I've heard it said countless times that science is just a set of opinions and that it is no more valid than anyone else's. That assumption underpins much of the justification for Woo theory, whether it's the existence of some undetectable energy called Qi, or some healing energy that is assumed to exist inside us, or the existence of chakras, or the apparently remarkable properties of magnets and crystals. Science, it has been claimed, is arrogant in assuming some kind of privileged access to knowledge of the world, in setting itself up as the arbiter of truth. In this view, science is preventing us from having choice, restricting us to believing only what is given to us by scientific authorities. This view even had its own absurd academic variant called postmodernism that tried to make this theory profound by using obscure, and often meaningless language.
Scientists are very used to this sort of comment and invariably it arises from a poor understanding of how science progresses. The first, and perhaps most important, principle of science is that the theories which explain our knowledge are independent of the beliefs and values of the proposer. It does not matter, at all, what the scientist thinks or believes — the theory must rest on its explanatory power and the supporting evidence. Science is not a belief system.
Secondly, it isn't science that constrains us and takes away our choice in what to believe about the way the world works. It's the world itself. It doesn't matter what any scientist thinks about gravity, or the boiling point of water. These things are completely independent of any world-view the scientist might have. The choice in what we believe is still there, but whether it corresponds to reality or not is not our choice. Nature doesn't care what we think.
Science makes strenuous efforts to ensure an accurate correspondence between theory and reality and the reason our choice is restricted is because external reality constrains us. We cannot simply decide that water boils at a different temperature or redefine the value of gravity. These are real, tangible external constraints. Scientific experiments are all about identifying and understanding those constraints.
So when it comes to talking about medicine, and whether or not some therapy works, we have to test it against the real world and not simply stop at the point when we've made up the theory. It's not scientists who are being undemocratic in restricting our choice of belief in a medicine. We can all, if we want to, believe that homeopathy works. But it's testing it in the real world that will tell us whether the theory is right or not. It has been tested, and homeopathy doesn't work. And that doesn't change just because someone spends money buying it.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Robert M. Barga
While my scientist inside agrees with all of this, the palceboo effect is strong with Americans
2 - Dr Dreadful
A superlatively well-argued and lucid article that should be required reading.
In particular, this paragraph: "The first, and perhaps most important, principle of science is that the theories which explain our knowledge are independent of the beliefs and values of the proposer. It does not matter, at all, what the scientist thinks or believes - the theory must rest on its explanatory power and the supporting evidence. Science is not a belief system."
This is the part that a lot of people simply don't get - yet is such a damned simple idea.
3 - Ruvy
Science is not a belief system. It is a method for perceiving, gathering, organizing and testing the validity of data.
But unfortunately, scientists are human, just like the rest of us. They become attached to ideas that they want to believe to be true - and then bend fact to theory. Einstein did this - only to rue it as his biggest mistake in his investigations into physics. A fellow who had found out that evolution seems to explode out, rather than progressing at a steady rate, as theory held it to be in the 1920's locked his evidence in a drawer - he wanted to keep his job, and scientists around him would have kicked him out of his job had he proposed something so heretical to scientific "orthodoxy"
Science - just like every other discipline humans pursue - is subject to the weaknesses of human nature. This is something that a lot of people simply don't get - yet is such a damned simple idea.
4 - Christopher Rose
Ruvy, that is why scientific research is subject to peer review and testing, so as to filter out any one individual's possible human frailty.
That is just one of the many reasons that it is more reliable and trustworthy than the arrogant know it all nonsense that faithists believe in - and why they ultimately can't quite be trusted with important decisions, their dogma gets in the way of the truth.
That is something that a lot of people simply don't get...
5 - Bob Lloyd
Ruvy, you've made a really important point in that although the scientific method works to expose bias and weakness in theories, those individual scientists who spend years developing their work, are understandably attached to it. They have a vested interest in being right - often their careers depend on it.
Einstein was well known for his cosmological constant, a number needed to make his theory work. Sometimes, such attempts yield insights that help science progress but it is the peer review that exposes the mistakes. Einstein was very willing to admit he was wrong when faced with the evidence.
Another classic example is Charles Darwin himself who, worried about the reaction from academics, delayed publication of the Origin of Species for more than twenty years. In England at the time, you could only be a professor if you also took holy orders so no academic institution would challenge the power of the church - evolution was a head on challenge to the hypothesis that species were immutable, a central tenet of Christianity at the time. That shows that even great scientists are subject to intense personal pressures and the peer review system helps to overcome them. If it wasn't for the Geological Society and the Royal Society supporting Darwin, his theories would never have seen the light of day.
So you're absolutely right. Scientists are human like everyone else but it's the peer review system that allows scientific theories to stand on their merit, and also helps scientists resist personal bias and outside pressure.
6 - Bob Lloyd
On the placebo effect, my problem is really two-fold. Firstly, the placebo effect is unpredictable - we can't tell who will be susceptible and in what circumstances, and it changes over time. Someone who experiences it, may well not experience again. So although, if it exists, it might calm a patient and reduce their stress, you can't rely on it as any kind of treatment. It might simply disappear.
But the second problem is that it only works if the patient is continually lied to, and they continue believing the lie. They have to believe they are getting treatment when they are not. I have an ethical problem with the idea of lying to people as a form of treatment.
But there's an entire alternative medicine industry worth billions of dollars in the US alone, which sell the placebo effect and even the pedlars experience it through the anecdotes of their customers. Is it ethical to sell lies, even if the customers like them?
7 - Jeanne Browne
Bob, you are for the most part, of course, entirely correct: good, independent science is not a biased opinion, it's a proven fact. However, not everything can be tested or proven by classic scientific principles, which largely rest on what the five senses can perceive, even if highly sophisticated equipment is needed to perceive it. But there is also legitimacy in the various expressions of the sixth sense, those things that stand the test of time and experience, rather than concrete testing in a lab. I think this unwillingness to accept any possible truth in something that can't be scientifically proven leads to dangerous forms of stubbornness, insensitivity, and downright hubris -- especially in the practice of medicine. Science is far more than opinion - but experience is also far more than rootless belief. Both a sensitive scientist and a rational layman should be able to accept the possibilities inherent in this idea.
8 - Ruvy
...there is also legitimacy in the various expressions of the sixth sense, those things that stand the test of time and experience, rather than concrete testing in a lab. I think this unwillingness to accept any possible truth in something that can't be scientifically proven leads to dangerous forms of stubbornness, insensitivity, and downright hubris -- especially in the practice of medicine. Science is far more than opinion - but experience is also far more than rootless belief. Both a sensitive scientist and a rational layman should be able to accept the possibilities inherent in this idea.
Jeanne,
I couldn't have said this better. kol hakvód! All honor to you! Not only do you pose the appropropriate response to the author, you also posit the appropriate response to Mr. Rose above, who can be and often is as closed-minded as the most closed-minded and bigoted of theologians (people I've had to deal with on occasion, to my displeasure). For your reading pleasure, I suggest this essay I wrote on a lecture given several years ago in Jerusalem by Dr. Gerald Schroeder. Enjoy!
moadím l'simHá
Ruvy
9 - Christopher Rose
Jeanne, although you frequently make a lot of sense, you are way off the mark with your comment that "not everything can be tested or proven by classic scientific principles".
If anybody is guilty of "stubbornness, insensitivity, and downright hubris" it is all those mystical types who insist on believing in all kinds of implausible mumbo jumbo despite the absolute lack of any evidence to support any of their misguided and potentially dangerous beliefs.
10 - Christopher Rose
Ruvy, I would really appreciate it if you would stop endlessly repeating your lies about me being closed-minded on this subject.
As I have stated many times to you, I really don't mind if there is one or more deities but no honest person could accept that there is any convincing evidence to support the suggestion.
Furthermore, it is also clear that you are the one that actually has a closed mind as no amount of reason can ever change the fixed ideas that you believe in, whereas I am perpetually open to the idea of change and the notion that my views might be proven wrong, two concepts that are impossible for you.
11 - Ruvy
Sorry, Chris. Your own words testify against you and have, comment after dreary comment.
12 - Jeanne Browne
Christopher and Bob -- Any belief can be misguided or silly or even downright stupid. It only becomes dangerous when the believers try to foist it on others.
I AM one of those mystical types, although I'm eclectic and unconventional about the mumbo-jumbo I believe in, and I recognize my beliefs are opinions (and they aren't consistent), not Great Truths, and it's of no importance to me whatsoever if others agree with my ideas or not; I don't feel I have to be part of a school of belief for my ideas to be legitimate for me.
The fact that our society is split by a spiritual divide with rabid Faithists on one side and superior Rationalists on the other is most unfortunate. There is a difference between religion and spirituality. The former is mythology based on scripture and a drive to convert The Other; the latter is a personal, often confused sense that something exists that is greater than ourselves, and if we're lucky, it provides a sense of comfort and connection with others.
The fact that historically, as well as presently, religion has tried to discredit if not obliterate science, is one of humanity's greatest failings. But the idea that the only truths about life are those that can be documented by science is unimaginative and cold.
As any gifted practitioner of the lively arts can tell you, the creative process is a humbling and unsettling one, because at some point, whatever it is you think YOU are creating takes on a life of its own, and an honest artist will admit that he is in many respects merely a talented channel for some force/source outside himself.
As they sang in "Oklahoma!," "Oh the farmer and the cowman should be friends." In a truly free and rational society, those who live by the proven strictures of science should be able to co-exist with those who look into the sky and see not just glittering masses of matter, but the magic and mystery of stars.
13 - decembre
Scientists lie, science lie too.
Lately, 21 researchs made in a US University for large pharmaceutical company were all fraudulent causing thousands of injuries or death not yet accounted for.
Iatrogenic sickness is the number one killer in the USA.
14 - Christopher Rose
Ruvy: thank you for proving, yet again, in comment #11 that you are incapable of any kind of basic honesty, that you lack personal integrity, and prefer lies to facts. Now we all know for sure exactly what kind of person you are...
Jeanne: I have a lot of time for spirituality, although none for the inadequate and embarrassing mumbo jumbo of the three strands of monotheism that currently afflict humanity so badly and grotesquely.
Furthermore, I would defend anybody's right to believe absolutely anything they want to. The problem is when these petty know it alls try to make policy based on their beliefs or impose their views on others.
There would be far less social and global conflict if these faithist views were kept well away from the levers of government and law.
All life, not just human and probably not just Earthly, is interconnected and interwoven and there is much to wonder at and to be spiritual about in that simple fact.
15 - Bob Lloyd
I'm always worried when an argument depends on appeals to some "sixth sense" because in my experience, it invariably is a faith-based argument, both in claiming that the sense exists, and in the supposed data it provides.
Standing the test of time is something which science does abundantly well. But that's not the same as saying that traditional beliefs are valuable simply because they are traditional. Beliefs change when there is sufficient evidence to show them to be incorrect, unless the believer closes themselves to such change.
So we certainly have an accumulated knowledge based on experience but we get our understanding of natural processes by studying them, producing theories which explain them, and testing the predictions and observations based on those theories. Simply assuming that experience is correct is unreliable. In the past, illness was variously attributed to the wrath of various gods, miasmas, sin, curses, and lots of other completely incorrect causes. Until the germ theory of disease, these had all stood the test of time and experience.
Experience need not be a rootless belief, of course, but if there are claims to experience things which are undetectable, for example such things as healing energies, Qi, chakras, and the like, these genuinely are rootless. Because quite simply, they are NOT rooted in reality, but in belief. If they really are based on experience, it should be possible to demonstrate their existence using relatively simple experiments.
If someone doubts the existence of say electricity, it's very easy to demonstrate it and convince them. But in the case of Qi and healing energies, you can't. Instead there's an appeal to a sixth sense, some mystical belief, or just plain evasion. That's why many Woo practices are hard to distinguish from fraud. If a scientific theory is incorrect, it's open season for critics to demonstrate it and everyone wants to see the data.
16 - Bob Lloyd
Just a quick comment about open-mindedness. Science is incredibly open-minded because it makes open the data and theories in peer-reviewed publications. Literally anyone can come along and propose a theory that better explains the known facts, challenge them, and argue their case.
But science also takes it a stage beyond opinion. Once someone advances a theory, let's say healing energy, science expects some evidence or data to make it worth considering. This filter isn't closed minded, it's just rational. We need to distinguish between the opinion and the fact. Literally anyone can invent an alternative therapy based on fanciful ideas (I've done it myself in my book) but if we want to know if it reflects reality, we need some way of testing it. That's not closed minded either - it's taking the theory seriously.
17 - decembre
@Bob Lloyd ... We need to distinguish between the opinion and the fact. ...
Why then not listen to the success people got with homeopathy ? Is this not scientific?
I for myself, a non beleiver, was asked many years ago to try it. It worked.
30 years taht i haven't met with a doctor but my friends all did and they all discovered they were sick. Now, they're on pills, they call that health !
18 - Bob Lloyd
There have been many clinical trial tests of homeopathy, double-blind, randomised, and controlled tests, all of which demonstrate no difference between homeopathy and the placebo effect. By far the most thorough analysis of these trials was conducted by Dr Aijing Shang and published in the Lancet in August 2005. He demonstrated with hard data that homeopathy was indistinguishable from the placebo effect, a view endorsed by the Cochrane Collaboration.
It is very easy to accept that something we have bought has done us some good, but clinical trials are needed to demonstrate that it really was that treatment that causes the benefit. Anecdotal accounts are not evidence. After more than 100 years of investigation, there is not a single shred of evidence that homeopathy does anything at all. Sad, but true. There are millions of people spending money buying nothing.
19 - roger nowosielski
Personally, I don't understand what the hoopla is all about. Was the author trying to posit the methodology and the status of science against diverse belief systems (such as the three main religions)? If so, it's a dead horse and hardly deserving of effort in the 21st century. So against whom, really, is the argument directed? Who is the straw man?
On the other hand, the cursory treatment (barely two pages) given to the description and the merits of the scientific method is of the most naive kind, after the long-discredited tradition of crude positivism, and shouldn't make the grade even in the average undergraduate program, never mind gradual studies seminars in the philosophy or the sociology of science.
20 - Jeanne Browne
I'm curious, Bob: do you give any credence whatsoever to Eastern medicine and other alternative (alternative in the West) therapies? Also, I don't understand why "anecdotal evidence" -- the experience of many people in regard to a specific treatment or other phenomena -- should be completely discredited and discarded as valueless. I completely respect the scientific process and completely oppose bringing faith-based ideas to the tables of science or government. But there is so much of life and human experience that cannot be calculated or proven. Is there scientific evidence for love, compassion, justice, mercy; where do feelings and ideals figure into scientific theory? (I'm just wondering...)
21 - James Pannozzi
"We can all, if we want to, believe that homeopathy works. But it's testing it in the real world that will tell us whether the theory is right or not. It has been tested, and homeopathy doesn't work."
Try Ennis' paper (Inflammation Research, vol 53, p181)? She started out to disprove the "water memory" theory, but her experiment instead confirmed it. After diluting away all the molecules of a stimulant substance, the experiment showed biological effects as though the missing molecules were still there.
This is unexplained by science and remains under research. Her experiment has been repeated and confirmed. Nobel Prize winning scientist Brian Josephson made comments favorable to the possibility of a scientific theory supporting Homeopathy - see "Is Homeopathy Nonsense - and Why It May Not Be" on his website.
And, most recently, we have research recently announced from the winner of the 2008 Nobel prize which indicates a possible theory.
Professor Luc Montagnier, a French virologist who co-discovered HIV and who won the Nobel Prize in 2008, and co-workers published the results of a series of experiments investigating the electromagnetic properties of highly-dilute biological samples.
Reference
Montagnier L, Aissa J, Ferris S, Montagnier J-L, Lavallee C (2009). Electromagnetic Signals Are Produced by Aqueous Nanostructures Derived from Bacterial DNA Sequences. Interdisciplinary Sciences: Computational Life Sciences, 1: 81-90.
Those who attack Homeopathy by acknowledging the curative effects and then attempting to write it off as "placebo" effect, an idea which was smashed by research in a Journal of Clinical Epidemiology paper not long ago are spouting uninformed nonsense about Homeopathy. We must accept that there is some research out there and wait for real scientists to do their work.
Meanwhile, if you happen to get the flu, there it is, sitting right in the highly regarded Cochrane research database, that Homepathic Oscillicocinum, shortened the duration and intensity of the flu, though it had no effect on prevention. Is this definitive? No. Is it proof? No, of course not. That is understood.
Pretending that Homeopathy does not work is really an insult to thousands of dedicated and perfectly capable MD's and other health professionals that use it routinely ... and quite successfully. The scientific confirmation will come in time, but to disregard the healing power of Homeopathy, or worse, to deny it, represents an unscientific elitism which is, in my opinion, dangerous to real medical science.
22 - Bob Lloyd
Jeanne, I don't have a problem with medicine wherever it comes from if it is shown to work. Of course, we need to try to understand how it works, if it does. But Chinese Traditional Medicine has no consistent theory of how the body works, no consistent diagnostic techniques, and no rationale beyond mysticism.
The reason anecdotal accounts are not treated as evidence is because of their unreliability. People who have spent money on a cure that they expected to be useful are biased towards supporting it. The reason clinical trials are double-blinded and controlled is precisely to eliminate that bias. All that an anecdotal account in favour of a treatment shows is that the person believes the treatment works, not that it really does work. And the difference between the two is important.
It's perfectly true that there is a huge amount of human experience that cannot be calculated and proven, but health isn't one of them. We can and should test whether a claim to treatment and cure actually works. We do have the means to do that using double-blind, controlled, randomised trials which very effectively sort out the ones that work from the ones that don't.
There's nothing cold or unfeeling about science and it's attempts to understand the physical world. Scientists are people too with all the usual feeling and emotions of love, compassion, etc, with shared values of justice and mercy. It's a common mistake to claim science is cold and unfeeling.
23 - Bob Lloyd
James, despite devotion from the many followers of the faith of homeopathy, there is no evidence of water memory. It really has been exhaustively studied and there really is no evidence. The Cochrane database lists all the research it has assessed including those with poor methodology. It says categorically that there is no evidence to support homeopathy.
The World Health Organisation recently condemned the practice of homeopaths claiming to be able to treat malaria and even AIDS with homeopathic remedies. Despite very vocal claims from this hugely profitable industry, they have still not been able to produce ANY scientifically credible evidence. They're lactose pills with no active ingredients.
24 - Christopher Rose
Jeanne, re your #20, there actually IS scientific evidence for emotions and if there actually is "so much of life and human experience that cannot be calculated or proven", it is because it hasn't been done yet, not that it can't be done.
I must echo Bob's remark about science; it is not at all cold or unfeeling in my opinion, but hallmarked by curiosity and love. It is only the charlatans that fear science that try to discredit it by depicting it in this way...
25 - decembre
...There are millions of people spending money buying nothing. ...B.L.
And NONE of them were ever sick from it although cured.
Now i repeat what i said before, iatrogenic sickness IS the LEADING CAUSE of DEATH in the USA.
And we haven't checked yet on the sick that die at the hospital from new deseases that medicine invented unconsciously.