Science and Skepticism

In my own mind, I’ve really cemented position as a Skeptic.

I used to consider myself a skeptic, but with a relatively open mind towards the possibility of spirituality, faith, and belief. I mean, there are billions of people in the world who believe irrational things. Even very smart people. But after reading and pondering, I just can’t figure out why.

I recently read Richard Dawkins letter to his daughter, titled “Good and Bad Reasons For Believing”. Go read this now. We’ll wait. To sum up, the good reason to believe in something is “evidence”. The bad reasons are “tradition”, “authority”, and “revelation”. He expands on each of these topics, of course.

I then read an excerpt from Carl Sagan’s book “The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”. The excerpt is called “The Dragon in my Garage.” You should read this, too. Soon after reading this, I purchased the book itself, and I started reading it last night. It really got my mind racing.

Also, here's a small web movie which touches on the subject of what science is. (Skip to 25:10 or so for a really nice description of how clinical trials work). It’s long, but well worth watching.

Each of these attempt to teach us laypeople exactly what Science is. The authors clearly feel that the general public is scientifically illiterate. Given our collective penchant for UFO stories, psychics, ghost sightings, crystal healing, and all manner of pseudoscience, I’m afraid I’m inclined to agree.

In my own opinion, the problem with scientific illiteracy is that it makes Science appear to be “just another religion”. Those who don’t understand basic science are forced to take it on faith alone. For example: we hear scientists say that humans and apes evolved from common ancestors (or, and I cringe when I hear it, that we “evolved from apes”) millions of years ago. On Sundays, though, our pastor tells us that we were created from a divine source in the same form as we are today. Some people think this happened as recently as 6000 years ago. Both the pastor and the scientist are pretty emphatic that they are right. In fact, they both can cite lots of important sounding resources that confirm their belief, and also make pretty convincing arguments why the other guy is wrong.

So we’re left in the lurch. Who should we believe, and why?

The best option would be to do all the research on our own, and see all the evidence with our own eyes. But obviously, we can’t all be experts in paleontology and biology, as well as fluent in ancient languages. So, somehow, we need to decide. Do we believe the scientist or the pastor?

Sagan points out a difference between science and religion. My paraphrasing is: science wants to be wrong, and religion wants to be right.

So here’s how science works. We observe the world around us, and see that weird stuff happens. We notice, for a stupid example, that water turns into ice when it gets cold, and turns back to liquid when it warms up. Why does this happen, we wonder? So we take water into the laboratory, and do tests. Over and over again, we find that water always freezes at 32 degrees. In fact, the tests we do aren’t to try to make water freeze. The tests we do try to make water NOT freeze at 32 degrees. But no matter what we try, water always behaves the same way.

What a great discovery! We publish our results and crack open the champagne.

Now here is the CRITICAL part: A fellow scientist in the French alps reads our paper. He’s also been working on the water freezing problem, and has found that water freezes at a slightly different temperature at a high altitude. Another scientist tries seawater, and finds that he comes up with different results as well. So we all go back to the lab and try more tests, until we come up with a good working model of how water freezes, noting that salinity and altitude make a difference. And once we get that model, we publish it, and let others beat on it, looking for holes. And even when it seems to stand up to rigor, we still keep testing it, just in case. We want it to be wrong. In fact, I’ll bet that proving that our current concept of why water freezes is wrong would win you a Nobel Prize.

Another example. Does anyone remember the Cold Fusion discovery in the 80’s? Two guys thought they had unlocked the secret to cheap and abundant energy, and published their results. It was all over the news for a while, until other people tried to duplicate their claims, and couldn’t. That is the scientific community at work. Everything is transparent and open-source.

A couple years ago, my dad had an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine. I didn’t realize it at the time, but soon after it became pretty clear that this was a big deal. Being a proud son, I read the article. I couldn’t understand much of it. My memory was that the conclusion of the article was basically “our tests indicate a minor trend toward such-and-such. More testing is required.” I remember thinking “That’s it?” We talked about it, and it became more clear that that’s how it works: Science isn’t sweeping discoveries. Science is adding to the accumulated body of knowledge in very small, verifiable steps. It’s slow and steady, but it is reliable and repeatable.

And Science is pragmatic. It works. If praying or faith healing or holding a crystal to my forehead reliably cured migraines, I’d do that instead of 50mg of Imotrex.

I’m certainly not an expert in religions, but they don’t appear to have the same sense of inward scrutiny and need for self-validation.

I think I’ve always been a skeptic, but now I’m making it official. And my first official pronouncement as a Skeptic: that I’m skeptical of my own skepticism! Are there things that I believe on faith alone? What do I believe in that can’t be tested or verified? And, to be fair, have I really given crystal therapy for migraines a fair shot?