COVID-19 Origins Groupthink Resembled Human Origins Groupthink

The COVID-19 pandemic began spreading worldwide in the year 2020, after originating in Wuhan, China, the site of two major virus labs. Throughout that year scientists showed a very high degree of "follow the herd" behavior and groupthink and conformism when talking about the origins of the virus. "Singing from the same hymn book," scientists almost uniformly claimed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 had a purely natural origin.  

In February 2020 a letter had appeared in the British medical journal The Lancet entitled "Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19." The statement denounced as "misinformation" and "conspiracy theories" suspicions that "COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."  It stated the following:

"The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."

The authors suggested that "conjecture" on this topic should be repressed for the sake of "unity," stating, "We support the call from the Director-General of WHO to promote scientific evidence and unity over misinformation and conjecture." 

The authors very inaccurately claimed to have no conflict of interests, stating "We declare no competing interests."  In reality, several of the authors had major conflicts of interest. The scientist who had orchestrated the Lancet letter (Peter Daszak) was very entangled with a Chinese lab (the Wuhan Institute of Virology) that was very close physically to the place where the COVID-19 virus outbreak first occurred.  Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance organization had given lots of money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for it to engage in dicey research on viruses. 

Later in The Lancet we read this reference to the letter mentioned above, one that embarrasses that letter's authors by calling on them to "re-evaluate their competing interests":

"In this letter, the authors declared no competing interests. Some readers have questioned the validity of this disclosure, particularly as it relates to one of the authors, Peter Daszak....The Lancet invited the 27 authors of the letter to re-evaluate their competing interests."

There then follows a statement by Daszak in which he seems to confess quite a bit of what sounds like  conflict of interest, but still fails to mention the name of the Wuhan Institute of Virology that he was closely involved with, using instead three times the vague phrase "work in China."   

The Daily Mail quotes a scholar of COVID-19 origins (Jamie Metzl) as speaking very unfavorably about the February 2020 Lancet letter orchestrated by Daszak:

"Jamie Metzl, who sits on the World Health Organization's advisory committee on human genome editing and is a former Bill Clinton administration staffer, said Dr Daszak's letter was a 'form of thuggery'. He said: ‘The Lancet letter was scientific propaganda and a form of thuggery and intimidation. By labelling anyone with different views a conspiracy theorist, the Lancet letter was the worst form of bullying in full contravention of the scientific method.' "

Metzl was using a little hyperbole, as no literal thuggery (no literal physical violence) was involved, and mere words are never "the worst form of bullying," which is physical violence. It is rather hard to judge exactly how much of an effect the February 2020 Lancet letter had. But it did rather seem in early 2020 that the letter had "worked like a charm" to tell scientists that no heresy was allowed from the prevailing view on this topic.  Throughout that year scientists acted as if they were thinking, "We got the memo: it is a taboo to question the purely natural origin of COVID-19." 

When I wrote my January 21, 2021 post "Gene Engineers Keep Up Their Risky Tinkering, Unfazed by Pandemic Suspicions," such a taboo was very much in effect; and I was "going out on a limb" by giving equal treatment to natural origins ideas and the hypothesis of a lab leak as being the cause of COVID-19, stating the following:

"Because of such explanatory difficulties, there does not currently exist any plausible detailed theory of a purely natural origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19...We do not yet know exactly how COVID-19 originated, and we do not know whether its origin was purely natural."

But then in the next few months the taboo started to break its stranglehold on the thinking of scientists, as you see in the postscripts I added to my January 21, 2021 post, mentioning discussion of the lab leak hypothesis starting to occur in mainstream publications in February and March 2021. By spring 2021 many a scientist was saying that we do not know whether COVID-19 originated by purely natural effects or because of a leak from some lab doing research on viruses.  

Mainstream sources began to point out that it was not at all a conspiracy theory to merely doubt that COVID-19 had purely natural origins.  There were three main hypotheses:

(1) That COVID-19 had originated because of purely natural evolution. 

(2) That COVID-19 had accidentally escaped from a laboratory (the lab leak hypothesis), presumably when well-meaning scientists were working to try to prevent future pandemics. 

(3) That COVID-19 had been deliberately designed as a biological weapon. 

Mainstream sources began to point out that the second of these two hypotheses (the lab leak hypothesis) is not at all a conspiracy theory, as it involves merely a hypothesis of an accident. 

By March 25, 2021 there appeared a letter in the journal Environmental Chemistry Letters which was titled "Should we discount the laboratory origin of COVID-19?" and stated the following:

"Several characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 taken together are not easily explained by a natural zoonotic origin hypothesis. These include a low rate of evolution in the early phase of transmission; the lack of evidence for recombination events; a high pre-existing binding to human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2); a novel furin cleavage site (FCS) insert; a fat ganglioside-binding domain (GBD) of the spike protein which conficts with host evasion survival patterns exhibited by other coronaviruses; and high human and mouse peptide mimicry. Initial assumptions against a laboratory origin by contrast have remained unsubstantiated. Furthermore, over a year after the initial outbreak in Wuhan, there is still no clear evidence of zoonotic transfer from a bat or intermediate species."

US President Joe Biden ordered an intelligence review on the topic. CNN describes the resulting report like this:

"Four intelligence community agencies and the National Intelligence Council assessed, with low confidence, that Covid was likely caused by natural exposure to an animal, the summary says. One agency assessed with moderate confidence, however, that the first human infection most likely was the result of a lab-associated incident that 'probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute.' And three agencies said they were unable to coalesce around either explanation without additional information."

An article in the journal Science very inaccurately describes this intelligence review as favoring a purely natural origin for COVID-19, which makes no sense because having one agency conclusion with "moderate" confidence in favor of the lab leak hypothesis is stronger than having several agency conclusions against that hypothesis (all of merely "low" confidence). 

A sign of the new respectability of the lab leak hypothesis is a recent (September 17, 2021) letter in The Lancet, one entitled, "An appeal for an objective, open, and transparent scientific debate about the origin of SARS-CoV-2."  The letter strongly criticizes the Daszak letter that had appeared in the same journal in February, 2020.  The September 17 letter states the following:

"As will be shown below, there is no direct support for the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2, and a laboratory-related accident is plausible. There is so far no scientifically validated evidence that directly supports a natural origin...After 19 months of investigations, the proximal progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 is still lacking. Neither the host pathway from bats to humans, nor the geographical route from Yunnan (where the viruses most closely related to SARS-CoV-2 have been sampled) to Wuhan (where the pandemic emerged) have been identified. More than 80 000 samples collected from Chinese wildlife sites and animal farms all proved negative....A research-related origin is plausible...Overwhelming evidence for either a zoonotic or research-related origin is lacking: the jury is still out... As shown above, research-related hypotheses are not misinformation and conjecture. More importantly, science embraces alternative hypotheses, contradictory arguments, verification, refutability, and controversy. Departing from this principle risks establishing dogmas, abandoning the essence of science, and, even worse, paving the way for conspiracy theories. Instead, the scientific community should bring this debate to a place where it belongs: the columns of scientific journals."

The claim that COVID-19 had a purely natural origin was a questionable dogma that was kept in place through almost all of 2020 because of sociological conformity effects such as groupthink.  While the stranglehold of that dogma has weakened, there continues to exist many other dubious dogmas in the world of science academia that keep sitting on thrones largely because of sociological effects and peer pressure.  One such dogma is the dogma that humans had a purely natural origin.  The way in which such a dogma has continued to reign is very similar to the way that the dogma of purely natural COVID-19 origins kept in power throughout the year 2020.  Below is a table comparing the two cases:

	Purely natural COVID-19 origins versus design involvement in COVID-19 origins (possibly well-intentioned design)	Purely natural human origins versus design involvement in human origins
The main issue was a conflict between a “purely natural” origins explanation and an explanation involving intelligent agency.	Yes.	Yes.
“Purely natural” theory became an orthodoxy that it was “heresy” to question	Yes, during the year 2020.	Yes, through most of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century.
“Purely natural” theory was never well-established by observations	Yes (see the previous quote in The Lancet).	Yes.
The “heretical” design hypothesis was always reasonable and not very far-fetched	Yes. Given Wuhan virus labs in the same city where COVID-19 arose, and many cases of “gain of function” research by scientists, a “lab leak” hypothesis was always reasonable.	Yes. Given enormous levels of hierarchical organization in the human body, tons of functional information in DNA, very many uniquely human mental traits and mental abilities not credibly explained by brain activity, and seemingly fine-tuned fundamental constants in nature, the hypothesis of design involvement in human origins was always reasonable, and never was far-fetched.
Lack of any credible detailed theory to explain “purely natural” origins	Yes (see recent letter in The Lancet). There was never any credible explanation of how the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 could have so quickly become so well-adapted to transmission in humans. An intermediate organism serving as a bridge between bats and humans was never found.	Yes. The misleading term "natural selection" (which does not actually involve selection, a choice by a conscious agent) was never a credible explanation for the origin of so many unique human capabilities, as the co-creator of  evolutionary theory (Alfred Russel Wallace) explained at length in an essay "The Limits of Natural Selection As Applied to Man."
Proponents of reasonable “design” hypothesis unfairly described with a misleading epithet.	Yes. Proponents of the lab-leak hypothesis were called “conspiracy theorists,” even though they did not actually believe in a conspiracy, but merely some possible overconfidence and carelessness.	Yes. Theorists of intelligent design were frequently called “creationists,” a word implying   biblical fundamentalism, even though the Bible is rarely mentioned in the literature of such theorists, who argue not by appealing to scripture, but by describing the fine-tuned functional complexity and   enormous level of hierarchical organization in human beings, and the inadequacy of Darwinist explanations for such biological wonders and the human mind.
The prevailing orthodoxy was established partially to serve the vested interests of biologists	Yes. If a pandemic arose from a lab-leak in a scientist lab, the prestige of scientists would be lessened, and they might get less funding and more restrictive regulations.	Yes. The claim that scientists understood the origin of humans and other species led to a huge boost in the prestige of scientists, who could then paint themselves as “grand lords of explanation.”

The table above mentions only one of the forms of bullying that has been used against theorists of design involvement in human origins, who are sometimes defamed as  "zealots" or "fanatics" by their Darwinist opponents, even though there is no sign of any difference in the levels of passion in the two camps. 

Shaming someone with a "could easily be true" hypothesis

An excellent article by journalist by Paul D. Thacker discusses the groupthink, dysfunctional journalism, intellectual bullying and herd-following cowardice of the year 2020. The article is entitled "The covid-19 lab leak hypothesis: did the media fall victim to a misinformation campaign?" The misinformation campaign referred to is one coming from the mainstream science news sources. 

Referring to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), the article begins by stating a little of what I mentioned above:

"For most of 2020, the notion that SARS-CoV-2 may have originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, was treated as a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory....But that all changed in the early months of 2021, and today most outlets across the political spectrum agree: the 'lab leak' scenario deserves serious investigation."

The article mentions quite a few mainstream sources that were to blame for the supression of one of the two leading hypotheses about COVID-19 origins, mentioning censorship by Facebook. It mentions the failure of science journalists, quoting science journalist Nicholas Wade:

"Wade explains, 'Science journalists differ a lot from other journalists in that they are far less sceptical of their sources and they see their main role as simply to explain science to the public.'  This, he says, is why they began marching in unison behind Daszak."

We see such a failure constantly on science news sites: science journalists meekly acting like  North Korean journalists, repeating trustingly any claims that come from professor authorities, no matter how groundless, dubious or speculative such claims may be. 

What we saw in the year 2020 in regard to COVID-19 origins (the premature claim that scientists knew about about how a mysterious biological innovation had appeared) was no fluke. It was just another example  of a malfunction that repeatedly occurs in modern academia: overconfident scientists dogmatically proclaiming they  understand things that they don't actually understand.  It was the opinion reversal of 2021 that was the real fluke, because once scientists start claiming in great numbers to understand something they don't understand, they typically continue for very many years to repeat such boastful claims of understanding, rather than realizing within a year or two that they claimed to understand things they don't understand.  

What goes on regarding scientific matters is that a very tiny group at the top of a pyramid can control what millions of other people believe, as illustrated in the diagram below (in which the tiny pink triangle at the top controls the beliefs of all the other layers).   

Postscript: They're still at it. In a very interesting article in Undark.org, we read, "Still, some continue to refer to those who suggest the possibility of a lab leak as conspiracy theorists, among them H. Holden Thorp, Science’s editor-in-chief, who used the term in a Nov. 11 [2021] editorial." We read, "Undark reached out to numerous scientists who worked with Daszak, and most never responded." 

The Sociological Dynamics of Ideological Regimes

An individual authority such as a scientist or preacher or a priest or a politician is like a link in a big chain link fence, and that "chain link fence" is the social structure that he is part of. There is no very good understanding of why certain authorities say the things they say without some insight into the sociology of belief systems. Let me make a rather crude sketch of the sociology of belief systems, a topic of great complexity.  

Ideological Regimes

To describe a particular system of belief that gained some ascendancy,  we may use the term "ideological regime."  An ideological regime is some structure of belief and related social structures and habits that have become popular in a particular place.  In a particular country there may exist more than one ideological regime.  For example, in the United States there are currently multiple ideological regimes, such as these:

(1) the belief tradition and social structure of Catholicism;

(2) the belief tradition and social structures of Protestantism, taking several different forms;

(3) the belief tradition and social structures of Darwinist materialism;

(4) the belief tradition and social structures of what we may call money-centered consumerist capitalism.

In some countries,  there may be fewer ideological regimes: three, two, or rarely a single one. Looking at medieval or ancient history, we can probably find some cases in which religious beliefs were thoroughly entangled with political and economic beliefs, and in such countries there may have existed as few as only one ideological regime. 

An ideological regime consists of  both a system of belief and a social structure that supports such a system, making sure that it preserves its ascendancy, along with rules, traditions, customs or laws that help propagate the ideological regime. 

Regime Authorities

An ideological regime almost invariably has authorities that profess its belief doctrines. In some ideological regimes, such authorities may exist in a hierarchical order. In the Catholic Church there is a pope ruling over cardinals ruling over bishops ruling over priests.  In the ideological regime of Darwinist materialism, there is not a very formal hierarchical structure of authorities. But informally there is such a hierarchy, consisting of four levels:

(1) Nobel Prize laureates at the top of the hierarchy;

(2) professors from the most prestigious universities on the second level;

(3) professors from less prestigious colleges or universities at the third level;

(4) mere PhD holders who are not yet professors at the lowest level of authority. 

There are also related authorities such as deceased scientists who have been aggrandized as great teachers or men of profound insight. 

In the ideological regime of money-centered consumerist capitalism, there is a less clear-cut structure of authority, but the authorities may include people such as politicians, influential very rich celebrities and high-prestige business leaders such as prominent CEO's.  The ideological regime of Protestantism has human authorities such as ministers as its authorities, and under such a regime the Bible is emphasized as an authority to be followed.  Under the ideological regime of Marxist-Leninism, there existed various authorities such as politburo members and the party officials known as commissars. 

Regime Dogmas

The dogmas of an ideological regime are the debatable beliefs that the regime perpetuates. Under some ideological regimes, particularly openly religious ones, there may be a frank admission that articles of faith are being taught by the regime, and that an act of faith is required to accept such doctrines.  Under other ideological regimes,  there may be claims or pretentions that the dogmas of the regime are facts that any reasonable and well-educated person should accept. For example, under the ideological regime of Darwinist materialism, various unproven claims about human origins or human brains may be sold as "facts of science."  Under the ideological regime of Marxist-Leninism, various unproven dogmas about communism and class struggle were not described as dogmas or tenets, but were instead described as "facts of history" or "facts of economic science" that required belief from any reasonable scholar.  Under the ideological regime of money-centered consumerist capitalism, various assumptions may simply be taken for granted as rather obvious truths, such as the assumption that working 50 or 60 hour weeks at a job you don't like is well worth it if this allows you to buy some larger-than-you-need house that will cause your friends to be envious.  But under conflicting ideological regimes, such assumptions may seem very far from obvious truths. 

Regime Enforcers and Regime Enablers

The maintenance and preservation of an ideological regime requires the participation of many agents acting to perpetuate the regime.  The existence of esteemed regime authorities is not sufficient to achieve such an end. There usually must be various less prestigious  individuals who act to promulgate the teachings of the ideological regime, and possibly help punish and diminish any who dare to oppose its teachings. In the Catholic Church an example of such regime enforcers are nuns, deacons and Sunday school teachers, who lack the authority of priests, but do a great deal of the low-level indoctrination that helps to enforce the ideological regime. 

In the ideological regime of Darwinist materialism, skeptics act as regime enforcers. The skeptics act to defame and disparage any of the very many people who report observations contrary to the reigning dogmas of Darwinist materialism, such as those who report inexplicable psychic experiences or apparition sightings.  In this regime other low-level regime enforcers or regime enablers are people such as high school biology teachers, who make sure that children are indoctrinated in the belief tenets of the ideological regime, and science journalists. In the modern landscape of Darwinist materialism, science journalists tend to uncritically parrot whatever claims or speculations come down from professors in support of their belief dogmas, even when they are far-fetched claims such as monkeys rafting across the Atlantic ocean millions of years ago.  Such journalists are also careful to write articles that restate the belief doctrines of the ideological regime of Darwinist materialism, and are careful to write little or nothing about observations in conflict with the teachings of such an ideological regime.  

In the ideological regime of Marxist-Leninism, there were innumerable low-level enforcers, such as censors, local informers who snitched on dissident thinkers, and the gulag guards who helped to keep dissidents locked up in prison camps.  In the ideological regime of money-centered consumerist capitalism,  regime enablers include a host of pitchmen and social media sources that try to make you feel unworthy or second-class if you are are not consuming and purchasing as expensively as more high-spending people of a similar age. 

Regime Outcasts and the Expunging or Deprecation of Outcasts

A culturally successful ideological regime may achieve almost total dominance in a particular geographical area. But usually there will exist some people who oppose the ideological program the regime is advancing.  To maintain its position of dominance, the ideological regime will usually attempt to expunge or deprecate its opponents, who will be branded as outcasts.  Historically there have been cases of expunging through violence or imprisonment.  The medieval Catholic Church expunged opponents by using tools of violence such as the Inquisition, or by declaring crusades against heretics,  leading to their violent destruction in events such as the Albigensian Crusade. During the long and very bloody Thirty Years War, both Protestant groups and Catholics would try to expunge their opponents through open military conflict. Equally harsh events occurred when the ideological regime of Marxism-Leninism violently eliminated vast numbers of suspected opponents though events such as mass trials and purges.  During the Cold War, minor regimes defying the ideology of consumerist capitalism might face various attempts to destroy them or their leaders. 

An ideological regime may engage in more moderate efforts against its opponents. A common strategy is to simply use some deprecatory description designed to label the opponents as people not to be taken seriously. Different ideological regimes have different terms designed to brand opponents as outcasts whose thoughts are undeserving of serious consideration. In the Catholic Church, the term "heretic" was once a very powerful epithet that could be used to effectively demonize anyone teaching contrarian doctrines. In other Christian groups, it is enough to use the word "unchristian" or "anti-Christian" or "anti-scriptural" to brand someone as an outcast not to be taken seriously. Under Marxist-Leninism, a potential opponent could be branded as an outcast by simply calling him a "counter-revolutionary" or a "capitalist-roader."

In the ideological regime of Darwinist materialism, there are various techniques for branding opponents as outcasts whose thought is unworthy of attention.  Someone may loosely be called a "mystic" or a "spiritualist" or a "creationist" as a way of branding them as outcasts to be ignored. Those terms are typically thrown around inaccurately by careless mudslingers.  Being rooted in the fundamentalist idea of biblical creationism, the word "creationist" should only be used for those objecting to Darwinism on biblical grounds.  Most of the people called "creationists" by Darwinists are no such thing, and make objections because of biological reasons, such as the inadequacy of Darwinism to explain very high levels of hierarchical organization and functional complexity. 

But this type of careless use of deprecatory labels is extremely common when regime outcasts are branded.  Just as people called "mystics" or "creationists" by materialists are usually not such a thing, most of the people labeled as "capitalist-roaders" or "counter-revolutionary" by Marxists were not such a thing, and very many of the people called "unchristian" by Christian zealots were actually Christians. 

Under the ideological regime of money-centered consumerist capitalism,  those not following the recommended high-spending or capitalist way of life might be deprecated through various terms of abuse such as "beatniks," "hippies," "low achievers," "low-class," "losers," "socialists," or "commies."

Regime Canonization

A very important tool for the propagation of an ideological regime is the promotion of some individual to a state of almost-superhuman status.  We may call this regime canonization.  Very obvious examples are found in Catholicism, where very many holy men and women were officially canonized as saints, and referred thereafter with names such as Saint Peter or Saint Theresa.  Almost equally obvious examples occurred under Marxism-Leninism, which made all-but-saints out of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. Other examples can be found in the ideological regime of Darwinist materialism,  which has effectively canonized Charles Darwin as a kind of saint of science. Under Chinese communism, Chairman Mao was consecrated as a kind of secular saint. 

Legends usually grow around those canonized as saints. A thousand legends have grown around the saints of Catholicism, such as abundant medieval legends that their bones had almost magical healing powers. In the ideological regime of Darwinist materialism, the principle legend is the legend that Charles Darwin explained the origin of species or the origin of biological innovations.  Since Darwin's time innumerable stunning examples of biological organization and fine-tuning have been discovered that Darwin knew nothing about, such as the enormously intricate functional complexity of cells and protein molecules. But even though claiming Darwin explained the origin of species is rather like claiming that the ancient philosopher Plato explained smartphones or digital computers, the legend that Darwin explained the origin of species continues to be told endlessly by the proponents of Darwinist materialism.  Similarly, under Marxist-Leninism people were endlessly told the legend that Vladimir Lenin had established a worker's paradise, which many people believed contrary to the evidence of their eyes. 

Some ideological regimes may kind of canonize individuals rather loosely and carelessly. For example, under the ideological regime of money-centered consumerist capitalism, certain very wealthy and high-consuming figures may undergo a kind of canonization, and may be painted as some kind of supermen; but no great virtue may be expected from them.  But such figures are still constantly upheld as role models which we should aspire to be like, if fate and fortune permit.  

Regime Information Control

For an ideological regime to persist in a dominant manner, it is very important that information be carefully controlled. There are various techniques used to insure control. One technique is the publication of impressive-looking volumes or sets of volumes teaching no viewpoint other than the ideology and belief traditions of the ideological regime. For example, the ideological regime of Catholicism published the 15-volume Catholic Encyclopedia which was followed many years later by the 15-volume New Catholic Encyclopedia; and the ideological regime of Marxist-Leninism published an equally impressive-looking 65-volume set called the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. For decades the ideological regime of Darwinist materialism was promoted by the many volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica and the World Book encyclopedia, which would describe many unproven claims as if they were facts. Nowadays wikipedia.org has largely replaced such encyclopedias, and serves as the chief party organ of Darwinist materialism.  Similar to such encyclopedias are subject textbooks and journals in which you are indoctrinated in strict accordance to some ideological regime.  

In such encyclopedias and textbooks and journals there is almost always a rigorous filtration and control of information, so that the reader gets no information that might disturb his faith in the ideological regime served by the encyclopedia or textbook or journal.  So, for example, you will read nothing in the Catholic Encyclopedia that might shake your faith in Catholicism, and there was nothing in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia that would shake your faith in Marxism-Leninism.  And on wikipedia.org, you will almost never read anything that shakes your faith in the belief doctrines of Darwinist materialism.  When such information sources discuss phenomena or viewpoints that conflict with the ideological regime they serve, any discussion will be carefully controlled so that mainly  negative information will be served up about the opposing viewpoint or the inconvenient phenomena.   

Historically, the most rigid ideological regimes have controlled information by out-and-out censorship, in which the publication of opposing viewpoints was legally forbidden. Under medieval Catholicism,  opposing viewpoints might have been forbidden by laws prohibiting heresy or blasphemy, or edicts banning specific works.  Under less rigid ideological regimes, there is no censorship in the form of absolute prevention of any form of publication. But under such ideological regimes, various forms of near-censorship can occur. For example, during the 1950's you would have found it all but impossible to get published in an American newspaper an editorial challenging the basic premises of money-centered consumerist capitalism. 

One such technique is to constantly claim that nothing can have observational validity unless it is published in a peer-reviewed journal, and then to have a system wherein secret votes of anonymous peer reviewers can prevent publication in such journals.  This can make sure that the journals act as biased information silos that only present findings in accordance with the belief traditions of the ideological regime. 

Explanatory Ingestion

It often happens that phenomena will appear that seemingly cannot be well-explained within the context of an ideological regime's ideology.  Below are some examples:

(1) People may report seeing apparitions of the dead, or having dramatic near-death experiences in which they float out of their bodies, contrary to the ideology of Darwinist materialism.

(2) Dissidents may arise in a Marxist-Leninist regime, complaining about their lack of rights and the poor quality of their living conditions.

(3) Mediums may report contact with deceased people, contrary to the beliefs of some religious group that the dead are silent and unconscious, waiting for some moment of physical resurrection following apocalyptic events. 

(4) Many people may report being very happy even though living in small living quarters and consuming little, contrary to the constant encouragements of those upholding the regime of money-centered consumerist capitalism. 

In such cases, there may occur a process by which an ideological regime may try to explain the troubling phenomenon by using explanations consistent within its own ideology. We may call this "explanatory ingestion." For example:

(1) One of the authorities of Darwinist materialism may try to explain apparition sightings and near-death experiences as mere neural hallucinations, conveniently ignoring the fact that near-death experiences often occur during cardiac arrest in which there is no neural activity, the fact that apparition sightings often occur suddenly to those with no history of hallucinations, and the fact that there are many cases of multiple witnesses reporting a sighting of the same apparition. 

(2) A Marxist-Leninist regime may try to explain the speech of dissidents as "sluggish schizophrenia," or perhaps some speech provoked by those taking money from foreign agents in capitalist countries. 

(3) A religious group believing that the dead are silent and unconscious may try to explain messages reported by psychic mediums as being caused not by the deceased on some Other Side but by demons trying to deceive humans. 

(4) People living very happily with low incomes and small living quarters may be explained away by consumerist capitalists as being drug users or lost-in-their-own-heads "losers" or low achievers with "bad taste"  or people with a lack of "culture" or "high style" claimed to be found in more high-spending people that are applauded for their financial success, no matter what mental or personal or moral price they paid to obtain their gaudy glamorous lifestyle. 

Regime Icons

An ideological regime will be more successful if it has some visual images it can use to remind people of its belief system. Catholicism has a rich tradition of such iconic visuals, many of them centered around images of the Virgin Mary.  Protestantism favors many visual depictions of Jesus.  In Darwinist materialism there is a constant use of a visual showing a line of progression from monkeys to men. In Marxism-Leninism there were frequent visuals of workers gazing upward, the left hand holding a tool, and the right hand raised in a clenched fist to symbolize revolutionary fervor. In the ideological regime of money-centered consumerist capitalism, a favored visual is some multi-millionaire relaxing in front of the huge pool in his mansion, or maybe leaning against his fancy car parked in front of his mansion. 

Ideological Regimes Tend to Be Long-Lasting

In general, ideological regimes tend to persist for long times, often for centuries.  The iron chains of conformist peer pressure are very hard for humans to shake. But in my lifetime I have seen one major ideological regime collapse, that of Marxism-Leninism.  In the 1970's I would have predicted that such a regime would persist throughout my life.  What is amazing is the speed with which Marxism-Leninism fell in Russia, despite having so many seemingly zealous supporters.  The lesson from this is that something hailed as a universal consensus in a large part of the globe may rather quickly end up being discarded by most of its supporters.  Apparently the hypnotic spell of groupthink can rather quickly be broken, once people on the bandwagon begin to notice that lots of other people are jumping off of the bandwagon. 

Postscript: A very interesting book making observations similar to that of this post is the 1966 book The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann.  You can read the book online here.  While I found many of the book's observations to be perceptive, I thought its terminology was a bit confusing. The book uses the term "universe" in the same way that I used the term "ideological regime." I much prefer the latter term, since people are too likely to think of the physical universe when hearing the term "universe."  Below is a quote from the book, describing a clash of two ideological regimes (called "universes"), in which one threatens the dominance of another:

"The alternative universe presented by the other society must be met with the best possible reasons for the superiority of one’s own. This necessity requires a conceptual machinery of considerable sophistication. The appearance of an alternative symbolic universe poses a threat because its very existence demonstrates empirically that one’s own universe is less than inevitable.... Individuals or groups within one’s own society might be tempted to ‘emigrate’ from the traditional universe or, even more serious a danger, to change the old order in the image of the new....It is important to stress that the conceptual machineries of universe-maintenance are themselves products of social activity, as are all forms of legitimation, and can only rarely be understood apart from the other activities of the collectivity in question. Specifically, the success of particular conceptual machineries is related to the power possessed by those who operate them. The confrontation of alternative symbolic universes implies a problem of power - which of the conflicting definitions of reality will be ‘made to stick’ in the society. Two societies confronting each other with conflicting universes will both develop conceptual machineries designed to maintain their respective universes. From the point of view of intrinsic plausibility the two forms of conceptualization may seem to the outside observer to offer little choice. Which of the two will win, however, will depend more on the power than on the theoretical ingenuity of the respective legitimators."

Why a Clique of Scientists Might Do Worse at Judging Truth Than a Jury

When newly awarded PhD's start writing papers and books and judging truth, they are rather like jurors who have been methodically exposed to evidence, and who then deliver a verdict that is a judgment of truth. A community of scientific experts may have much more prestige than a group of ordinary people chosen for a jury. But there are some reasons for thinking that the 12 ordinary people on a jury may be more likely to judge truth correctly than a clannish scientific community with some narrow subject specialty. Below are some of the reasons.

Reason #1: Jury Members are Randomly Selected, but Scientific Experts are Often Those Who Volunteered to Join an Ideological Enclave

One of the greatest strengths of the jury system is that jury members are randomly selected. A system in which jurors can volunteer for particular trials would not work well at all. If a particular defendant was on trial for murder, and jurors could volunteer for a particular case, then you might end up with only jurors predisposed to find that the defendant was guilty. Instead the jury system guarantees randomness. Jurors are randomly selected from the population. When they go to the court, they are randomly assigned to trials. So we usually don't end up with things like juries consisting mostly of people who were inclined to judge one particular way when judging a court case.

But this random selection process differs greatly from how scientific experts become scientific experts. A scientific expert becomes a PhD by volunteering for some particular graduate program at a university. These graduate programs are often ideological enclaves, places where there predominates some particular ideology not embraced by most people.

The fact that the graduates of such programs are volunteers creates the opportunity for sociological selection effects. Let's imagine an extreme example. Let's imagine there arises some new scientific discipline called groosology. It might be the opinion of 90% of the American population that groosology is utter nonsense. But groosology might be “all the rage” at some Graduate Program in Groosology Studies at a particular university. The people who sign up for such a program might almost all be from the tiny fraction of the population that believes in groosology. At this particular program there might then be tremendous sociological pressure for students to embrace groosology. So 90% of the graduates of this graduate program might be believers in groosology, even though a randomly selected jury from the general population would probably conclude groosology is worthless nonsense.

The diagram below illustrates this type of sociological effect. Such a sociological effect is going on at many graduate programs at universities, which are often as much ideological enclaves as are theology schools.

There is the additional fact that university graduate schools are not free, but often charge very high tuition fees, such as $30,000 a year. The number of scholarships for graduate programs is only a small fraction of the scholarships for bachelor's degree programs. Such facts tend to guarantee that the people who sign up for university graduate programs are not merely people predisposed to accept the ideology of such programs, but are actually people particularly eager to accept such an ideology. For example, you are not likely to shell out $50,000 to be trained as an evolutionary biologist unless you were really enthusiastic about the prevailing thinking of evolutionary biologists to begin with.

An equivalent situation in a jury pool would be if courts charged a high fee (such as $5000) for you to be a voluntary juror on a particular defendant's jury. This would guarantee that the juries would be populated only by those who were the most passionate about the defendant's guilt or innocence.

Reason #2: Juries Are Exposed to an Even-handed Discussion by People Arguing Opposing Cases, but Scientists Are Not Trained in Such a Way

One of the great strengths of the jury system and the court system is that equal weight is given to opposing sides. Imagine if someone is being tried for murder. First, the district attorney will give an introductory speech making the case for the defendant's guilt. Then the defendant's attorney will make a speech arguing for the defendant's innocence. Then the district attorney will present witnesses and evidence trying to establish the defendant's guilt, which at each stage may be challenged or cross-examined by the defense attorney. Then the defense attorney will present witnesses and evidence trying to establish the defendant's innocence, which at each stage may be challenged or cross-examined by the district attorney. Finally the district attorney will summarize the case for the defendant's guilt, and the defense attorney will summarize the case for the defendant's innocence. What could be more even-handed?

But unlike a juror who is exposed to both sides of the case with a fair balance, a student studying at a scientific graduate school gets no such even-handed exposure to opposing opinions and differing evidence. Such a student will be likely to be indoctrinated in only side of the case. For example, if you are studying to be a neuroscientist, you will get years of indoctrination that will give you one side of the story: the idea that mental processes are purely the products of brains, and cannot occur once a brain is dead. There will certainly not be a point in your training where your program director will say, “Very well, to give you an evenhanded education, you will now spend the next six months talking to psychics, those who had near-death experiences, and mediums who claim to be able to contact the dead through seances.” (Graduate schools may have courses on the thinking of those opposed to the viewpoints taught by the graduate schools, but such courses are normally taught by teachers hostile to such thinking, and simply amount to an attempt to immunize the student against such thinking.)

How would it be if juries had such experiences? We might imagine a jury that would hear only the prosecuting attorney's case, without ever hearing the defense attorney's case (or a jury which heard only the defense attorney's case, without ever hearing the prosecuting attorney's case).

Reason # 3: Juries Are Not Socially Pressured to Have Particular Opinions While They Are Being Exposed to the Evidence

If you are a juror, you are not socially pressured to have a particular opinion until you get into the jury room to reach your verdict. Jurors are silent while a trial is proceeding, and jurors are instructed not to talk about a case during a trial, until the final jury discussion after the evidence has been presented. So there is no peer pressure for you to think in a particular way until the very end of the process, nor is there any authority figure asking you about whether you have conformed to the expected thinking.

But it is a very different situation for the student training in a scientific graduate program. The student will be constantly asked to take tests and write essays, and he may be graded partially according to whether he accepts whatever ideology he is being taught. For example, someone training to be a neuroscientist may be asked to explain how memory works, and he may be graded by how well he parrots prevailing theories, and may be graded poorly if he suggests such theories are unbelievable. Having made a huge investment in tuition, the student is almost forced to “deliver his verdict” on the truth of what he is being taught before his training has finished; or he may risk flunking his courses and losing his huge tuition investment.

Reason # 4: Juries Have No Financial Interest in Reaching a Particular Verdict

If you are a juror and get into the jury room, you will have no vested interest or financial interest in reaching a particular verdict. You can then reach an opinion solely on the facts, knowing that it will make no difference to your financial health.

But we may contrast this with the person who has just graduated from a university graduate school. His financial health will now depend on conforming to whatever ideology was taught at his graduate school. If he speaks as if he accepted the prevailing ideas in his little science community, he will have a decent chance of getting research grants, and might even be appointed to be a professor (a decision that will be made by professors who have embraced the ideology of his scientific community). But imagine if this person announces a contrarian verdict. Imagine if he states that he disagrees with the conclusions of his scientific community. Such a person will have placed himself “out on a limb,” and his position will be financially precarious. He will have a hard time getting scientific journals to publish his scientific papers, since peer reviewers often exclude papers suggesting results contrary to the ideological taboos and norms of a scientific community. Lacking much of a publication record, and out of sync with the thought of those who decide whether he should be appointed as a professor, he won't be able to get appointed as a professor.

So many of our newly minted PhD's are like bribed jurors. They have a strong financial incentive to reach particular conclusions. If something similar were to go on with juries, we might imagine a situation like this. Near the end of the trial, when you went into the jury room to reach the verdict, you would find various pitch men who would tell you that if you voted in one particular way, you would be paid $10,000.

If Being a Juror Was Like Becoming a Conformist Scientist

I can put all these observations together into a portrait of what it would be like if being a juror was like studying to become a scientist at certain types of graduate programs. Things would work like this. The only way in which you would become a juror would be if you paid a big fat fee to sit on a particular jury – something like $20,000 or $40,000. Once you got on that jury you would find yourself with other jurors who had all volunteered for the particular case you were to judge on, jurors who had all paid large sums to sit on the jury. During the trial you would only be presented with one side of the case, the case of the prosecuting district attorney. During the trial breaks, you would have authority figures come to see you and your fellow jurors. They would ask you questions to make sure that you were absorbing and accepting the government's case, and they would try to squash any skepticism you might have about that case. Once the case had been presented, you and your fellow jurors would finally find yourself in the jury room, assigned to the task of reaching the verdict. But before you started, you would talk with various people who would offer you huge bribes to vote as the prosecuting district attorney wanted you to vote. You would know that rejecting authority and thinking independently would be very financially disadvantageous.

In the description above, the giant fee required for sitting on a particular jury corresponds to the tuition price of getting a graduate degree. The situation of hearing only one side of the case corresponds to the fact that you are pretty much taught only one standpoint if you sign up to get a degree in something like Freudian psychoanalysis, string theory, evolutionary biology or neuroscience. The part about trial breaks corresponds to the fact that graduate students are constantly monitored and graded in accordance with how well they are absorbing their indoctrination without resisting it. The part about the bribes in the jury room corresponds to the fact that any newly minted PhD knows that he will flourish financially by singing from the same hymn book as the other scientists in his specialty, rather than going out on a limb and judging that such scientists have come to wrong conclusions.

We don't have such a jury system like the one described above. We have instead a totally different system designed to maximize the chance the jurors will reach impartial decisions after hearing both sides. The common person who takes part in such a system – sometimes a low-paid cleaner, driver, or cashier – does not have the prestige of a scientist. But due to the strengths of the jury system, such a person may be more likely to judge truth correctly and objectively than some person with a fancy title who may be the assembly-line end-product of the mind-molding conformist machinery of an ideological enclave.

How to Run a School That Churns Out Standardized Thought-Robots

From the sociological considerations above, we can deduce some general tips that can be used by any person wishing to create an ideological enclave that will generate graduates that all share the same ideology.

1. Make it perfectly clear that your institution will be teaching a particular ideology (but avoid using that particular word).
2. Charge a very hefty annual tuition, making sure that the only people who sign up for the school are people strongly predisposed to believe in whatever ideology you will be teaching.
3. Give your students a one-sided curriculum that indoctrinates them in your ideology, with little or no exposure to alternate viewpoints.
4. Require that your students repeatedly voice assent to your ideology as you are teaching it, by doing things such as having tests in which the correct answers are those reflecting your ideology, and written essays that will be graded poorly if they do not reflect your ideology.
5. Flunk out students who show signs of rebelling against your ideology, or simply leave them in some “uncompleted curriculum” limbo that causes them to quit.
6. During the months leading up to graduation, make it perfectly clear that your graduates will enjoy a lucrative career in your organization and similar organizations if they continue to voice the ideology that the school has taught, but that they will receive no financial reward at all for their huge tuition investment if they defy that ideology.

This should work like a charm, and 90% of your graduates will probably end up voicing approval for whatever strange ideology you have taught them. Sadly the description above doesn't differ very much from how certain types of scientific specialists are trained.

Postscript: My previous post The Groupthink Problem in Modern Cosmology and Physics discusses complacent conformity problems in two branches of science. In my post Improving the Conformity Factories Known as Science Graduate Schools I give some ideas on how to lessen some of the "rubberstamp thinking" problems mentioned in this post. Besides the ideas discussed in that post, I can think of an additional way to reduce the problem: fund scholarship programs that offer "take it or leave it" full-tuition scholarships to randomly selected college seniors, offering to pay the entire cast of graduate education in one particular scientific area, without any option to change the field of study.  For example, a randomly selected English major might suddenly receive an offer to pay the full cost of becoming a PhD in neuroscience, with no option to change to some other PhD program. With such a program, you would have a higher percentage of graduate school beginners who were not predisposed to accept the ideology of a particular graduate program.  An additional idea is to set up a large prize fund consisting of many individual financial awards to be awarded only to scientists who publish results that contradict prevailing assumptions in their field.  A good name for such a fund would be: the "Shock to the System" awards. 

Busted Bandwagon: The Sociology of BICEP2 Groupthink

It's finally official. Today the online version of the journal Nature (an authoritative source for scientists) has an article headlined “Gravitational Waves Discovery Now Officially Dead.”

In March 2014 the BICEP2 study was released, and it claimed to have found evidence for gravitational waves from the beginning of time. It was a result that would have confirmed the theory of cosmic inflation, a theory about what went on during the universe's first second. In March of that year, cosmologists around the world started crowing about how the discovery of the decade (or even the century) had been made. It was claimed that “smoking gun” evidence for the cosmic inflation theory had been found. For months many scientists and “household name” news sources described the inflated claims of the BICEP2 study as scientific fact.

But now the roof has caved in on this claimed breakthrough. Further analysis by the very large team of Planck scientists has found that the results of the BICEP2 team can plausibly be explained as being the result of ordinary dust and something called gravitational lensing, without imagining that the observations are caused by anything having to do with gravitational waves, the Big Bang, or cosmic inflation.

From the beginning there were lots of reason for suspecting that the BICEP2 study was on very shaky ground. The day after the study was released I released a very skeptical blog post entitled “BICEP2 Study Has Not Confirmed Cosmic Inflation,” pointing out some reasons for doubt. I followed this up in the next month with several other very skeptical blog posts on BICEP2. The reasons I discussed were out there in April 2014, but seemed to be ignored by most cosmologists at that time, who got busy writing lots of scientific papers about the implications of the supposedly historical BICEP2 study.

Now some cosmologists will point their fingers at the scientists of the BICEP2 team, and say, “Their error.” But the blame goes surprisingly wide and deep in this matter. We must also attach blame to the many other cosmologists who jumped the gun, and wrote scientific papers based on the BICEP2 claims, treating them as if they were all-but-proven. You can use this link to find the names of 125 scientific papers that have “BICEP2” in their titles. A great deal of these papers had titles such as “The Blah Blah Blah Theory in Light of BICEP2” or “Blah Blah Blah After BICEP2.” It seems that very many theoretical physicists took a good deal of time to write up papers discussing the profound implications of the BICEP2 study, the main results of which have now been declared “officially dead.”

How can we explain this embarrassing goof? It couldn't have been because our cosmologists are stupid. After all, they write these papers with lots of very hard math. Could it be this snafu occurred because no one warned them that the BICEP2 findings were preliminary, and needed to be confirmed by the Planck team? No, there were plenty of such warnings, and it was clear from the beginning the BICEP2 claims were in conflict with some of the Planck results.

In order to explain this gigantic goof, one needs to consider sociological factors. The group of scientists with one particular specialty is a small subculture subject to bandwagon effects, peer pressure, groupthink, group norms, group taboos, and other sociological influences. Given a proclamation by enough scientists within a field that a particular result is a “stunning breakthrough,” acceptance of that result becomes a group norm. Similarly, once a particular effect or result has been denounced by enough scientists within a field, then a taboo has been established, and rejection of that result becomes a group norm. Once a group norm or group taboo has been established in such a small subculture, it is rather like a buffalo stampede. Running with the herd is very easy, and running against the herd is very difficult. Every subculture imposes punishing sanctions on those within it who defy the group norms and group taboos. 

Peer pressure

For several months, acceptance of the BICEP2 claims was a group norm within the community of cosmologists, and so cosmologists fell in line, and followed the herd. A gigantic bandwagon effect was created. Using many dollars of taxpayers and universities, they wrote up lots of scientific papers that were based on the now-defunct group norm.

What lesson can we learn from this misadventure? One important lesson: make a judgment on the truth of something based on the facts and the evidence, not based merely on whether some consensus has been reached by a small subculture of scientists. That's because such a consensus may be heavily influenced by sociological factors and economic factors within the subculture: herd effects, groupthink, group norms, group taboos, bandwagon effects, and vested interests. Like politicians and judges, scientists like to imagine themselves as impartial judges of truth, judging only on the facts. But scientists are subject to sociological influences just like other people, influences that can decisively affect their pronouncements.

6 Myths About Science, Scientists and Scientific Theory

People often toss around misconceived ideas about science, scientists, and the nature of scientific theories, whenever such an idea may serve whatever point they are trying to make. Below is a look at some of the more common examples of such misconceptions.

Myth #1: Any good scientific theory is falsifiable

This idea was advanced by the philosopher Karl Popper, and has been repeated by many others. The idea is that we can distinguish between a scientific theory and an unscientific theory or idea by asking whether or not the theory can be proven wrong, or falsified. It is argued that whenever you have a good scientific theory, you can always imagine observations that might disprove that theory, or falsify it.

But it is easy to imagine some examples of perfectly good scientific theories that are not falsifiable. The best example is the theory that extraterrestrial life exists. There is no way to falsify such a theory, because we can imagine no series of observations that would prove it wrong.

Imagine what it would take to disprove the existence of extraterrestrial life. You might think that this could be accomplished by making a survey of all planets in the universe. But there is no way that any civilization (even a civilization millions of years more advanced than ours) could make such a survey. Because of the limit of the speed of light, it would take eons to survey the planets in an entire galaxy of billions of stars. Once such a survey had been completed, there would still be billions of other galaxies to check. Surveying them all would take billions of years.

Suppose we imagine some civilization with some warp-drive that allows instantaneous travel. Even with a large fleet of warp-drive starships traveling instantaneously, it would take many millions of years to check all the planets in a universe such as ours with more than 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. After such a survey, could you then say that extraterrestrial life doesn't exist? No, because there would always be the possibility that life could have started somewhere during the eons it took to do the survey, on one of the planets that had already been checked.

So while it may be true that most scientific theories are falsifiable, it is not at all true that all scientific theories are falsifiable. The theory that life exists on other planets is a top-notch scientific theory that is not falsifiable.

Myth #2: Scientists are almost all unbiased and impartial judges of truth


I'm sure that many scientists are unbiased and impartial judges of truth, but there are reasons why many scientists far fall short of such a standard. First, let's consider sociological factors. A modern scientist belongs to a relatively small subculture subject to sociological factors such as peer pressure, group taboos, and group norms. When a scientists deviates from those group norms and group taboos, he may be subject to punishing sanctions from his peers, which may include ridicule, non-publication of papers, or denial of promotions. In some sciences we see a strong herd mentality, in which scientists tend to jump on some bandwagon which may or may not make sense to jump on. In some cases there may be a financial reward or incentive to jump on that bandwagon, and a financial penalty or sociological penalty for “running against the herd” and rejecting it. Can we suppose that in such cases our scientists act as unbiased and impartial judges of truth? Often they do not. We should not assume that scientists are more likely to be unbiased and impartial judges of truth than people in most other professions.

Consider also the case of a scientist who specializes in some theoretical area such as inflation theory or string theory or some flavor of quantum gravity. Early in his career, such a scientist is almost “betting the farm” on that theory, by taking years to study its intricacies. Once such an investment is made, that scientist becomes a vested interest. He will flourish if that theory gains support, and may flounder if the theory loses support. Is such a person going to be an objective judge about whether the theory is probably true? No, not any more than someone holding 100,000 shares of a particular company will be an objective analyst of the company's future prospects.

Myth #3: Science is whatever scientists think or assert

A good definition of science is observations and experimental data accumulated through methodical investigation, and theories that have been conclusively proven from such observations and data. Are the assertions of scientists limited to such a thing? Not at all. Scientists are people who have opinions, and those opinions are often group norms enforced by their subculture. Such norms may or may not be anything verified by observations or data.

We must distinguish between two different things: science and the opinions of scientific academia. The relation is illustrated in the Venn diagram below. Since there is too much in science to be understood by the average scientist, there is a red area outside of the purple area.

An example of an item in the blue area but not in the purple or red area is the opinion of many scientists that life arose billions of years purely because of chance chemical combinations. Such an opinion does not correspond to an observation or experiment. It's an opinion.

In quite a few cases, writers will misspeak, speaking as if things in the blue area of the diagram are things that are part of science. A writer will maintain that such and such gloomy opinion is science, because most scientists think it. But a scientist's opinions are a mixture of science, his own inclinations, and most likely the ideological norms of his particular subculture. Such norms may or may not correspond to anything that has been actually proven by facts or experiments.

Myth #4: Science is only produced by scientists, or is only what is published in scientific journals

As I stated before, science can be defined as observations and experimental data accumulated through methodical investigation, and theories that have been conclusively proven from such observations and data. Anyone today can methodically collect observations by using a camera and carefully noting facts relevant to the photos. This means that any average Joe can contribute to science, without having a science degree. 90% of the facts accumulated in a biology textbook (such as the basic facts of internal anatomy) were originated by people who did not have degrees in science, but who merely made observations and systematically recorded such observations.

Consequently, appalling as such an idea may be to some scientists, anyone who at length methodically investigates a phenomenon with sufficient diligence and honesty produces work that is as much science as some result from some fancy expensive particle accelerator, regardless of whether the phenomenon is considered paranormal. There is no sound basis for the claim that only work published in scientific journals is science. If such a standard were applied, we would have to throw out half of the facts in our science textbooks, which were originally established by researchers long ago who did not publish in scientific journals.

Myth #5: A theory that makes predictions is more worthy of respect

Science writers often claim that when a theory makes predictions, it is more worthy of respect than some other theory that does not make predictions. But this is not correct. The fact that a theory may make predictions does not mean that it is more likely to be correct than some other theory that does not make predictions. 

Consider the following example. A car strikes a pedestrian walking on the outer edge of the road. The first theory is that this was due to pure bad luck, that the driver just failed to notice the person walking on the side of the road. The second theory is that the driver was intentionally trying to kill a random victim. The first theory makes no prediction. But the second theory predicts that the driver will try such a thing again, given his homicidal nature.  Does this mean the second theory is more likely to be true? No, it doesn't. It fact, the second theory is less worthy of belief than the first theory, given that careless people are much more common than homicidal people. 

Myth #6: If scientists spend lots of time on something, then it's science

Because their small subculture is strongly subject to herd effects and groupthink, scientists may jump on a bandwagon and waste millions of taxpayer dollars and countless man-years pursuing some dubious enthusiasm, the popularity of which may persist for decades. But such activity does not necessarily mean that the underlying theory is actually science. Science is not automatically what scientists have long labored on – it is only what they have proven.