Healthy, Semi-Healthy and Unhealthy Ways Scientists Can Respond to Evidence and Arguments Against Their Theories

Scientists love to create and defend theories that they claim are solutions to grand mysteries of nature. For a certain type of creative scientist, it is a very enjoyable activity to create a new theory that can be proclaimed as some grand solution to a long-standing mystery of nature. Other scientists (often much less creative scientists) love to play the role of defending some popular theory against challenges. How do such scientists respond to people presenting evidence and arguments against their beloved theories? There are healthy types of responses, semi-healthy types of responses, and  unhealthy types of responses. 

Healthy Response #1: The Simple Sparse Auxiliary Hypothesis

An auxiliary hypothesis is something added to a theory to handle some objection. When an auxiliary hypothesis is simple and rather sparse, then adding it to a theory need not damage the theory's credibility.  For example, suppose you have the theory that UFOs are spaceships from another planet. Then suppose someone objects that most reported UFOs are not all that big, but that to accomplish interstellar travel would require a spaceship that is very big. You can respond to this objection by introducing a fairly sparse auxiliary hypothesis. You simply maintain that when UFOs are seen, they are usually smaller exploratory craft which come from a much larger unseen "mother ship" large enough to travel across interstellar space.  That's a fairly sparse auxiliary hypothesis that seems rather plausible. Humans themselves have experience in building landing craft that are moved around by larger units designed purely for traveling through space. For example, the rover vehicles that NASA lands on Mars are carried to Mars by much larger craft.  The rockets on a rover vehicle are purely for landing on Mars, and don't take the rover vehicle to Mars. 

Unhealthy Response #1: The Extravagant or Overweight Auxiliary Hypothesis, Introduced for Purely "Ad Hoc" Reasons

An unhealthy response by a scientist can occur if he tries to defend his theory by introducing some hypothesis that can be called extravagant or overweight. For example, when astrophysicists were confronted with observations suggesting that the existing theory of gravitation did not correctly predict the rotation speed of stars around the centers of galaxies, astrophysicists created the theory of dark matter, which postulated that the average galaxy is surrounded by a halo of invisible matter heavier than all the matter in such a galaxy. This was a purely "ad hoc" auxiliary hypothesis. The Standard Model of Physics gave no warrant for believing in such invisible dark matter. The dark matter hypothesis meant having to resort to a claim that most of the matter in the universe is invisible, an extravagant claim.  A similar situation occurred when astrophysicists responded to a claimed discovery that the universe's expansion was accelerating. Astrophysicists then introduced the "ad hoc" hypothesis of dark energy, that almost all of the mass-energy in the universe is some invisible type of mass-energy called dark energy. The Standard Model of Physics gave no warrant for believing in such invisible dark energy. For a discussion of how dark matter and dark energy claims seem to be examples of unhealthy scientific activity, you can read the paper here. Nowadays the worst example of an extravagant "ad hoc" auxiliary hypothesis is the claim of the multiverse, that there are an infinite or near-infinite number of universes.  Such a hypothesis was introduced solely for the "ad hoc" reason of trying to explain away evidence that our universe has very precise fine-tuning of a type that no random universe would ever have.  The claim of a multiverse actually does nothing to explain away such evidence, for reasons discussed here and here. 

Unhealthy Response #2: Dismiss the Evidence or Case Against the Theory by Claiming That It Is the Reigning Theory

This occurs when a scientist responds to some evidence or case against his theory by appealing to its popularity. Often this unhealthy response occurs in combination with unwarranted or unsubstantiated claims about the popularity of the theory. Scientists are notorious about abusing the word "consensus" in referring to theories. Consensus is a word with multiple meanings, and may be defined as either a unanimous agreement in which everyone holds the same opinion, or merely something believed by a majority. Claims of a consensus of scientific opinion in support of a theory are usually poorly founded and often inaccurate. The only way to reliably measure the opinion of scientists is to do well-designed secret ballot polls including "I don't know" options, and such polls are almost never done.  A scientist claiming a consensus in favor of his theory will typically not even have convincing evidence that most scientists believe in his theory. 

Unhealthy Response #3: Dismiss the Evidence or Case Against the Theory by Claiming That There Is No Substitute Explanation

This occurs when a scientist responds to some evidence or case against his theory by claiming or implying or insinuating that we must keep believing in the theory because there is no other explanation for what the theory tries to explain.  This usually involves the fallacious assumption that scientists cannot go from saying "I understand this phenomenon by means of a theory popular among scientists" to saying "scientists once thought they understood this matter, but now it is clear they do not." There is no reason why such a transition cannot occur, and when such transitions do occur, it is a sign that science is acting in a healthy way.  Often the "there's no alternative" claim is untrue, and the situation is that there is an alternative, but one that scientists would prefer not to believe. For example, it may be claimed that there's no alternative to believing that humans evolved through an accumulation of random mutations. There certainly are alternatives, such as believing that man originated with the help of purposeful activity by a superhuman power. 

Semi-Healthy Response #1: Make a "Not Very Worried" Response to the Evidence or Case Against the Theory 

This occurs when a scientist confesses that there is some force or truth in the evidence or case against the theory, and then tries to minimize the problem by describing this conflict as a mere "potential problem" for the theory, or perhaps a "cloud on the horizon" for the theory, or a "possible worry for the theory." 

Semi-Healthy Response #2: Make a "We're Working on a Fix" Response to the Evidence or Case Against the Theory 

This occurs when a scientist confesses that there is some force or truth in the evidence or case against the theory, and then tries to minimize the problem by claiming that work is underway to fix the problem. 

Semi-Healthy Response #3: Vaguely Claim That the Evidence Against the Theory Is Exciting  

This occurs when a scientist tries to "make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" by confessing that there is some force or truth in the evidence or case against the theory, but claims that this is "exciting" because it hints at interesting depths of nature that scientists will one day day be able to figure out. 

 

Healthy Response #2: Confess That the Evidence or Case Against the Theory Is Strong, and That the Theory Is Deeply Deficient  

One healthy form of concession is to admit that there is some force or truth in the evidence or case against the theory, and to concede that the theory has severe problems and may not be correct. 

Healthy Response #3: Confess That the Evidence or Case Against the Theory Is Strong, and the Theory Is Probably Wrong  

Another healthy form of concession is to admit that there is some force or truth in the evidence or case against the theory, and to concede that the theory has severe problems and probably is not correct. 

Healthy Response #4: Confess That the Evidence or Case Against the Theory Is Strong, and Create a New Theory to Replace It

Although this response often results in the creation of new theories that are just as bad as the old discredited theory, this type of response is basically healthy. 

Healthy Response #5: Confess That the Evidence or Case Against the Theory Is Strong, and Strip Down the Theory to Make It Less Pretentious

Another healthy response to evidence against a theory is to restate the theory so that it claims to explain much less than originally claimed. Scientists very rarely practice this healthy response. A good example was when Alfred Russel Wallace published his essay "The Limits of Natural Selection as Applied to Man."  Wallace was the co-founder of the theory of evolution, which he originally seemed to regard as a general explanation for the origin of species such as man. But around 1869 Wallace was being exposed to massive evidence for paranormal events that could not be explained by such a theory. Wallace responded with his essay "The Limits of Natural Selection as Applied to Man," making it clear that the theory of natural selection was not an explanation for any of the higher mental faculties of man. He in effect said, "Evolution explains much less than many previously said it did."  His wise response has been senselessly ignored by biologists, who continue to make groundless extravagant claims that natural selection explains almost all biology origins. 

Unhealthy Response #4: Simply Ignore the Evidence or Case Against the Theory

We see this response massively from neuroscientists who have the theory that the human mind is merely the result of the brain. There is a gigantic mountain of evidence for human mental abilities that cannot be explained by brain activity. Such evidence has been published for literally centuries.  Some examples can be found here, here and here.  To give one of very many examples I could list, the published evidence is overwhelming that in the nineteenth century Alexis Didier displayed powers of clairvoyance utterly beyond any possible neural explanation. Below is a quote from Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-founder of the theory of evolution, on page 245 of the December 22, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist:

" Dr. Edwin Lee, a well-known physician, in his book on  Animal Magnetism, has given, from personal observation, a minute account of the clairvoyance, of Alexis [Didier] at Brighton, which occupies twenty-five pages. Among a great variety of most remarkable tests, he frequently read passages in books brought at random a number of pages in advance of the page opened, but at the level of a line indicated. Numbers of these tests are recorded, the words read always being found at the level indicated, but not always at the exact number of pages in advance asked for. The evidence for this, as well as for many other forms of clairvoyance, is overwhelming, and the tests applied of the most varied and stringent character."

How do neuroscientists respond to all the evidence for ESP and clairvoyance? They simply ignore it. They show zero signs of having seriously studied such evidence. The few that mention such evidence will typically resort to the next item on my list. 

Unhealthy Response #5: Make Unfair or "Ad Hominem" Attacks Against Those Presenting the Evidence or Case Against the Theory, Perhaps Resorting to Stereotyping, Gaslighting or Character Assassination 

This type of "blame, shame and defame" response occurs massively. Scientists have long engaged in "ad hominem" attacks against those criticizing their theories or those who helped to produce evidence against their theories.  This often involves unfair stereotyping in which careful scholars and witnesses are dismissed as kooks or mentally disturbed. Then there are various rhetorical tactics in which attempts are made to associate critics of a theory with some other people who may hold some belief unacceptable to scientists.  

Unhealthy Response #6: Dismiss the Evidence or Case Against the Theory, on the Grounds That It Did Not Appear in a Peer-Reviewed Paper

When scientists use this response they sound like some Catholic priest saying "I can't accept your criticisms of Catholicism because they were not published in the Catholic Quarterly." The idea that evidence and reasoning can be ignored because it did not appear in a peer-reviewed paper is one of the most unhealthy and nonsensical responses a scientist can make to criticisms of his theory. Once a theory becomes very popular within some academic community, the theory may become a cherished orthodoxy within some little belief community of scientists; and peer reviewers may then deny publication to papers challenging the theory that is "all the rage" in their little tribe. Under such conditions we would not expect reasoning challenging the thinking of experts of a particular type to be approved by peer reviewers who are experts of that type.  Moreover, it is folly to be thinking that sound reasoning and sound evidence only shows up in peer-reviewed papers.  In fact, in quite a few scientific specialties, peer reviewers allow an abundance of very poor studies and groundless speculative papers to be published.  Nothing could be more fallacious than to insinuate that something is good quality because it is peer-reviewed, or that something is not good quality because it is not peer-reviewed.  

The Untrue "All Scientific Theories Are Falsifiable" Claim Is Merely a Rhetorical Device

On Thursday physicist Sabine Hossenfelder published a blog post pushing the dogma that all scientific theories have to be falsifiable. The post had this dogmatic title: “Yes, scientific theories have to be falsifiable. Why do we even have to talk about this?” Since Hossenfelder gives not a single reason for believing that all scientific theories must be falsifiable, we may wonder why she is confident about this claim, so confident that she asks, “Why do we even have to talk about this?” She claims that all hypotheses that are not “falsifiable through observation” are hypotheses that “belong into the realm of religion.” Rather than trying to present any reasons for believing this strange claim, she states, “That much is clear, and I doubt any scientist would disagree with that.” Such a claim is neither clear nor logical, and there are many scientists and philosophers who would disagree with it.

To disprove the idea that scientific theories have to be falsifiable, you need merely provide some examples of important scientific theories that could never be falsified. It is very easy to do this. Let's start with one of the most widely discussed and best-loved theories of modern times, the theory that life exists on some other planet. There is no way to falsify this theory, because the universe is too big.

The universe consists of billions of galaxies, and in each of these galaxies there are millions or billions of stars. Astronomers believe that planets are extremely common, and that a large fraction of all stars have planets. What would you need to do to falsify the belief that extraterrestrial life exists? You might think that you could do this in theory by launching some grand fleet of spaceships to search all planets. But such a task would be impossible. There would be too many planets to search, and it would take too long. The speed of light limits travel to other stars. So some grand fleet of spaceships would require billions of years to search all of the other planets in the universe.

Suppose that after, say, five billion years of exploration such a massive fleet of spaceships still reported no signs of extraterrestrial life. Would that falsify the theory that extraterrestrial life exists? It certainly would not. For in the billions of years that such an expedition had been operating, it would always be possible that extraterrestrial life had appeared in one of the places that had already been searched. So searching every single extraterrestrial planet in the universe for life (without finding any) would absolutely not falsify the claim that extraterrestrial life exists.

Galaxies (Credit: NASA)

Could we imagine, perhaps, that such an expedition might place cameras on every planet that it searched, to try to send back to Earth a signal allowing us to say that at this current moment none of them have life? That wouldn't work, because there is no signal that can travel faster than the speed of light. So, for example, if we got a signal from some camera that had been left on some planet 130,000,000 light-years away, and the camera showed no life, that would only prove that part of the planet did not have life 130,000,000 years ago. It would not prove that the planet does not now have life. Nor would it even prove that 130,000,000 years ago the planet had no life, for the planet might have life in some place that the camera was not observing. Besides the fact that you can't get live “showing it as it is right now” signals from planets many light-years away, there is the difficulty that you can't fill a planet with cameras, and there's all kinds of life that cannot be detected with cameras.

Very clearly, the important scientific theory that life exists on other planets is a theory that is not falsifiable. This simple fact destroys the credibility of the claim that a scientific theory has to be falsifiable. There is no logical need to write anything further on the topic. But just for the sake of overkill, I will give some further examples of scientific theories that are not falsifiable.

Another example of a very popular and widely discussed theory is the theory of natural abiogenesis, which is the theory that life naturally arose from non-life. It is theoretically quite possible to get a result supporting this theory. If a lab that was simulating early Earth conditions reported that life had spontaneously arisen from chemicals, that would be evidence supporting the theory of natural abiogenesis. But it is quite impossible to falsify the theory of natural abiogenesis. Even if you did a billion years of experiments trying to produce life from lab chemicals, and none of them were successful, that still would not prove that life had not arisen from chemicals because of some incredibly unlikely once-in-a-galaxy rare event.

A large class of scientific theories that cannot be falsified are those which describe realities on which our existence depends. Human biological existence has very many physical dependencies, so there ends up being quite a few theories describing realities on which our existence depends. To give one example, our existence depends on a strong nuclear force that binds together protons and neutrons in the nucleus of an atom. There is a theory corresponding to this reality, the theory that there exists a force that causes protons to be bound together in the nucleus, despite the very strong electromagnetic repulsion of their positive charges. Could we falsify this theory? No, we could not. We could only falsify it by observing that something on which our existence depends does not exist. But that could never happen.  Similarly, the theory of electromagnetism is a theory describing the basic electrical repulsion and attraction on which biological chemistry depends. We cannot falsify such a theory, since that would involve observing the nonexistence of something that is a prerequisite for our existence.

Some other fundamental theories are the kinetic theory of matter (that gas consists of small particles in motion), the cellular theory of life (that cells are the fundamental building blocks of life), and the atomic theory of matter (that atoms are the basic building blocks of life). None of these theories can be falsified. Having made countless observations showing such realities, there is no way that future observations will refute them. We cannot imagine any observations that would cause us to believe that gases do not consist of moving tiny particles, or any observations that would cause us to believe that living things are not made up of cells, or any observations that would cause us to believe that rocks are not made of atoms.

The common expression “you can't prove a negative” is largely correct in suggesting that very many theories cannot be disproved or falsified. For example, you can prove that someone masturbates, but cannot prove that he does not masturbate.

Instead of the principle “a scientific theory must be falsifiable,” a much better principle is “a scientific theory should be either verifiable or falsifiable.” In general, any theory that is either verifiable or falsifiable can be considered a scientific theory. The theory of extraterrestrial life is a scientific theory, because we can easily imagine some simple observational events that would verify it. The theory of natural abiogenesis is a scientific theory because we can easily imagine some simple observational events that could verify it. 

The silly idea that a scientific theory must be falsifiable is one that was advanced by philosopher of science Karl Popper, because of ideological considerations. People such as Popper wanted to stigmatize theories that they disliked. So they advanced the strange, illogical idea that a scientific theory must be falsifiable, hoping that it would help brand certain types of theories and experimental inquiry as being unscientific.

And so, while scientists such as Joseph Rhine were piling up strong experimental evidence for the existence of ESP,  as discussed here, thinkers such as Karl Popper were trying to sell the idea that a scientific theory must be falsifiable. This was ideologically convenient. It could now be claimed that the theory that ESP exists is not scientific, since there is no way that it could be falsified (even a million negative ESP tests would not prove that ESP does not sometimes occur). This kind of effort makes no sense, for the same sword invented to kill ESP kills just as effectively the theory of extraterrestrial life, the theory of natural abiogenesis, the kinetic theory of matter, and quite a few other things that ESP-loathing scientists may prefer to believe in.

I may note that a principle that Scientific American attributes to philosopher of science Karl Popper, the claim that “pseudo-science seeks confirmations and science seeks falsifications,” is bunk and fantasy. Mainstream scientists typically spend most of their time searching for confirmations, and spend almost no time looking to falsify their favorite theories. Typical mainstream scientists spend almost no time attempting to falsify the theories they most love, and they are also extremely bad about examining evidence that seems to contradict such theories. So, for example, neuroscientists spend endless hours trying to confirm their dogmas about brains storing memories and brains producing thoughts, but they pay almost no attention to the many facts that argue against such claims. Modern science academia is a conformity culture with cherished dogmas, and it is a culture that punishes and stigmatizes heretics and contrarian thinkers who attempt to discredit those dogmas. This is the exact opposite of an approach centered around falsification. The fact that scientists aren't very interested in falsifying things is shown by the fact that scientists find it is hard to even find a journal that will publish their negative experimental results (as discussed here), and also by the fact that when someone writes a scientific paper presenting evidence against a dogma cherished by scientists, he may find his paper retracted by a journal purely because the paper is daring to question a sacred cow (as happened in this case). 

Karl Popper's essay “Science as Falsification” is a very revealing one, because it makes quite clear that Popper's claim about falsification was not at all something that came from a study of the way scientists actually behave, but was instead a claim that was contrived for the sake of a creating a weapon against a few theories Popper didn't like. Popper makes clear in the paper that he was bothered by the popularity of three theories: Freud's theory of psychoanalysis, Marx's theory of economics and history, and Adler's theory of psychology. Popper reveals in his essay that he invented his theory of falsification to combat such theories. It was actually a poor weapon against Marx's theory and Freud's theory, both of which actually are falsifiable. Freud's theory could be falsified if people became much crazier by going to Freudian psychotherapists, and Marx's theory could be falsified if capitalist countries all became blissfully happy and Marxist countries all became miserable failures.

The whole idea of creating a theory of how science works (“science as falsification”) based on a desire to create a weapon against theories you don't like is one that made no sense at all. Just as Marx and Freud were dogmatic thinkers who got far more influence than they deserved, Popper was a thinker who got far more attention than he deserved. Popper was bothered that the Marxists and Freudians claimed to see confirmations that weren't really confirmations. If people are claiming confirming evidence that isn't really there, a good way to handle that is to advocate tighter standards for confirming evidence, and to show how particular claims of confirming evidence are unfounded – not to be making untrue claims suggesting science is all about falsification rather than confirmation. Were we to follow Popper's bizarre claims such as “confirming evidence should not count except when..it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory,” we would have to throw out a large fraction of the scientific results in textbooks.

Rather obviously untrue, the claim that scientific theories are all falsifiable is simply a rhetorical device, one that is occasionally trotted out by people as an argumentative weapon to use against theories they don't want to believe in (sometimes theories for which there is a great deal of evidence). It's a very ineffective weapon, because it's so easy to find examples of respected scientific theories that are not falsifiable. 

General Reasons for Doubting Most Scientific Theories

In this blog I have often stated specific reasons for doubting particular scientific theories. In this post I will write more generally, and discuss some reasons why most scientific theories should be held as doubtful, rather than ideas that are very probably true.

Reason #1: Most scientific theories are underdetermined, and a scientific theory usually is no better than rival theories called “empirical equivalents” that could explain the facts or make predictions equally well.

There are in academia quite a few highly intelligent thinkers who have widespread doubt about the reliability of scientific theories. Such thinkers are often philosophers of science. Philosophers of science have often said that most scientific theories are underdetermined. A theory is said to be underdetermined if there is not sufficient evidence to establish its truth. A scientific theory is said to be underdetermined when there are no observations allowing us to tell that such a theory is true rather than other rival theories that can explain observations equally well. Such theories are called “empirical equivalents.” You can find out more about this topic by doing a Google search for “underdetermination of scientific theory.” The article here gives a detailed discussion of the topic.

In many cases, we can readily think of alternate theories to explain the things that a scientific theory was created to explain. For example, we can easily imagine a rival to the theory that man appeared by evolving from lower species : a theory that humanity was specifically introduced to our planet with help from visiting extraterrestrials. In other cases, we may not be able to readily think of a rival theory to a scientific theory. But in such a case there are typically five or ten possible theories that could be imagined by someone willing to expend enough time thinking up alternatives. When we can't think of some rival theory that might be an empirical equivalent to some popular scientific theory, this usually just reflects the weakness of our imagination, not a lack of possible alternatives.

Reason #2: Most scientific theories are not top-notch theories and do not make precise numerical predictions that have been repeatedly verified.

There is a small group of scientific theories (which we may call top-notch theories) that make precise numerical predictions that have been repeatedly verified. Examples include the theory of general relativity, the theory of electromagnetism, and the theory of quantum mechanics. These theories rightfully enjoy high prestige. For example, it's rather impressive if a theory predicts that a particular comet will pass by Earth so close that it can be seen with the naked eye on January 13, 2038, and such a thing does happen on exactly that day.

However, it must be remembered that the vast majority of scientific theories do not make precise numerical predictions that have been repeatedly verified. Most scientific theories make no exact numerical predictions at all. Other scientific theories make exact numerical predictions that have never been verified.

Just as we should not let the accomplishments of some geniuses in New York City make us assume that most New Yorkers are geniuses, we should not let the predictive successive of a small number of scientific theories lead us to the impression that most scientific theories are precisely and successfully predictive. Most scientific theories are not any such thing.

Reason #3: Many scientific theories conflict with other respected scientific theories or conflict with one or more observed facts.

It is not at all true that scientists offer only one scientific theory to explain each type of phenomena. In many cases there are multiple scientific theories that offer rival explanations for the same phenomena. For example, both the Modified Newtonian Dynamics theory (MOND) and the dark matter theory offer rival explanations to account for stellar behavior. In some cases, two widely accepted theories may conflict with each other. For example, it if often said that the theory of general relativity and the theory of quantum mechanics conflict with each other. 

It is also true that a large fraction of scientific theories conflict with one or more observed facts. For example, Neo-Darwinism (which predicts very gradual evolution) conflicts with the fact of the Cambrian Explosion in which most of the animal phyla appeared rather suddenly in the fossil record. The theory that brains create minds conflicts with the fact that when epilepsy patients have a hemispherectomy operation (involving the removal of half of the brain to stop seizures), there is little effect on either intelligence or memory.

The proponents of a scientific theory will always bring to our attention any cases of observations that seem to support the theory, and avoid mentioning any observed fact that conflicts with the theory.

Reason #4: Once a scientific theory becomes popular, its drawbacks and failures are swept under the rug, and its successes are exaggerated.

Once a scientific theory becomes the most popular scientific account to explain something, that theory starts getting treated the way a Republican president gets treated on Fox News (or like a Democratic president gets treated on MSNBC). The failures and drawbacks of the theory are rarely discussed, but any apparent successes of the theory are trumpeted and exaggerated. An example is the Big Bang theory. We hear frequently about how the theory successfully explains the expansion of the universe and the cosmic background radiation. But we very rarely hear about how the Big Bang fails to predict a universe consisting of very little antimatter. In fact, the Big Bang theory predicts a universe with equal amounts of matter and antimatter, and we live in no such thing. 

After reading a balanced, objective account of the pros and cons of the most popular scientific theories, one that realistically discussed all the problems with such theories, your overall confidence in scientific theories would be substantially weakened.

Reason #5: It is easy to use “tricks of the trade” to get what may seem like some empirical support for a scientific theory, even if the theory is wrong.

A typical scientific theory will have some proponents who present this or that reason for accepting the theory. But we should not believe in the likely truth of some theory because some proponent has gathered a few facts to support it, or presented some experimental data that may seem to point in its favor. We should always remember that there are more than 15 different ways in which a scientist or a science writer may lead you to believe something is true even though the evidence for it is poor. Some of these ways are discussed in my long post “The Building Blocks of Bad Science Literature.”

Among the shady tactics used by over-eager scientists and science writers are the following:

• Cherry-picking data to support a conclusion (discussing only items in support of the conclusion, and ignoring things that conflict with the conclusion).
• Click-bait headlines that announce things different from what a scientific paper actually showed.
• Scientific papers done using too-small sample sizes, so that there is a very high chance that the announced result is a false alarm.
• Misleading visuals such as brain scan visuals that suggest some brain part is dramatically more involved during some activity, even though the actual variation is only 1% or less.
• Dubious Monte Carlo simulations in which some computer experiment reveals a result that largely just reflects the assumptions of the person who programmed it.
• Improper exclusion of alternative explanations, in which some researcher leads you to believe that some particular thing must be the cause of some experimental or observational result, failing to discuss alternate reasonable explanations that might plausibly explain the result in a different way.
• Data dredging in which some experimental data is put through dubious statistical transformations until some trace of “statistical significance” is found.
• Cases in which statisticians were requested to do dubious things by scientific researchers (surprisingly common according to one recent investigation).

A researcher armed with many thousands of dollars of grant money and a wide variety of such “tricks of the trade” will have little trouble dredging up some superficial evidence that seems to support his pet theory, no matter how far-fetched it may be. Similarly, if you give an astrologer $100,000 in research money, a wealth of data sets, and some good computer equipment and analytic software, there is a good chance he will be able to produce a few results that may suggest that there is some truth behind astrology.

Reason #6: Scientists grind out scientific theories almost as commonly as bloggers grind out blog posts.

Occasionally you will hear someone say that while it is easy for a scientist to present a hypothesis, it is very, very hard to produce a theory, because “a scientific theory is something that has been well-established by evidence.” This claim does not use a correct definition of the term “scientific theory.” Scientists use the word “theory” the same way as ordinary people do, to mean a hypothetical explanation of something. The claim that scientists only call something a theory when it is well-established by evidence is disproved by the fact that one of the main theories of physics is universally called “string theory,” and it is admitted even by string theorists that there is currently no empirical evidence for string theory.

A modern theoretical physicist may churn out five or ten theories a year. Since there are thousands of theoretical physicists, and thousands of biological and psychological theorists, you have a situation in which scientific theories are rather "a dime a dozen." 

When Scientific Theorists Use “Prestige by Association” Ploys

There is a persuasion technique that we can call “prestige by association.” The technique is used by someone who tries to give himself extra prestige by associating himself with someone or something more respected, famous, rich, successful or admired. Below are some examples:

1. A person who runs a not-very-reputable investment company will be careful to collect any pictures he can get of himself with well-known or respected people, and to display such pictures as framed photos visible to anyone who comes to his office.
2. A president or political candidate who dodged military service will favor “photo ops” in which he is seen side-by-side with military heroes.
3. A person who had some remote connection with a respected institution will make much mention of this thin connection. For example, a person who merely graduated from a community college, but who later wrote a short article in some magazine published by Harvard may frequently refer to himself as a “Harvard-published author.”
4. An author publishing some nonsensical claims in a book may tell us that the book now resides in the Library of Congress, a claim that may impress people who do not realize that anyone can submit to the Library of Congress a book as long as it is 50 pages long.
5. If your friend knows someone who knows movie star Jennifer Lawrence, your friend may try to trumpet this connection, almost making you think that he is one of Jennifer Lawrence's inner circle – even if Jennifer would never be able to recognize him.

The same “prestige by association” tricks are often used by scientific theorists trying to build up the reputation of some doubtful scientific theory. The strategy is to make your dubious scientific theory sound more credible by trying to establish some association or mental link with some other scientific theory that has more prestige. Below are some examples of how this “prestige by association” trick was used by various theorists:

1. When some theorists advanced the extremely dubious idea that human behavior is strongly influenced or largely controlled by genes, they christened this implausible theory “behavioral genetics,” thereby trying to borrow some of the prestige of the well-established science known as genetics.
2. When theorist Gerald Edelman advanced a complex speculative theory of the brain, he labeled it “Neural Darwinism,” trying to get some prestige by association. But the theory bears little resemblance to anything taught by Darwin.
3. When theoretical physicist Lee Smolin advanced some weird theory that new universes are being formed when black holes collapse, he called this theory “cosmological natural selection,” trying to get some prestige by association from the biological theory of natural selection (even though there is scarcely any resemblance between his non-biological theory and doctrines about natural selection in biology).
4. Theorists trying to bolster the prestige of the Darwinian theory of the origin of species by natural selection will often discuss that theory while discussing very prestigious theories such as special relativity and the theory of electromagnetism that make precise numerical predictions that have been exactly verified. The aim is to leave the reader with the impression that Darwinism is in the same class with such exact mathematical theories. No mention will be made of the fact that Darwinism, unlike such theories, does not make exact numerical predictions that have been verified.
5. The theory of cosmic inflation is a separate theory from the Big Bang theory. The Big Bang theory maintains that the universe arose from an incredibly dense state 13 billion years ago, possibly from a state of infinite density. The cosmic inflation theory is a theory that the universe underwent a super-short phase of exponential expansion during a tiny fraction of its first second. The evidence for the Big Bang theory is pretty good, but there is no good evidence for the cosmic inflation theory. Repeatedly the proponents of the cosmic inflation theory have tried to play “prestige by association” tricks by trying to get people to conflate the fairly well-established Big Bang theory with the purely speculative cosmic inflation theory. They do this by describing the cosmic inflation theory as “the modern version of the Big Bang theory” or “the current version of the Big Bang theory.” Such claims are inaccurate, as the Big Bang theory and the cosmic inflation theory are two separate theories, and evidence establishing the first is not evidence establishing the second. Similarly, proponents of the cosmic inflation theory may refer to it as “the inflationary Big Bang theory,” trying to give their speculative cosmic inflation theory some of the credibility of the Big Bang theory.

Recently the press office of Stanford University has given us another example of scientific theorists playing “prestige by association” games. We have an article in which the author tries to give the completely groundless and entirely speculative “string theory landscape” theory some “prestige by association” by linking it to the Big Bang theory. The article states, “The latest draft of the scientific story of genesis is called the String Theory Landscape,” as if the “string theory landscape” theory was some version of the Big Bang theory. This is entirely false. The “string theory landscape” theory is not a theory of the origin of the universe, and is not a version of the Big Bang theory.

The article also tries to give a much-needed prestige boost to string theory by trying to link it or associate it with the cosmic inflation theory. There are two reasons why this attempt is absurd. The first is that it's a case of trying to bolster the prestige of one empirically groundless theory by associating it with another empirically groundless theory. For just as there is no evidence for string theory, there is no evidence for the cosmic inflation theory (not to be confused with the more general Big Bang theory). So if you're a string theorist trying to bolster your prestige by associating your theory with cosmic inflation theory, it's kind of like some Big Foot theorist trying to bolster his prestige by joining forces with a Loch Ness monster theorist.

Another reason the attempt to bolster the prestige of string theory by associating it with cosmic inflation theory is laughable is that the two theories are unrelated. Cosmic inflation theorists have churned out nearly 1000 different papers giving versions of cosmic inflation theory, and virtually none of these papers ever relied on the assumptions of string theory. String theorists have churned out more than 1000 different papers giving versions of string theory, and virtually none of these relied on the assumptions of cosmic inflation theory. A New Scientist story talks about a study that “suggests it may be difficult to reconcile string theory with the widely accepted theory of inflation.” It quotes a Princeton scientist saying, “I think the fact that it is difficult to combine inflation and string theory is very interesting.”

The Stanford University article gives us this bad reasoning:

This diversity, they say, is key to explaining certain baffling features of our universe, like the fact that several parameters in physics and cosmology appear to be curiously fine-tuned for life forms like us to exist. Perhaps the most glaring example is the cosmological constant, which relates to a universal repulsive force that is pushing space-time apart. Physicists have struggled to explain why the tiny value of this constant just happens to lie within the narrow band that allows stars and planets to form and biological life to evolve. But if there are innumerable universes, each with differing laws of physics, then it should not be surprising that we inhabit one where the cosmological constant is small – if things were any different, we could not exist to marvel at the coincidence.

But actually, it should be incredibly surprising that we inhabit a universe where some vastly improbable set of coincidences occurred, because you don't change the likelihood of such coincidences occurring in any one of those universes by imagining other universes. The likelihood of something very improbable happening in any one random trial does not change by increasing the number of trials (for example, your probability of winning a million dollars at a Las Vegas casino is not increased the slightest if there are a trillion universes filled with casinos). So imagining the “innumerable universes” other than ours is pointless. What's happened is that our string theorists have made an elementary error in logic, confusing the likelihood of “some universe” being fine-tuned for life with the likelihood of “our universe” being fine-tuned for life.

Such elementary errors in logic are not rare among PhD's, such as when biologists suggest that natural selection is the cause of complex biological innovations, when there is no natural selection effect related to a biological innovation (no “survival of the fittest” effect) until after that biological innovation appears. This is the elementary reasoning error of maintaining that a consequence of an effect is the cause of that effect, which is kind of like reasoning that the thundercloud appeared because the city street got soaked by the thunderstorm. We must always remember that a man who has a PhD is just as prone to commit elementary reasoning errors as someone who does not have a PhD. Our different tribes of scientists (such as the string theory tribe)  are belief communities just as much as the Amish and Sikhs and Scientologists are belief communities, and in many a belief community bad reasoning can be so normalized that it may be hard for a member of the community to see how large a logic error he may have committed.

String theory maintains there are 10 or more dimensions of space. This idea has flunked a recent observational test. A recent headline reports, “University of Chicago astronomers found no evidence for extra spatial dimensions to the universe based on the gravitational wave data.”

LIGO gravitational wave detector

Postscript: Stanford University has now completed its five part goofy exposition of the Fake Physics of the "string theory landscape."  Its more laughable parts include:

(1) Scientist Andrei Linde babbling about infinite copies of you in the multiverse. 

(2) A scientist named Dimopoulos making the silly claim that the "richness" of string theory "tells you that there are many universes."

(3) The claim that the "string theory landscape" with 10 to the five hundredth power universes "elegantly explains why the universe appears to be so eerily fine-tuned for life."  The theory doesn't do that, and if you look up the definition of "elegant" you will see that in a scientific context it means a solution that is simple; but nothing could be less simple than imagining 10 to the five hundredth power universes. 

There's a lesson you should derive from the third example (which repeats an untruth discussed here). It is that when scientists say something about one of their theories, the exact opposite may be true. So a theory described as "brilliant" by a scientist may be very stupid; and a theory described as "proven" by a scientist may be groundless and inconsistent with observations. 

Real physics involves equations, and there is no way to ever write an equation that yields another universe or a multiverse.  You never get another universe doing real physics calculations. Multiverse fantasists may try to impress us by writing papers with equations, but none of their equations ever yields another universe after the equal sign. 

How to Get Your Weak Scientific Theory Accepted

Imagine you create some scientific theory, and you want the theory to be generally accepted in some corner of the academic world. You might think that this is an incredibly hard task, requiring that you both come up with a new theory and somehow marshal convincing evidence showing that the theory is correct. But it may not be so hard. The world of scientific academia is often not a world of dispassionate judges weighing evidence with great objectivity. It is often a world in which sociological effects, psychological effects and ideology play a large role. So the path to getting the academic world to accept your theory may not be so difficult, and there are techniques you might use to get even a very weak or dubious theory accepted by the academic world.

The first step is to get some scientific paper published describing your weak theory. This is not particularly hard to do, because there are ways to make weak ideas seem rather impressive-sounding. The first way (very commonly used) is to load almost every paragraph of your paper with dense, all-but-impenetrable technical jargon. Such jargon will impress lesser reviewers of your paper.

The second way to make your weak theory sound rather impressive is to load up your paper with obscure mathematics. You need not worry that anyone will complain that the mathematics were irrelevant, for almost no one makes such a complaint about scientific papers, even when the mathematics is absurdly extraneous. The all-but-incomprehensible math in your paper may impress some peer reviewers of your paper, giving them the impression that your weak theory is a weighty intellectual contribution.

Once your paper is published, you will need to start leveraging the popular press, so that some articles about your theory will appear in magazines and online web sites. The first step is to get your college or university to release a fawning press release trumpeting your weak scientific paper and claiming that it is a stunning breakthrough. This is very easy to do. The writers of university press releases are a very compliant lot, and will be unlikely to challenge your extravagant claims. The rule for university press releases seems to be that it is okay to trumpet utterly far-fetched claims, as long as such claims somehow seem to shed glory and prestige on the university.

Then you may have to reach out to some science journalists to get them to write about your weak scientific paper. This is not very hard to do. Today's science journalists are very often docile and compliant “pom-pom journalists” eager to repeat any claim you may make to have achieved a “stunning theoretical breakthrough.” There will be very little chance that the science journalists you contact will subject your claims to much critical scrutiny.

Having got some press coverage, you now need to reach out to a few of your pals in the academic world, to get them to make supportive comments about your weak theory. This will probably not be very hard, as the world of academia has countless “I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine” relationships. If you have been a professor for many years, you probably know quite a few people who owe you favors, such as people whose books you favorably commented on.

You can then start using authority techniques, by calling your weak theory “science.” Using such verbiage will be like sprinkling magic fairy dust, and will cause many a person to start treating your weak theory with great respect. If someone objects, claiming that science is best defined as facts that have been determined by observation and experiment, and that there are no such facts substantiating your weak theory, you can respond by presenting an alternate definition: the much looser definition (recently stated by a scientist blogger) that science is simply whatever scientists are working on. Of course, under such a definition every weak theory published in a scientific journal is “science.” 

The next step requires audacity. The idea is to start claiming that your theory is starting to achieve mass acceptance among your little tribe of scientific peers. There are various artful expressions you can use to make such a claim. For example, you can say that “a consensus is starting to emerge” that your theory is correct, or that “a growing number of experts” are adopting your theory. No one will be likely to challenge these claims, which are hard to verify.

The next step requires even more audacity. At some point you can stick your neck out and claim that there is now a consensus of experts in your field who believe that your theory is correct. Such a claim will be difficult or impossible to verify, but it will have enormous force and power from the sociological perspective of the bandwagon effect. If people hear such a claim repeated enough times, then your theory will get all kinds of new supporters who never would have adopted it, but who will now adopt it just because they want to run in the direction they think the herd is running. No one wants to be in defiance of a consensus of experts. So countless people will flock to your weak theory the moment they hear that there is a consensus of experts in favor of your theory, even if no such consensus has really developed. Claims that a consensus of experts has agreed on something often are kind of self-fulfilling claims that help cause such a consensus to appear because of a sociological bandwagon effect.

This step may fail, and you may fail to get people to accept your claim that there is a consensus of experts in favor of your weak theory. But if you get people to accept such a idea, even if a consensus does not yet exist, then your work is almost done. The bandwagon effect will continue, the snowball effect will keep rolling, and your theory will have triumphed in some little corner of the academic world.

There may still remain many who think that your theory is pure nonsense. But since you have now got something you can claim to be a consensus of experts, you can now make use of a technique that is incredibly popular in the academic world: the technique of nonconformity shaming tactics. You could employ this technique, by calling your weak theory “science,” and demonizing all who oppose it as “anti-science.” Few will object in the academic world, where the term “anti-science” is shamelessly employed with reckless abandon, such as by those who call anyone preferring not to consume gene-spliced food as “anti-science.”

Your efforts in this regard will be enormously more likely to succeed under two cases: (1) if your weak theory allows scientists to enhance their prestige by triumphally claiming that they have solved some long-standing mystery; (2) if your weak theory allows scientists to claim they have an explanation for some event or phenomenon that does not fit in with their claims that everything can be explained by random physical processes. In the latter case, there will be a kind of “ideology boost” that will make your theory 300% or 400% more likely to be accepted than if it had no ideological relevance. Your fellow scientists will show almost infinite tolerance for accepting silliness in theories that seem to help them evade what they most dread: that there may be spirits or souls, or that the universe or life may be the result of intentional purpose.

Yes, given the very strong influence of sociological and ideological factors in the success of academic theories, you could use all of these tactics to get the academic world to adopt your weak theory. But you would not be a very honest person if you did that. It would be much better to not do such things as I have mentioned here, and to have greater intellectual integrity, even at the price of having less success in getting people to adopt your theory. And it is much better to honestly admit your ignorance about some great mystery than to get the academic world to accept some very dubious theory of yours about that mystery, some theory that does not warrant belief.

Fanboy Flub: He's Way Wrong About Scientific Theories

In the New York Times a few days ago there was an article by Carl Zimmer in the Science section. The article was entitled In Science, It's Never “Just a Theory.” Zimmer asserts the following:

Theories are neither hunches nor guesses. They are the crown jewels of science.

Later Zimmer makes this assertion:

A theory, likewise, represents a territory of science. Instead of rivers, hills, and towns, the pieces of the territory are facts.

So generally speaking, scientific theories are made up of facts, and no guesses? Hogwash. Rubbish. Zimmer is apparently a science theory fanboy who we can expect to receive a scientific theory with the same reverent enthusiasm that a trekkie might receive the next installment of the Star Trek franchise. (The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines a fanboy as “a boy or man who is an extremely or overly enthusiastic fan of someone or something.”) Let's look at some things that conflict with this naive attitude toward scientific theories.

Consider some of the weird scientific theories that are floating about these days. There is the Everett “many worlds” theory of parallel universes, which imagines that the universe is constantly splitting up into different copies of itself, and that there are a zillion copies of you in different alternate universes, where everything imaginable occurs. Then there's the Integrated Information Theory which tries to explain consciousness in a way that implies that your thermostat and cell phone are partially conscious. Then there's the so-called “landscape” version of string theory, which unnecessarily imagines something like ten to the five hundredth power universes, each of which is a different permutation of string theory (a speculative branch of physics that is entirely unproven). Then there's Smolin's theory of cosmological natural selection, which gives us the groundless speculation that certain type of stars spit out new universes when they die. Then there's the panspermia theory that life began on Earth because aliens planted it here. Then there is Freud's theory that you have deep-rooted conflicts caused by your subconscious sexual attraction to your mother. Then there are neurological theories that your self is just an illusion.

Zimmer would have us believe that scientific theories are in general “crown jewels,” but it seems that some scientific theories are more like junk than jewels.

But isn't it at least correct that most scientific theories are true? No, it isn't. Scientists love to churn out speculative theories, particularly physicists and cosmologists. There are countless different versions of what is called the cosmic inflation theory, each making different assumptions. Presumably no more than one of these different versions can be true. There are countless other scientific theories describing different variations of the Big Bang, different configurations of our universe, and different eventual fates for our universe. Probably the great majority of these are false. There are countless different attempts to describe a physics beyond the Standard Model. The great majority of these theories must be wrong, as they all make assumptions that conflict with each other. A similar thing probably holds true about theories in fields such as neurology and psychology.

I may note that there is absolutely no ethic in science that a scientist should regard a theory as being probably true before he publishes a paper suggesting it. Quite to the contrary, there is a “publish or perish” ethic under which it is considered just fine to publish a paper suggesting some oddball theory that probably isn't true, particularly if it is mathematically interesting or is an interesting twist on some other theory or if it is an idea that somehow might cause someone to think of a theory that is probably true. When Harvard professor Abraham Loeb came up with an extremely implausible but interesting and innovative theory about life evolving in the first few million years of the universe's history, his colleagues probably thought it was nice work.

But is it true that we can tell that some scientific idea is solid when it is called a theory? No, it isn't. The claim that scientists only use the word “theory” for well-established ideas with lots of evidence behind them is pure bunk, a groundless piece of folklore typically trotted out when making the case for some theory that has insufficient evidence behind it. What proves this is that the completely unsubstantiated set of ideas called “string theory” is referred to under just that name by scientists and non-scientists, not some other name such as “string hypothesis.” Scientists pretty much use the word “theory” just like ordinary people use it.

But is it true, as Zimmer claims, that in the world of science “theories are neither hunches nor guesses”? As a general claim about scientific theories, that is false. A sizable fraction of modern scientific theories are highly speculative theories largely consisting of guesses. In fact, many scientific theories are guesses piled up on top of other guesses. When the cosmic inflation theory was introduced, it was a wild guess about details of the first second of the universe, which was built upon other wild guesses about the universe (a class of speculative theories called grand unification theories). Neither of these wild guesses has been confirmed, but the cosmic inflation theory is still influential. Heaping speculations upon speculations is typical behavior for the modern theoretical physicist.

Zimmer's generalizations about scientific theories are about as accurate as generalizations such as, “You get quick service when you phone technical support,” and “Middle age men are trim and muscular.” Zimmer claims that in science, it's never “just a theory,” but the truth is in science, it's very, very frequently “just a theory.”

Do any of the theories of science deserve to be called “crown jewels,” the term so carelessly used by Zimmer as a general characterization of scientific theories? Yes, but only a small few. The scientific theories that are “crown jewels” are mainly those that make exact numerical predictions that have been repeatedly proven to be true. Some examples I can think of are the theory of gravitation, the theory of electromagnetism, and the kinetic theory of matter (particularly when it predicts the behavior of gases).

The table below lists some different categories of scientific truth-claims, distinguishing between well-supported claims and claims that are not well-supported. Only the tiniest fraction of scientific theories fall into the first category. What can be particularly confusing is that a particular set of ideas called a scientific theory may be what we can call a composite theory, meaning a theory consisting of different types of truth claims, some being well-supported and others being not well-supported. 

Given such composite theories, it may be quite hard to sort out whether some, all or most claims in a scientific theory should be believed. There is no reliable shortcut to evaluating most scientific theories. You cannot simply rely on a scientific consensus, because there may be strong sociological, ideological and “bandwagon” factors that may cause a majority of scientists in some field to endorse a theory which is not actually worthy of belief, or that contains some unworthy parts. There is no substitute for rigorously analyzing the individual truth claims that make up a scientific theory, and evaluating each such claim in a critical light, demanding supporting evidence for each claim, listening to opposing arguments, and rejecting any part of a theory which is not well-supported by facts or evidence.

It's okay to be a nature fanboy, but don't be a science theory fanboy who reverently receives the latest dubious theoretical claim floating on gossamer threads of thought. Be someone who analyzes scientific theories in the same probing, questioning way that you might analyze the truth claims of a salesman in a used car lot.