Problems in Scientific Thinking

1
Problems in Scientific Thinking

• Theory Influences Observations
• The Observer Changes the Observed
• Equipment Constructs Results

2
Theory Influences Observations

• The theory in part constructs the reality.
• Reality exists independent of the observer, of
  course, but our perceptions of reality are
  influenced by the theories framing our
  examination of it.
• Thus, philosophers call science theory laden.

3
Theory Influences Observations

• Albert Michelson, like many physicists of the
  day, believed that light was a wave, propagating
  through the Luminferous Ether
• He constructed instruments designed to show
  shifts in the interference patterns of
  intersecting beams of light, to show how fast the
  Earth was moving through the Ether
• Despite increasingly sensitive instruments, no
  shifts were ever detected
• Micheleson never quite believed that there was no
  Ether to be found.

4
Equipment Constructs Results

• Equipment can only detect that which it was
  designed to detect - based on the assumptions on
  how it ought to detect events
• Any change in equipment would not necessarily be
  detectible, since that is not what the equipment
  is designed to detect
• Fitzgerald and Lorentz contended that Michelsons
  not finding an interference pattern shift was
  because the device was changed by its movement
  through the Ether
• Michelson didnt like that explanation, either.

5
Equipment Constructs Results

• The equipment used in an experiment often
  determines the results.

6
The Observer Changes the Observed

• In other words, the act of studying an event can
  change it.

7
The Observer Changes the Observed

• Shining a light on a leaf in order to study the
  cells causes the cells to change in response to
  the light
• Exposing a soil sample to air loses water very
  quickly, causing clay mineral structures to
  change

8
Problems in Pseudoscientific Thinking

• Anecdotes Do Not Make a Science
• Scientific Language Does Not Make a Science
• Bold Statements Do Not Make Claims True
• Heresy Does Not Equal Correctness
• Burden of Proof

9
Problems in Pseudoscientific Thinking

• Rumors Do Not Equal Reality
• Unexplained Is Not Inexplicable
• Failures Are Rationalized
• After-the-Fact Reasoning
• Coincidence
• Representativeness.

10
Anecdotes Do Not Make a Science

• Without corroborative evidence from other
  sources, or physical proof of some sort, ten
  anecdotes are no better than one, and a hundred
  anecdotes are no better than ten.

11
Anecdotes Do Not Make a Science

• Lorenzo Odone, a sufferer of adrenoleukodystrophy
  or ALD, was treated with a derivative of olive
  oil and rapeseed oil by his parents
• Dr. Hugo Moser, vilified in the movie, Lorenzos
  Oil, discovered that the oil could prevent ALD,
  but only before symptoms appeared
• Despite calls for wide distribution of the oil,
  largely from anecdotal evidence, Dr. Moser
  remained true to his scientific path, and showed
  that the oil was not a cure, but a preventative
  treatment
• He went on to identify a test for the genetic
  markers that would maximize the value of the oil.

12
Scientific Language Does Not Make a Science

• Dressing up a belief system in the trappings of
  science by using scientific language and jargon
  means nothing without evidence, experimental
  testing, and corroboration.

13
Scientific Language Does Not Make a Science

• This planet has been slumbering for eons and
  with the inception of higher energy frequencies
  is about to awaken in terms of consciousness and
  spirituality. Masters of limitation and masters
  of divination use the same creative force to
  manifest their realities, however, one moves in a
  downward spiral and the latter moves in an upward
  spiral, each increasing the resonant vibration
  inherent in them.

14
Bold Statements Do Not Make Claims True

• Something is probably pseudoscientific if
  enormous claims are made for its power and
  veracity but supportive evidence is scarce as
  hens teeth.
• The more extraordinary the claim, the more
  extraordinarily well-tested the evidence must be.

15
Bold Statements Do Not Make Claims True

• In 1989, Pons and Fleischmann, two chemists at
  the University of Utah, announced that they had
  initiated nuclear fusion reactions at room
  temperatures, using electrochemical techniques
• This flew in the face of conventional fusion
  research, which relies on very high pressures and
  temperatures
• No other laboratory has been able to replicate
  the findings of Pons and Fleischmann.

16
Heresy Does Not Equal Correctness

• Being laughed at does not mean you are right.
  Lots of true ideas are accepted without ridicule
  or opposition, violent or otherwise.
• The scientific community cannot be expected to
  test every fantastic claim that comes along,
  especially when so many are logically
  inconsistent.

17
Heresy Does Not Equal Correctness

• Nicola Tesla designed and invented much of the
  basic equipment for electrical power grid as we
  know it today, including AC generators,
  transformers, and transmission lines
• He is also known for his announcements about
  death rays, earthquake machines, and other
  fanciful means of harnessing electricity
• Most of these designs have since been shown as
  unworkable.

18
Burden of Proof

• The person making the extraordinary claim has the
  burden of proving to the experts and to the
  community at large that his or her belief has
  more validity than the one almost everyone else
  accepts.
• In other words, it is not enough to have
  evidence. You must convince others of the
  validity of your evidence. And when you are an
  outsider this is the price you pay, regardless of
  whether you are right or wrong.

19
Burden of Proof

• Wegener, considered by many an outsider (and a
  German, no less!) had the burden of proof upon
  him. Many of his arguments were regarded as
  invalid and thus were not convincing.
• Holocaust Deniers claim that the Holocaust never
  occurred, or that it was blown out of proportion
  and that there was no systematic plans to
  eliminate the Jews and other undesireables. No
  proof has been offered that contradicts that the
  Holocaust did in fact occur.

20
Rumors Do Not Equal Reality

• Rumors begin with I read somewhere that. or I
  heard from someone that.. Before long the
  rumor becomes reality, as I know that. passes
  from person to person. Rumors may be true, of
  course, but usually they are not.

21
Rumors Do Not Equal Reality

• An entire television genre is built around this -
  watch any episode of Mythbusters
• The Darwin Awards also categorizes events as
  confirmed by primary sources or as an urban
  legend.

22
Unexplained Is Not Inexplicable

• Many people are overconfident enough to think
  that if they cannot explain something, it must be
  inexplicable and therefore a true mystery of the
  paranormal
• Even those who are more reasonable at least think
  that if the experts cannot explain something, it
  must be inexplicable
• The problem is that most of us find it more
  comforting to have certainty, even it if is
  premature, than to live with unsolved or
  unexplained mysteries.

23
Unexplained Is Not Inexplicable

• How does one walk on hot coals? Amazing control
  of pain? And yet, no burns result
• Uri Gellar built an entire career on his mental
  powers, including spoon bending. But weakening
  the neck of the spoon to just beyond the failure
  point can have the same effect.

24
Failures Are Rationalized

• In science, the value of negative
  findings-failures-cannot be overemphasized.
  Usually they are not wanted, and often they are
  not published.
• But most of the time failures are how we get
  closer to truth. Honest scientists will readily
  admit their errors, but all scientists are kept
  in line by the fact that their fellow scientists
  will publicize any attempt to fudge.

25
Failures Are Rationalized

• After the fall of the Soviet Union, many clinics
  opened and thrived, claiming to cure all sorts of
  illness with special herbal teas and
  psychically-energized water
• When the psychics cannot distinguish normal water
  from the energized water, the claim is that other
  water absorbed the energy
• When such cures do not work, blame is shifted
  to the user for having done something that
  interferes with the cure working.

26
After-the-Fact Reasoning

• Also known as post hoc, propter hoc, literally
  after this, therefore because of this.
• As Hume taught us, the fact that two events
  follow each other in sequence does not mean they
  are connected casually. Correlation does not
  mean causation.

27
After-the-Fact Reasoning

• Since children with autism often display little
  emotion, it was assumed that their mothers were
  cold to them
• Since the parents of many high-ability students
  listen to Mozart, it is assumed that mothers
  playing Mozart to their children in vitro will
  increase their intelligence.

28
Coincidence

• Coincidences are often seen as deeply
  significant. When the connection is made in a
  manner that seems impossible according to our
  intuition of the laws of probability, we have a
  tendency to think something mysterious is at work.

29
Coincidence

• Slot machines are designed to pay out just enough
  to convince players that a bigger payout is just
  around the corner
• Individual electronic slot machines are required
  to pay out everything put in them over the life
  of the machine - a designed 30 million arm pulls
• Slot machines remain the largest profit center in
  most casinos.

30
Representativeness

• As Aristotle said, The sum of the coincidences
  equals certainty. We forget most of the
  insignificant coincidence and remember the
  meaningful ones.
• Our tendency to remember hits and ignore misses
  is the bread and butter of our thinking
• We must always remember the larger context in
  which a seemingly unusual event occurs, and we
  must always analyze unusual events for their
  representativeness of their class of phenomena.

31
Representativeness

• The Bermuda Triangle is supposedly the site of
  many unexplained and mysterious disappearances of
  planes and ships
• The channel marks the convergence of multiple
  shipping and air routes
• The relative proportion of unaccounted for
  disappearances in this area is actually lower
  than the rest of the world
• Should it be called the Bermuda Un-Triangle?

32
Logical Problems in Thinking

• Emotive Words and False Analogies
• Ad Ignoraniam
• Ad Hominem and Tu Quoque
• Hasty Generalizations

33
Logical Problems in Thinking

• Overreliance on Authorities
• Either-Or
• Circular Reasoning
• Reductio ad Absurdum and the Slippery Slope

34
Emotive Words and False Analogies

• Emotive words are used to provoke emotion and
  sometimes to obscure rationality.
• Like anecdotes, analogies and metaphors do not
  constitute proof. They are merely tools of
  rhetoric.

35
Emotive Words and False Analogies

• Recent advertising (and other) campaigns that
  represent this typology
• If you are not with us, you are with the
  terrorists
• Look at virtually any propaganda poster

36
Ad Ignoraniam

• This is an appeal to ignorance or lack of
  knowledge and is related to the burden of proof
  and unexplained is not inexplicable fallacies,
  where someone argues that if you cannot disprove
  a claim it must be true.
• In science, belief should come from positive
  evidence in support of a claim, not lack of
  evidence for or against a claim.

37
Ad Ignoraniam

• If you cannot prove that psychic powers do not
  exist, then they must exist?
• BATFE claims that, despite the lack of a clear
  definition of what an explosive is, Ammonium
  Perchlorate Composite Propellant (APCP) is an
  explosive because (a) they say so, and (b) no one
  can prove to their satisfaction that it is not an
  explosive.

38
Ad Hominem and Tu Quoque

• Literally to the man and you also, these
  fallacies redirect the focus from thinking about
  the idea to thinking about the person holding the
  idea.
• The goal of an ad hominem attack is to discredit
  the claimant in hopes that it will discredit the
  claim.

39
Ad Hominem and Tu Quoque

• Thank You For Smoking How does your mom know
  cigarettes cause cancer? Is she a doctor?
• Answers in Genesis How do you know it took
  millions of years? Were you there?
• Al Gore is a politician and not a climate
  scientist. Why should we believe him?

40
Hasty Generalizations

• In logic, the hasty generalization is a form of
  improper induction.
• In life, it is called prejudice.
• In either case, conclusions are drawn before the
  facts warrant it.

41
Hasty Generalizations

• Just because a blonde in a red convertible cut
  you off on the road, that does not mean that all
  blondes in red convertibles are poor drivers
• One cornfield of crows does not make all crows
  black.

42
Overreliance on Authorities

• We tend to rely heavily on authorities in our
  culture, especially if the authority is
  considered to be highly intelligent.
• Authorities, by virtue of their expertise in a
  field, may have a better chance of being right in
  that field, but correctness is certainly not
  guaranteed, and their expertise does not
  necessarily quality them to draw conclusions in
  other areas.

43
Overreliance on Authorities

• While expertise is useful for separating the
  wheat from the chaff, it is dangerous in that we
  might either (1) accept a wrong idea just because
  it was supported by someone we respect (false
  positive) or (2) reject a right idea just because
  it was supported by someone we disrespect (false
  negative).
• How do you avoid such errors? Examine the
  evidence.

44
Overreliance on Authorities

• Despite evidence from biologists and geologists
  to the contrary, Lord Kelvins claim that the
  Earth was no more than 25-75 million years old
  was the accepted truth until just before his
  death
• Carl Wieman, Nobel Laureate in Physics for making
  and describing the Bose-Einstein Condensate,
  claims that wide use of clickers or interactive
  response devices will be the salvation of science
  education.

45
Either-Or

• Also known as the fallacy of negation or the
  false dilemma, this is the tendency to
  dichotomize the world so that if you discredit
  one position, the observer is forced to accept
  the other.
• But it is not enough to point out weaknesses in a
  theory. If your theory is indeed superior, it
  must explain both the normal data explained by
  the old theory and the anomalous data not
  explained by the old theory.
• A new theory needs evidence in favor of it, not
  just against the opposition.

46
Either-Or

• Even after Wegener and Du Toit had made
  compelling arguments for the past proximity of
  South America and Africa, based on
  paleontological, stratigraphic, and glacial
  evidence, the broader geologic community would
  still not accept drift theory.
• Charles Schuchert and other American geologists
  contended that the same evidence could be
  accounted for by land bridges, which subsquently
  sunk beneath the oceans.

47
Circular Reasoning

• Also known as the fallacy of redundancy, begging
  the question, or tautology, this occurs when the
  conclusion or claim is merely a restatement of
  one of the premises.
• Obviously, a tautological operational definition
  can still be useful. Yet, difficult as it is, we
  must try to construct operational definitions
  that can be tested, falsified, and refuted.

48
Circular Reasoning

• We have a Space Shuttle program because we need
  to build the International Space Station
• We need the International Space Station so that
  we have someplace for the Space Shuttle to go to.

49
Reductio ad Absurdum and the Slippery Slope

• Reductio ad absurdum is the refutation of an
  argument by carrying the argument to its logical
  end and so reducing it to an absurd conclusion.
• Surely, if an arguments consequences are absurd,
  it must be false. This is not necessarily so,
  though sometimes pushing an argument to its
  limits is a useful exercise in critical thinking
  
• Often this is a way to discover whether a claim
  has validity, especially if an experiment testing
  the actual reduction can be run.

50
Reductio ad Absurdum and the Slippery Slope

• God is Love
• Love is Blind
• Ray Charles is Blind
• Ray Charles is God
• God is a Jazz Singer

51
Psychological Problems in Thinking

• Effort Inadequacies and the Need for Certainty,
  Control, and Simplicity
• Problem Solving Inadequacies
• Ideological Immunity, or the Planck Problem

52
Effort Inadequacies and the Need for Certainty,
Control, and Simplicity

• Most of us, most of the time, want certainty,
  want to control our environment, and want nice,
  neat, simple explanations.
• All this may have some evolutionary basis, but in
  a multifarious society with complex problems,
  these characteristics can radically oversimplify
  reality and interfere with critical thinking and
  problem solving.

53
Effort Inadequacies and the Need for Certainty,
Control, and Simplicity

• Cutting Greenhouse Gas emissions will heal the
  Ozone Layer Automobiles are the biggest source
  of Greenhouse Gasses, so we should all just walk
• Gasoline prices are so high right now because the
  tree-hugging Liberals wont let us drill more oil
  wells

54
Problem Solving Inadequacies

• All critical and scientific thinking is, in a
  fashion, problem solving
• There are numerous psychological disruptions that
  cause inadequacies in problem solving
• Scale, complexity, distorted priorities, etc.,
  fall in to this category.

55
Problem Solving Inadequacies

• Global warming is happening, but
• It is too big for us to do anything about it
• There are too many variables to deal with
• Any changes that I make may take centuries to
  have any impact
• I have a big meeting with an important client, so
  I need a big car.

56
Ideological Immunity, or the Planck Problem

• In day-to-day life, as in science, we all resist
  fundamental paradigm change. Social scientist
  Jay Stuart Snelson calls this resistance an
  ideological immune system educated,
  intelligent, successful adults rarely change
  their most fundamental presuppositions. We
  build up an immunity against new ideas that do
  not corroborate previous ones.

57
Ideological Immunity, or the Planck Problem

• Historians of science call this the Planck
  Problem, after physicist Max Planck, who made
  this observation on what must happen for
  innovation to occur in science
• An important scientific innovation rarely makes
  its way by gradually winning over and converting
  its opponents it rarely happens that Saul
  becomes Paul. What does happen is that its
  opponents gradually die out and that the growing
  generation is familiarized with the idea from the
  beginning.

58
Ideological Immunity, or the Planck Problem

• Contrary to most textbooks, there was no hiatus
  in thought between Wegeners work and the Plate
  Tectonics revolution in the late 1960s
• Hess, Holmes, Wilson, Vine, Matthews (among
  others!) all provided input beyond their strictly
  published work
• Much of the published work was couched in
  carefully defined terms or circumspect rhetoric
• Many elder statesmen in geology needed to
  retire from active work for a complete version of
  Plate Tectonics to take the headlines.