Updating Sagan's Analogy of the Scientist as Candle Holder

Today at one prominent site presenting itself as a science news site, we have not just one article bitterly blasting scholars expressing concern  about pesticides and herbicides, but two such articles. At  another prominent web site presenting itself as a science news site, a site boasting about being written by "the world's best scientists," we have today a strange article claiming that formaldehyde is "the carcinogen that wasn't," even though several expert health agencies have declared that formaldehyde is a carcinogen (a cancer risk).  This is a reminder that science these days is all mixed up with other things, including corporate-funded propaganda and nineteenth century belief customs, with such strange mixtures simply marketed as "science." Scientists are created in university departments that are often ideological enclaves. An ideological enclave is some environment where almost everyone believes in some particular ideology or belief system. 

A seminary is an example of an ideological enclave. A seminary is an institution where people are trained to be ministers or priests of some particular religion. A university graduate school program (one issuing masters degrees and PhD's in some academic specialty) may also be an example of an ideological enclave. Just as a seminary trains people to think in one particular way, and to hold a particular set of unproven beliefs, many a university graduate program may train people to think in a particular way, and to hold a particular set of unproven beliefs. 

Once a person starts being trained in an ideological enclave, he will find relentless social pressure to conform to the ideology of that enclave. This pressure will continue for years. The pressure will be applied by authorities who usually passed through years of training and belief conditioning by the ideological enclave, or a similar ideological enclave elsewhere. In a seminary such authorities are ministers or priests, and in a university graduate school program such authorities are professors or instructors. Finally, after years of belief conditioning the person who signed up for the training will be anointed as a new authority himself. In the university graduate school program, this occurs when something like a master's degree or a PhD or a professorship is granted. In a seminary, this may occur when someone becomes a minister or priest.

Groupthink is a tendency for some conformist social unit to have overconfidence in its decisions or belief customs, or unshakable faith in such things. Groupthink is worsened by any situation in which only those with some type of credential (available only from some ideological enclave) are regarded as fit to offer a credible judgment on some topic. In groupthink situations, an illusion of consensus may be helped by self-censorship (in which those having opinions differing from the group ideology keep their contrary opinions to themselves, for fear of being ostracized within the group). In groupthink situations, belief conformity may also be helped by so-called mindguards, who work to prevent those in the group from becoming aware of contrarian opinions, alternate options or opposing observations. In an academic community such mindguards exist in the form of peer-reviewers and academic editors who prevent the publication of opinions and data contrary to the prevailing group ideology

For the person who completes the program of a university graduate school program, and gets his master's degree or PhD, is that the end of the conformist social influence, the end of the pressure to believe and think in a particular way? Not at all. Instead, the “follow the herd” effect and the pressure to tow the “party line” of the belief community typically continues for additional decades. The newly minted PhD rarely goes off on his own to become an independent thinker marching to his own drummer, outside of the heavy influence of the belief community. Instead, such a person usually becomes a kind of captive of a belief community. The newly minted PhD will very often get a job working for the very ideological enclave that trained him, a particular academic department of a university. Or, he may end up employed by some very similar academic department of some other university, a place that is an ideological enclave just like the one in which he was trained. Having very stringent speech  conformity requirements for promotion, such employment typically lasts for decades, during which someone may be stuck in a kind of echo chamber in which everyone parrots the same talking points. So when there is groupthink and ideological conformity in some academic specialty, peer pressure can continue to act for decades to prevent people from deviating from the prevailing conformity. 

Conformity

Scientist Carl Sagan liked to state an analogy comparing the scientist to a person holding a candle in the dark, the candle representing the techniques of science. Sagan made this analogy in the title of his book The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. This was a 438-page book on paranormal phenomena in which Sagan showed zero signs of having seriously studied the observational claims he was writing about. You can tell Sagan's dismal lack of relevant scholarship on this topic by simply examining the many books mentioned in the references at the back of the book, almost none of which is an original source material. Not one of the books mentioned is one of the 100 top books that Sagan should have read before writing about paranormal phenomena, and we see a complete or almost-complete failure to examine relevant original source materials such as the many volumes of the Journal and Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. And so it is for the overwhelming majority of scientists who talk about paranormal phenomena, 99% of whom show zero signs of having seriously studied the evidence for such phenomena.  What we get in Sagan's book is a kind of ersatz scholarship, filled with lots of erudite digressions about extraneous matters that might fool some people into thinking the author made a serious study of the main thing he was writing about.  

After considering the groupthink and conformity factors at play in scientific academia, we can update Carl Sagan's candle-holder analogy, to take into account the theory-laden interpretations that scientists are so often socially pressured into making, because of a conformist culture they belong to.  We can imagine two men walking in the dark with the scientist holding the candle, two fellow scientists. The two scientists would constantly pressure the candle holder to think and interpret in a particular way. So the conversation between the three may go rather like this:

Candle holder: I'm going to go walking in the dark woods now, so I sure am glad I have this little candle.
Scientist Bob: Let's walk along, and Dave and I will help you interpret what you see.
Candle holder:  Why, I think I see rather dimly ahead of me something that looks designed. 
Scientist Dave: No, we are in nature, and our rule is there can be no design in nature. So what you see ahead must be merely an illusion of design. 
Candle holder: Really? 
Scientist Bob: Yes, there are millions of different species that resemble things that were designed, but these are all just millions of illusions that nature has given us.
Candle holder: Uh...okay, if you say so.  Well, as I look over there I think I see what looks like a tree. 
Scientist Dave: So you had the idea of a tree, and that idea no doubt came from your brain, so this is really further proof that your brain is what causes your ideas, not something else like a soul.
Candle holder: Uh...okay.  Now, looking over to the right, I dimly see a dark shape that looks quite spooky. 
Scientist Bob: No, you must not think that. If you start thinking that something out there is spooky, then you might believe in other spooky things: things like spirits and paranormal phenomena. Scientists like us must not believe in such things, for we fear above all the disapproval of our peers, who tell us not to believe in such things.
Candle holder: Uh...okay.  Now, looking over to the left, I think I see an animal scurrying around. 
Scientist Dave: It's locomotion from a mammal, no doubt. Such impressive functionality is further proof of the ability of random "copying error" genetic mutations to produce stunning wonders of hierarchical biological organization such as conscious moving animals. 
Candle holder: Uh...okay.  If you say so.  Now I think I would like to go off the trodden path of this dark woods, and try to discover something in that very dark area over to the left of the path. 

Scientist Bob: That sounds rather like what some might call "exploring the occult," and is greatly discouraged by your fellow scientists. Our way is to walk on the well-trodden path. We kind of figure, "It's probably the right way if so many have walked that way." 

Scientist Dave: Yes, don't "raise eyebrows" by straying from the footsteps of your colleagues. A safe career move is to do something like write paper #987 speculating about extraterrestrials, or write paper #1452 speculating about string theory, or do the 287th experiment this year electrically shocking the feet of mice. 

Candle holder: Very well, I'll stay on the well-trodden path. Now, I must confess that despite having this candle, I am really quite ignorant of what there is around me in this dark woods, particularly anything that is more than a few meters away from me.

Scientist Bob: How will people follow us authorities if we sound like we know so little? It's better that a scientist should sound like a great lord of knowledge, or students paying very high tuitions may complain about their professors knowing too little. 

And so peer pressure and groupthink and careerist conformism may cause the candle holder to often reach a dubious or wrong conclusion about what he sees in the dim light, and may prevent the kind of disruptive discoveries that would be the most valuable or illuminating.  Our scientists have lit many candles, but very many of our scientists have also tried to snuff out many important candles that were lit in the past. That occurs whenever some scientist who hasn't bothered to study the evidence for some phenomenon or effect claims that there is no evidence for such a phenomenon or effect, rather than honestly telling us that he has not properly studied the evidence for such a phenomenon or effect. Because so many of them have tried to snuff out important candles that offended them, and because so many of them they have spent so much time pushing ideas that offer very little or no real illumination, it may seem somewhat uncertain whether the  scientists of the past 100 years have increased mankind's illumination, or decreased it.  The countless scientists who got so entangled with military projects and destructive corporate projects may have looked more like bringers of darkness than bringers of light.   As for physicists like Edward Teller, they helped invent atomic bombs which were very bright when they exploded, but which led to a dark night of nuclear fear that lasted for decades (causing billions of healthy people to often wonder whether they would soon die in a fiery nuclear holocaust). 

We have in these days a thousand glittering ways to be distracted by entertaining trivialities, but there seems to have been little increase in our insight about the questions that are most important. Despite all our technical conveniences and comfort, and all our glitzy neon sparkle, it is quite possible that more enlightened humans of the future (holding bright torches of spiritual and moral insight) may look back on our current era as rather much a dark age.

Postscript: Speaking of formaldehyde (which I mentioned at the beginning of this post), I remember the insanity of forced exposure to it during a high school biology class. Students were forced to dissect cats, with such a dissection lasting for many days.  Provided with no protective gear, each student would retrieve his dead cat from a big trashcan filled with formaldehyde, a carcinogen; and the liquid splashed all over the place. Some distinguished authorities had determined that such formaldehyde exposure and prolonged dissection of dead cats was not only allowed, but actually required of all the senior high school students.  In another high school class, each student was socially pressured to stick his hand into a container filled with mercury, a very hazardous material.