[extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence

[Chris Phoenix]

Rick wrote:
> One should only believe according to evidence. And by evidence I mean
> verifiable evidence as would be accepted by those most schooled and
> respected in the ways of science.

Is science really a good arbiter of evidence?  Until recently, I thought
it was.  It appears to be ideal: a distributed-intelligence process,
backed up by experiment every step of the way.  But I've run across a
few things that have made me question whether it actually works very
well in practice.

A major source of discomfort is an excellent book, _Discovering_ by
Robert Scott Root-Bernstein.  I think this book is to the American
scientific establishment what Atlas Shrugged is to socialism, except
that _Discovering_ also contains practical advice.

Scientific theories, even the most elegant ones, are simply
approximations that are good enough until something better comes along. 
It's easy to think that this implies continuous improvement and means we
must be getting really close to the truth now--and perhaps in a few
areas we are.  But a look at the variety of atomic theories (one of many
things explored in the book) shows that scientists spent decades working
with theories that wouldn't satisfy a high school chemistry student
today--not noticing how inadequate they were, because the theories spent
decades being quite adequate for what the scientists were doing with
them.  But this isn't the worst of it.

Scientific answers are decided by consensus.  In theory this means that
every answer is carefully checked--yeah, and in theory, communism is a
fair system.  One of the strongest lessons of the book is that
scientists usually see what they look for.  Especially in the centers of
scientific endeavor.  Scientists who are good at finding what they
expect to find produce fewer controversial results.  And predictable
results are easier to write grants for.  And long careers in one field
are a good way to stop innovating.  So, the way to maximize funding (and
minimize exploration) is to reach a consensus as soon as
possible--doesn't matter if it's right, as long as it's good enough to
run predictable experiments--and stick to it as long as possible. 
(Actually, I don't think this last is directly stated in the book, but
it's pretty obvious.)

I've seen this at work in the way the "most respected" scientists (and
the bureaucrats they're symbiotic with) have closed ranks against
molecular nanotechnology.  No one comes up with a serious argument
against it--they just do a bit of handwaving and pretend that they've
debunked it.  The scary thing is that this works.

The final straw came a few nights ago, when I remembered something I'd
been trying for a year to forget.  One evening last summer, my wife
suddenly got a pain in her lower ribs, in a place she'd never had pain
before, bad enough that we canceled our plans to go for a walk so I
could rub her back (and this had never happened before either).  When I
started the massage, she said, "How come the more you touch me there,
the more I want to cry?"  A few minutes later, the pain went away.  And
a few hours after that, we learned that her brother had been killed in a
motorcycle accident within a few minutes of that time, and his lower
ribs had been run over.

Obviously this is not scientific evidence, it's not a repeatable
phenomenon, and it leads to no useful theory.  I don't ask anyone else
to accept it or act on it; that's not the point.  The point is: Is it
more "scientific" for me to ignore it, or to accept that it happened and
I can't explain it and it might be significant?  Any scientist worth
their salt would tell me that, since there's no such thing as ESP, there
must be some mundane explanation.  I told myself that for a year.  But
I'm becoming convinced that this is the wrong answer.  It's the answer
that makes scientists see only what they expect to see, every time. 
Science cannot progress if it can't deal with the unexpected, and
science without progress is dead.  But modern science, it seems, has
only two categories: Things that can be studied with the scientific
method, and things that cannot be addressed.  There is no category
anymore for observations that cannot be categorized, but only
catalogued.  If there is such a thing as a mundane theory that makes ESP
possible, science will find it only by chance.  It's heresy even to
look.  

Not long before I read _Discovering_, I participated in a discussion on
another list in which a philosopher/chemist made statements like
"Science is not about truth."  My defense of science was energetic and
often verged on scornful.  But now I'm wondering whether I owe that guy
an apology.  Where is the truth in "Since your observation is
impossible, it must be meaningless"?  How is truth advanced by funding
mostly research based on well-established theory?  Why is it that the
phrase "peer reviewed grant proposal" is not universally horrifying to
scientists?

Now, to get back to the quote that started this screed: "...evidence as
would be accepted by those most schooled and respected in the ways of
science."  Would this be Richard Smalley, who won the Nobel Prize for
chemistry?  And who recently wrote that an ordinary chemical reaction
involves five to fifteen atoms?  I guess he's never heard of flame
chemistry, or the formation of ozone in the upper atmosphere?  Well,
maybe he wasn't thinking too hard.  He wrote this--and Scientific
American printed it--in an attempt to discredit molecular
nanotechnology.  

We must hope that individual scientists are less reliable than science
as a whole--otherwise the entire institution is bankrupt!  But your
criterion requires asking the opinion of individuals, applying methods
designed for groups, to insufficient data, outside their field.  I
really think you'd do better to ask a lawyer; they're trained to deal
with unfamiliar information and find weaknesses in strange arguments.

Personally, I'd most rather have Richard Feynman evaluate my evidence;
but I think he would've been too humble to give the kind of official
scientific opinion you're looking for.  A Google search for "Feynman
religion" found some reviews of _The Meaning of It All_.  Amazon quotes
him thus:
  "In case you are beginning to believe that some of the things I said
before are true because I am a scientist and according to the brochure
that you get I won some awards and so forth, instead of your looking at
the ideas themselves and judging them directly...I will get rid of that
tonight. I dedicate this lecture to showing what ridiculous conclusions
and rare statements such a man as myself can make."

And according to a review on ePinions,
  "His recurrent theme is freedom of thought: the freedom to doubt, to
investigate, and to believe. For example, when noting the two
legacies of western civilization - the "scientific spirit of adventure"
and "Christian ethics" - Feynman concludes that these two legacies
are "logically, thoroughly, consistent." We must be free to doubt and
question to find new answers, and we must be free to believe
and base our actions in a morality larger than ourselves."

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0738201669/102-2708461-0320925?v=glance
http://www.epinions.com/book-review-60F8-58F600-3905B39B-prod5

Note: I'm not saying that science should study religion, or should
subordinate itself to religion--I'm not talking about religion or
anything mystical at all.  What I am saying is that even in areas where
science could make a contribution, it is usually unwilling to stretch
itself far enough to follow up the interesting clues.  And the
scientific establishment is responsible for an unforgivable waste of
potential talent, because people who could have been creative
investigators are instead turned into grant-grubbing conformists.  (Some
scientists escape, but many do not; and those who remain creative often
have to resort to lying or stealing to pursue their interesting
research.)  I'd almost go so far as to say that modern science can't
claim credit for its successes, because they happened as much despite
the institution as because of it.

I'll end with a quote from Isaac Newton.  "I don’t know what I may seem
to the world, but as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy
playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then finding a
smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great
ocean of truth lay undiscovered all before me."  How many scientists
today would be willing to admit that their work is not even wading into
the "ocean of truth"?  Are they greater scientists than Newton, or are
they completely missing the point?

Chris

--
Chris Phoenix                                  cphoenix at CRNano.org
Director of Research
Center for Responsible Nanotechnology          http://CRNano.org