Very much of what we read in science papers and in science news articles is primarily or largely speculation. Sometimes scientists are very out-in-the-open that they are engaging in wild flight-of-fancy speculations. An example was Eugene V. Koonin's 2007 paper "The cosmological model of eternal inflation and the transition from chance to biological evolution in the history of life: The possibility of chance emergence of the replication and translation systems, and the protein superfolds." In this paper Koonin seems to frankly confess that a natural origin of life would require pretty much infinite luck. He appeals to the multiverse as a solution, which is the idea that there are an infinite or near-infinite number of universes, so many that even the most improbable things can happen. On page 12 he states the following:
"The 'many worlds in one' version of the cosmological model of eternal inflation makes a startling prediction: that all macroscopic, “coarse-grain” histories of events that are not forbidden by conservation laws have realized (or will realize) somewhere in the infinite universe, and not just once but an infinite number of times [52, 53]. According to Garriga and Vilenkin, 'there are infinitely many O-regions where Al Gore is President and – yes – Elvis is still alive.' ”
The reasoning in this paper was about as obviously speculative as the very strange reasoning in a paper Koonin co-authored entitled "Towards physical principles of biological evolution" in which he oddly appealed to "glasses" and "frustrated states" as things that might help us explain why "biological systems reach organizational complexity that far exceeds the complexity of any known inanimate objects." It was at least nice to read a scientist confess that biological systems are far more organized than anything humans have ever built, an assertion I have repeatedly made on this blog.
But it does not sound very robustly scientific for some professor to say, "Let me now speculate." Professors and science writers have long followed a technique to try and make their speculations sound more substantive and scientific. The technique is one that I may call "the Mixture Method." The method consists of mixing up speculations with either scientific facts or mathematics or a combination of the two, usually in a way so that the speculative parts are a relatively small part of the paper or article.
There are three ways in which the Mixture Method may be employed:
(1) A writer may surround his dubious speculations with a great number of scientific facts.
(2) A writer may surround his dubious speculations with a great amount of mathematics.
(3) A writer may surround his dubious speculations with both a great number of scientific facts and a great amount of mathematics.
Let me give a hypothetical example of using the Mixture Method. Let's imagine a scientist stating the following:
"Our sun is a truly astonishing object. It shines with an incredible constancy. We experience annual variations in temperature, such as the greater warmth of summer and the greater coldness of winter. But such variations are caused by earthly factors, not fluctuations in solar radiation. Space measurements of fluctuations in solar radiation over an 11-year period show that the radiation from the sun has fluctuated by much less than 1 percent. The consistency of solar radiation seems all the more impressive when we consider that the sun is like a very slowly exploding thermonuclear bomb. In fact, the process by which the sun produces radiation is essentially the same process that powers hydrogen bombs. Humans have noted no real variation in solar output during recorded history. The famous 'Year Without a Summer' of 1816 was not caused by any variation of solar output, but by the 1815 volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies. Given its incredible consistency of output over thousands of years, it is plausible to presume that the sun is a carefully engineered object produced very long ago by extraterrestrial visitors. Indeed, it has repeatedly been remarked by scientists that if the nuclear physics of the sun's thermonuclear reactions had not been just right, then the sun would either have burned out long ago, or flared up so much so as to destroy all life on Earth. Our galaxy contains very many such stars that are either white dwarf stars that burned out long ago or red giant stars that have consumed their planets, like the Roman god Saturn said to have eaten his own child."
In the statement above, we have a skillful execution of the Mixture Method. The writer has given us mainly indisputable facts, from a variety of disciplines: nuclear physics, astronomy, modern history and the cultural history of ancient times. Buried within all of those facts and erudition, the writer has slipped in an extremely dubious speculation: that our sun is an object created by visiting extraterrestrials. Since this speculation is preceded by facts and followed by facts, it is not very unlikely that a reader reading this paragraph might swallow the whole thing as "fact" or "science," failing to see the very dubious speculation embedded inside it.
(Why is it dubious to claim that the output constancy of the sun is due to the sun having been engineered by extraterrestrial visitors? For one thing, the universe contains many billions of suns of the same type as ours; so our sun is not some freak star requiring a freak explanation. For another thing, the constancy of the sun mainly is a by-product of fine-tuned laws of physics and fine-tuned fundamental constants of the universe, which -- against all odds -- allow stable sun-like stars to exist. No matter how great their power, visiting extraterrestrials could not control such laws of nature and fundamental constants of the universe. So while stars like the sun may be possible because of some cosmic-level teleological agency, they are not very credibly explained as the results of extraterrestrial visitors.)
The italicized example above illustrates the most effective way to execute the Mixture Method: by having facts and data being much more common in your paper, article or post than speculation. You will not fool many into thinking your paper is "science" if your paper is about 50% speculation. But imagine if your paper, article or post consists of 80% fact and data or 90% fact or data, with only 5% or 10% being dubious speculation. Then it will be easy for your reader to fail to notice when the speculation has occurred.
In scientific papers we see mathematical versions of the Mixture Method. To get an idea of what this is like, visualize the pouring scene above, but imagine a fourth pitcher of "obscure mathematics." The reader will get a mixture of lots of facts, lots of obscure mathematics, and some dubious speculation. The reader may think that there is not much speculation, failing to see that the mathematics is itself speculative. A large fraction (perhaps even a majority) of all mathematics appearing in scientific papers is purely speculative mathematics.
You don't see much mathematics in posts and articles written in the popular press. Such posts and articles do often use something that makes it easier for writers to execute the Mixture Method: a heavy use of jargon. When your prose is all filled with jargon and specialized terms, it can be harder for the reader to figure out that a crucial 5% of your post or article is dubious speculation. For example, when you are appealing to some essentially miraculous piece of luck, you can call that something like "fortuitous serendipity." And when you are claiming that some miracle of luck could have happened, you can call that "stochastically conceivable."
Of course, an all-important rule of the Mixture Method is the rule that you never inform the reader when speculation is about to occur. You just slip in your speculation surrounded by many facts, and hope that the reader thinks your speculation is just another fact. The most brazen and misleading way to use the Mixture Method involves not merely surrounding a speculation with facts, but speaking just as if the speculation is fact, often shamelessly using the term "we know" to refer to things that are not at all known. For example, a writer may claim that we know life arose accidentally from lifeless chemicals (a most implausible claim that is not at all something known), or may claim that we know that the universe passed though an instantaneous phase of exponential expansion (a very dubious claim that is not at all something known).
I describe in this post a method I never cognizantly attempt to use, but only a method I have very often noticed professors and science writers using.
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