Pseudo Science Comes in Many Forms

• Phenomenological Science? by John Fentress, 3/24/98
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    • Case Studies: How Others Think About How We Think, and How We Think About How They Think - I Think! by John Fentress, 3/27/98
      
      

I just returned from a fascinating trip to the west coast, where I was guest of Gerald Edelman (The Neurosciences Institute) and Francis Crick (The Salk Institute). These two individuals have been recognized (Nobel Prizes) for doing "science". They also happen to be creative, brave, and occasionally off the wall. So what!

I appreciate the concerns about "science" (but please, not "SCIENCE"). I am a neuroethologist, and earn a major part of my living by looking at brain circuits that are involved in specific properties of movement control. Yea, we make hypotheses, test them, even do statistics and controls. Aren't we clever. Big deal!

The superficial trappings of science (small "s") can be taught in 10 minutes. Now here is the rub. Some people get so hung up doing surface science that they equate science with technology, or with a piece of equipment, or some statistical test that is not understood anyway. (As Richard Feynman once asked: "What is the probability that probability theory is correct"? Maybe the point is too elusive.)

Words are not things, things are not processes, descriptions of processes are not explanations, and blah, blah, blah. I too rebel when I hear pseudo explanations that confuse words for explanation, and conflate theories that have different histories, and more blah blah. But saying "blah blah" gets boring. So we use terms to try to capture what we are seeing, thinking, guessing, and screwing up. We could do a dance, I guess.

Here is an experiment: Take 64 green mice and 64 red mice. Place one half of each group in a centrifuge for 20 seconds. Test all four resulting groups for tight-rope walking capacity (your measure). Do stats that look for interactions (cool things) and publish. Great science. Significance of no significance whatsoever.

Here is another experiment. Take an observation or idea. Try to refine it. Guess what might be going on. Screw around with the system a bit. See what happens. Make a better guess. Refine your vocabulary. Think of where you might be misled. Design controls based on that. Do a better job next time. That's science.

Its not science, for example, to jump conceptually from firings of one or a small population of neurons to "explain" aggession, perception, learning, motivation, or anything else at the behavioral level. This is a tradition in the name of non-thinking reductionism. It is total crap. Useless, and worse. Its a pretense. Idiotic. Easily funded bullshit.

Of course we do not all need to agree on this point. Some like being fundamentalists, so that they can decry others who prefer to think. If that's the church of choice, I am out of here. Take your religion; I'll take my spirituality.

What's the point? Many, many essays on this site reflect people trying to come to grips with new ideas, new perspectives. Most of the expressions are, strictly speaking, "wrong". Of course they are. So, perhaps we should have everybody shut up and not bother the puritans. Or perhaps we should continue to bumble along, recognizing that there are indeed errors in our ways. These are errors of cognitive limits, incomplete information, unrecognized biases......etc.......They are not SINS.

But, who expects everyone to agree anyway?

JCF

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