Add salt, to taste. Or, why are mainstream scientists so arrogant, closed-minded and elitist?



I was watching a short talk by Dr. Eric Cline on "Junk Science and Archaeology" the other day (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHLuOH6j9Mw, or just search for the name and title). In this talk, Dr. Cline trashes pseudo-scientific announcements in the field of archeology and makes some very interesting points that hold for all fields of science that have a pseudo-science counterpart -- e.g., geology, medicine, linguistics, zoology, paleontology, evolutionary biology, cosmology, to name a few. For example, he points out that the media latches on the junk science announcements -- like, "I found Noah's arc" -- because they are sensationalistic, unlike real science that is not (because it is incremental). Similarly to finding Noah's arc, it sells more pages -- or clicks, or TV time -- to report on the new berry that "cures" cancer, than the new study on a process that increases the life-span of rats, with a particular type of cancer, by 20%.



But the point that Dr. Cline makes (at 1:25) which I want to discuss here is the following. "Pseudo-scientists make claims that have nothing to do with science because, for example, they ignore contrary evidence, or they speak to a high moral purpose. [...] But what they say looks like legitimate science because it is cloaked in legitimate sounding terms but it really has nothing to do with anything; and yet how does the general public know who to believe and what to believe?"



This question in the last sentence, highlights the fertile soil in which pseudo-science grows. So, who do we believe? We certainly can't only believe Dr. Cline, just because he is an expert. This is a fallacy known as "argument from authority" -- although this mostly applies to authorities talking outside their field of expertise. Let's phrase this question differently. How come scientists claim that they immediately recognize pseudo-science, when the general public can not? The pseudo-scientists have a quick response to this. Because mainstream scientists are arrogant, closed-minded and elitist. There, it's simple. Or is it?



Let me offer a different answer. The one from the perspective of a mainstream scientist. It is the method. Period. Let me elaborate. As Dr. Cline points out in the same talk, non-scientists do things like ignoring contrary evidence, and when they do there are no consequences for them. Like, I announce I found Noah's arc this year. It turns out I didn't. That's ok, I find it again next year. And the general public forgets. And the media keeps latching onto my sensationalistic claims. And passionate people keep giving me money so I can continue my so called research. If you try this in academia your career will be over, and it will be over fast. Why? Because in academia there is an established method to getting your claims published. In real science we scrutinize one another's research and claims. When you want to announce something you have to provide enough evidence supporting your claim that other experts in the field -- sometimes your antagonists -- will accept your claims as legitimate. We call this process peer-reviewing. Now, don't be fooled, this process is by no means perfect. There are publication venues with sketchy review processes, there are ways to lie, or hide contrary evidence, and so on. But there is a method. There is a checking mechanism. There is reviewing and filtering. In pseudo-science there is none. Nothing. Go ask one of the people selling magic berries what method they used to prove the efficacy of their product. How many people it cured, how many it didn't, what the control group was, what the dosage was and at what dosage you experience side-effects. Go ask one of these guys that use fancy electronic devices to find ghosts -- the guys that the History channel gives a voice to by airing their shows -- how they established that the signal their devices register is from ghosts and not from other sources. Ask them what the signal to noise ratio is, what the systematic error is, the variance and the standard deviation of their measurements. Because in real science that's what we do. We measure things and then quantify our measurements, and the error, and the bounds in which our theories hold, and the extremes at which our theories fail. And then we demand from our peers to do the same when we review their work. Otherwise we reject it. No, our method is not perfect. It allows for mistakes and even scams. But because there is a method the mistakes are eventually corrected and the scams might work for a while, but they are eventually discovered and punished.



So, let's return to the question Dr. Cline poses (how does the general public know who to believe and what to believe?) The answer is not pretty (and it's long, again.) The answer relies on the fact that by reviewing one another's work, real scientists train themselves to recognize the fine difference between a well supported claim from a claim that is not supported all that well. And I'm talking about real science claims in both cases. Scientists become good at differentiating between good science and mediocre science. So when they encounter a completely unsubstantiated claim -- like the ones made by pseudo-scientists -- it jumps out to them. It is immediately obvious.



Now, wait a minute, you might say. This is exactly an example of scientific arrogance and elitism. It is natural to think this, at first, and here is my defense against this view. I was looking for some cooking recipes the other day. One of them said "add salt to taste", and the other one, for dough, said that I should measure some quantity of water and then keep adding flour until "it reaches the right consistency." But I don't know how much salt that is, or what the right consistency is. This is why I was looking for a recipe in the first place! My grandmother though, always knew what the right consistency was and how much salt to put in the food. Maybe she was arrogant. An elitist bread maker. Or maybe making dough all the time trained her enough so that she could recognize immediately what the right consistency is. And maybe, just maybe, this is exactly the same way in which real scientists can immediately differentiate between a well supported claim and a completely unsupported one.



But, but ... you might say, you are just telling us to trust the scientists. How is this not an argument-from-authority fallacy? It is not, because I am not suggesting that any specific expert of a specific field should be trusted about everything. I am not even suggesting that any single expert should be trusted about their own field of expertise, just because they said so. What I am saying is that when a large group of scientists tells you that a particular claim, or set of claims (think Bigfoot, ancient aliens, magical berries, finding Noah's arc every few years, etc) is nonsense, then you should probably trust them. Just like you would trust that the dough is not right if you are new to making bread and a whole village worth of grandmas is telling you that you need more flour.