 20 children) and scare-mongering in the cause of selling newspapers. A related rant for another time is the current US government’s position that there still needs to be more scientific investigation. No Mr Bush, there just needs to be less cosying up to your chums in the US oil and car business. Bah humbug.