The decline effect and the scientific method : The New Yorker
I urge you to read Jonah Lehrer’s interesting article, not as a window into the seamier side of scientific research, but as a window into the seamier side of popular speculation on the same. Since my own earliest days conducing scientific experiments in high school and reading, yes, pop science books, I have always been struck by how wildly different scientists views of what they do are from popular views. Popular readers of science (and very smart non-scientists), such as I admit that I am, tend to place much more weight on scientific results than scientists themselves do.
I am not suggesting that scientists do not believe that their results are valid, important, even true. Rather, I am suggesting that scientists are much more eager to be proven wrong than most of us will allow. We picture them pulling out their hair or standing on the ledge of Golden Gate Bridge should their conclusions prove mistaken. In matter of fact, based upon conversations I have had with the rather large number of scientists I know, real scientists welcome news that another scientist has expanded upon, revised, or even disproven their results.
Yet, here are Mr. Lehrer’s conclusions:
The decline effect [which is what Mr. Lehrer calls the declining provability of prior research] is troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that’s often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer#ixzz1X162fLTO
Is this a mere matter of semantics? Do we need to quibble over what the words “prove” or “truth” or “believe” mean? I do not think so. The scientific method, subject to confirmation, is the best that we have. There is really no other way to talk intelligibly about scientific proof. Does the “truth” embraced broadly by scientists change over time? Of course it does. And no scientist would tell you otherwise. But this does not reduce science to mere belief.
Another way to cast Mr. Lehrer’s argument is to say, we don’t know what we don’t know. Happily scientists are constantly discovering variables that did not come to light under earlier premises and given earlier research designs. This is not because these earlier premises or research designs were bad, or that the scientists were irresponsible. We don’t know what we don’t know. Nor does it mean we need to abandon the scientific method. (What other method do you suggest?) Nor does it really mean that scientists need to display greater modesty. (I really know of no single group better supplied with modesty.)
Rather, I would suggest, we need to do far better talking about why the scientific method—notwithstanding the snail’s pace at which it moves, and notwithstanding the many (perhaps preponderance of) conclusions it has been forced to recant—is still far superior to the alternative.
Here I would simply note that all of Mr. Lehrer’s proofs throughout his article presume the reliability of the scientific method. Which leads me to my final point, it is sheer irresponsible nonsense for Mr. Lehrer to suggest that “we still have to choose what we believe.” Either his remark is trivial—of course we choose—or it is unintelligible—what we choose is arbitrary.
Perhaps I choose that the earthquake produced crack in the Washington Monument is a sign of God’s wrath against a profligate, atheistic, science-crazed, humanistic nation? My choice has just as much science behind it as yours. Or does it?