BoyScientist

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

Donald Rumsfeld

It is conceivable that some of the hostility between science and faith can be explained in terms of the above quote.

Philosophy, faith and belief all deal with unknown unknowns, areas so far ahead of the limits of our knowledge that there is not even such a thing as an educated guess.

For example, what came before the big bang? was it started by intelligent entities, or are we really beyond the event horizon of a black hole? (I am not a cosmologist so perhaps there is a scientific concsensus about this).
All that anybody can say is I believe that ....

Science deals with known knowns and known unknowns, with any luck the former should lead to the latter. Ultimately Science aims to address the unknown unknowns; indeed, the scientists who do are generally highly regarded (e.g. Darwin and Einstein).

Problem arise in two scenarios;

1) when unknown unknowns become known knowns or known unknowns and it disrupts the belief system surrounding an unknown unknown, as has occured with evolution / creation.

2) when belief and faith is dressed up as a known unknown, for example when people say we know this fairy water cures you, its just science has not yet found out how.

One of the important things we learn as children is to discount things which have been shown to be false (within a reasonable frame of reference) and to stop thinking too deeply about things which humanity is unlikely to ever really address.

In the case of the former it is a question of initially recognising there is no santa clause (sorry) and going on from that to stop believing that it is possible to acquire Jedi powers (I was at university with someone who was having difficulty trying to control the force). From these realisations we develop our instincts about how to understand the world; which are honed through scientific training. We learn that it is important to discount ideas, theories and hypothesis (no matter how elegant) which do not stand up to critical examination and testing.

An example in the case of questions that humanity cannot address is the question of how the universe came to exist. Through school / University we would often discuss the fact that if any of the fundamental constants of the Universe were even slightly different there would be no life. This is used by some as evidence for an intelligent creator, and indeed it might be, but this only raises further questions:
1) can I meet them
2) how did they get there
3) why?

The point is that we could go on for ever in these infinite loops and get nowhere, we can be so busy asking these speculative questions that we forget to invent the wheel.

The internet is a wonderful place to talk / debate / argue with people who hold a different view of the world, if in real life someone tells me that they believe in fairies I will politely humour them to avoid causing a scene and being rude. On the internet these social constraints are absent, I will never meet these people from the internet so I can happily tell someone that there are no fairies and that astrology is all rubbish.

This applies equally to other ideas, I am particularly thinking of ‘alternative’ science, where as part of the debate I and others attempt to debate with homeopaths, creationists, vitamin sales men etc.

Unlike philosophical and political debates there is a ‘right’ answer, these ideas (creationsim faries etc.) have been demonstrated to be false to a high degree of confidence, barring of course the creator coming and messing around with the initialisation parameters of the universe.

Scientists do not necessarily know the right answer, for example, there is no point reading Origin of the Species. Aside from the basic premise it is pretty much wrong; primarily because Darwin didn’t know about genetics. The current theory of evolution is however sufficient to discount the notion of irreducible complexity, so beloved of creationists.

It is this insistence on being right that has led to the genesis of the term scientific fundamentalism. There is a big difference between science and religion, principally that religion can not be proved right or wrong and so a fundamentalist in the religious sense believes what they believe because they have faith.
The only faith Science requires is that we are not in the matrix or in brains in a jar, that the observations we make about the world are valid and are not just the result of some creator messing around with us.
If you accept this as a given, science can tell you a lot about what the world is not. In the example of creation science can say we were not placed here 5000 years ago by some bearded dude.
Science cannot tell you what did happen, we have a good idea but we don’t know for sure. Simmilarly science can tell you that homeopathy does not work better than placebo that there is no such thing as electrosensitivity and that buying a £50 crystal only cures you because the symptoms are in the mind and a good placebo will cure that.

In many ways it is those opposed to science posters who are fundamentalists - they have faith that their idea is right and will not accept an alternative in the face of huge amounts of evidence

One of the first things Biochemistry undergraduates are taught is that the reason there are strict regulations on genetic manipulation is that the first scientists to work in the field realised the power and significance of what they were working on and decided that it was important that the boundaries of science were not decided by scientists but by society at large.

This is a principle which has been applied almost universally from genetic manipulations in bacteria through to procedures in mammals to stem cell research. The belief that society at large should determine the limits of scientific investigation goes hand in hand with the notion that the public can understand the scientific investigation in question.

I often find that I can barely understand the science of even closely related fields and this is after almost 10 years of study. So how can we (as scientists) expect the public at large to not only understand what we do, but make rational and ethical judgements regarding its importance.

A big part of the problem is that science is viewed in a suprisingly negative way, someone who has their life saved by science will often turn round 10 minutes later and begin to demonise other elements of the same science that save them.

Worse still are the 'cargo cult' and 'quack' 'sciences' which serve to spread a bastardised idea of science; based, it seems, on old wives tales and how people 'feel'.
I am reminded of a statement on the front page of a quack science site where the author suggested some ludicrous hypothesis and for evidence said 'think about this for a moment and you will find the idea resonates with you and you will know it to be true'. When this is offered up as science how are the public ever to distinguish between fools gold science and real gold science.

A final aspect of the problem, which my recreational research has led me to believe is key to the entire issue is the use of science by political and pressure groups to justify an otherwise completely absurd position. Often when this is done the research is completely mis-represented so a piece discussing how preservatives used in processed meat lead to increased cancer risk becomes a media circus about how we shouldn't eat meat. In some cases, such as the alcohol limit fiasco and the MMR vaccine scandel, the scientists are to blame for making stuff up, though I'd like to believe (however naively) that this situation will not occur again.

For some years it was the policy of leading scientists to only engage with the public on 'serious' science issues, and hope that the public have the sense to see through the fog of Intelligent design, homeopathy and other nonsense. It was believed that to debate these issues would lend them credence.

It unfortunately seems that purveyers of gibberish have used our silence to establish themselves in the public eye as credible, as a result there has been a shift in opinion of scientists who are now becoming increasingly confrontational in an attempt to re-establish what is and what is not science, and it in this vein that I have started this blog.