Free Radicals - Michael Brooks [33]
In De Vries’s words, such statistics result from scientists’ acknowledgement of ‘the ambiguities and everyday demands of scientific research’. In other words, everyone knows it’s the only way to get the job done.
Science is a quest to convince yourself and others of something you only guess to be true. That is a hard task, and requires tenacity and ingenuity – and, occasionally, questionable tactics. Major frauds, such as fabricating or copying results, are unlikely to go undetected, but scientists also know that results so gained are unlikely to satisfy the inner craving that drives them. That is why only 1 in 300 perform such acts. The minor misdemeanours, on the other hand – the cherry-picking or the questionable methods of analysis, are weapons with which to swipe at the irritating but inescapable ambiguities without risking any dishonour or self-doubt.
As long as things turn out OK, those who bend the rules in this way are almost always forgiven. The science writer Simon Singh, discussing accusations of cherry-picking in Eddington’s work, concedes that Eddington may have ‘subconsciously minimised his errors in order to get the right result’. But Singh waves this indiscretion aside: ‘Regardless of whether or not this was the case, Eddington’s result was hailed as a wondrous piece of science.’ Goodstein’s defence of Millikan includes a similar observation: ‘it is worth remembering that history has vindicated Millikan in that his result is still regarded as correct’, he says. Heredity pioneer Gregor Mendel’s data are suspiciously clean, and that has been largely overlooked because his hypotheses turned out to be correct.
The dictates of science say that it is impossible for scientists to prove themselves right without carrying out experiments. Unfortunately, running useful experiments according to the accepted scientific method often proves impossible too. So results get fudged. Years, decades or even centuries later, with all the ambiguities of their experimental methods exposed, we still see these people as great scientists. And rightly so.
If their convictions and intuitions had been wrong, these scientists would have disappeared from history. It is the intuitive understanding, the gut feeling about what the answer should be, that marks out the greatest scientists. Whether they fudge their data or not is actually immaterial. Simon Westfall’s study of Newton led him to convict Newton of deliberate fraud, and yet, when all was done, he remained in awe: ‘He has become for me wholly other, one of the tiny handful of supreme geniuses who have shaped the categories of the human intellect.’
Faced with all this, the historian of science Stephen J. Brush has gone so far as to ask whether his subject should be X-rated. The myth of the scientist, as a rational, open-minded investigator who proceeds methodically, is grounded in the outcome of controlled experiments and searches objectively for the truth, is a useful one, he says. If young scientists were to find out what really happened in the history of their subject, it might ‘do violence to the professional ideal and public image of scientists’.
But surely the truth is to be celebrated. This is real science, as done by very human beings. And, as we have seen, this is good science. As time goes on, further experiments, using better technology or new ideas, exonerate those who were brave enough to be right without the full support of the data. This is the way progress has happened. Perhaps it is the only way it can happen when established – but wrong – ideas refuse to be uprooted by any other means. If sweeping aside one tide per day, declaring a problematic photographic plate void, or disregarding an obstinately stable oil droplet is the price we pay for beating a quicker path to the truth, then so be it. The future must be brought into the present by any means necessary. And, as we shall see in the next chapter, that includes finding ways to deal with situations where there is no decisive evidence at all.
MASTERS OF ILLUSION
Evidence isn’t everything