“Nobel's Razor” as a Rule of Thumb for Judging Science Claims

There are quite a few problems involving scientific research.  One problem is what is called medical ghost-writing, in which pharmaceutical companies will hire people to write up a study, and then recruit doctors to sign their names to the study, even if the doctors had little or no involvement in the study.  A wikipedia.org article on the topic says, "A 2009 New York Times article estimated that 11% of New England Journal of Medicine articles, 8% of JAMA, Lancet and PLoS Medicine articles, 5% of Annals of Internal Medicine articles and 2% of Nature Medicine were ghost written." 

Another problem is that press releases issued by universities, colleges, and various other institutions are frequently announcing scientific research in ways that include exaggerations, unwarranted claims or outright falsehoods. A scientific paper reached the following conclusions, indicating a huge hype and exaggeration crisis both among the authors of scientific papers and the media that reports on such papers:

Thirty-four percent of academic studies and 48% of media articles used language that reviewers considered too strong for their strength of causal inference....Fifty-eight percent of media articles were found to have inaccurately reported the question, results, intervention, or population of the academic study.

Another huge problem involves what is called the Replication Crisis. This is the fact that a very large fraction of scientific research results are never replicated. The problem was highlighted in a widely cited 2005 paper by John Ioannidis entitled, “Why Most Published Research Studies Are False.” 

Although physics is often regarded as a more “hard” and reliable form of science, there is still tons of wobbly speculation in the world of cosmology and theoretical physics. An example was the recent paper by three cosmologists claiming to have found evidence of something called “Hawking points” in the cosmic background radiation, which they interpreted as supporting their cyclical theory of the universe that almost no one else but them believes in. A cosmologist studying the cosmic background radiation for the faintest traces of something he wants to believe in may be compared to someone who checks his toast with a magnifying glass every day, and eventually reports something that he thinks looks a little like the face of Jesus. 

What rule can you use to distinguish between solid well-established science on the one hand and hype and speculation on the other hand? Can we simply use the rule of “trust something if you read it one of the top science publications like Science or Nature or Scientific American, but maybe be skeptical if you read about it in a publication or web site of lesser stature?” No, this principle does not at all work. Nowadays the most respected science publications often contain quite a few misleading headlines proclaiming as discoveries dubious research results that do not at all qualify as discoveries. For example, in the leading science journals, we very often find neuroscience experiments done with too few test animals, such as only 7 (15 test animals per study group is the minimum for a moderately reliable result). 

It is also not at all true that you can rely on the truth of a science headline that you read in the New York Times, since the writers at this publication almost never show signs of critically scrutinizing dubious claims by scientists and university press releases. Nor is it true that you can count on a research result that is directly stated in the title of a scientific paper. Scientists frequently give their papers dubious titles announcing results they have not proven. Nor is it true that you can count on a result announced by a distinguished college or university such as MIT. Nowadays the press offices of colleges and universities are notorious for the dubious hype of their press releases, and this problem is not at all confined to less prestigious academic institutions. In this post and in the series of posts I have labeled “overblown hype” you will find many examples to back up the claims I have made in this paragraph.

Can we perhaps distinguish between solid science and unproven speculation by following the principle “trust in things that most scientists believe”? No, because of some of the reasons discussed in this post and this post. Unfortunately, communities of experts can become ideological enclaves, and in such enclaves it is all too easy for a majority to reach an opinion that is not well established, once that opinion becomes “all the rage” in that community.

There is actually no reliable process in place for determining what doctrines are believed in by a majority of scientists. It is quite unreliable to try to gauge the opinion of scientists by analyzing scientific papers, because a scientific paper may repeat standard shibboleths to increase its chance of getting published, and it's hard to tell how much the authors believe in such customary utterances. An opinion poll of scientists is a more reliable way of measuring their opinions. But most such polls suffer from defects, such as offering too little choice, and not offering an option of “I don't know” or “I'm uncertain about this.” Some opinion polls of scientists also require them to publicly assert their opinions to their superiors, which is not a reliable way of measuring private opinion.

The most reliable way to measure opinions on a topic is a secret ballot. But there is no process in place for measuring the opinions of scientists through a secret ballot. Furthermore, common opinions regarding a consensus of scientists are based entirely on impressions got from US and European scientists. A true global measure of scientific opinion (including all the scientists in India and China) might have many surprises. In light of all these difficulties, it is not a particularly reliable or useful guideline to try to distinguish between strong science and less reliable science claims by using common opinions about which things most scientists believe in or don't believe in.

But I can think of one simple “rule of thumb” principle that is pretty good for distinguishing between solid topnotch science on the one hand and weaker claims on the other hand. The principle is what I call “Nobel's Razor.” This is simply the principle: if some science claim has won a Nobel Prize, regard it as topnotch “Grade A” science, but if no one has ever won a Nobel Prize for establishing the claim, regard it as something less than topnotch, well-established science.

The Nobel Prize committees award annual prizes in physics, chemistry, and medicine and physiology. Over the years, the Nobel Prize committees have been extremely good about awarding prizes only to very solid scientific results (with a handful of exceptions). The Nobel Prize committees “wait for the dust to settle,” almost always avoiding giving a prize to any research result until its solidity has been established over a period of several years. For example, Penzias and Wilson discovered the cosmic background radiation in the mid-1960's, but had to wait until 1978 before getting their richly deserved Nobel Prize in Physics.

There are some interesting examples of things that are claimed to be examples of established science, but which have never won any Nobel prizes. One such example is that no one has ever won a Nobel prize for any work establishing Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, nor any work helping to establish Neo-Darwinism. This is a great embarrassment to Darwin enthusiasts. It is true that Darwin died before the Nobel prizes were established. But we may ask: if Darwinism is really a topnotch scientific result, why has there been no Nobel Prize for any type of research work done to establish such a theory?

Other interesting examples of widely-repeated claims by scientists that have no Nobel prizes in their favor are the opinion that the human mind is a product of the brain, and the opinion that human memories are stored in our brains. No one has ever won a Nobel prize for research helping to establish such ideas. The link here shows the scientists who won the Nobel prize in medicine and physiology, and what research they did to win the prize. None of the prizes are for work involving memory, consciousness, or the relationship of the brain and the mind.

You can see here a list of all people who have won Nobel prizes in physics. No one has ever won for any research on dark matter, dark energy, the multiverse, or the “cosmic inflation” claim that the universe underwent an instant of exponential expansion (not to be confused with the more general theory of the Big Bang).

Do all these omissions mean that this “Nobel's Razor” principle is not a good way of distinguishing between topnotch well-proven science on the one hand and lesser claims that are not very well proven? No, such omissions help to establish the solidity of such a “Nobel's Razor” rule-of-thumb, and to help show that the Nobel committees have been excellent about only giving awards to results that are well established by observations or experiments. When people press you to believe in some science claim that is not topnotch science demonstrated by observations or experiments,  you can ask such persons, "Why should I believe in that when no one ever won a Nobel Prize for establishing it?" Such a question will not be an effective reply to assertions about global warming, seeing that the IPCC committee was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.