Imagine you create some
scientific theory, and you want the theory to be generally accepted
in some corner of the academic world. You might think that this is an
incredibly hard task, requiring that you both come up with a new
theory and somehow marshal convincing evidence showing that the
theory is correct. But it may not be so hard. The world of
scientific academia is often not a world of dispassionate judges
weighing evidence with great objectivity. It is often a world in
which sociological effects, psychological effects and ideology play a
large role. So the path to getting the academic world to accept your
theory may not be so difficult, and there are techniques you might
use to get even a very weak or dubious theory accepted by the
academic world.
The first step is to get
some scientific paper published describing your weak theory. This is
not particularly hard to do, because there are ways to make weak
ideas seem rather impressive-sounding. The first way (very commonly used) is to load
almost every paragraph of your paper with dense, all-but-impenetrable
technical jargon. Such jargon will impress lesser reviewers of your
paper.
The second way to make
your weak theory sound rather impressive is to load up your paper
with obscure mathematics. You need not worry that anyone will
complain that the mathematics were irrelevant, for almost no one
makes such a complaint about scientific papers, even when the
mathematics is absurdly extraneous. The all-but-incomprehensible
math in your paper may impress some peer reviewers of your paper,
giving them the impression that your weak theory is a weighty
intellectual contribution.
Once your paper is
published, you will need to start leveraging the popular press, so
that some articles about your theory will appear in magazines and
online web sites. The first step is to get your college or university
to release a fawning press release trumpeting your weak scientific
paper and claiming that it is a stunning breakthrough. This is very
easy to do. The writers of university press releases are a very
compliant lot, and will be unlikely to challenge your extravagant
claims. The rule for university press releases seems to be that it
is okay to trumpet utterly far-fetched claims, as long as such claims
somehow seem to shed glory and prestige on the university.
Then you may have to reach
out to some science journalists to get them to write about your weak
scientific paper. This is not very hard to do. Today's science
journalists are very often docile and compliant “pom-pom
journalists” eager to repeat any claim you may make to have
achieved a “stunning theoretical breakthrough.” There will be
very little chance that the science journalists you contact will
subject your claims to much critical scrutiny.
Having got some press
coverage, you now need to reach out to a few of your pals in the
academic world, to get them to make supportive comments about your
weak theory. This will probably not be very hard, as the world of
academia has countless “I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine”
relationships. If you have been a professor for many years, you
probably know quite a few people who owe you favors, such as people
whose books you favorably commented on.
You can then start using
authority techniques, by calling your weak theory “science.”
Using such verbiage will be like sprinkling magic fairy dust, and
will cause many a person to start treating your weak theory with
great respect. If someone objects, claiming that science is best
defined as facts that have been determined by observation and
experiment, and that there are no such facts substantiating your weak
theory, you can respond by presenting an alternate definition: the
much looser definition (recently stated by a scientist blogger) that
science is simply whatever scientists are working on. Of course,
under such a definition every weak theory published in a scientific
journal is “science.”
The next step requires
audacity. The idea is to start claiming that your theory is starting
to achieve mass acceptance among your little tribe of scientific
peers. There are various artful expressions you can use to make such
a claim. For example, you can say that “a consensus is starting to
emerge” that your theory is correct, or that “a growing number of
experts” are adopting your theory. No one will be likely to
challenge these claims, which are hard to verify.
The next step requires
even more audacity. At some point you can stick your neck out and
claim that there is now a consensus of experts in your field who
believe that your theory is correct. Such a claim will be difficult
or impossible to verify, but it will have enormous force and power
from the sociological perspective of the bandwagon effect. If people
hear such a claim repeated enough times, then your theory will get
all kinds of new supporters who never would have adopted it, but who
will now adopt it just because they want to run in the direction they
think the herd is running. No one wants to be in defiance of a
consensus of experts. So countless people will flock to your weak
theory the moment they hear that there is a consensus of experts in
favor of your theory, even if no such consensus has really developed.
Claims that a consensus of experts has agreed on something often are
kind of self-fulfilling claims that help cause such a consensus to
appear because of a sociological bandwagon effect.
This step may fail, and
you may fail to get people to accept your claim that there is a
consensus of experts in favor of your weak theory. But if you get
people to accept such a idea, even if a consensus does not yet exist,
then your work is almost done. The bandwagon effect will continue,
the snowball effect will keep rolling, and your theory will have
triumphed in some little corner of the academic world.
There may still remain
many who think that your theory is pure nonsense. But since you have
now got something you can claim to be a consensus of experts, you can
now make use of a technique that is incredibly popular in the
academic world: the technique of nonconformity shaming tactics. You
could employ this technique, by calling your weak theory “science,”
and demonizing all who oppose it as “anti-science.” Few will
object in the academic world, where the term “anti-science” is
shamelessly employed with reckless abandon, such as by those who call
anyone preferring not to consume gene-spliced food as “anti-science.”
Your efforts in this
regard will be enormously more likely to succeed under two cases: (1)
if your weak theory allows scientists to enhance their prestige by
triumphally claiming that they have solved some long-standing
mystery; (2) if your weak theory allows scientists to claim they have
an explanation for some event or phenomenon that does not fit in with
their claims that everything can be explained by random physical
processes. In the latter case, there will be a kind of “ideology
boost” that will make your theory 300% or 400% more likely to be
accepted than if it had no ideological relevance. Your fellow
scientists will show almost infinite tolerance for accepting
silliness in theories that seem to help them evade what they most
dread: that there may be spirits or souls, or that the universe or
life may be the result of intentional purpose.
Yes, given the very strong
influence of sociological and ideological factors in the success of
academic theories, you could use all of these tactics to get the
academic world to adopt your weak theory. But you would not be a very
honest person if you did that. It would be much better to not do such things as I have mentioned here, and to have
greater intellectual integrity, even at the price of having less
success in getting people to adopt your theory. And it is much
better to honestly admit your ignorance about some great mystery than
to get the academic world to accept some very dubious theory of yours
about that mystery, some theory that does not warrant belief.
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