Essay:Science and The Layman
Suppose someone was handed a book arguing in favor of a certain viewpoint. They read it, and could find no fault with it. Now, suppose the person who gave the book asked them whether they agreed with it or not. Given that the arguments in it seemed plausible to them, it would make sense that they would agree. But what if they disagreed with the book's conclusions, despite not finding any errors, and not being able to formulate any objections to its arguments? You might suppose such a person to be close-minded, unwilling to accept new ideas, and perhaps irrational.
Now suppose that the book argued that pi is exactly equal to 3 and that the person receiving the book had no mathematical knowledge. Now, disagreeing wouldn't seem particularly unreasonable. In fact, you probably wouldn't think very highly of such a person reading the book and then becoming firmly convinced that pi was, in fact, equal to three, and still less if he then started trying to convince everyone else of this. It is my contention that those who are not specialists in a given field cannot reasonably claim that the opinions they hold about subjects in that field are based on their interpretation of the evidence, because they do not have the knowledge necessary to distinguish between valid and invalid evidence and thus to form useful or valid judgments. Their interpretation (and any opinions they may have) will most likely be irrelevant and worthless. Yes, the reader mentioned above may not be able to find any fault with the arguments, but that in itself does not obligate them to accept the book's conclusions. Why not? Because the person's not finding any errors does not necessarily mean there are none; it may simply mean they are not capable of recognizing any the book may contain, because they lack the necessary skills to critically evaluate the evidence offered.
Situations like the one above happen all the time when laymen with no relevant credentials (that is, without the necessary knowledge), argue heatedly about, for instance, whether climate change is real or whether is earth is six thousand years or billions of years old.
Take me. Suppose I wanted to form an opinion regarding some alternative treatment's being superior to placebo or not. I do not possess the necessary medical or statistical knowledge to look at the literature and decide for myself whether the evidence supports the claims of effectiveness.[1] Instead, I note that all (or most) medical and scientific authorities (and perhaps meta-analyses) declare that it does not. The studies showing efficacy may be criticized for having design flaws or for applying an inappropriate statistical analysis, and their supporters may reply with counter-arguments that I, as a layman, have no way of evaluating. Would I be justified in assuming the treatment is not effective? I would say so. Of course, it may be objected that this is just an appeal to authority or popularity. Perhaps so, but as a layman, my only option is to choose who to believe, and I choose the mainstream view as being the safest bet. Of course, the mainstream view may turn out to be wrong, but I have no way of knowing whether this will be this case.
There are those laymen who, like me, tend to side with mainstream science, and those who tend to side with up-and-coming rebels who claim to have discovered revolutionary new paradigms. The latter may cite the Galileos, the Wegeners the Semmelweis's who were rejected by the establishment, only to be posthumously vindicated. True enough, but there were others who were also rejected, whose ideas failed to stand the test of time, and who languish in obscurity. The names above are only the illustrious exceptions. A geologist in the 20s may accept Wegener's theory of plate tectonics, or not; that's his prerogative. But for a layman from that time to be a strong skeptic or believer would be unreasonable. Some often claim that science is "just a theory" and note that science was wrong before. Consequently, some of these persons have a tendency to prefer theories that contradict the scientific mainstream. This is not necessarily bad in itself (science works by questioning things), but I do note that many of these people have a strange double standard, suddenly discarding the "it's just a theory" inclinations and their usual standards of skepticism when presented with an alternative theory. For them, the scientific consensus is provisional and ephemeral, yet this doubt does not extend to novel hypotheses.
When an author claims that some passages in the Hebrew Bible (or in certain Sumerian tablets) have been misinterpreted for generations, and that only he has now discovered their true meaning (which just so happen to support his theory of extraterrestrials having visited the Earth in ancient times), scholars of Biblical Hebrew only are capable of expressing arguments for or against his claims. He may have all sorts of highly complex and detailed arguments that would sound very convincing to the layman who knows nothing of Biblical Hebrew, but that would by no means fly in a scholarly environment (a long sequence of superficially impressive but false claims is known as a Gish gallop). Of course, just because something is complex and detailed is no guarantee that it is, in fact, true. The arguer may seem very intelligent and sound like he knows what he's talking about (to a non-expert), and he may very well be; on the other hand, he may be asserting things that are complete and utter nonsense. The layman has no way of knowing if a given Hebrew word really means what the person says it does, or if the philologists were right all along. Still, as in the case of the book about pi, I think it would be safer to side with the scholars. The public's opinion is irrelevant; what matters is what the specialists in the field think. The majority may be wrong, of course, but they could also very well be right.
No one knows everything, and everyone eventually comes across some subject for which they have no choice but to trust (or not) the specialists working in that field. Everyone, even the most educated scientist, is a layman about something. People like to think for themselves, and it is unpleasant to think that this is often not possible. Yet this is reality, We all have to accept that there are things about which we are not knowledgeable.[2] It is not reasonable to be strongly skeptical or supportive of any accepted or proposed scientific hypothesis or theory unless one is a specialist in the field under discussion, because only then can one know enough to judge its merits and faults. Keith Devlin, a mathematician at Stanford University, has stated that Andrew Wiles' proof of the Fermat's Last Theorem is so complex that only mathematicians from a specific subfield can understand it, and that other mathematicians (including himself) have to take the word of those working in that subfield that it is true.[3] As to when one should trust the experts, that is something for which I do not have a satisfactory answer.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ It may be objected that there is plenty of anecdotal evidence. However, anecdotes are not considered to be valid evidence, because they suffer from selection bias and it is impossible to tell whether an anecdote is representative or only a fluke. Explaining why science does not accept anecdotes as valid is beyond the scope of this essay, but for more information see the following articles: anecdotal evidence, improbable things happen, coincidence, panacea, bloodletting, Essay:List of CAM-free anecdotes.
- ↑ There is a stereotype of physicists as being convinced they are qualified to speak about any subject whatsoever, as illustrated in these comics: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2556 http://xkcd.com/793/
- ↑ Comment on What is a proof, really?