Rob,Originally Posted by Rob Thornton
I apologize once more for my way of expressing my opinion about this subject. Also, in an afterthought, I considered that it was worthwhile to argument my point as you suggested it, even though it would make a long comment, as I surmised.
So, all I am going to say relies mostly on a personal experience in communication during which I had been concerned at some point with similar, say, “things.”
First of all, my reader has to accept a notion which says that scientists, and even respected scientists sometimes, may be fooled in the very frame of their specialty. For, no matter how smart and educated we are, the diploma we may have in our pocket, the name of the university in which we teach; we are human and, as such, we are subject to credulity, self-delusion, vanity, ambition, bellow-the-line mental impairment, and influence.
There is a long record of reputed scientist who succumbed to these weaknesses. Many believed or still believe in the existence of extraterrestrial visits on earth aboard flying saucers. Others feel personally compelled in particular forms of ideology or irrational beliefs. Others are just dishonest and do not hesitate to fool others either in order to prove the validity of what they sincerely believe in, or in order to collect others’ interest, or even sometimes in order to get money or to obtain subsides to finance their researches.
In most instances those “flawed” scholars and scientists act thus way in total independence and for very personal reasons. They are not at all acting in the frame of a conspiracy or else.
We are dealing here with cognitive consistency and interaction between theory and data. Consistency can largely be understood in terms of the strong tendency or people to see what they want to see and to assimilate incoming information to pre-existing images.
So, it happens sometimes that one of those persons fancying sulfurous theory successfully collects the interest of quite down-to-earth organizations which, truly, do not subscribe to their theories. For, their prestigious and credible credentials, and the prestige of their reputation or this of the university or research centre or which they work, added to the hazardous theories in which they personally venture, may serve other particular aims and goals.
In other words, certain hardly verifiable theories and assumptions may get much credit, or at least interest, when proposed, advocated, and promoted by famous or respectable persons. I am talking about what we use to call “influence.”
Since we are not intellectually omnipotent, how to make the difference between serious scientific theories and works worthy to collect our interest and scientific disinformation?
To draw inferences from ambiguous information, one must employ less certain intellectual tools. The question to ask of these ways of thinking are whether they yield perceptions that are as accurate as those that would be produced by other processes and, at minimum, whether they are rational. This is particularly tricky when attempting to draw inferences from scientific data which, by its diversity of fields is likely to put us at some point, if not often, in terra incognita.
When this occurs, when the advanced theories we are interested in seem hardly questionable for want of a suited scientific knowledge, we have to rely on other considerations.
Personally, when facing such challenge, I turn, first, to syntax and semantic analysis in the aim to find patterns likely to betray a possible slight mental unbalance, or to spot the presence of too elliptic phrases and statements and their frequency. Often, scientists and authors attempting to fool others or to “honestly” convince others “trick” the content of their essay through the over use of prestigious names and quotations which sustain points and assumption that, truly, hardly connect each with others while we are dedicating much of our attention to it. An essay containing prestigious names and quotations pertaining to too many and a priori unrelated scientific fields betrays an unscientific way of doing things and so it is highly suspect.
Most good and serious scientists manage to make their point clear and sustain their statements with citations and names.
Moreover, further inquiries about names and citations are pretty useful and will provide us with a precious knowledge on the foundations sustaining the works and assumptions of the author who is the object of our scrutiny. It will tell us whether these parts or the near totality of this scientific background is likely to be scientifically obsolete, or even ideologically or politically biased, for example.
But, balanced structures do not necessarily reveals irrationality if the cognitive consistency of a given scientist or author can be explained by his well grounded beliefs about the consistency existing in the environment he is perceiving; and so an author or a scientist may be sometimes honest and wrong at the same time.
Because many of the structures in the world are balanced, the tendency to perceive balance often serves people well. It may, of course, lead people astray when the stimuli do not fit the pattern. As example picturing this last point, though it is not relevant to scientific matters, this is one reason why American decision-makers were slow to recognize that two of their enemies (Soviet Union and China) were hostile to each other.
When I said rational I meant those ways of interpreting evidence that conform to the generally accepted rules of drawing inferences. Conversely, irrational methods and influences violate these rules of the “scientific method” and would be rejected by the person if he were aware of employing them.
We should not deduce from the observation of inconsistencies that the scientist or the author which is under our scrutiny is necessarily dishonest. For, when cognitions are organized to produce irrational consistency, choice are easier since all considerations are seen as pointing to the same conclusion. Nothing has to be sacrificed. But since the real world is not as benign as these perceptions, values are indeed sacrificed and important choices are made, only they are made inadvertently. As I said earlier, most scientists and authors who are advocating a disputable theory or thesis do it with authentic sincerity.
As I previously said, some of those scientists and authors venturing into hard-to-prove or disputable speculations are sometimes the target of organization truly looking for misinformation and disinformation operations done either in order to implicitly sustain or challenge political or religious ideologies or other scientific theory, or to help arouse doubt in other’s mind, or to confuse other’s mind (i.e. those of an opponent), or to “pollute” their mind with irrelevant information or “noise.” These practices belong to the realm of information warfare, or psychology warfare.
While it is important to consider separately the reliability of the source, as indicated by previous records, and the inherent credibility of the message, as indicated by its compatibility with other evidences, the final judgment should rest on an evaluation of both factors.
As conclusion to this long post I sustain my point with some examples.
Sigmund Freud’s assumptions and theory sustained left-leaning inclinations, even though this famous scientist would certainly retort that his works and discoveries sustained on the contrary the validity of socialism as best solution to general discontent. However, Freud happen to be right about many things that do not relate to political or ideological considerations.
Jean Emile Charon, a French nuclear physicist, conducted nuclear research at France’s Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique (Atomic Energy Commission). At some point of his career, this reputed scientist crossed the limits defined by the whole scientific community when he attempted to unify in a same theory—he named theory of “complex relativity”—quantum mechanics and a sulfurous perception of the human mind. He published several books filled with challenging mathematic and physics formula of his own which all demonstrated the existence of a sub particle he called “electron-eon.”
From time to time, we all hear about archeologists who deliberately burry authentic archeological items, previously found elsewhere, in the ground of an archeological site in order to demonstrate the validity of their theory.
Alan David Sokal is a professor of physics and faculty member of the mathematics department at New York University. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1981. In January 2006, he was appointed as the Chair of Statistical Mechanics & Combinatorics at University College London. Curious to see whether a prestigious scientic publication would publish a submission which "flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions", Sokal submitted for publication a grand-sounding, but nonsensical paper entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity". The journal did publish it, and Sokal then revealed the hoax, so as to prove how easily the most qualified and most competent scientist can be abused by titles and challenging essay sparkled with serious and unquestionable quotations.
Its all good
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