Note: I first published this on a now-defunct blog in January 2011
But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable. This phenomenon doesn’t yet have an official name, but it’s occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology. In the field of medicine, the phenomenon seems extremely widespread, affecting not only antipsychotics but also therapies ranging from cardiac stents to Vitamin E and antidepressants: Davis has a forthcoming analysis demonstrating that the efficacy of antidepressants has gone down as much as threefold in recent decades.–Jonah Lehrer
Lehrer’s recent article on the decline effect, where initially strong and robust results shrink over time, has caused quite a stir (see here, here, here, and here). It’s similar to Freedman’s Atlantic profile of Ioannidis in that it identifies some allegedly deep problems in the structure of science.
As both Lehrer and Freedman note, the fight for funding, the bias against null results, the drive for more publications, a desire for personal glory, and conflicts of interest all make the practice of science quite a bit different from how it’s usually portrayed. Both, however, also note that there may be something fundamentally amiss here. These relatively straightforward explanations only go so far. It appears we can’t quite determine what’s really going on, and Lehrer’s subtitle asks: “Is there something wrong with the scientific method?”
I think it’s important to remember that the scientific method (TSM) was first used to solve what are, conceptually at least, fairly simple questions. Planetary motion, as beautiful, intricate and awe-inspiring it may be, is solved by high-school students every day before lunch recess. After all, it’s just giant balls circling each other. Even quantum mechanics and relativity can be described almost perfectly with existing mathematics, and it’s usually first taught to college sophomores. Penicillin was discovered in a petri dish, where we can reliably control most variables. And so on.
None of this is meant to diminish Newton, Einstein and Fleming, or to trivialize their accomplishments. They were geniuses, and we are forever indebted to them. But it appears to me that what we consider the canonical scientific accomplishments were often fairly discrete questions. If you can effectively use mathematics (as you can in much of physics), or if you can control all the relevant variables (physics, molecular biology), the problem is tractable. But determining the effect of Vitamin E on public health is a different beast altogether. After all, what we call health is really a combination of traditional medical science, economic status, level of stress, culture, pollution, and who knows what else. TSM may never be able to disentangle all these effects regardless of how many perfect, unbiased studies we run. From Freedman’s article:
But even if a study managed to highlight a genuine health connection to some nutrient, you’re unlikely to benefit much from taking more of it, because we consume thousands of nutrients that act together as a sort of network, and changing intake of just one of them is bound to cause ripples throughout the network that are far too complex for these studies to detect, and that may be as likely to harm you as help you.
And so asking what’s wrong with TSM kind of misses the point. There’s nothing really wrong with it. It’s that TSM, this crowning achievement of human intellect, the best tool ever developed to investigate the natural world, may just not be as powerful as we want it to be. Even if we disclose conflicts of interest, release all collected data (not just the pretty ones), publish more null results, and quadruple funding, some problems will be beyond our reach. There are ultimately some things in heaven and earth not dreamt of in our philosophies.
I think Decoding science would probably back up your arguments nicely!
Trying to deal with all the resistance I figured out a very simple experiment that can show a serious problem with the limitations in the concept of the kinetic energy Theory and also the problems with everything being particles and waves which makes us unable to understand electrons. I was hoping that maybe from your interesting perspective you could help me somehow?
I think you're going to get quite interested in understanding the physical structure of atoms and why chemistry does what it does and the true activities of electrons. I've thought of a simple experiment that shows a problem with the kinetic energy Theory and our opinions about electrons somehow being both particles and waves.
I think the easiest way to create a knowledge Renaissance and shock the world is to show them that there's something wrong with the kinetic energy Theory. People just love the idea that you heat up water and it picks up kinetic energy and evaporates but that simply cannot possibly be true because water is the stickiest thing we know and making it hotter does not eliminate its stickiness. So we have also a problem with beliefs about electrons and both of them can be quickly addressed in a very simple experiment.
I was hoping you would somehow post that or talk about it a little bit and convince people to explore. We need a few talented people to do a very simple experiment and everything will work out and we will have a happy future. You are part of the collective and you have the talent to generate public interest, I need that help! Here's what I'm trying to get to go viral:
I love pragmatists and people willing to explore. And I agree that people going out like Einstein and trying to explain gravity is completely wrong. What you need to do is explain light and how it creates its frequency which is the key to finally understanding the balance of forces so you can understand how volume is established. I won't go through a detailed argument here but you can find it on my website or try Google searching: medium Light Orbits and especially read my co-authors brilliant article called validations.
Calling all practical-minded people: As someone deeply interested in material properties, I find the precise mechanics of evaporation of condensation to be a fascinating puzzle. Standard kinetic models treat these phase changes as well enough explained, but if you look at them more closely, the legacy textbook explanations introduce quite a few complications that challenge credulity and violate Occam's razor.
To look at this empirically, I've put together a practical $20 backyard dare on my Substack page Decoding science using everyday materials. I am seeking pragmatic minds who focus on physical data to review the setup, test the anomaly, and see what the observation actually shows I would love your thoughts on it.
https://whitethomasalan.substack.com/p/the-20-backyard-dare-that-quantum?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=88ul7d
Hopefully this is a short enough formated message that you can just send this around and encourage people to do this simple experiment and help launch an exciting new sge of science.