It
is widely recognized among scientists that there is a problem called
the “replication crisis.” This is the problem that a large
fraction of research studies cannot be replicated. The problem was
highlighted in a widely cited 2005 paper
by John Ioannidis entitled, “Why Most Published Research Findings
Are False.” A scientist named C. Glenn Begley and his colleagues
tried to reproduce 53 published studies called “ground-breaking.”
He asked the scientists who wrote the papers to help, by providing
the exact materials to publish the results. Begley and his colleagues
were only able to reproduce 6 of the 53 experiments. In
2011 Bayer reported similar
results. They tried to reproduce 67 medical studies, and were
only able to reproduce them 25 percent of the time.
The replication
crisis is real, but it is only part of the malfunction in scientific
academia. There are other very serious problems. Here are some of
them:
- There is a great deal of overconfidence and hubris among many scientists, who often claim to know things they do not at all know.
- Speaking in triumphal tones, many scientists claim that they, their colleagues, or their predecessors have accomplished things that were not actually accomplished.
- Many scientists inaccurately describe as “science” or "fact" truth claims or speculations that have not been proven by experiments or observations, claims that are merely philosophical ideas or simply dogmas, stories or speculations that became popular among scientists.
In
the past and future posts of this blog, you will find discussions of
many examples of such things. But for now, let's look at some recent
examples.
One
example is a recent headline from the web site of the publication New
Scientist.
The headline is: “Kepler
finds 219 new exoplanets and 10 are rocky and Earth-like.”
But
the story doesn't actually discuss the discovery of Earth-like
planets; it merely discusses the discovery of Earth-sized planets.
The discovery of an Earth-like planet would be the discovery of a
planet with life. No such thing has taken place.
Another recent
example was a FermiLab press release claiming that a new “dark
matter map” had been created. But (as discussed here) the map in
question was not actually a dark matter map, but a map of mass
(something that might be any combination of dark matter and ordinary
matter). The technique used to create the map was gravitational
lensing, an effect produced by any type of matter, whether dark
matter or regular matter. Claiming to have created a map of dark
matter based on gravitational lensing is like using an infrared
sensor to make a map of human body heat signatures in New York City,
and then claiming that you have created a map of Chinese people in
New York City. Of course, such a technique cannot distinguish between
Chinese and non-Chinese people. By announcing a “dark matter map,”
FermiLab was guilty of creating a completely false impression that
dark matter had been directly observed.
Another
recent example of scientists claiming to have accomplished things
they have not accomplished is to be found in this press release from
the Australian National University, which was headlined, “ANU-led
study solves mystery of how first animals appeared on Earth.” The
press release was picked up by science-reporting sites such as
ScienceDaily.com, which had an article with the title, “Mystery of
how first animals appeared on Earth solved.”
A
person hearing such a claim may think immediately of the mystery of
what is called the Cambrian Explosion. When
we examine the fossil record, we don't see fossils appearing in
larger and larger sizes, at an even rate of progression between 3
billion years ago and 100 million years ago. Instead, we see very
little fossil evidence of life prior to the Cambrian era about 540
million years ago. But during the Cambrian era there is a sudden
surge of fossils in the fossil record. This sudden blossoming of life
during the Cambrian era is known as the Cambrian Explosion.
The
largest classification category used for living things is the phylum.
Astonishingly, every major phylum of animal dates from the time of
the Cambrian era about 540 million years ago, or shortly before. Referring to the
Cambrian Era ending about 485 million years ago, a scientific web
site says, “By
the end of the period, every major animal phylum was firmly
established, and life after
the Cambrian was radically different from what had gone before.”
This situation is a severe problem for orthodox Darwinism. From Darwinist assumptions, we would expect that the animal phyla would have gradually appeared over the past billion years, with the number of phyla slowly increasing as time passed. But the fossil record shows no such thing. Instead there was a kind of a biological “Big Bang” in which all the major animal phyla appeared rather suddenly. Explaining this problem has been a long-standing problem.
This situation is a severe problem for orthodox Darwinism. From Darwinist assumptions, we would expect that the animal phyla would have gradually appeared over the past billion years, with the number of phyla slowly increasing as time passed. But the fossil record shows no such thing. Instead there was a kind of a biological “Big Bang” in which all the major animal phyla appeared rather suddenly. Explaining this problem has been a long-standing problem.
What explanation do
these Australian National University scientists offer? Below are some
excerpts from the press release:
"We
crushed these rocks to powder and extracted molecules of ancient
organisms from them," said Dr Brocks from the ANU Research
School of Earth Sciences. "These molecules tell us
that it really became interesting 650 million years ago. It was a
revolution of ecosystems, it was the rise of algae." Dr Brocks
said the rise of algae triggered one of the most profound ecological
revolutions in Earth's history, without which humans and other
animals would not exist....
Dr Brocks said the extremely high levels of nutrients in the ocean, and cooling of global temperatures to more hospitable levels, created the perfect conditions for the rapid spread of algae. It was the transition from oceans being dominated by bacteria to a world inhabited by more complex life, he said. "These large and nutritious organisms at the base of the food web provided the burst of energy required for the evolution of complex ecosystems, where increasingly large and complex animals, including humans, could thrive on Earth," Dr Brocks said.
So this is Dr.
Brocks' explanation: there suddenly appeared all of the major animal phyla
on planet Earth, the first large animals, because there was some
algae available for eating. This is, of course, not an actual
explanation. It's like trying to explain 40 different types of
monsters rising up out of the ground in your backyard by saying that
you were having a barbecue, and monsters like barbecued food.
Philosophers
distinguish between two types of conditions: necessary conditions and
sufficient conditions. A necessary condition for something is a
condition that is necessary for that thing to occur or appear, but
which does not guarantee that such a thing will occur or appear. A
sufficient condition for a thing is a condition which, if satisfied,
guarantees that such a thing will occur. You do not explain a thing
by merely mentioning a necessary condition of that thing. For
example, you would not explain the not-observed appearance of a
snowman in your back yard, by pointing out that it's very cold, and
snowmen only appear when it is very cold.
The existence of
algae in the ocean might be a necessary condition for the existence
of large complex animals, because that algae might be at the bottom
of a food chain used by the animals. But the existence of algae in no sense
explains the appearance of large complex animals that the Earth has
never seen before. The existence of algae is at best a necessary condition for the Cambrian Explosion, and is not a sufficient condition.
The Australian
National University press release is therefore guilty of a
preposterous misstatement by announcing that this is research that
has solved the mystery of how the first animals appeared. It is no
sense correct that Dr. Brocks and his colleagues have solved the
mystery of how the first animals appeared on Earth, nor have they
contributed even 1 per cent towards solving such a mystery. Most people
already presumed long ago that algae existed before the first
animals, and the previous existence of algae does not explain the
existence of such animals, which are many times more complex than
algae. The mystery of the Cambrian Explosion remains unsolved. A
Cambridge University professor, responding to Brock's claims, says he
has gotten things backwards, and that the explosion of algae did not
drive the rise of animals.
The example we see
in this case is not very uncommon. It is sadly true that when
reading today's science magazines, one has to be very careful to
separate the gold from the dross, the fact from the tribal folklore. Scientists have many great
accomplishments to be proud of, so why do many of them seem to be
claiming to know things they don't, or claiming that they or their
predecessors accomplished things they didn't? It's like some person
with $200 million in the bank telling people he's a billionaire.
Science mags are grab-bags mixing the sound and the shaky
Postscript: A 2015 study found a huge surge in the use of pretentious words in biomedical scientific papers, suggesting that hype is becoming ever-more-common. The study noted this:
The absolute frequency of positive words increased from 2.0% (1974-80) to 17.5% (2014), a relative increase of 880% over four decades. All 25 individual positive words contributed to the increase, particularly the words “robust,” “novel,” “innovative,” and “unprecedented,” which increased in relative frequency up to 15,000%.
This is only in scientific papers themselves; there's a whole other layer of hype going on in university press releases and the press coverage of scientific activities. Call it the "hype crisis."
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