Irving Langmuir and pathological science: A warning for our times

It's American chemist Irving Langmuir's birthday today, so it's a good time to remind ourselves of his very illuminating and timeless warning about "pathological science". Langmuir was the first industrial scientist to win the Nobel Prize. The prize was awarded to him for pioneering contributions to surface chemistry, although he also did important research in electronics and solution chemistry. He did most of his work during the early part of the 20th century when science - especially physics and chemistry - was advancing at breakneck speed. Not surprisingly, when science advances at breakneck speed, so do its quacks. 

Langmuir took note of the many cases of fraudulent science published during the previous decades and in 1953 gave a talk about the misuses of science which he titled "pathological science". His basic definition of pathological science was "science" which tricked people into believing false results by "subjective effects, wishful thinking and threshold interactions." Not all pathological science is willfully fraudulent, but all of it suffers from a common set of pitfalls that distinguish it from solid science. One can recognize how prescient Langmuir's talk was by the fact that many of the criteria we use today for evaluating scientific results or progress and identifying scientific misconduct are elaborations of his theses.

Among the cases of pathological science that Langmuir cited were N-rays, Martian canals, UFOs and extrasensory phenomena. The list has only grown since then, and to it we can today add homeopathy, polywater, cold fusion, "arsenic bacteria", faster-than-light neutrinos and evidence of cosmic inflation. There are many causes of pathological science. Some of them are simply the result of working at the frontier of science where little is known and mistakes are easy to make, others are the result of cognitive, social and emotional biases which scientists suffer from as much as anyone else, and yet others can be the result of active fabrication.

Langmuir listed many tell-tale signs for identifying pathological science. Among these were the following:

1. The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.

Homeopathy is a classic manifestation of this particular feature of pathological science. It rests on the potent medical effects of barely detectable (and in many cases non-existent) substances dissolved in water. However, the example of "arsenic" bacteria looks at this feature from a different vantage point. In that case what the authors (who claimed that they had discovered bacteria growing on arsenic instead of phosphorus) failed to test for was traces of phosphorus that could have actually invalidated their hypothesis. 

Sometimes a causative agent of "barely detectable intensity" could in fact be valid, but even in that case its effects need to be consistent and reproducible, and there also needs to be a good theory which can support its causal connection to the phenomenon under investigation; that connection can validate the dependence of the effect on the intensity of the cause. The arsenic bacteria case failed on both counts.

1. The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability; or, many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.

This is a straightforward caveat against statistical insignificance. When Langmuir was lecturing the science of statistics was just coming into its own. Since then and especially in the last decade or so, mountains of material have been published on key statistical concepts and pitfalls like p-hacking, effect size, sampling bias and cherry-picking. Pioneering psychologists like Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have showed how humans can be fundamentally incapable of thinking statistically. Failure to pay attention to any one of the myriad important statistical measures can deceive scientists into seeing a result where none exists. In my own field of molecular modeling, due attention to statistics has become a rallying cry for many scientists. The reproducibility crisis has turned into one of the biggest challenges to contemporary science.

That being said, one has to appreciate that scientists in some areas like particle physics are working at the very edges of statistical meaning; particles like the Higgs boson are discovered by looking at three or four sigma levels of statistical significance. In that case Langmuir's second caveat is important; you have to make many more measurements than what would be ordinarily necessary - or feasible for that matter - to confirm the effect. That is why data at the LHC comes from billions or even trillions of collisions between particles. The same goes for testing subtle effects of drugs across diverse populations.

1. Claims of great accuracy.

Solid science never tries to make claims that are bigger than what its edifice would sustain. I would think that most pathological science actually tries to keep away from proclamations of great accuracy, instead trying to skirt falsification by keeping its claims as vague and generic as possible. Astrology is a notorious example, keeping its "predictions" so vague that almost any event will "confirm" them. And yet I can also imagine practitioners of pathological science trying to dazzle credulous believers with the false veneer of accuracy. In this category I would probably place any number of health fads that allow you to lose 20 pounds in exactly 13 days, or guarantee immunity against a remarkably accurate and comprehensive list of maladies. So Langmuir is right in this regard; if it sounds too accurate, it probably is.

1. Fantastic theories contrary to experience.

This particular caveat was Langmuir's way of saying that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", about twenty five years before Carl Sagan said it. Any number of pseudoscientific phenomena will fall into this category: alien abduction, psychokinesis, the afterlife, reincarnation...the list goes on. More challenging claims are those like the ones about "arsenic" bacteria. These are at least plausible enough in principle and don't seem to violate any known laws of physics and chemistry, but given the number of conditions that need to be simultaneously satisfied in order for them to be true, they are extremely unlikely except in the face of convincing evidence.

At this point it's worth pointing out that there have been a number of theories in science, most notably in physics, that are in fact quite fantastic. Time dilation, spacetime curvature and quantum entanglement are only three of them. Yet what made these amazing creations of the mind plausible was the mathematical rigor behind them and their agreement with previous theories (relativity for instance arose from a desire to make Newton's laws of motion and Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism consistent with each other). And even then, they were regarded as hypotheses before experiment overwhelmingly confirmed them; that is why even today, in spite of the fact that they run completely "contrary to experience", we still believe these theories.

1. Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment.

I can think of no better example of this feature of pathological science than creationism and intelligent design. Come up with an objection to a creationist idea and the creationist will have an answer for it. In almost every case the answer will be non-falsifiable and so general that it will either be impossible to disprove it or it would be possible to always "prove" it because of its hollow generality. At some point your theory then becomes so wide as to accommodate every single objection and fact, and a theory that explains everything then ends up explaining nothing.

1. Ratio of supporters to critics rises up to somewhere near 50% and then falls gradually to oblivion.

This is an especially amusing and true aspect of pathological science. Usually when an improbable discovery is announced there's always enough number of believers to push hard for its plausibility and significance. Part of the reason is psychological; we actually want new, groundbreaking discoveries in science. The discovery of cosmic inflation and that of arsenic bacteria both fall in this category. I don't know how many of those who read about these believed in them, but Langmuir's estimate sounds rather reasonable. It did not take much longer then for this number to rapidly dwindle and fall to oblivion.

The political environment in the near future is almost certainly going to push its own brand of "science" on the public, even as it revels in its own version of "facts". In addition, the deluge of big data has already made it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. All this has lowered the bar for deception and outright fraud. Only scientists can police each other and make sure that chicanery, both willful and accidental, don't become part of established scientific fact. Irving Langmuir's warning about pathological science shines as brightly as ever.

Billionaires and science prizes: "Fund the science, not the prizes"

Physicist Lawrence Krauss has a good piece decrying recent billion-dollar science prizes like the Breakthrough Prize which billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg are giving out to leading scientists in Oscar-style extravaganzas, and I have to say I largely agree with his criticism. Quite aside from the simple fact that gunning for any prize is terrible motivation for doing science, I have always been skeptical about how much of a difference exactly these prizes make in terms of public appreciation of science, let alone in terms of getting young people interested in science.

As Krauss puts it, it's not just a simple question of whether these recognitions are "good" or "bad" for science (they're probably not bad per se); it's a question of whether the cost to benefit ratio is worth it and whether there are simply better ways in which a billionaire can spend his or her billion dollars on science. I also tend to agree with his cynical-sounding but valid point that the most palpable impact of these prizes is probably to raise the public profile of the benefactors themselves rather than the recipients. Nor are the prizes, as glittering as they seem, the ultimate honors; as Krauss accurately observes, all the prize winners would almost certainly trade their awards for a Nobel Prize if they had a chance. Simply put, money can't really buy you prestige.

Krauss's recommendation for what to do instead with all that money is simple: instead of putting a billion dollars into a prize for an individual or specific discovery, fund actual science instead. One of the reasons is simply the magnitude of what could be done: a simple calculation leads to the rather alarming conclusion that a billion dollars would fund about two hundred and seventy postdocs for a year. In fact, as any academic who is cash-strapped and constantly jousting for a dwindling percentage of NIH or NSF grants knows, even a million dollars could serve as a healthy injection of funds into a moribund project. Here's Krauss on how spreading the wealth around could do a great deal of good, especially in fields in which the government is increasingly stepping back.

"But a larger problem is that these prizes are not an efficient use of funds. Instead of funding science prizes, these billionaires should try funding the science itself. Take particle physics—one of the main specialties in which Breakthrough Prizes have been awarded. In that field, government funding has been cut back significantly, and budgets have been flat or declining for years. The $27 million awarded by Yuri Milner, in 2012, would have funded perhaps two hundred and seventy new postdoctoral fellowships that year, or a smaller number of postdoctoral fellowships combined with endowed faculty positions. That could more than double the current number of young researchers in the field. With a larger group of young, talented, and ambitious scientists finding gainful employment, the likelihood of jumpstarting some new and exciting research would be significant. (The benefit to young scientists, meanwhile, would be far greater than that created by giving more money to older scientists whose work has, in all likelihood, already been recognized and well supported.)"

Krauss's words remind me of a past blog post in which I had commented favorably on private funding of actual science and had cited very successful endeavors like the Broad Institute and the Kavli Institute as well as scientific projects funded by people like Larry Ellison and Paul Allen. It seems quite clear to me that these people have done a lot more good for science than what they would have had they put their billions into annual prizes given out by Hollywood celebrities in rock concert-like events with performances by actual rock stars. This is exactly what Krauss gets to at the end of his piece:

"My advice to would-be billionaire prize-makers is simple: set up independent foundations from which good young people and the institutions they are part of can receive support. This will allow more scientists to pursue careers that might otherwise be cut short due to the current, and unfortunate, lack of public funding. If you want glitz, spend your money on yachts; if you want to have an immediate impact as a force for good, then help the poor. But if you want to help the scientific enterprise, prizes aren’t the way to do it."

The AAAS's nomination of Prof. Patrick Harran does a grave disservice to their stated mission

I hear through the Twitterverse that the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has appointed Prof. Patrick Harran of UCLA as a new fellow for 2015. I have to say that this choice leaves me both befuddled and disappointed.

Most of us would remember that Prof. Harran was charged on four felony counts for the laboratory death of undergraduate Sheri Sangji in December 2008. The case dragged on for several years, and in 2014 Prof. Harran and UCLA struck a deal with prosecutors that allowed him to avoid the charges in exchange for a fine and community service. The charges were not refuted; they were negotiated for.

Now I am certainly not of the opinion that someone like Prof. Harran should not be rehabilitated into the scientific community in some way or another. Nor do I think that he should never be recognized for his ongoing research. I am also not in a position to pass legal judgement on the degree of his culpability.

But that's not the point here at all. If the award was from, say the ACS, for purely technical achievement I would have been less miffed. As it happens it's a recognition from the AAAS: the American Association for Advancement of Science. 

Advancement of Science does not just mean advancement of the technical aspects of science; it means advancement of the sum total of the scientific enterprise, a key component of which is the intersection of science with public appreciation and public policy. The AAAS was set up in 1848 with the express goal of not just recognizing scientific achievement but of facilitating scientific discourse in the public sphere. Past presidents of the AAAS have included Robert Millikan and Stephen Jay Gould, both of whom put a premium on scientists actively engaging with the public.

Let's take a look at the official mission of the AAAS as noted on their own website:

• Enhance communication among scientists, engineers, and the public;
• Promote and defend the integrity of science and its use;
• Strengthen support for the science and technology enterprise;
• Provide a voice for science on societal issues;
• Promote the responsible use of science in public policy;
• Strengthen and diversify the science and technology workforce;
• Foster education in science and technology for everyone;
• Increase public engagement with science and technology; and
• Advance international cooperation in science.

In my opinion, the election of Prof. Harran goes against at least four of these goals; enhancement of communication between scientists and the public, strengthening support for the scientific enterprise, increasing public engagement with science and most importantly, "promoting and defending the integrity of science and its use".

It's quite clear from the AAAS's mission statement that scientific responsibility and scientific outreach are two of its major aims. In fact one can argue that the AAAS, along with the NAS (National Academy of Sciences), is one of two policy organs in this country which represent the public face of the scientific enterprise. For more than a century now the AAAS has been an integral part of the nationwide scientific dialogue involving scientists, the government and the people. Perhaps it's fitting in this regard that the current CEO of the AAAS is former New Jersey Congressman Rush Holt, one of the few politicians in this country who's not only finely attuned to the truth-seeking nature of science and its potential corruption but was also a serious practicing scientist himself at one point.

All this makes the matter even denser and harder to understand. How does the election of someone who is still under a cloud of suspicion for not having implemented responsible safety practices in his laboratory at a major university and who has not pled guilty to any of the charges against him a healthy reaffirmation of the dialogue between scientists and the public? How does this election help them in their stated mission of "promoting the integrity of science and its use" when Prof. Harran's actions and the charges against him clearly called that integrity of use into question? 

In addition, the statement from a spokesperson of the AAAS saying that they were "unaware of the charges against Harran" is simply bizarre. The Harran and Sangji stories have been all over the news for more than seven years now; how much more exposure do they need for an organization of the size and reach of the AAAS to take notice?

The whole episode is deflating and incomprehensible. Again, this is not about Prof. Harran's merits purely as a scientist; in fact in a sense it's not about him at all. It's about what the AAAS wants to be. Does it want to be an institution purely recognizing technical achievement or does it want to be one which promotes scientific responsibility and outreach? If - as its almost one hundred and fifty year history indicates - it wants to be the latter, it can surely do better than this.

Note: For a comprehensive view of the details of the case as they unfolded, see C&EN reporter Jyllian Kemsley's outstanding coverage here.

We do not need to discard old scientific role models in order to embrace new ones

Historian of science Steven Shapin has a review of Steven Gimbel's new capsule biography of Einstein in which he holds forth with some of his more general thoughts on the art of scientific biography and the treatment of famous scientific figures. Shapin mulls over the current of writing about scientific lives that initially tended to treat its inhabitants as scientific heroes but which in recent times has sought more to illuminate their human flaws. Pointing out the triumphs as well as the follies of your subjects is of course a good way to achieve balance, but as Shapin points out, one can bend over backward in either direction while doing this.

"The “human face” genre was an understandable response to hagiography, but more recently it has lapped over into a commitment to dirt-digging. Some modern scientific biographies mean to show great scientists as not just human but all-too-human, needing to be knocked off their pedestals. Galileo—we are now told—was a self-publicizing courtier, sucking up to his Medici patrons; Robert Hooke was a miser who molested his niece; Newton was a paranoid supervisor of torture who cheated in a priority dispute;Pasteur was a careerist power broker who cut ethical corners; even gentle Darwin was channeling laissez-faire capitalist ideology and using illness as an excuse to get colleagues to face down his scientific opponents on his behalf. Weary of stories about the virtues attached to transcendent genius, biographers have brought their scientific subjects down to Earth with a thunderous thump."

This view does not quite conform to the post-modernist ideal of treating every achievement as a subjective (and pedestrian) product of its times rather than as the unique work of an individual, but it does go a bit too far in discounting the nature of the few genuinely intellectually superior minds the human race has produced. The approach also tends to conflate people's scientific achievements with the social or personal aspects of their lives and somehow asks us to consider one only in the "context" of the other. For instance according to this approach Richard Feynman (who would incidentally have celebrated his ninety seventh birthday today had he been alive) is not a hero because of his occasional sexist remarks or behavior, but the truth of the matter is that Feynman's behavior does not stop many of us (who are well aware of the unseemlier aspects of his personality) from regarding him as a scientific hero. 

It also seems odd to me to declare that Feynman is not a role model for science communication when millions of young people of all colors, nationalities, genders and political views have been deeply inspired by his teaching, books and science. Growing up in India for instance, I know first hand how much Feynman's books encouraged me and my friends to go into science; I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that his books probably sold more copies in the bookshelves and on the streets of India than in this country. This fact also demonstrates that while it helps, one does not always need someone from their own community or gender to serve as an inspiring figure. When I was growing up it might have been nice to have a Nobel Laureate from my neighborhood to serve as a role model, but Einstein, Feynman, Darwin and Bohr provided no dearth of inspiration. When I thought about the wonderful facts about the world they had unearthed it did not matter whether they were white, black, brown or green. They were scientists first and Americans, Englishmen, Germans and Danes later.

The point is, when it comes to being a successful model for science communication, shouldn't the product speak for itself? In our quest to seek new models of science communication, why do we need to discard older ones because they somehow don't look or speak like us? Why can't we have addition instead of substitution? And yet I see a minor, well-meaning but vocal chorus of voices in this country which wants to replace, not add to, old heroes of science communication. These proponents of diversity make the case that we need people from our own communities to serve as role models, and while this is certainly true their arguments sometimes ignore two facts: firstly, they underestimate the sheer power of scientific ideas like evolution or the birth of the universe to move young minds, and secondly they confuse "role model" with "inspiring figure". Henrietta Swan Leavitt is certainly an inspiration for me, but by definition she cannot be a role model. Role models do work better when they are somewhere close to you, but inspiration can come from anywhere.

Somewhere in our quest to bring about a more equal scientific community I think we are elevating identity above ideas, notions of nationality, gender and color above the sheer factual authenticity of scientific contributions. While the former are important, they cannot rise by treading on the latter which as facts about the universe stand in their own right in isolated splendor. When I think about Feynman I don't want to think of him as a Dead White Guy first and as the originator of Feynman diagrams only second, and when I look at George Washington Carver I don't want to think of him as a Black Scientist first and as the originator of groundbreaking ideas in agriculture only second. We need to look at ideas first and foremost as ideas, and only secondarily as ideas from a person belonging to a particular community, gender or nationality. Otherwise we risk falling prey to the same divisiveness and proliferation of "isms" which we seek to abolish.

The same problem applies to recognizing the balance between scientific genius and social environment. As Shapin alludes to in his piece, for some reason there has been what I see as a completely unnecessary tussle between two camps in recent times: one camp wants to declare scientific achievements as the work of lone geniuses while the other camp (definitely the more vocal one in recent times) wants to try to abolish or radically downplay the idea of genius and instead ascribe scientific feats to cultural and historical factors. Thus you can have genius or you can have luck, community, education and accidents of birth, but you cannot have both. The truth of course is much more mundane and somewhere in between: Einstein or Feynman were extraordinary intellects who did things that few others could have done, but it's also equally accurate that they could not have done those things without the relevant historical and social factors being lined up in their favor. We don't have to pick between genius-enabled science and socially-enabled science. The reality is that both of them piggyback on each other. There is little doubt that flashes of insight occasionally come from geniuses, just as it's true that these flashes stand on a foundation of historical and social drivers.

Fortunately as Shapin indicates, the art of denigration itself has not seen untrammeled success and some successful biographies of Einstein for instance have satisfying walked the tightrope between hagiography and candid human assessment. 

"Denigration is now itself showing signs of wear and tear. Much present-day scientific biography aspires to something as apparently benign as a “rounded” account of life and scientific work—neither panegyric nor exposé, neither a dauntingly technical document nor a personal life with the science omitted. Walter Isaacson’s 2007 biography is an accessible and assured account, and his goal is such a “whole life” treatment. “Knowing about the man,” Mr. Isaacson writes, “helps us to understand the wellsprings of his science, and vice versa. Character and imagination and creative genius were all related, as if part of some unified field.” What could be more sensible?"

We can thus recognize Einstein as an authentic genius while also recognizing the shoulders on which he stood. We can recognize Feynman's scientific genius and his pronounced impact on the minds of millions of science students while recognizing his flaws as a human being. Gimbel's biography is along similar lines. 

Taken together these balanced works provide some hope that we can appreciate the shining products of humanity while also appreciating their human defects. Like the paradoxical but complementary waves and particles of quantum theory, the two complete each other.

In the matter of Walter Lewin, MIT goes medieval

By now most people must have heard the unpleasant news that Walter Lewin, the beloved and world-renowned physics teacher at MIT whose legendary video lectures drew comparison with the Feynman Lectures on Physics has been barred from campus and stripped of his emeritus professor title in response to charges of sexual harassment of a student in one of his MITx courses. Unfortunately, considering the very public fame that Lewin achieved, MIT has been frustratingly silent on divulging the details of the events, but we can only assume that the charges were quite serious and supported by strong evidence.

It's a very painful and precipitous fall from grace for someone who had achieved the kind of stardom reserved for a handful of science personalities - images of Lewin swinging from a pendulum to demonstrate how its period is independent of its mass, or risking being struck in the face and badly hurt by having the pendulum approach his face within a hairsbreadth are now part of science folklore. As someone who has savored many of his lectures as well as his book, I am not the only one to feel pained, confused and stunned.

What I find bizarre is that MIT has chosen to take down all the lectures that made him famous. I simply don't understand this, especially since they have quoted reasons of "safety" in doing this - how could Lewin possibly entice or harass students simply through explaining the motion of a simple pendulum through an old, archived lecture? Apply whatever punishment you see fit to him but why deprive millions of students around the world of the joy of physics? As an institution that pioneered online courses through the Open Courseware modules, it is particularly damning to have MIT engage in this action.

Sadly, the purging of Lewin's lectures from the online universe cannot help but bear comparison to the book burning and blacklisting of speech and writing that was so endemic in the Dark and Middle ages. MIT's actions are akin to banning, say, Wagner's operas because he was anti-Semitic, or Peter Debye's equations because there are hints that he was silently permissive at the very least during the rise of the Nazis. Their actions remind me of the movie "The Ten Commandments" in which, after learning that his beloved son is actually the son of a Hebrew slave, the Pharaoh issues an edict to have Moses's name stricken from every monument and parchment in the land so that his very existence can be erased from history. It really shouldn't be so hard to separate men from their actions, and I cannot understand what motive MIT could have had in taking down the lectures. I am assuming that content in the Internet age is not as lost to the chasm of ignorance as content existing in a few select printed volumes four hundreds years ago, but the issue is really about the medium, not about the message.

Whatever their motive, the message MIT is sending to the world is not too complimentary - we will put the objectivity of knowledge on the same pedestal as the fallibility of human beings, and if we find evidence for one we will banish the other one too. It's a very troubling precedent in my opinion. I do hope that especially an institution as committed to the spread of knowledge as MIT reconsiders the decision.

Update: I am glad to see that prominent MIT computer science professor Scott Aaronson has the same thoughts and in fact believes even more strongly than I that taking down the lectures is a huge mistake. I also agree with him that MIT needs to be much more forthcoming and transparent in revealing the details of the case to a perplexed public.

"I’m someone who feels that sexual harassment must never be tolerated, neither here nor anywhere else.  But I also feel that, if a public figure is going to be publicly brought down like this (yes, even by a private university), then the detailed findings of the investigation should likewise be made public, regardless of how embarrassing they are.  I know others differ, but I think the need of the world to see that justice was done overrides MIT’s internal administrative needs, and even Prof. Lewin’s privacy (the names of any victims could, of course, be kept secret). 

More importantly, I wish to register that I disagree in the strongest possible terms with MIT’s decision to remove Prof. Lewin’s lectures from OpenCourseWare—thereby forcing the tens of thousands of students around the world who were watching these legendary lectures to hunt for ripped copies on BitTorrent.  (Imagine that: physics lectures as prized contraband!)  By all means, punish Prof. Lewin as harshly as he deserves, but—as students have been pleading on Reddit, in the MIT Tech comments section, and elsewhere—don’t also punish the countless students of both sexes who continue to benefit from his work.  (For godsakes, I’d regard taking down the lectures as a tough call if Prof. Lewin had gone on a murder spree.)  Doing this sends the wrong message about MIT’s values, and is a gift to those who like to compare modern American college campuses to the Soviet Union."

Frankenstein and his monster in the age of Oprah and NIH funding

Frankenstein and his monster on Broadway
(Image: dvdbeaver.com)

The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Laughlin is one of those rare minds who combines a wide-ranging knowledge of many fields with a wicked sense of humor and a devil-may-care attitude. This combination of gifts is on full display in his wonderful book "A Different Universe", a volume that at its heart is about the limitations of reductionism in physics and the manifestations of emergence but which tends to gambol around a remarkable variety of topics ranging from politics to scientific personality with cheerful barbs and a constant sense of wonder about what we don't know about the human and the natural worlds.

In the book is contained a gem. Laughlin imagines what Mary Shelley's Frankenstein would have been like in the modern age of cut-throat federal funding, media frenzy and winner-take-all economic incentives. The result is in equal parts riotous humor and a capsule of deep insight. Definitely the funniest thing about Frankenstein I have read.

"I find it profoundly ironic that the very fallibility of science that motivated Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein – people’s tendency to believe they understand things when they actually do not – should become mainstream and acceptable for financial reasons. It brings to mind Oscar Wilde’s observation that the lack of money is the root of all evil. One can just imagine what Mrs. Shelley’s novel would have been like had it been written today. Instead of an angst-ridden nerd from Geneva, Victor Frankenstein would have been an enterprising young spam profiteer from the Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia. Instead of traveling to Igolstadt to learn his highly creative surgical techniques, Victor would have flown to Boston to attend Harvard Medical School – after a four-year hiatus at Princeton investigating tennis and women.  

Instead of constructing the monster in secret he would have used political connections to obtain a stupendous grant from the National Institutes of Health, then set up shop in Bethesda and floated a massive initial public offering. Instead of reviling his creation he would have plastered it on fliers touting his innovative technical breakthrough and announcing the launch of a new longevity clinic. The monster, meanwhile, forsaking a murder rampage as insufficiently destructive, would instead write a best-selling trash novel, appear on Oprah, and run for governor of California. Victor himself would not seek death on the ice floes of the Arctic but would look forward to a morally and financially untroubled retirement in Palm Springs as soon as his lawyers got rid of those meddlesome do-gooders from the Securities and Exchange Commission."

Isaiah Berlin, science and the dangers of certainty

Isaiah Berlin (Image: hannaharendt.org)

The essence of science is uncertainty. The scientific process gropes, not finds, its way to the truth. And yet there are those who have sought certainty and sacred truth not just in science but in human affairs. In science this illusory search can be a mere annoyance or at worse it can be a recipe for shattered careers and wasted man hours, but in human affairs it can lead to the most horrific tragedies. As Jacob Bronowski poignantly put it in "The Ascent of Man",

"Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken."

The great philosopher of ideas Isaiah Berlin delivers that last message to us from the grave with resounding sincerity in an article published by the New York Review of Books which reprints Berlin's 1996 address as commencement speaker at the University of Toronto. Berlin lived from 1909 to 1997 and he is most widely known to the public as the originator of the distinction between hedgehogs and foxes. But he was also recognized as one of the most thoughtful thinkers and writers of his generation, and because of his long life and wide-ranging intellect was in a good position to catalogue the horrors of the entire century and distill their central message.

That central lesson, as Berlin puts it, is the gospel of the one unalterable truth, the meld of sacred values that one must pursue at the expense of everything else. That gospel is hardly new - men have pursued it to nefarious and tragic ends for centuries - but it saw its most horrific culmination in terms of scale and purposeful slaughter in the crimes of the twentieth century.

Berlin lays most of the blame for the century's excesses at the feet of Karl Marx, and it is hard to argue that if there was one philosopher who has caused so many ills during the last two hundred years it has been Marx. But there were certainly others, dogmatic and prejudiced men whose sometimes idle speculations fueled other murderous philosophies. There were the armchair philosophers and casual anti-Semities (de Gobineau, Chamberlain) for instance whose writings inspired Hitler during his early years. These armchair philosophers - and Berlin's words about the momentous consequences that the 'mere' words and ideas of philosophers can have are timeless - knew they were in possession of the one truth just like their predecessors. And this led to ruin for millions. Not all these philosophers actively plotted the murder of their fellow countrymen of course, but they were clearly unaware how their vision of some Universal Truth could lead others to do so. Here's the problem:

If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise. Only the stupid and malevolent will resist once certain simple truths are put to them. Those who resist must be persuaded; if they cannot be persuaded, laws must be passed to restrain them; if that does not work, then coercion, if need be violence, will inevitably have to be used—if necessary, terror, slaughter. Lenin believed this after reading Das Kapital, and consistently taught that if a just, peaceful, happy, free, virtuous society could be created by the means he advocated, then the end justified any methods that needed to be used, literally any.

The embrace of any kind of means as justification for ends is hardly Lenin's invention, and we can be sure that men will continue to wield this fatal idea. But there is an even more fundamental reason why such ideas are dangerous. It's not just the lives they take, but the inherent flaws they present. Here Berlin reminds us of the essential role that pluralism has played in human history, a philosophy that he himself did so much to expound on.

This is the idea of which I spoke, and what I wish to tell you is that it is false. Not only because the solutions given by different schools of social thought differ, and none can be demonstrated by rational methods—but for an even deeper reason. The central values by which most men have lived, in a great many lands at a great many times—these values, almost if not entirely universal, are not always harmonious with each other. Some are, some are not. Men have always craved for liberty, security, equality, happiness, justice, knowledge, and so on. But complete liberty is not compatible with complete equality—if men were wholly free, the wolves would be free to eat the sheep. Perfect equality means that human liberties must be restrained so that the ablest and the most gifted are not permitted to advance beyond those who would inevitably lose if there were competition. Security, and indeed freedoms, cannot be preserved if freedom to subvert them is permitted. Indeed, not everyone seeks security or peace, otherwise some would not have sought glory in battle or in dangerous sports.

Justice has always been a human ideal, but it is not fully compatible with mercy. Creative imagination and spontaneity, splendid in themselves, cannot be fully reconciled with the need for planning, organization, careful and responsible calculation. Knowledge, the pursuit of truth—the noblest of aims—cannot be fully reconciled with the happiness or the freedom that men desire, for even if I know that I have some incurable disease this will not make me happier or freer. I must always choose: between peace and excitement, or knowledge and blissful ignorance. And so on.

It is the inability to grasp this fundamental tussle between different values that in part leads people to believe in holy truths. But Berlin is honest and reflective enough to admit that he sees no straightforward solution to this dilemma. This is perhaps because the only solution is to admit the dilemma and live with it, to respect a plurality of opinion and abide by the views of multitudes, to recognize that the contradictions that man presents are the contradictions that man contains. In fact this reconciliation with differing views lies at the heart of both liberal democracy and scientific exploration.

Science has always prided itself on respecting a plurality of views, perhaps because its practitioners have realized how fickle pronouncements of ultimate truth are. At the end of the nineteenth century a few leading physicists declared that fundamental physics was now set in stone and all that was needed was the drive toward more accurate measurements. The world of relativity and quantum theory shattered that fond illusion. Similarly many experts in evolution believed that the genome was unalterable once it was passed on from parents to children. The discovery of epigenetics put a completely different spin on genetic inheritance. The same slaying of longstanding beliefs - Aristotle's four elements, vitalism, the ether - has pervaded the history of science.

It is thus clear that science has always suffered when its adherents have insisted that there was one truth to be known, shared and cherished. But it - and humanity - have suffered even more when the belief in such a truth came not from the scientific edifice itself from but from a political or social outlook that used that edifice to its own ends. The greatest harm comes not when scientists claim universal truth but when all of us, scientists as well as non-scientists, believe that science should support what we believe are sacred political or social values.

That is why I find myself troubled by what I see as the misuse of science and facts by both the left and right in this country and in other lands. The bedrock of presumed certainty in what one sees as "hard data" not only roots one's beliefs in sacred values but it often simply precludes one from understanding subtleties and rationally responding to arguments on the other side: in other words it stops otherwise intelligent people from thinking. For instance the sad thing about the tiny vocal minority that expressed real or perceived outrage about some of my recent posts was not the outrage itself - outrage has been wielded as a public instrument since prehistoric times and has now probably replaced baseball as the national pastime - but the remarkable fact that none of these so-called "critics" actually replied to the points in the posts with any amount of detail. All that was left at the end was smoke without fire, cries and smoldering fury without a modicum of enlightenment. Consequently the outrage experts simply moved on to another outrage without either disseminating or imbibing any measurably useful knowledge, and the pattern repeated. The overwhelming emotion I felt for this minority was pity, but the real sense I had was one of missed opportunity; I understood that neither their outrage nor my pity promoted understanding. Many others (gratifyingly a much larger number than the minority) who wrote to me disagreed with points made in the posts, but unlike the others they were reasonable and civil, thought that the consequences of the whole episode were eminently silly, pointed out disagreements where they thought they existed, responded to detail with detail and most importantly, pointed out common ground. That is how a conversation should proceed in the age of Twitter - without Twitter.

This knee-jerk disapproval manifests itself on both sides of the political aisle. The right deplores global warming because it is inimical to its political agenda, the left holds the science of global warming perfect and sacrosanct because saying otherwise would be inimical to theirs. The right believes that some people are actually superior or inferior to others and twists the science of genetics, race and IQ to that end. The left fears this viewpoint so much that it gropes for support for the equality of all men in science, even when science and human value systems should really be kept separate from each other. The right looks into science for the contention held by some of its members that one gender is inferior to the other. The left is so fearful of this contention that it is quick to interpret any studies demonstrating even subtle or uncontroversial gender differences as evidence of discrimination against one gender or another. Generally speaking, the right is quick to point out differences rather than similarities while the left is quick to assume that pointing out differences is tantamount to pointing out inferiority or superiority. The left's sacred value is equality, the right's is God and country.

As someone who grew up with liberal, free-thinking values I myself am more partial to one of these viewpoints than the other, but in reality we should regard both of them as flawed. In my opinion both pose barriers to the honest gathering of knowledge. I believe it is folly to look to science as a source of human values. Occasionally science may support what we see as proper values, but I do not think it is wise to constantly fall back on science for justification for what should be uniquely human moral and social principles. For instance if tomorrow a specific case study from the animal kingdom provides support for democracy or feminism or opposition to misogyny, well and good. But what if another case study demonstrates the opposite? Would we then abandon our values or regard them as dubious because they are not mirrored in the raw facts of the natural world? Every stripe of liberal would reject that contention, and conservatives should reject it too. Although it is often difficult to separate science from morality, it is wise to constantly strive to do so since science respects no human decisions and follows no social trends.

What, then, are scientists to think about the complex world of human values? The simple answer is that they should realize the limitations of their methods and understand that even though detailed knowledge of one aspect of the scientific world or another may make them experts in certain fields, it still does not make them experts in using these aspects to gain detailed insight into human affairs. At best their knowledge of these facts makes them valuable advisors, but it makes them no wiser as arbiters of social goods and evils than other non-scientists. A good example is the case of nuclear scientists whose insights into atomic weapons made them uniquely positioned to offer advice to governments at the end of World War 2. But even their expertise in these scientific matters did not make them any more qualified to make expert decisions on the moral issues that the world confronted because of these weapons. Richard Feynman perhaps summed it up best with his pithy statement, "When I am asked to give advice about a non-scientific issue I am no smarter than the guy next to me." Like good citizens scientists should of course hold forth on such issues as much as anyone else, but they should do so only as non-scientists who have been informed a little better than their fellow thinkers, not as experts whose insights into these matters are privileged because somehow they seem to be mirrored in or rejected by their science.

It seems to me that when applied to scientists themselves, Berlin's admonition about the dangers of certainty lies not in believing in certain truths about science itself - most scientists are well-versed with the scientific method to know that the norms of scientific truth keeps on changing - but to use science as justification for their moral certainty. The moral certainty itself may or may not be valid depending on the context, but it's misguided and often dangerous to root that certainty in the ever-shifting sands of scientific facts. Human values are too precious to be left to science. The twentieth century should send out a deafening message to that effect.