Debunking the Myth of Science
No, I am not irrational, but I do wish to highlight our deviation from the idea of scientific method.
What is Science ?
Science is a truth derived by means of scientific method. What is scientific method then ? It is a process involving following stages:
- Observation of an unknown event.
- Putting forward Hypothesis or theory that can explain the occurrence of that event.
- Predicting output by means of proposed hypothesis or theory.
- Rigorously examining the validity of prediction by analyzing the output by means of empirical method, i.e. registering by means of sensors, either natural or electronic.
- Accepting, modifying or rejecting the proposed hypothesis on the basis of validity of prediction.
And above all, an open-endedness of the process, which means, the process being always open to new observations that doesn’t support accepted hypothesis.
Science for commoner
Consider everything that you know which you regards to be scientific, now, have you arrived at that knowledge by means of scientific method ? The answer will be yes but on closer examination, it will be found out that most of commoner’s so called scientific knowledge comes from the authority on which he or she trust of performing diligent scientific enquiry.
For example, for a common man, the hypothesis of flat earth or spherical earth, should be equally valid. All common man observation can equally be satisfied by the hypothesis of flat earth, be it day and night, eclipses, and others. So what makes us certain that earth is not flat but spherical ? The answer to it will be the science books we have read since childhood, our teachers and various other scientific institutions on which we trust.
Then, am I suggesting not to trust these authorities ? No, The whole scientific progress that we as a humankind have made today could have not been possible if we didn’t trust the already validated scientific knowledge. It will be ridiculous to imagine a world where we have to validate all accepted sciences before moving forward with a new hypothesis.
The Myth
More or less we have following three myths that surrounds science and taints it’s legitimacy:
MYTH 1: Common man’s science is based on scientific method
No, Common man’s science is based on trust in authority and that authority’s science may be based on scientific method. The trust in that authority is due to it’s successful predictions in the past and also due to our social surrounding. Trust in the authority will vanish if it’s observable predictions starts to fail, also it is highly unlikely for a person born in a non scientific surrounding or time to accept the authority of a something that derives it’s legitimacy based on scientific method. For example, it is likely for a person born in medieval Europe to give that authority over truth to the institution based on religion (Church), rather than to the institution based on scientific method.
Secondly, common man trust in scientific authority is often exploited by advertisement agencies. Perfect example for this can be use of physicians in cigarette advertisements from 1930s to the 1950s. The details of it can be found in this article: “The Doctors’ Choice Is America’s Choice”
MYTH 2: Scientific method is free from human condition
No, like all other human creation, scientific methods too sometimes gets corrupted due to human condition. What can be termed as human condition ? It is a sum total of things that we experience as a human, all our collective desires and motivators. For example — desire for financial stability, desire for social acceptability, peer pressure, pride, hatred and others.
Out of everything that is plaguing the scientific progress, ignorance of the role played by human condition is the primary culprit. We should not expect to have objective scientific progress without human condition but by recognizing its role, one can reduce the damage it does.
During early COVID days, Trump, US president, was advocating for a drug called hydroxychloroquine, which was getting a lot of pushback from Trump’s political opponents and a section of scientific community, which was valid, then on may 22, a paper was published in a reputed medical journal The Lancet, which associated hydroxychloroquine with an increased risk of death in patients hospitalized with the COVID-19. This scientific paper was widely reported by newspaper who were critical of Trump in following days.
But then on June 4, 2020, 13 days after the publication, the paper was retracted by Lancet after scientific community at large pointed out the discrepancies in the data used. It was later found out to be a fraud. The details regarding the incidents can be found here. Further this is not a not a rare event, many institutes, journals and publications often find themselves in such situations, and to what we can ascribe such incidents ? No, we are not considering human errors here, we are talking about data manipulation and fabrication, which can only be accounted by means of human condition.
Economic cost of a scientific research, necessitates the role of patron, now this patron can be governments, NGOs, religious institutes and private companies. This role of money introduces a bias, a bias favoring the patron. A drug trial sponsored by a pharmaceutical company is more likely to produce scientific output favoring the efficacy of the drug. Similarly, government and religious institute can selectively fund a research that align with there version of truth, further maligning the sanctity of scientific method.
Another issue relates to incentivizing successful and time bounded scientific research. PhD students often conduct research in a time bounded manner, with success of their career entangled with success of their work, add to it the burden of peer pressure and institutional hierarchy, all these sometimes results in data fabrication and manipulation to suit the proposed hypothesis or to establish that the empirical methods used gave expected output. This issue can be highlighted by a recent incident that took place at Tata Institute of the National Center For Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bangalore, India, where a scientific paper was retracted from Nature Chemical Biology due to digital alteration of images, details of which can be found in this article from Print — NCBS scientist to be ‘counselled for her authoritarian conduct’ after data fabrication probe.
One might argue that in all these cases scientific community at large were able to point out the the discrepancies, but that will be a fallacious argument because it is just not possible to get to know such incidents without it being getting caught. Also, one must not undermine the whole scientific progress and scientific community based on such incidents, instruments such as peer review has largely been able to mitigate such incidents, maintaining the objectivity of scientific research.
MYTH 3: Scientific progress is linear
Third and the last myth plaguing science is the assumption of linearity of scientific progress. In his book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher, proposes a model of scientific progress where progress is not linear but undergoes paradigm shifts from time to time. Consider the example of model of our solar system and consider the time when European astronomers agreed over geocentric model of universe, and as scientific progress were made in that direction, many anomalies were discovered in regards to observable planetary motions and to account those, geocentric model was further modified with much more complicated planetary orbit. These direction of scientific progress continued till it was established that heliocentric model is more accurate model of our solar system, destroying all the scientific progress made in the direction of geocentric model.
The heliocentric model was neither accepted just after the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus’s work “De revolutionibus orbium coelestium”, nor was first proposed by Copernicus, this model co-existed with the geocentric model both before and after Copernicus, until the anomalies arising out of geocentric model became so prominent that it was just not possible to make further adjustment for them. The transition between these model was a paradigm shift which not only gave new direction to scientific research but also discarded a large chunk of scientific progress that was made earlier. The similar shift happened with Einstein's space-time fabric.
Conclusion and the mythical dome.
The three myths discussed above, acts like three pillar that supports an overarching dome, which in itself is a myth — “Science is objective truth”.
Many a times we are told “It is science” to say it is a undeniable objective truth, but even science can be countered if it can be proved that it is solely resting on any one or all of the above three myths. Science is not a objective truth, everything we know today as science can be completely destroyed by upcoming paradigm shift. All being said, it should also be clarified that, Scientific method is still humanity’s best tool to discern truth. There may and may not be any correlation between scientific truth and objective truth but that is of least importance as long as it corresponds to our human experience of physical universe.
I Would like to end this article by quoting a passage from “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”:
We are all deeply accustomed to seeing science as the one enterprise that draws constantly nearer to some goal set by nature in advance.
But need there be any such goal? Can we not account for both science’s existence and its success in terms of evolution from the community’s state of knowledge at any given time? Does it really help to imagine that there is some one full, objective, true account of nature and that the proper measure of scientific achievement is the extent to which it brings us closer to that ultimate goal? If we can learn to substitute evolution-from-what-we-do-know for evolution-toward-what-we-wish-to-know, a number of vexing problems may vanish in the process. Somewhere in this maze, for example, must lie the problem of induction.
