An Elusive and Judgmental Reality

If scientists are having a problem, what hope is there for the rest of us?

According to Jonathan Lehrer, scientists have a great deal of difficulty dealing with data that does not confirm their theories or hypotheses. They do not embrace it; they ignore it or wish it away.

Link here.

The rest of us, as Lehrer writes, consider ourselves to be empiricists. We pretend that our decisions are guided by facts, not fictions. We believe that trial-and-error is the best approach to life decisions. We consider ourselves rational individuals, shielded from the temptations of emotion, conducting our lives according to the same principles that scientists use when testing their hypotheses.

Apparently this is not the case, either among scientists or among the rest of us.

In Lehrer's words: "The fact is, we carefully edit our reality, searching for data that confirm what we already believe. Although we pretend we're empiricists-- our views dictated by nothing but the facts-- we're actually blinkered, especially when it comes to information that contradicts our theories. The problem with science, then, isn't that most experiments fail-- it's that most failures are ignored."

As I said, we all believe that we think rationally and evaluate our decisions in relation to the evidence of their success or failure. We apply these principles to the way we bring up children, choose lovers, pursue careers, or trade the markets.

Much of the time, however, we are fooling ourselves. We are just as likely, perhaps more likely, to double down on a bad decision than to change our minds.

If scientists are blind to anomalous data, so too are lovers. When humans fall in love they become especially oblivious to any data that contradict their plans, dreams, or feelings. Most especially they are blind to anything that would challenge their idealized judgment of their lover.

Strong feelings seem to trump all other considerations. It's as though we assume once we have been overwhelmed by a strong passion, we are necesarily in touch with a higher truth, one that will always trump facts.

But we do not just fall in love with other people. We also fall in love with our own ideas, our own theories, and our own beliefs. Here again the moment of inspiration feels so good and so right that we allow it to trump any facts that seem to contradict it.

It gets worse. Once we have become convinced of a lover's consummate wonderfulness or an idea's ultimate truth, we invest in them. We invest time and energy in our lovers and ideas, we become publicly identified by our investments.

Once we have altered our life to bring a lover into it or alter our life plan in order to make it conform to a new idea we have a stake in being right. This makes us less willing or able to admit of error, to accept the verdict of reality.

Often enough we become so invested in a bad relationship or a bad idea that we get angry at anyone or anything that would cause us to doubt it.

Among scientists falling in love with an idea seems to be less important than another influence: peer group pressure. As Lehrer explains it, scientists often ignore non-confirming data because they belong to a culture or a department or a fraternity that has invested in a specific theory. When you are part of a group you try to be in mental harmony with other members of the group. Not only do you want to think as they think, but you feel honor bound to uphold the group's values and beliefs.

If you discover data that threatens your theory, you are putting yourself at odds with a group in which you have status and prestige. How many of us, in those circumstances, would sacrifice status and prestige for data that may or may not be conclusive?

Scientists with academic stature come to have what Lehrer calls "a vested interest in the status quo."

I would add that they also have some respect for tradition. While the will to conform inhibits new scientific discovery, it also makes for a more orderly field of study. The truths of past science might be superceded by new work, but they still deserve some respect.

Lehrer offers some advice about how people can become more open to new data and new evidence. After all, it is possible that the theory is wrong, but it is also possible that the data is wrong. How can anyone know?

For academics in a department, the solution involves breaking out of the closed world of their department, and discussing the problem with people from other disciplines. If people in the chemistry department veer toward a form of academic groupthink, they can best solve their research problems by conversing with biologists and medical professionals.

Once the study group has been expanded to include people who are unfamiliar with departmental jargon, everyone will have to reformulate their thoughts and rephrase their issues so that outsiders can understand them.

Such reformulations, occurring in conversation, often clarify issues and advance research. As Lehrer points out, such discussions are far more effective than going it alone.

In some ways this same point applies to the practice of life coaching, especially as it concerns business coaching. How can a business coach help someone when the coach does not have a background in business?

Applying the same principle, we can say that when a businessman has to explain his business to an outsider he will have to articulate details and assumptions that he might have taken for granted or taken on faith, because they are the lingua franca of his business, but which sound a lot less valid once they are presented to an outsider.

Compare this with the practice of psychoanalysis. For those few who still imagine that psychoanalysis has something to do with science, consider this: in psychoanalytic treatment the analyst presents a theory or interpretation. The patient is then required to produce confirming material, and to persuade the analyst that this material has persuaded him of the truth of the analyst's interpretation.

The psychoanalyst's theory is not subject to trial-and-error. If the patient discovers material that seems to contradict the interpretation the patient is labelled resistant, neurotic, and in need of much more treatment.

Will the Real Creationist Please Stand Up

The debate continues. Was God an intelligent designer or did the universe fall into place at random? Should we teach creationism or Darwin or both? Must we choose between science and superstition, between enlightened reason or mindless faith?

Of course, most people know that God and science are not contradictory. While you can always find a backwoods preacher who will tell you that the world was literally created in seven days and that Lot's wife was literally turned into salt, no serious person would say that the Bible should be taken as scientific fact.

Does this mean that we should scrap God and become atheists? Or, as the politically correct crowd might say: Is God a social construct?

Before rushing off to embrace atheism-- the latest intellectual fad-- consider a line of reasoning offered by Jacques Lacan a few decades ago. It may not have been original, but it is compelling.

Four hundred or so years ago Johannes Kepler worked out the law that determined planetary orbits. Of course, he did not think that he had proven that God did not exist. Quite the contrary, he thought that he had gained an insight into God's mind.

If the planets were-- obviously-- obeying this law before Kepler discovered it, where had the law been before that time. If it is reasonable to think that the law existed before any humans wrote it down, is it also reasonable to say that a mind was thinking it? If so, what kind of mind? Clearly, it was not a human mind.

The same can be said for any scientific laws, including the laws of evolution. Thus, many have stated that there is no inherent contradiction between physical laws and metaphysical minds. But metaphysics is not the same as physics, and has no real place in a science course.

That is not the issue. Lurking in the wings of this debate is the following problem. Do the enlightened masses who have brandished the truths of science to smite the demons of creationism and intelligent design really believe in science? Would they throw out one of their politically correct prejudices if science proved it was not true.

Several years ago Harvard president Lawrence Summers made a few remarks about the biology of gender differences, some of which derive from Darwin.

As you recall, he was instantly attacked for having committed blasphemy. He was eventually run out of office on a rail. We all remember the furor. Did it sound like a rational, enlightened debate or a witch hunt?

Many of those who are fighting to exclude creationism from 10th grade biology-- position I would support-- believe that gender is a social construct, that sexual roles are a social construct, and that fatherhood and motherhood are socially constructed. Some of them also believe that all science, from physics to chemistry to geology, is one large social construct.

For social construct, read: creation. They really believe that the socio-sexual whirl was created by design. They believe that gender roles were designed intentionally by dominant males in order to serve the interests of an entrenched patriarchy. Some believe that the purpose was to repress human libido and oppress women.

This is a creationist view. Instead of God creating human beings, the politically correct crowd proposes that a trans-historical patriarchy did the dirty deed. They object to this design because they consider it to be unintelligent.

This creationist view has previously led to a re-creationist vision. If a criminal conspiracy created human nature to serve someone's will-to-power, then it should be possible to re-create human nature, the better to liberate the impulses that patriarchy has oppressed. Manifestations of this new human being are the Nietzschean Superman and the New Socialist Man.

You cannot hold fast to these beliefs and tout the virtues of Darwin. Among the better known aspects of Darwin's theory is the notion that sexual selection is based on a reproductive calculus. People are hard-wired to seek out sexual partners who will aid in the successful reproduction of the species.

This theory-- call it a scientific fact-- does not jibe with the notion that gender roles are social constructs or social creations. Nor does it jibe with Freud's Oedipal theory that everyone's true desire is to copulate with his or her mother. Nor does it jibe with the notion that sex is fundamentally about obtaining pleasure and that it does not much matter how, when, where, and with whom you go about it.

If you believe that the species is hard-wired to reproduce itself, then any theory that tries to explain sex by saying that human beings are merely seeking pleasure.. is unscientific. Call it neo-creationist dogma, if you like.