Understand the rules before you break them.....

In a different class I give a lecture on how to give an oral presentation. After going through a pretty big list of do's and don'ts I finish by pointing out that all good speakers will break one or more rules. In my mind though it is still important to understand the rules, not so you can slavishly follow them, but so you know when you are going against convention. Bottom line - always understand the rules before you break them. I think that is generally a good motto for life too.

That is why I go, as clearly as I can, through the scientific method, despite the fact that some fairly influential thinkers have argued that most scientists don't even operate in this way. Again, I would argue that it is vital to understand the rules so that you can see the consequences of breaking them. A noted Berkeley connection is the philosopher Paul Feyerabend who spent three decades associated with UC Berkeley. Feyerabend was critical of not just the idea of the scientific method but was also critical of the idea of the philosophy of science itself - a critical guy. You can read accessible and interesting introductions to his work at both Wikipedia and at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (My definition of 'accessible' is that you can read the article and understand what most of the words mean and the gist of what they are saying. My definition of 'interesting' is that it made me go hmmm.)

If you look at any article in a scientific journal you will also notice that it isn't neatly laid out like the slide I showed with 'Data', 'Hypothesis', 'Prediction' etc. Although these words will be tantalizingly scattered throughout the text. In a bid to demystify the somewhat arcane style of scientific writing, the journal Science has selected a number of scientific articles from that journal and annotated them, illustrating how different parts of each article embody the scientific method. This is part of the 'Keystones of Science project'. Here is an annotated example of the scientific method example titled Microbial Genes in the Human Genome: Lateral Transfer or Gene Loss?.

This time last year: Dr Dino versus the Amazing Randi

Dr Dino versus The Amazing Randi

Offering a prize is one way to attract a lot of publicity. Unfortunately not all prizes are created equal.

Let's compare the prizes offered by Kent Hovind (aka 'Dr Dino'), a creationist, who is currently offering $250,000 for scientific evidence of evolution with the prize offered by James Randi (aka 'The Amazing Randi') who has one million dollars to anyone who can prove they have 'supernatural powers.

The first one sounds easier doesn't it? But like all offers you need to read the small print. To satisfy Hovind you would have to show, and I quote:

* NOTE: When I use the word evolution, I am not referring to the minor variations found in all of the various life forms (microevolution). I am referring to the general theory of evolution which believes these five major events took place without God:
1. Time, space, and matter came into existence by themselves.
2. Planets and stars formed from space dust.
3. Matter created life by itself.
4. Early life-forms learned to reproduce themselves.
5. Major changes occurred between these diverse life forms (i.e., fish changed to amphibians, amphibians changed to reptiles, and reptiles changed to birds or mammals).

Wow. That suddenly got a lot harder. In fact it can now be argued that to satisfy Hovind you would need to prove not only that God didn't do the aforementioned five acts but that he couldn't have done so. This would imply that God is not omnipotent, so satisfying Hovind may involve proving that God does not exist. Christian theists have already pointed out that the only way to truly know whether God exists or not is to be omniscient - that is to be God yourself!
Enough. This is clearly just a publicity stunt. If you do want to read more you can find a nice summary and links at the talkorigins site. Bottom line, if you want to play in the Science sandbox you need to play by the rules.

The offer by James Randi is actually far more interesting. In order to get Randi's million bucks all you need to do is show a single convincing case of a supernatural power (eg. Dowsing. ESP. Precognition. Remote Viewing. Communicating with the Dead . Homeopathy. Faith Healing. Astrology. Prophecy. Levitation. Reflexology. Clairvoyance. Graphology. Numerology. Palmistry. Phrenology.) What is a convincing case? One that is clearly shown cannot be a trick.

The interesting bit to me is in the correspondence between the James Randi Educational Foundation and the claimants as they try to agree on a testing protocol (look at the ones with the most replies for the most interesting debate). This has a lot of relevance to today's discussion on putting your hypotheses to rigorous tests. Psychics may be able to read your mind but they may also be able to read your body language or just plain cheat. If you give them easy tests then passing them doesn't really reveal very much. A good test is one that can distinguish real psychic powers from cheating. I admire Randi for putting his money on the line in this way. Not only is he inviting believers in the paranormal to put themselves to the test but he is also saying that he does not believe he can be tricked. It probably helps that Randi was a magician himself and is, I imagine, hard to fool.

A wizard did it.

One thing that fascinates me as I learn more about the history of science is what people believed things were before they knew what they really were – or, in a similar vein, what people believed caused certain phenomena before they knew the real cause.

Some of these beliefs were wonderfully inventive and enrich our culture to this day. For example in Monday’s lecture I mentioned the suggestion that pygmy elephant skulls, with no eye sockets and a single, large, and centrally placed socket for the trunk, could have been the basis for the Cyclops myth. There is a nice write-up of this work on the National Geographic website which is based upon the work of Adrienne Mayor. In her book The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times, Adrienne Mayor argues that the Greeks and Romans used fossil evidence both to support existing myths and to create new ones: Griffins, Centaurs, Cyclops, Giants etc.

Other explanations were much less inventive and ascribed a wide variety of phenomena (mysterious plagues, poor crops, bad weather etc) to entities such as witches and wizards (or their equivalent in the local culture). In modern popular culture such appeals to generic, and all powerful, entities is considered poor writing. The Simpsons have popularized the phrase ‘A wizard did it’ as an example of an evasive answer to an inquiry, usually with the implication the question is being purposely avoided. The phrase originated when Lucy Lawless responded to Professor Frink's question regarding a continuity error in Xena: Warrior Princess.

Frink: In episode BF12, you were battling barbarians while riding a winged appaloosa yet in the very next scene my dear, you're clearly atop a winged Arabian! Please do explain it!

Lucy Lawless: Uh, yeah, well whenever you notice something like that … a wizard did it.

Frink: Yes, alright, yes, in episode AG04 …

Lucy Lawless: Wizard!

Frink: Oh for glaven out loud.

Due to the wonders of alphabetical order “A wizard did it’ is first in the list of Simpsons neologisms on Wikipedia.

I mention it here because this raises some interesting questions about what makes a good hypothesis. Why do I criticize the 'wizard hypothesis'? I am, deliberately, going to put off detailed discussion of the scientific method until the second part of the class so we won't cover this in lecture for another couple of weeks.

Undoubtedly there are still phenomena around that science does not have a good explanation for. I can think of several but UFO’s would be a good example, especially the alien abduction phenomenon. It is interesting to speculate on how the future will rate our attempts at explanation – as a good attempt given the facts, as part of our cultural mythology, or as just laughable….