The love of truth: more a process than a destination

Dissent, Protest, & Justice Series 006

Originally posted on Facebook, 4th December 2021

If quantum mechanics were being pioneered today, wave-particle duality would see academia divided into ‘wave-ists’ and ‘particle-ists’, each trying to ensure that the other’s articles were suppressed. Universities would shun eminent professors whose ‘wave-ist’ views were branded particle-denial.

A century ago, the brilliant minds of Bohr, Planck, Schrodinger & Einstein, explored the nature of the universe, produced hypotheses, and, welcomed others doing experiments that would validate or disprove their conclusions. Later in the 20th century Feynman summed it up “It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.”

‘The Science’ was not any specific conclusion, but the sceptical process of Scientific Method, which recognises no gods, no popes. Today’s ‘trust the science’ mantra is an oxymoron: EITHER we rely on trust, OR we rely on science ie check by experiment, see if the theory’s projections are correct, consider alternate hypotheses.

The formal part of my own scientific education ended with A levels in 1987. I am not at all up to date, and never was a specialist in any of the now-popular scientific issues. But one doesn’t need specialist knowledge to see that the wheels have come off. The problem used to be largely confined to the issue of Global Warming, but we now have establishment positions that may as well be ex-cathedra pronouncements by a secular pontiff, in matters as wide ranging as the merits of children having three separate vaccines Vs a single MMR jab, the level of side effects from Covid vaccines, and the efficiency of masks at preventing viruses spreading.

Disagreeing with the establishment view is treated as heresy, just as surely as in the seventeenth century, Galileo’s heliocentrism brought the might of Rome down on him. We now have a ridiculous situation where Social Media companies ‘anti-misinformation’ (ie anti heresy) policies on Covid result in suppression of clinical trial data published by the pharma companies: In July 2021former New York Times science reporter, Alex Berenson, cited and linked to the results of a clinical trial by Pfizer, and was banned for his pains.

If someone sayings the earth is flat, the answer is to show people a photo of the earth, and encourage them to look out of the window and see the earth’s curvature when they go on a plane. Criminalising, or denying media acces to, flat earthists does nothing to improve public understanding. Telling people what to think, instead of equipping them to think for themselves, is wrong, and wont work.

A healthy debate will allow the truth to emerge. And the complexity of the truth should make us consider new data / other perspectives, rather than rushing to discredit them (or to demonise the dramatis personae as ‘Liars’). Bill Bryson’s , book “The Body” describes an attempt to describe the smell of the hormone androsterone. One-third of subjects cannot smell it at all, and record it as odourless. One-third discern the (generally agreeable) smell of sandalwood. One-third perceive the (not so agreeable) smell of urine. Do we want a science in which three observers have a heated argument, with one ‘winning’, or one in which the three different perspectives are each understood as contributing to our understanding?

Don Quixote’s “The road is fairer than the inn” is now popularised as ‘Success is a journey, rather than a destination’. Lets extend the analogy to say that finding scientific (or other) truth is about the process of searching, rather than the conclusion(s) reached. In particular because, once we reach a conclusion, it is fatal to see it as a definitive: it is good only unless and until a better explanation is found. Returning to Cervantes, one might say that on reaching the inn, one then needs to take to the road again.

Happy travelling