by runner310
Cargo Cult Religion:
[Via Skeptico]
Several bloggers have commented on this article by Tom Stern about Ken Ham’s creation museum published in The Point magazine While Stern’s article was generally OK in its presentation of Ham’s museum as pseudoscience unsupported by facts, he spoils the ending with a false conflation of science with religion And although he claims he isn’t doing this (“Of course science isn’t a faith: it builds bridges…” etc), he really is and in a most intellectually lazy way This is what you find towards the end of the article:
I was taught the earth is four billion years old and, going around the Museum, I realized I don’t actually know how “they” know that.
This isn’t the tired retort, often aimed at Dawkins et al., that science is just another faith. Of course science isn’t a faith: it builds bridges, it puts Americans on the moon and finds extraordinary new ways for us to kill each other. But it has more in common with faith than either the religious or scientific community would like us to admit. For Nietzsche, this was particularly evident in the consideration of scientific methods: there’s something comforting about the repetitive rituals of the scientific and technical life, which mimics the priestly cure of the Hail Mary or morning prayer. And there’s something silencing, too, about the way facts are presented to the public—as fossilized nuggets of information not to be questioned. Where once we used to turn to the priest for advice and guidance, now we turn to the scientific expert; we bend to the stamp of his authority, his status, his style—compare the expert witness in the courtroom to the priest at the hanging.
So science isn’t faith, but Stern doesn’t know how we know the age of the Earth and Nietzsche wrote something about the rituals of science being like religion, and so science really is like faith, except it isn’t I find it telling that Stern finds the the time to mention Nietzsche seven (count them) times (why?) but apparently doesn’t have ten seconds to put earth is four billion years old into Google and find out how we know the age of the Earth (If he had, he would have soon found this nice explanation of Isochron Dating.)
[More]
Although the post is a little old. This is a nice discussion of how people attempt to place science in a box, like religion. But science is not religion, unless one wants to make religion such a diffuse term it really has no meaning.
What I love is that the article has a nice link to a commencement speech given by Feynman called Cargo Cult Science. (Here is a nice pdf of the speech.) It has this nice description of how science really works and how it is easily separated from cargo cult science:
But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school–we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty–a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid–not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked–to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can–if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong–to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.
In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.
Part of the reason to do this is simple human nature – not to be horribly embarrassed when someone points out a error in logic. That is part of the benefit of peer review – to catch some obvious hole that you just did not see.
But it also means that when providing the methods in a paper, all relevant information must be given. It is also why I read the whole paper when I can because there are often little bits of information placed in them that can be extremely helpful when doing similar work.
Sometimes we don’t really know what is relevant until it becomes relevant.
One of my favorite stories has to do with Claudia Kappen and her rats (subscription required). It begins with an altered Hox gene.
Hox is an important gene for the developmental pathways in almost every metazoan. Kappen inserted a mutated Hox gene into a strain of mice. This gene normally works to control the presence and maturation of precursor cells in cartilage. This particular mutant Hox gene is hyperactive, resulting in the inability of the mice to properly form cartilage. Mice with this mutation die soon after birth. Their rib cage is not strong enough to withstand breathing.
Now, she did all this work at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She moved from there to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, and took her mice with her, where they DID NOT die. Instead of shattering, their skeletons stayed together.
Now, it must have been disconcerting to move to another location and see all the results of your work completely disappear. Would anyone believe any of the work you had done? Should you?
I can sympathize with this. We make assumptions all the time without even knowing it. For example, mice kept in polycarbonate cages are exposed to Bisphenol A, a chemical that acts like estrogen. What effects would this have on a wide range of experiments?
So, as scientists, we really worry when things are not repeatable. Is it all an illusion? Is it the phases of the moon? Is it the water? What is really going on? Often it is a trivial explanation. Sometimes it leads ti really interesting science.
Kappen is one sharp scientist and was able to show why the phenotype of her transgenic mice was different, even thought the genotype was the same. That is, although the genes were no different, their bodies were.
Something was different in their environment; something that was now masking the mutation. It turned out to be the corn cobs. The mice in their new home in Nebraska got cages with a different bedding than in Tucson, one made with corn cobs. Could something in these cobs provide the environmental difference that was overcoming the mutation? On a hunch, she examined whether folate (one of the B vitamins found in the cobs) could be the missing ingredient.
She was right.
Normally, the cartilage cells from the mutant mice, to quote Kappen, “shriveled up and died” when grown outside the animal. If grown in a folate-enriched medium, they grew just as well as wild type cells. If she fed transgenic mice carrying the defective gene extra folate, they had almost normal skeletons. Her conclusion says it best: “The faulty Hox gene can be modified by an environmental substance.” So, in this case, a faulty gene could be hidden by the environment.
She actually discovered something extremely interesting all because she had to reevaluate some of her assumptions. This often happens and is one way that science moves forward. Sometimes people just fool themselves. There is a reason it is known as the Clever Hans effect.
As scientists, we know how easy it is to be fooled by data, to see what we want to believe. Part of our training has been to help see these pitfalls and avoid them. And if we can not avoid them, as with Kappen, to figure out how these assumptions affect our data.
Many people do not have this training and are often fooled by fallacies and fraud, by cargo cult science. It may look scientific but there is little real science present.
As Feynman states:
We’ve learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature’s phenomena will agree or they’ll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it’s this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science.
A good scientist is their own harshest critic. Those that fail to learn that often have very public humiliations. At least if they want to remain a scientist. Some just go off and make a living with deniers of various sorts.
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