Ratio Scientiae
Ratio Scientiae Blog
  • Home
  • Meet the Author
  • Ratio Scientiae Blog
  • Random Science
  • Writing & News
  • Nonfiction Books
    • Science Can Be Right Because It Can Be Wrong
  • Fiction Books
    • The Sun Zebra
    • Spirit Women
  • Science Cat (Mascot)
  • Contact

2/20/2018

Can scientific theories be false? It’s all in the completeness

0 Comments

Read Now
 
Some scientific theories that are in the way of religious, political, and corporate interests have been getting a bad rap. These theories are claimed to be false by their foes. So for example, creationist claim that evolution is false, climate change deniers claim that global warming is false, and so on. In fact, many people seem to imply that theories are ephemeral, and to buttress their claim they offer a list of theories that have been proven “false”. Why should we rely on a scientific theory to affect public policy today if it can be shown to be false tomorrow?
 
In addressing this issue there are several things we have to consider.
 
Before we begin, we need to make the clarification that the word “theory” in the popular parlance can be a synonym for a guess or a very preliminary explanation. In science, a theory is a vastly more stable form of knowledge. In fact, if the theory is sufficiently developed, it in itself can become a fact. So what are the characteristics of a sufficiently developed theory? They are:
 
1) It explains the existing observations and experimental results.
2) It has generated predictions that have been found to be true.
3) It has generated practical applications that work.
4) Results from other scientific disciplines corroborate the theory and the theory corroborates results in other scientific disciplines.
 
Please read the list above again carefully. Don’t you think that when a theory fulfils these characteristics we can say with confidence that it has clearly grasped important aspects of the realities it’s trying to explain? But, you may ask, what if a genius like an Einstein comes along and thinks up a new interpretation for everything the theory explains and predicts, and expands it into a different theory to explain new things? Can’t we say then the theory was proven false?
Picture
Well, let’s consider what Einstein did. He reinterpreted Newton’s laws of gravitation and motion, and came up with explanations for phenomena the Newtonian interpretations could not explain. Einstein thus relegated Newton’s laws to particular cases where velocities are much lower than that of the speed of light or when very strong gravitational fields are not involved. But here is the thing: the speeds at which planets, rockets, space probes, and objects in everyday life move, and their behavior in the gravitational fields that they encounter most of the time, can be described with a satisfactory level of accuracy by Newton’s laws. The existence of a planet (Neptune) and the return of a comet (Halley’s Comet) were predicted using Newton’s laws. The life of astronauts and the integrity of multimillion dollar space probes depend on the veracity of the calculations employing Newton’s Laws. Is it fair to say that Einstein proved Newton’s theories were false?
 
Of course not! Einstein showed Newton’s theories were incomplete, and this is what the public has to understand when discussing scientific theories. Sufficiently developed scientific theories cannot be false, they can only be incomplete. When assessing scientific theories, it is counterproductive to talk in terms of true or false. What has to be discussed is whether a theory has been formulated at a high enough level of detail, in other words, whether the theory is complete enough. We don’t need theories to be 100% true. They can’t be (nothing can), and they don’t have to be. We only need the theory to be complete enough to be useful for society.
 
Finally, it must be pointed out that the vast majority of scientific theories are not “big name” theories such as the theory of evolution or global warming. There are hundreds of scientific fields and subfields that have given rise to thousands of theories most of which are boring, highly technical, and devoid of importance to the “culture wars”. Therefore they do not make the news, and non-scientists are not even aware of them. Most of these theories have never been overturned, and in fact form the basis of modern science leading to tens of thousands of practical applications and policies. If these theories were not sufficiently complete representations of reality, modern life would not be possible!

So next time you are pondering the worthiness of a scientific theory, remember, it's all in the completeness. 


The figure is a collage of a copy of a painting of Isaac Newton by Sir Godfrey Kneller (1689), which is in the public domain, and a photograph of Albert Einstein by Orren Jack Turner obtained from the Library of Congress, which is also in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1963 and the copyright was not renewed.

Share

0 Comments

2/14/2018

Defending Established Science from the Unreasonable Man

2 Comments

Read Now
 
Picture
Many snippets of wisdom that have permeated our culture are routinely quoted in social media such as the one from the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw featured in the image above that states that all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
 
Everyone seems to have an affinity with this particular trope. After all, who doesn’t love the story of the little guy fighting against the establishment? It seems that most of us, within reason, are programed to root for the underdog. The mavericks, the misfits, the fringe-thinkers, the outcasts: why do these characters have a place in our hearts? Is it perhaps because in the daily tedium of our lives, as we persevere overburdened by challenges at work, in our homes, and in society, we sometimes wish we could upturn the established order and restart anew? Perhaps we have considered going against the current, challenging the system, rocking the boat, but then deemed the risks of doing so too dire and just bowed our heads and kept on going. So maybe when one of these colorful characters that actually dares to challenge the powers that be comes along, we live vicariously through their plight a fantasy that we ourselves are too cowardly to bring to reality.
 
Be that as it may, in the field of science many of these characters have captivated the public’s imagination. Take the case of Dr. Barry Marshall who proposed the hypothesis that stomach ulcers are not caused by excessive acid secretion due to stress, as was thought by most experts, but by infections with a type of bacteria called Helicobacter pylori. Dr. Marshall failed to convince the scientific establishment. He was not able to develop an animal model of the disease, and could not obtain funds to perform a human experiment. So what did he do? He experimented on himself! He drank a broth infected with the H. pylori isolated from a patient who had developed severe gastritis. Within days he developed the same symptoms the patient had, and he was able to cure himself using antibiotics. It took another decade of struggles, but gastroenterologists were eventually convinced of the truth of his claim, and Dr. Marshall won a Nobel Prize in 2005.
 
Isn’t that a great story? And like this story, there are many other such stories of the unreasonable man battling the system and prevailing in the end. However, the popularization of these stories has generated several notions in the public consciousness that are not accurate.
 
The first is the notion that the only way science makes progress is when one of these characters upends conventional wisdom and triggers a revolution. This is not true. Most of the time progress in science occurs incrementally as thousands of scientists perform vital work within the system developing new knowledge, methodologies, procedures, and applications. The backgrounds and expertise of these scientists are fundamental to driving any new or old area of science forward. Without these individuals working within the system there would be no science. The notion that ALL progress, at least in science, depends on the unreasonable individual is simply false.
 
The second notion is that just because you are one of the unreasonable individuals you must be right, and the scientific establishment must be wrong. It must be understood that for every individual who has challenged the established order successfully, there have been dozens to hundreds of other individuals who have challenged the established order and were proven to be wrong. The stories of these individuals are normally not of interest except, if at all, to those whose write historical descriptions of the development of a given scientific field, and they are barely mentioned in the popular press.
 
Finally, the last (and probably most troublesome) notion is that when the scientific establishment lashes out at one of these unreasonable individuals, this is taken as proof that there is a bias within the scientific community motivated at best by intellectual conformity and closed-mindedness, or at worse by corrupt influences tied to granting agencies or corporate interests. However, what the public may interpret as an unfair treatment of a scientist by the scientific community is more often than not due to the fact that science is a very conservative enterprise, and the bar to overturn or reinterpret established science is set pretty high. Science is biased towards established knowledge; as it should be! When you go against established science, you’d better have some exceptional evidence and arguments or else you are going to be given a very hard time! Even scientists with Ph.Ds. can propose things that are wrong, misguided, or just plain stupid. Not all ideas deserve to be treated equally, not all evidence is sound, and not all interpretations of the data are correct.
 
What most individuals seeking to change the prevailing scientific paradigm do is address the criticism made by their peers, generate more evidence, and reformulate their ideas or their presentation. Convincing other scientists that you are right is the warp and woof of science. However, a disturbing phenomenon has emerged. Today those individuals who have been rebuffed by the scientific community can take their case to “the people” arguing that they are victims of a corrupt scientific establishment that is hell bent on silencing them and discrediting their ideas. Such is the case of Dr. Andrew Wakefield who, when his views that vaccination was linked to autism were rejected by the medical community, took his case directly to the public. He actually succeeded in convincing many parents to avoid vaccinating their children leading to a spike in infant deaths from some diseases that are preventable nowadays.
 
Established science is called that for a reason. Scientific theories are constructs that have grasped important aspects of the realties they seek to explain, and they cannot be overturned on a whim. The quixotic quest of the unreasonable man must not be romanticized. These individuals are wrong most of the time, and established science must be protected from them. If you want to upend established science, the burden of proof is on you!

 
The image of George Bernard Shaw was modified from a photograph in the George Grantham Bain collection at the Library of Congress and has no known copyright restrictions.

Share

2 Comments

2/7/2018

Is the Earth round? Avoiding The Absolute Truth to Find the Practical Truth: the Devil is in the Level of Detail

6 Comments

Read Now
 
Most people hold a “binary” notion of the truth. For them things can either be true or false, because that which is false cannot be true, and that which is true cannot be false. We will call this notion the “absolute truth”. I want to argue that this absolute truth notion is unsatisfactory and impractical at addressing the worthiness of scientific theories. For this purpose I will use an example.
 
Consider the idea that the Earth is flat. For people in antiquity living in a flat place like the plains or a desert it probably made sense to think this, but eventually the ancients figured out that the Earth was not flat. The Earth is round and we know that for a fact nowadays.
 
So, the Earth is flat: false, the Earth is round: true; right?
 
Actually, the Earth is not round!  As Isaac Newton proposed and was later found to be correct, the Earth, due to its rotation, is an “oblate spheroid”, which means it is flater at the poles and bulging at the equator (the distance from the Earth’s center to sea level is 13 miles longer at the equator).
 
OK, so, the Earth is round: false, the Earth is an oblate spheroid: true, right?
 
Well, not quite. The Earth is an oblate spheroid, but the southern hemisphere is wider than the northern hemisphere giving the Earth a bit of a pear shape.
 
Fine, so the Earth is an oblate spheroid: false, the Earth is a pear-shaped, oblate spheroid: true, right?
 
Actually, even this is false! The Earth’s mass is not distributed evenly across the planet, and the greater the mass, the greater the gravitational force, which leads to the creations of bumps in the Earth’s crust. Additionally these bumps change overtime due to the movement of continental plates, the changing weight of the oceans, lakes, ice masses, and atmosphere, and the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon. All of these processes can deform the Earth’s crust by the order of millimeters to a few dozen centimeters daily and by much larger amounts over geologic times.
 
So the Earth is a bumpy, shapeshifting, pear-shaped, oblate spheroid?
 
Yes.
 
Wahoo, we did it! At last we have the absolute truth! The Earth is an pear-shaped, oblate spheroid: false, the Earth is a bumpy, shapeshifting, pear-shaped, oblate spheroid: true, right?
 
At this point you are probably thinking: seriously, are you kidding?
​
Picture
This is the problem with the absolute truth notion: it ignores the level of detail that is required for adequately describing physical phenomena. The level of detail that is required from a description of the shape of the Earth will vary depending on what you are intending to use it for. For surveyors determining distances in small patches of the Earth’s surface, a flat Earth model is perfectly suitable, as the error in the measurements is negligible. For people dealing with time zones, the round Earth description is perfectly adequate. On the other hand, satellite orbits can be affected by small deviations of the Earth’s crust from a perfect sphere, so people following satellites must take into account the oblate spheroid and pear deformities of the Earth. Similarly, people running particle accelerators must understand that the Earth is constantly shifting its shape so they can keep track of very small deformities in the Earth’s crust that arise daily and may mess up their measurements.
 
The vast majority of people would accept that the claim that the Earth is flat is false (low level of detail). On the other hand, most people would consider further refinements to the round Earth claim such as the oblate spheroid; pear-shaped, oblate spheroid; or bumpy, shapeshifting, per-shaped, oblate spheroid to be a needless amount of precision (too high a level of detail), and rightly so. The type of deviations from a spherical shape that these highly detailed models of the Earth deal with is at most about a dozen miles. If you take into account that the Earth’s radius is 3,959 miles, we are talking about a difference of 0.3%. By this token the Earth’s crust, despite its mountains and sea trenches, is very smooth. So for the use that most of us make of the information regarding the shape of the Earth, a round Earth model is an acceptable level of detail.
 
Depending on what you are trying to explain or achieve, trying to find the absolute truth may be not only impossible or unnecessary, but also cumbersome. So we come to the paradoxical realization that seeking the absolute truth may actually hinder or prevent our discovery of the practical truth! When scientists seek the truth regarding physical phenomena, what they have in mind is the practical truth which is a truth defined at a sufficiently high level of detail to explain the phenomena they are studying and derive predictions and useful applications. Later on other scientists may seek to explain things at a higher level of detail to address more complex questions that a lower detailed truth can’t answer satisfactorily, and so on.
 
What the public has to understand is that a scientific theory does not have to explain everything to be considered “true”. It just has to explain the relevant phenomena at a sufficiently high level of detail to generate accurate predictions and useful applications. The debate should not be about whether a given theory is true or false, but rather about whether a theory has been formulated at a sufficiently high level of detail for society to benefit from it.

 
The image from NASA is in the public domain.

Share

6 Comments
Details

    Categories

    All
    911
    Absence Of Evidence
    Adrenaline
    Adrenochrome
    Advances In War Medicine
    Affidavits
    Alder's Razor
    Alfred Wegener
    Alzheimer's Disease
    Amyloid Theory
    Ancient Astronauts
    Animal Rights
    Animals
    Anthony Fauci
    Anthropomorphism
    Antibodies
    Anti Vaccination
    Astronauts
    Autumn
    Bambi
    Believers
    Bias
    Big Bang Theory Sitcom
    Bigfoot
    Bill Ney
    Black Death
    Blind Experimental Design
    Brain
    Brains
    Building 7
    Buoyancy
    Cancer
    Cannonballs
    Carnivores
    Catoctin Mountains
    Cell Culture
    Center Of Mass
    Challenger
    Chance
    Chemical Names
    Chemical Reactions
    Chemtrails
    Chesapeake Bay
    Chimborazo
    Citations
    Citogenesis
    Civil War
    Climate Change
    Climategate
    Climate Skeptics
    Clinical Trial
    Coelacanth
    Coincidence
    Cold-Stress
    Communicating Science
    Completeness Of Scientific Theories
    Consciousness
    Conspiracy
    Contrails
    Controls
    Coquina Rock
    Coronavirus
    Counterintuitive Facts
    COVID19
    COVID 19 Vaccine
    COVID-19 Vaccine
    Creationism
    Cross-Sectional Method
    Cryptozoology
    Dan Shechtman
    Demonic Possession
    Density
    Devotion To Science
    Dihydrogen Monoxide
    Dinosaurs
    Discrimination
    Disgust
    Dishonesty In Science
    Diversity In Methodologies
    Diversity In Scientists
    DNA
    Doctors
    Donald Trump
    Double Slit Experiment
    Do Your Own Research
    Dreams
    Dr. Gloom's Crypt Of Curiosities
    Drugs
    Dust Bunnies
    Eclipse
    Efrain Racker
    Einstein
    Elections 2020
    End Of The World
    Erosion
    Established Science
    Everest
    Evidence
    Evolution
    Exorcism
    Experimenter Bias
    Experiments You Can Do In Your Home
    Experts
    Extinction
    Face Masks
    Facts
    Faith
    Faith Healing
    Fall
    Falsifiability
    Fantastical Claims
    Fauna
    Fear
    Feynman
    Finger Snapping
    Fosbury Flop
    Francis Crick
    Frankenstein
    Fraud
    Frederick's Municipal Forest
    Free Will
    Fruit Fly
    Funerals
    Funny
    Galaxies
    Genes
    Genius
    Geology
    Global Warming
    Global Warming Denial
    Gravitational Waves
    Gravity
    Gun Violence
    Hanlon’s Razor
    HeLa Cells
    Henrietta Lacks
    Heroic Science
    Hitchens's Razor
    Hoax
    Homosexuality
    Human Experimentation
    Human Folly
    Hurricane
    Hydroxychloroquine
    Hypothesis
    Ignaz Semmelweis
    Ignorance As Evidence
    Immunotherapy
    Infamy Or Glory
    Influenza
    Insults
    Intelligence
    Intelligence Tests
    Intelligent Design
    Iraq War
    Irish Washerwoman
    Isaac Asimov
    James Watson
    Katherine Hayhoe
    Language
    Lazarus Effect
    Left Fork Rocks
    Level Of Detail
    Libet Experiment
    Lightning
    Limericks
    Limitations Of Science
    Loch Ness Monster
    Lord Howe Island Stick Insect
    Mad Scientist
    Magnus Effect
    Max Planck
    Medical Risks
    Medical Terms
    Mediums
    Mental Illness
    Mice
    Microbiome
    Mind
    Mind In The Gutter
    Misuse Of Science
    MMR Vaccine
    Mnemonic Devices
    Moments Of Discovery
    Monty Hall Puzzle
    Movies
    NASA
    Natural
    Nature
    Nature Of Science
    Negative Evidence
    Nerds
    Newton
    Nobel Prize
    N-Rays
    Obesity
    Occam's Razor
    Open Mind
    Ouija Board
    Oxbow Lakes
    Para-Dimethylaminobenzaldehyde
    Paranormal
    Pasteur Louis
    Peak Of Illusion
    Peers
    Perception
    Philosophy
    Phobias
    Physics
    Pink Lady's Slippers
    Plague
    Politicization Of Science
    Polywater
    Popper’s Falsifiability Principle
    Possible/Impossible
    Power To The People!
    Predatory Journals
    Pregnancy
    Premonitions
    Probability
    Prophesy
    Pseudoscience
    Psychic
    Publication
    Puerperal Fever
    QAnon
    Quack
    Quackery
    Quantum Mechanics
    Quartzite
    Racism
    Radical New Ideas
    Randomness
    Ratio Scientiae
    Reality
    Reason
    Religion
    Rock Climbing
    Rosalyn Franklin
    Sagan's Standard
    Salem Witch Trials
    Sample Size
    Science Fiction
    Science Jokes
    Science Pranks
    Scientific Consensus
    Scientific Establishment
    Scientific Guidelines
    Scientific Journals
    Scientific Method
    Scientific Names
    Scientific Question
    Scientific Terms
    Scientific Theories
    Seashells
    Self-Experimentation
    Shape Of The Earth
    Skepticism
    Skeptics
    Skin Color
    Slavery
    Snake Oil
    Soccer
    Sonic Hedgehog
    Spanish Flu
    Spontaneous Generation
    Stanley Prusiner
    Stars
    Star Trek
    Statistical Significance
    Statistics
    Sublime/Ridiculous
    Suicide
    Surface To Volume Ratio
    Swanson Conversion
    Swine Flu
    Tangier Island
    Taxonomy
    Technical Details
    Thomas Young
    Timeline Method
    Transposable Elements
    Trusted Messenger
    Trust In Scientists
    Truth
    Tyranny Of Fantasy
    Understanding
    Universe
    Vaccine Hesitancy
    Vaccines
    Vacuum
    VAERS
    Valley Of Despair
    Values
    Video Games
    West Side Story
    Wikipedia
    Wolf Rock
    Women
    World Trade Center
    Xenophobia
    Zinc
    Zombies

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Meet the Author
  • Ratio Scientiae Blog
  • Random Science
  • Writing & News
  • Nonfiction Books
    • Science Can Be Right Because It Can Be Wrong
  • Fiction Books
    • The Sun Zebra
    • Spirit Women
  • Science Cat (Mascot)
  • Contact