Scientific skepticism
There is no more honourable word in the scientific lexicon
that that of 'skeptic' -- one who sincerely seeks after truth and who has the
courage to rebut scientific myths and false beliefs with empirical data and
sound logic.
'Skeptic' is a word that can be found in frequent use on the
Internet, especially by individuals who think of themselves as scientific
rationalists and by organisations such as CSICOP
and COPUS whose stated mission is to spread real scientific knowledge and to
defeat superstition and ignorance.
But in recent decades, 'skeptic' has come to mean something
else. It has come to mean the adoption of an attitude of scorn and derision
towards any kind of anomalous data that contradicts current scientific beliefs,
and the adoption of an air of condescension and superiority towards those who
venture to investigate or write about anomalous phenomena.
An example of this knee-jerk reaction can be found in the bogus criticisms of
this web site made by Robert Todd Carroll in his "Skeptic's
Dictionary" (Click here for details)
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Many professional scientists will read the examples given on
this site and respond by saying that in every generation it is up to the
discoverer of the new and the unexpected to make his or her case by experiment
and argument. No-one has an automatic right to be accepted, or even listened to
and anyone who enters the demanding profession of science must be willing to
submit to the most rigorous -- even harsh -- scrutiny.
Hard though it may seem, those scientists are quite right to
speak in this way. There is a long established principle of scientific
discovery, the Principle of Tenacity, which says that scientists are right to be
reluctant to give up the tried and tested in favour of a radically new theory
merely because of a few apparently anomalous experimental results.
I accept that the Principle of Tenacity is an important tenet
for science, and I accept that those who discover the new must become champions
in their own cause, fighting tirelessly by means of evidence and argument to
break down and overcome skepticism, suspicion and doubt among their colleagues.
But how are Doctors Fleischmann
and Pons to convince their colleagues of the reality of cold fusion by
argument and experiment when MIT falsifies its experimental results and tries to
discredit them in the press?
How is Dr Robert Jahn to
convince his colleagues in psychology and parapsychology that his experiments
prove overwhelmingly that human consciousness can influence electronic devices
when he is personally denigrated and demoted because of that research?
How is molecular biologist Jacques Benveniste to
convince his scientific colleagues by experiment and argument when those
colleagues dismiss him from his post and the scientific press prefers dawn raids
by stage magicians to real scientific investigation?
How is promising student Warwick
Collins to make his case concerning population genetics when his
professor tells him he will ensure Collins gets nothing further published in the
scientific press?
How are the readers of the Times Higher
Education Supplement to weigh the arguments against Darwinism when Richard
Dawkins campaigns to prevent those readers even seeing those arguments
in print, in case it changes their minds?
In these circumstances, and in many others described on this
site, it is not the Principle of Tenacity that is being invoked, it is blind,
unreasoning prejudice masquerading as scientific rationalism.
And the 'skeptics' who censor and ridicule in the name of
science, whether they know it or not, are the agents not of knowledge but of
pseudoscience.
Science does not need vigilantes to guard its gates. Science
has been successful because good science drives out bad and because an ounce of
experiment is worth any amount of scientific authority.
