Introducing Chris Dillow - Biases against science
I enjoy reading economist Chris Dillow, even if he infuriates me occasionally. His take on life is very different : he’s a self-proclaimed Marxist who writes for several respected financial and business journals, he doesn’t have much truck with ideology, right or left, but he’s (usually) a believer in markets - where they aren’t sullied by monopolists and politicians. He doesn’t have much time for professional bosses either, and sees managerialism as another form of value capture by vested interests. All this makes for an interesting read. Even if you don’t agree with him (which I’m sure bothers him not one jot), at least he makes you think. While on my travels, I had time to read his blog in a more leisurely fashion, and I thought you might be interested in some of his articles. First up, his thoughts on biases against science:
Professor Mark Pepys says “grossly inadequate” education has left most people “tone deaf” to science. I fear he’s right. But the problem isn’t confined to schools. There’s a vast number of biases that stop people thinking scientifically.
First, a matter of definition. Science is not merely, or even mainly, a body of facts. If it were, the problem of scientific ignorance would be easily solved.
Instead, the importance of science lies in its method - the way in which theories (stress the plural) are challenged against as much evidence as possible. In this sense, even scientists often fail to be scientific, as Richard Dawkins and James Watson have recently shown. And many doctors have a notoriously vague grasp of probability.I reckon there are at least four biases against the scientific method:
1. The power of authority. From infanthood onwards, we’re brought up to believe authority. It’s often sensible to do so. Parents and teachers know more than us. And it’s just impractical to work everything out for ourselves. But the scientific method requires that we believe not people but the evidence - and, indeed, are sceptical even of that. In this sense, Lord Rees - president of the Royal Society - was encouraging anti-science when he spoke recently of the “scientific consensus.” You don’t reach the truth through opinion polls.
2. The power of anecdote. People believe single, salient stories more than thousands of statistical data points. Take the question: does the MMR vaccine cause autism? The proper way to answer this is to fill in the four boxes (jab/no jab, autism/no autism) to establish correlations, and to ask: what are the possible mechanisms linking the vaccine to autism? Instead, people preferred the vivid story: “the son of a friend of a friend had the jab, and a few weeks later seemed to have autism.“ Few asked the scientific questions: how representative is this story? What’s the mechanism? The media perpetuate this bias. Journalists much prefer the human interest story to dry statistical inference. But you don’t necessarily get to the truth through entertainment.
3. The cult of self-expression. Everyone thinks they “have a right to an opinion”, a views fostered by vox pops and phone-in programmes. But opinion doesn’t matter. What matters is evidence and thought. Proper science is democratic in the sense that it considers all evidence, from whomsoever it comes. But it’s not democratic in the sense that it gives weight to the idle opinion of every passer-by.
4. Overconfidence. It’s very easy for our confidence in our opinion to grow faster than the evidence. This is especially likely if our achievements in one field win us prizes and esteem. This, I suspect, is part of the reason for James Watson’s unfortunate utterances.
The message here is that it’s not just schools to blame for scientific illiteracy. Indeed, the scientific method is profoundly unnatural - that’s why it took mankind millennia to stumble upon it.
Go to his blog to see all the comments this engendered.
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October 31st, 2007 at 9:36 am
I will throw in my 2 cents here.
#1) The first classic example of the power of authority here is the UN IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change), where their words on impending global warming disasters have been taken by world governments as God’s gospels, that is , don’t question their findings, because all its members are top notch climate scientists. Any opinions & doubts from skeptic climate scientists regarding global warming are just being brushed aside by the IPCC they label as deniers. The IPCC members do know that the current climate models in their report fall far short of being reliable to reach a high standard as to regard their findings as solid.
The second example, is the use of individuals such as Einstein by some paranormal believers to justify that this phenomena exists, simply because the great man said so. First Einstein didn’t create the laws of Physics (law of the universe), but he simply discovered some of them. This means that whatever he did say about the validity of paranormal (as some proponents have claimed) are irrelevant to the nature of physical reality, because physical reality itself is independent of the human inventor, whether we’re here to witness their existence or not. The laws of Physics were here before humans evolved from bacteria into homo sapiens, and they will still be here, long after we’d all gone. What I am trying to highlight here, is that the authority of a great scientist such as Einstein can’t be used to justify the existence of paranormal because he said so. Paranormal phenomenas, such as psychic powers, telekinesis, telepathy, foreseeing the future, etc, etc, do violate all the fundamental laws of natures (physics), such as the mass/energy conservation laws or MECL for short (paranormal doesn’t obey energy conservation), therefore, those (paranormal) claims must be dismissed, no ifs , no buts, even if an authority such as Einstein say they exist. Paranormal and MECL can’t be both true, it is one or the other. The reason for their (paranormal) unequivocal dismissal is that if we have to accept that they exist, then one must be prepared to also accept that we on this world are merely an illusion or just a figment of our imagination, since MECL could be violated at any time by paranormal. Existence as we know it sits right on top of MECL (its foundation), and if it is removed or be falsified in order to accept paranormal then the universe wouldn’t have existed in the first place.
So, I agree that the scientific method requires that we believe not people but the evidence. The evidence for global warming presented by IPCC is on a dodgy ground, while those for paranormal is zero (no evidence).
October 31st, 2007 at 10:10 am
#2) Anecdotal evidence is littered in all areas of life including some scientists whom are proponents of the so-called Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). Some governments around the world do fund researches in CAM, which is a waste of public money. There has never been any solid proof that demonstrated CAM practice does work. The proponents of CAM (researchers) have frequently referred to their branch of science as just alternative science as opposed to main stream science. This is done deliberately to make it out that what they’re doing does sound scientific and valid, but this is deception. There is no such thing as alternative science and main stream science, science is basically science, period. Imagine someone who would try to argue that there are 2 versions of Newton Laws of Motions, one is Alternative Newton Laws of Motions and the other is Main Stream Newton Laws of Motions. In reality there is one and only one Newton Laws of Motions, ie, it is neither alternative nor main stream it is just basically Newton Laws of Motions.
#3) I agree that what matters is evidence and thought and if they are repeatedly demonstrable by way of verifiable experiments then that counts heavily against consensus opinions that don’t produce evidence.
#4) I see that James Watson was overconfidence in his latest comment in the media, without any demonstrated evidence to what he claimed.
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:53 am
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