“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.” – Daniel Sarewitz, “Saving Science”, The New Atlantis, Number 19, Spring/Summer 2016, http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/saving-science.
The quote above is fairly damning, however, the article is written in a publication that is devoted to the intersection of science and public policy. Another article in the same number of that journal comments:
It is tempting to look at the growing rate of retractions as an indicator that scientists increasingly don’t know what they are doing or, worse, are becoming less honest about their work. After all, two-thirds of retractions are due to research misconduct, rather than honest error. The kinds of actions that count as misconduct are plagiarism, fabrication of data, and falsification — a category that includes the deliberate manipulation of data or research protocols that leads to the misrepresentation of results. … But technology has also allowed readers to become better at catching problems. For example, most publishers now use some version of plagiarism-detection software to identify manuscripts with plagiarized text early in the process of submission. … Technological developments don’t just provide tools for either committing or detecting fraud, but also make it easier for scientists to communicate and monitor one another’s work. While the Internet has made committing plagiarism and image manipulation easier in many ways, it has also made it easier to detect such misconduct — for the simple reason that more eyes allow for greater scrutiny on publications.” – Ivan Oransky, Adam Marcus, “Two Cheers for the Retraction Boom”, The New Atlantis, Number 19, Spring/Summer 2016, http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/two-cheers-for-the-retraction-boom.
There is a clear acknowledgement that the amount of studies that are being found to not be accurate is increasing, however, there is disagreement over what it means and why it has happened. Nevertheless, what it does not mean is that this can be taken to mean that we can throw away scientific studies and not have to listen to them. Neither article comes close to making that case. I bring this up because there has been an article promptly written whose title is, “Most Scientific Findings Are Wrong Or Useless”, http://reason.com/archives/2016/08/26/most-scientific-results-are-wrong-or-use (Ronald Bailey, Reason.com, 08/26/2016). It is, at best, an article that deliberately misunderstands the debate that is going on both in The New Atlantis and in the broader field of Philosophy of Science, and is quite tendentious. The website itself appears to have a series of articles that participate in the current madness of writing click-bait style headlines, such as “Trump and Other Politicians are Lying to You About Immigration”, and “Have More Kids. It is Good for the Planet.” There are other similar articles out on the web that try to make the same claim as this article.
So, ought we to be positive or negative about what is happening? Well, the problem with the claim that most scientific findings are wrong or useless is that it is published on a web publication using technology that simply did not exist until after I was married. That is, it seems odd to look at the vast scientific advances of the last couple of centuries, to then make the claims that are made in Reason.com. I replied to a friend that promptly cited the argument to mean that he no longer has to think about global warming that the arguments that are being made by this article are actually self-defeating and even harmful to Christianity. I said to him:
You do realize that exactly the same argument can be used to question or invalidate either fetal pain studies or claims that many birth control methods are abortifacients? (Note that the Orthodox Church does not have a united stand on birth control, and many jurisdictions permit it.) You open a Pandora’s box with this type of argumentation.
The article makes many very good points, except that the claims that scientific findings are best guided by technology are tendentious, at best. For instance, Einstein’s conclusions were purely mental exercises that were unable to be tested at the time they were published. Copernicus’ and Galileo’s findings were unable to be fully vetted at the time they were published as they were purely observational conclusions.
This article starts out apparently well, but its conclusions actually fit the very model that the author is decrying. He is drawing upon several observational studies that make claims of high numbers of irreproducible studies in order to draw conclusions using merely observational methodology that has not been reproduced. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
When I read what is going on, I find myself thinking that this is argument is a bit about whether the glass is half-full or half-empty. The two articles in The New Atlantis are designed to present both arguments so that the reader might try to draw some reasonable conclusions. The glass half-empty argument makes the non-historical claim that science should partner with “technology,” which appears to mean mostly with the Department of Defense, in order to produce easily verifiable results. This is science in the service of an outside force. Yet, when one looks at history, one realizes that this is not how it worked. If, on the one hand, Archimedes was definitely in the service of the State for various of his projects, it is also clear that Leonardo da Vinci was looking far into the future in his studies and his predictions of future achievements. As I cited to my friend, these scientists, along with Einstein, etc., were not simply serving technological advancement, but were trying to decipher the nature of reality. The glass half-empty argument not only goes too far, but ignores the dangers of linking science to technology, as though that is all that defines science.
The glass half-full argument also does not take into account the role of failure in the scientific process. Einstein’s breakthrough hypothesis was made possible, in large part, because of the failure of any and all experiments that attempted to measure the “ether” that was supposedly present in a vacuum, and the supposed failure of various of the experiments concerning the speed of light. It was repeated failure that spurred Einstein’s brain to reach a purely mental solution to the various issues. In the same way, Edison commented on how many failures he had before he achieved the light bulb. Nevertheless, all those failures contributed to the progress of science. They were not in vain. In the same way, when a paper is published and not reproduced by other scientists, it does not mean that science itself has failed, but rather that—just like in Einstein’s time—a knotty problem has not yet been resolved. And, as the glass half-full argument points out, the very increase in retractions and in finding problem studies may mean that it is precisely the newer communication technologies that are allowing problem studies to be found.
But, the glass half-full argument also does not fully take into account some of the problems in modern scientific publishing. Modern journal articles are published as though they were final conclusions rather than as though they were presentations to the scientific community asking for them to recheck the research. The pressure on a tenured university professor, to publish or perish, means that they are all too often rushing through their research in order to keep their jobs. This pressure to publish or lose grants and, perhaps, even your job, definitely may lead to bad science. Some of the current peer-review policies are not adequate. In fact, they cannot be adequate because the pressure to publish means that so many studies are published every year that it becomes impossible to properly peer-review them or to properly replicate them. This is a challenge that may need to be solved by simply giving up on the “publish or perish” system, and to change the way in which government (and other) grants are awarded and reviewed.
This brings me to the subject of some additional pressures on the scientific enterprise in America. On the one side, the insistence that whenever a study is published, the government must take immediate action leads to the enactment of regulations or, minimally, advisories that have little to no scientific backing. Note that every time a “study” comes out, there is an outcry for new guidelines to be enacted. In almost every case, there has been no chance to evaluate the efficacy of the study. This is not a science failure, but a public policy failure. When medicines are released on the basis of studies that are not finished, and simply because preliminary studies show that they may be efficacious, we have a failure in policy, not in science. On a consistent basis, you can turn on your TV (or Internet news provider) and see some group or another saying that it is unconscionable and unethical for the government to not release a medication from FDA studies, based on preliminary findings. There has been more than one case in which the study was not finished, nor were peer reviews conducted yet, but the finding was released because of pressure from some interest group or another.
On the other side, the ongoing insistence that if the study finds anything with which we disagree, then it must be stopped, has harmed science. One only need look back over the last several years to see how Congress has forbidden some government agencies to speak about global warming and to see the dampening effect that politics has upon science. If one looks back even more years, one need only see the Order of the Golden Fleece awards by Senator William Proxmire (Democrat) to see how the insistence on results can actually damage science. While there is no doubt that there is some apparently silly research going on, Senator Proxmire did much harm by insisting that research must have immediate practical results, otherwise the government should not fund it. Rather than increasing the utility of government awards, that approach led to studies being crafted more for finding some dubious benefit than to advance knowledge. He, as much as anyone else, gives the lie to the glass half-empty argument. The emphasis on utility leads to bad science. Since Senator Proxmire awarded his fleece from the seventies to the eighties, I will remind you of another award from the seventies. I propose that Senator Proxmire be awarded a posthumous Flying Fickle Finger of Fate.
What is true is that all too many, from every side of the political aisle, have no idea of how science is supposed to work. One side almost takes every study as gospel, while the other side descends into conspiracy theories. One side wants immediate government action on every study that appears to initially show a detrimental effect by [fill in the blank]. The other side latches on to one study, even if it is later disproven, and builds an entire conspiracy theory leading to the conclusion that the study was never disproven but was suppressed. Both approaches to science are dangerous and encourage science to become something it was never meant to be. Science was never meant to be a method whereby one study must be correct, otherwise science must be questioned. In fact, it is the opposite, one study forms the beginnings of a set of research that may (or may not) lead to the confirmation of the conclusion reached in the study. If it does not lead to the confirmation, then we have learned something. If it leads to the confirmation, then we have learned something. The other side appears to simply look for studies which support already believed presuppositions and claims that any study that contradicts the study that supports them is the result of a conspiracy.
Both sides do tremendous harm to science. Neither side truly understands the role of peer review, reproducibility, etc. But, that is not to say that the there are no issues. There are some serious issues in science that must be dealt with. Scientists are every bit as prone to bad logic as the rest of us. Scientists want to keep their jobs. Scientists are often also professors who must put in full work weeks, before even getting around to research. Scientists have their own set of presuppositions, which is why peer-review of a published article is needed. As a result, I am not convinced by either side in the argument, at this point in time. I am convinced that much of what is happening is made possible by the fact that most people do not know what is involved in scientific reasoning.
I will leave you with one humorous example of bad scientific reasoning:
WARNING!!
When you drink vodka over ice, it can give you kidney failure.
When you drink rum over ice, it can give you liver failure.
When you drink whiskey over ice, it can give you heart problems.
When you drink gin over ice, it can give you brain problems.
Apparently, ice is really bad for you.
Warn all your friends!!
Leave a Reply