Note: The script below is from the author at Manpollo.org
and other
site (on this second site, the author asks for help translating
the topics to Spanish for DVDs, etc.) The script doesn't correspond
100% to the video and still needs checking over.
This video is called “Nature of Science” and is part of the
expansion pack accompanying the orginial video “How It All Ends.”
This video will explore the nature of science a bit, looking at
how it is unavoidably tentative and uncertain. The purpose is
that we can then do a better job of putting into context the things
we hear about the science of global climate change.
Let’s start out with my assumptions. If we’re talking about the
meaning of life, then science can be informative, but is just
one tool of many equally valid ones, like faith, love, and direct
experience. But when we’re talking about trying to predict and
manipulate the physical world, I think that science is our best
bet. It’s certainly got by far the best success rate. As Carl
Sagan observed, if you want to know when the next eclipse of the
Sun will be, you might try magicians or mystics, but you’ll do
much better with scientists. If you want to save your child from
polio, you can pray or you can inoculate.
One more thing before we dive in: scientific thinking and critical
thinking in my mind are essentially the same thing. So as I talk
about how science goes about figuring out what to believe, underneath
it all I am at the same time suggesting how we as individuals—as
citizens—should go about deliberating issues.
It’s a well-established psychological phenomenon—and, in fact,
is simply human—to start out with your beliefs, and then go looking
for evidence to support them. The problem is, we tend to forget
or simply not hear evidence that contradicts our beliefs. I mean,
who wants to be shown that they’re wrong? Formally, that phenomenon
is called “confirmation bias.” The devilish result is that if
you’re not diligently aware of it, you could be served up a plate
of equally balanced evidence, and come out convinced that yours
is the viewpoint that was better supported by the evidence, because
you gave greater weight to the evidence that agreed with what
you already believed, and discounted—or simply didn’t hear—what
contradicted it. So confirmation bias can serve to actually reinforce
misconceptions in the face of evidence. That’s why it’s critical
to be vigilant about it in your own thinking, and why you’ll hear
me refer to it again and again.
In science (and in criticial thinking—like we should all be trying
to do in the whole climate change debate), it’s the opposite.
Instead of starting with beliefs and then looking for evidence,
you start by looking at whatever the evidence is, and then use
that to form beliefs. I think that’s pretty much what a chemistry
professor of mine once meant when he was teaching us about climate
change. He said “Get informed, and let it change you.” That’s
sort of the nutshell of how a good scientist might go about advocating
for something: he doesn’t tell you what to believe. He just reminds
you: start with the evidence, and move to belief, instead of the
other way around.
“That’s exactly what I’ve been saying!” I can hear the shouting
in my head right now, from some online commentors who’ve latched
on to my previous videos about climate change. “Why don’t we just
go with the facts!??”
Hey, sounds good to me. Simple, right? Just go with the facts?
The sticky part is determining what exactly are the facts. Here’s
an example. I’ll give a series of increasingly complex statements,
and you think about at what point we can no longer simply agree
it’s a fact, and instead have to do some interpreting.
[Behind burning candle] I have a candle in front of me. Fact.
The candle is burning. Fact. I’m sitting in a chair. Here you
might ask for more evidence before we pronounce it fact, because
you can’t see it, so how about if I showed you? Okay, with a little
checking—fact.
The problem is, I’m not really sitting in the chair, because I’m
not actually in contact. What’s really happening is my outer electrons
are repelling the outer electrons of the chair strongly enough
to make me hover imperceptively above it, like magnets that can
push on each other without touching [DEMO]. Okay, so I’m tricky.
“Don’t be such a dork,” you say. “Some things are just obvious.”
Well [eat candle], one of my favorite quotes on the matter is
from Buckminster Fuller. In fact, students have to walk underneath
it to get into my room. He wrote “Everything you learned in school
as ‘obvious’ becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study
the universe.” [Open mouth with “Ahhh.”]
This becomes a central point. Because, while we may all agree
that—for all intents and purposes—I am sitting in this chair,
when we shout at each other about whether the globe is warming
or not, it turns out both claims are subject to the same question:
how are we to decide whether something is a fact or not? It’s
not always as clear cut as we’d like.
This may seem like splitting hairs, but it becomes kind of important
if you have a question about a complex system or a really important
issue, like: gee, is that asteroid going to hit the Earth or barely
miss? Is this case of bird flu a human-to-human transmission or
not? Is the globe warming or not? Are we the ones doing it or
not?
“Sophistry!” you cry. “We can just look at the evidence.” Well,
problem is, evidence still needs to be interpreted, which can
be done poorly or skillfully. You see webbed foot tracks in the
hall, come across a shimmery green feather, and hear a quacking
sound. You conclude there must have been a mallard duck who recently
passed by. It’s obvious. But is it possible it’s actually a kind
of duck you’ve never seen before, and had you been better trained
as an ornithologist, you would have known that the green was slightly
the wrong hue for a mallard, and the tracks a little too big?
Interpreting evidence well takes skill, training, and experience.
You wouldn’t propose lowering prescription drug costs by hiring
my high school chemistry students instead of people with Ph.D.s
to research the drugs, would you? They both look at the same printouts
from the same machines: who’s interpretation of the evidence are
you going to trust? “Well then, let me do it myself,” you say.
Um—go for it. But then don’t be expecting me to accept your drugs,
which is the case with climate change, since it’s global, which
means you’re not the only one affected by your decision. I’ll
stick with the professionals, thanks.
Here’s an example I often give my students. I tell them that we’re
going to get creamed in Friday night’s football game, because—have
they heard?—the opposing side’s offensive line has an average
weight of just over 300 pounds! That usually worries them, until
I tell them that the linemen weigh 110, 103, 98, 97, and 1120
pounds. That leads to a discussion of the difference between the
“mean” average and the “median” average, and gets them to question
their faith a little bit in the reality so obviously implied by
such simple numbers as “the average.” If something as simple as
the average can be so tricky, how come we’re okay with Joe Schmoes
like you and me doing armchair analysis of climate science—one
of the most complex topics in human history—instead of leaving
it up to the scientists?
Why does evidence need expertise to interpret it? Because things
are almost always way more complicated than they seem.
I once cornered a Yale University particle physicist at a wedding
reception, cuz even though I teach physics and chemistry, I’ve
always got some questions myself, and no one around to answer
them. Anyway, I asked him how big an electron really is. I’d been
wanting to know for a while, so I was determined to get a solid
answer. An hour and several diagram-covered napkins later, I finally
got him to grudgingly assent to a single sentence answer that
we’d negotiated like it was a UN treaty. The deeper you go, or
the bigger the system (like climate), the less accessible the
“evidence” is to easy interpretation. (Fair warning: if you’re
an expert in some field of the physical sciences, you’ll probably
want to avoid me at parties. . .)
Yeah, but not everything is as complex as the climate, you say.
You’re right, some things are simpler, like 1+1=2. Here’s Bertrand
Russell and Alfred North Whitehead’s proof of that outlandish
mathematical statement.
This is part of why all science is inherently uncertain, and tentative.
Because the world is tremendously complex. So how do we get any
answers? Well, you delve as far into the complexity as you need
to for your purposes, or as far as you can get with your measuring
instruments, and then you make an explicit estimate of how close
you think you probably got to the “true value,” acknowledging
that you’ll never get there.
The goal, of course, is to make that uncertainty as small as possible.
There’s a couple basic ways of doing that.
The first is to be very careful about what biases—or preconceived
notions—the scientist brings to the table. The scientist Konrad
Lorenz summed up that duty when he wrote: “It is a good morning
exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis
every day before breakfast.” Why? Because if you aren’t aware
of your preconceived notions, then you are susceptible to the
trap of confirmation bias—starting with belief, and then looking
for evidence, rather than the other way around.
This can be insidious, because you don’t realize you’re doing
it, and as a result, you become more confident of your conclusions
than the evidence really merits.
The author Douglas Adams put it perfectly when he observed that
“assumptions are the things you don’t realize you have.” That’s
what the candle thing was about.
Here’s a couple more examples. You’ll probably be on your guard
now, but see if you can do more than just avoid being tricked.
See if you can identify the assumptions you hold that allow me
to mislead you.
[In front of board with 1+1=10 on it.] If I asked you to make
some simple observations, you might say I’m sitting in a chair
in front of a whiteboard, which has an incorrect equation on it,
and my toy is missing a green ring. Well, we’ve already established
that I’m not really sitting on my chair—I’m hovering imperceptibly
above it. And what if I told you that’s not a whiteboard—it’s
a showerboard from Home Depot? Or that I’m not missing a green
piece, but a blue one [switch and reveal]. Or that this is “base
two” math, and you approached it with the wrong assumption—that
it was standard “base 10”—so that YOU were the one who was wrong,
even as you pointed your finger at me? And I bet you thought this
was a fancy hat. Well really, it’s folded newspaper. In each case,
you make an unconscious assumption, which leads you from “the
evidence,” to a totally incorrect conclusion. Not because you’re
dumb, but because you didn’t have the appropriate training or
experience to be qualified to interpret the evidence.
So in scientific or critical thinking, you take great pains to
identify the assumptions you don’t realize you have, so that you
can account for them, and not wind up with a wrong conclusion
when you interpret the evidence.
Okay, okay, you’re saying. Let me try another one. I’m ready this
time. This time you’ll need a pencil or pen, and a piece of paper.
Hit the pause button while you go get one.
What I’m going to do is flash an image on the screen for just
an instant. Your job is to reproduce it as accurately as you can
on your paper. I’ll just flash it for an instant, and it’s not
fair using the pause button. Ready? Here we go. [Flash “Paris
in the the Spring.”]
Okay, now press the pause button again, and do your drawing. When
you’re done drawing, play the video again.
[Playing with some toy.]
Okay, have you reproduced faithfully what you saw? Here it is
again. See how you did. [reveal]
If you got it right, that means you’re thinking more like a scientist,
trying to be deliberately conscious of your assumptions. Well
done. Most people write “Paris in the Spring,” when it quite clearly
says “Paris in the the Spring.” Why? Because the human brain is
amazing. When it doesn’t have the opportunity to fully examine
something (a picture, a sound, a social interaction, a political
problem), it fills in the blanks using past experience.
That’s great, and really really useful, but the problem arises
when we don’t realize we’re doing it, because it can cause mistakes.
When I get disheartened with all of the really confident and totally
incorrect stuff I hear from most people who are skeptical about
climate change, I have to remind myself that their brains are
just doing what they are supposed to: filling in gaps in a really
complicated picture, using past experience. For instance, I often
hear: “How arrogant to think that humans can change the planet—we’re
so small.” Now that you’re more aware of how bias and preconceived
notions influence conlusions, can you identify the past experience
coming into play there? It’s probably that throughout human history,
the weather and climate have always been acting on us, and never
the other way around. So I guess it’s not surprising that people
feel that way.
But it is disheartening, because I wish they would be a little
bit more humble. To acknowledge that—hey—you might be wrong. Think
of it this way: the only way to ever improve, is to admit that
you might be wrong. Not one of us is infallible. That means that
each of us—you and me included—is right now carrying around some
beliefs that are mistaken. If we don’t acknowledge that we may
have some, then we’ll never have a chance to get rid of them—to
trade them in for more correct or more useful beliefs. That means
you’ll never improve, and will die no more correct than you are
right now. I don’t know about you, but the idea that I am right
now as good as I will ever be is oppressive to me—as well as being
flat out ridiculous. I mean, what are the chances that you know
everything right now?
That’s one reason why I got frustrated during the online debate
about my original video “The Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever
See.” When I reworked my argument in response to some holes that
people had poked in it, a couple people essentially said “So why
should we listen to you now, since you admit you were wrong before?”
and sat back smugly, convinced they’d won the debate. To them,
I lost credibility because I changed my argument in response to
the critiques. That’s just crazy talk! In science and reasoning,
admitting you’re wrong makes you more reliable, because in the
future, people can trust that if you’re wrong, you’ll change.
If you never admit you’re wrong, you lose credibility, because
your claims of being right simply become unbelievable. No one
is right all the time.
[At board] In fact, I would argue that it not only increases your
credibility with others, but it increases your happiness to admit
you’re wrong. Here’s what I mean. Let’s say you choose to belong
to the group of people who never admit they’re wrong. In that
group, there are two subgroups: those who actually never ever
make a mistake, and those who sometimes make a mistake. If you’re
always right, then hey presto—life is good. But if you are one
of these people, bad things happen, cuz sometimes you’re going
to be wrong, but not admit it. You get into nasty fights, you
lose credibility with people, and you never learn anything new.
Now let’s say you choose to belong to the group of people who
will admit to themselves and others when they’re wrong. Again,
two subgroups: those who never make a mistake, and those who sometimes
do. Again, being actually infallible is all giggles and joy. Here,
when people admit it when they make a mistake, they can take that
opportunity to fix it: they learn new things, they have less nasty
conflicts, and people not only like them better, but respect their
opinion more.
Wouldn’t you say there are probably precious few of these people
in all of human history? What are the chances you or I are one
of them? Since we’re almost certainly in one of these groups,
don’t you think this is the better bet than this?
[Back at desk.] So how does this work in science? First, as
I mentioned, scientists acknowledge that neither they nor their
instruments are perfect, and so they always include an estimate
of the error or uncertainty in any scientific statement. Second,
scientists take great pains to identify and isolate their assumptions,
trying to identify and eliminate errors that they may be making.
Third—and this is terribly important—they put their work out there
and ask for criticism, so that weak points can be identified and
strengthened, and the uncertainty reduced. That’s why it’s so
important to ask if the statement you’re hearing about climate
change has been “peer-reviewed.” That’s the official process that
science goes through to sift the solid, credible ideas from the
sloppy science. Although it doesn’t always work, it is a bruising,
messy, drawn-out process designed to only let the best, most robust
ideas float to the top. If something has been peer-reviewed, generally
that means that it’s methods are up to snuff, and the scientific
community thinks its worth looking at. It’s getting close to “the
best answer that science can give us.”
Keep in mind, it doesn’t always work. Sometimes a peer-reviewed
scientific article is shown to have significant problems. Guess
what happens then? The peer-reviewed journal that published the
research admits it, and sometimes even formally retracts the article,
apologizing in the process! Why? To increase their credibility!
Peer-review is the process science uses to get closer and closer
to the truth, but it is critical to remember in this whole climate
debate: science never claims to actually gets there. That’s the
surprising thing: science—that most precise and anal of all human
endeavors—is also the one to never claim to know the truth. Isn’t
it ironic? Don’t you think?
Another dynamic of science that’s worth noting is that of establishing
when one thing causes another, and when the two things are just
correlated. Here’s what I mean. If you look at this chart, it
is clear that as the number of pirates in the world has decreased,
the average global temperature has increased. There’s the evidence,
and no one disputes it. So, what’s the interpretation? That the
lack of pirates causes global warming? That pirates combat global
warming, and therefore we should start some pirate schools ASAP?
This is an example of correlation, two things whose trends track
each other. But science is careful to not yet say that one causes
the other.
For a serious example, it turns out that left-handed women contract
breast cancer at a higher rate than right-handed women. So does
left-handedness cause cancer? How does science go about answering
that question? Well, it’s complicated, but this much is useful
for us lay people to know: if two things are correlated, but scientists
can’t find a way to feasibly explain the mechanism by which one
influences the other, then they are not considered cause and effect.
That doesn’t mean science says “They aren’t cause and effect.”
It means science says “We don’t have any reason to believe they
are cause and effect,” but they are always open to future ideas
and evidence.
Sometimes you hear the criticism: “Scientists can’t even predict
the weather, so why should we listen to them about something even
bigger, like the climate?” That’s a little bit like saying: mathematicians
can’t even predict how this coin flip will turn out, so why should
we listen to their predictions of how a million coin flips will
turn out? Climate is about averages and overall trends, which
are easier to predict than a particular occurrence. Also, the
predictions are getting better and better over time. Remember:
science never claims to have the exactly correct answer—that’s
just a misconception—and an inappropriate demand—by the public
and the media. But the self-critical nature of science means that
it tends improve (which, incidentally, is why it’s so disturbing
that the predictions of climate change have gotten more dire as
time has gone on). But it never is done.
Sometimes you hear the criticism “There is no consensus among
scientists about human-caused climate change.” News flash! There’s
no consensus among scientists about anything! The inherent uncertainty
of science means there will almost always be dissent on any scientific
issue.
Pick the most well-known, well-established scientific law you
can think of. The Law of Gravity, right? Guess what? There’s no
consensus on it! We’ve got a satellite up there right now, Gravity
Probe B, testing our current understanding of gravity. And you
know what it’s looking for? I’ll give you a hint: remember the
phenomenon of “confirmation bias?” Scientists are really careful
to avoid that, so the probe isn’t so much looking for evidence
to confirm our theory. It’s looking for evidence to contradict
it! We’re actively trying to disprove perhaps the most widely
accepted and beloved of all scientific theories. Why? Because
we love it so much, we want to make it stronger. Looking really
hard and conscientiously for contradictory evidence and failing
to find it does more to increase our confidence than looking for
supporting evidence and finding it.
Science is never certain. You know that classic Mentos and Diet
Coke reaction? [show video] You want to know the scientific explanation
for it? Here it is: no one knows!!! There’s lots of conjecture—it’s
quite the hot topic in the chemistry education community. So you
can find explanations, but the uncertainties associated with them
are going to be very large. Why have we not studied it further
to reduce the uncertainties? Because it’s not worth it. But the
more important the issue is, the more research goes into it, the
smaller the uncertainties become. But if you’re waiting for there
to be no dissent at all, then you’ll wait forever, no matter what
the scientific issue.
It’s sort of like with this whole climate debate, it’s easy
to find websites giving all sorts of reasons to believe what I
already believe. But that doesn’t increase my confidence. I want
my argument to be rock solid, so I go looking for websites that
contradict what I believe. And when I can’t find much that’s credible,
that increases my confidence in my views. It’s like testing to
see if something is watertight. You look for the leaks, and if
you can’t find any, then your confidence increases. It feels great
to have everyone tell you you’re right, but it’s a deceptive,
complacent game. The way to really get confident is to go poking
at the other side, saying “what’s your response to this? How would
you contradict this?” which I’ve done quite a bit with my grid
argument about global climate change, which is why there are so
many bloody minutes of me talking on video as a result: the experience
left me bruised and battered, but it left my argument that much
stronger. In fact, as I film this, an early version of “How It
All Ends” leaked onto Digg.com a couple days ago, and I am heartened
the every single criticism I read there already is countered in
my video scripts. It didn’t get that way by me talking to people
who agree with me. In fact I handed my scripts to one of the best
critical thinkers I know and said: “Please find the holes in this
argument.” That’s why science is the most self-critical endeavor
in the history of humanity—it knows that that is the most effective
way to get better.
How about this objection: “Climate models are just models, just
predictions about the future, which we can’t test until the future
actually happens. We don’t know what’s really going to happen.
So they’re just conjecture, and therefore useless.” My response
is—ever ridden on a modern airliner? Cuz they’re all designed
on the computer, modeled on the computer, tested in the computer
model, then physical models, and finally computer models again,
which is where the pilots learn to fly them. When the Boeing 777
was first flown, all the technicians, managers, and you can bet
test pilots, were extremely confident that it would fly. Why?
Because we’ve learned how to make good computer models, by tweaking
them until their output matches what we see in the physical world.
Climate models on the computer, for instance, are calibrated with
the observed climate of the past. If we feed a model the conditions
in 1950 and it churns out predictions for the period 1950 to 2000
that closely match what actually happened, then that gives us
confidence in the predictions it makes when we put in the conditions
for 2000 and ask it about 2030.
It’s been proposed that the greatest knowledge is to know that
you do not know. So when you hear pronouncements about how global
climate change is bunk, or that we’re not the ones doing it, keep
that in mind. Now that you understand a bit about the uncertain
and tentative nature of science, ask yourself: how credible are
pronouncements about a scientific issue, when they’re made with
such certainty?
Along those lines, I was struck by how many people in the comments
to my “Most Terrifying Video” made absolute statements of truth
about the world. A ton of people flat out said “Humans are not
causing global warming.” Other comments I got included:
“Humans are too small to have an effect on the climate.”
“Global warming is a ploy for the elites to grow the government
and take away your freedoms.”
“It is true that the climate is changing, but there’s a lot of
debate about whether we’re the ones causing it.”
“Taking action may make things worse.”
“Climate changes all the time.”
“We’re coming out of a cold cycle, so this is natural.”
“100 years of data is not enough to know 1000s of years of the
past climate.”
“Personally, I don’t think global warming is as definitely man-caused
as popular media make it out to be.”
“Personally, I think?!!??”
We’re talking the most complex science in the history of humankind.
Chaos theory was discovered studying weather systems. “Personally,
I think?!!??” Who the heck are you say what the physical truth
is?
But then, I admit, I fell into a similar mistake of being absolute,
claiming in that video that “the only choice” is column A. Who
the heck are we to think we’ve got a lock on truth? Have you ever
been completely sure of something, and then turned out to be wrong?
Shouldn’t that temper our confidence the next time we feel that
way? It should give you pause when the trained person is less
certain of themselves than the untrained person. I was certainly
humbled by the unexpected explosion in my classroom that I describe
in the video “I Hope I’m Wrong.” I guess the bottom line lesson
is here that we will probably do better for ourselves and for
the whole with some humility.
Look, I don’t have the answers. And neither, probably, do you.
But we, as a people, as a species, can probably come up with something
that’s decent. Will it be right? Will it work? We can’t know for
sure. Will it be better than nothing? Probably.
I forget where I read it—maybe it was even a bumper sticker LOL—but
I recently came across a line that I think pretty well sums up
the lesson in humility that scientific thinking teaches us. And
I suspect it may help us make some headway in this whole discussion
of what to do about climate change. It’s just this:
“Don’t believe everything you think.”
This
video-article is part of an advanced listening activity for advanced
learners of English. 
The 3 videos on Youtube:
