Sleep Elaboration–Awake Pruning (SEAP) memory theory

The Sleep Elaboration–Awake Pruning (SEAP) theory of memory: Long term memories grow in complexity during sleep and undergo selection while awake. Clinical, psychopharmacological and creative implications

Medical Hypotheses; 73: 1-4

Bruce G. Charlton and Peter Andras

bruce.charlton@buckingham.ac.uk

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Summary

Long term memory (LTM) systems need to be adaptive such that they enhance an organism’s reproductive fitness and self-reproducing in order to maintain their complexity of communications over time in the face of entropic loss of information. Traditional ‘representation–consolidation’ accounts conceptualize memory adaptiveness as due to memories being ‘representations’ of the environment, and the longevity of memories as due to ‘consolidation’ processes. The assumption is that memory representations are formed while an animal is awake and interacting with the environment, and these memories are consolidated mainly while the animal is asleep. So the traditional view of memory is ‘instructionist’ and assumes that information is transferred from the environment into the brain. By contrast, we see memories as arising endogenously within the brain’s LTM system mainly during sleep, to create complex but probably maladaptive memories which are then simplified (‘pruned’) and selected during the awake period. When awake the LTM system is brought into a more intense interaction with past and present experience. Ours is therefore a ‘selectionist’ account of memory, and could be termed the Sleep Elaboration–Awake Pruning (or SEAP) theory. The SEAP theory explains the longevity of memories in the face of entropy by the tendency for memories to grow in complexity during sleep; and explains the adaptiveness of memory by selection for consistency with perceptions and previous memories during the awake state. Sleep is therefore that behavioural state during which most of the internal processing of the system of LTM occurs; and the reason sleep remains poorly understood is that its primary activity is the expansion of long term memories. By re-conceptualizing the relationship between memory, sleep and the environment; SEAP provides a radically new framework for memory research, with implications for the measurement of memory and the design of empirical investigations in clinical, psychopharmacological and creative domains. For example, it would be predicted that states of insufficient alertness such as delirium would produce errors of commission (memory distortion and false memories, as with psychotic delusions), while sleep deprivation would produce errors of memory omission (memory loss). Ultimately, the main argument in favour of SEAP is that long term memory must be a complex adaptive system, and complex systems arise, are selected and sustained according to the principles of systems theory; and therefore LTM cannot be functioning in the way assumed by ‘representation–consolidation’ theories.

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The nature of long term memory: instructionist or selectionist?

What follows is an ‘in principle’ argument about the basic nature of human long term memory. Although the details of real human memory may differ; if the premises concerning the nature of complex systems are correct, then memory ‘must’ work in something like the way we describe [1].

Human long term memory is typically described as a brain system for the storage of information about what has happened to an organism, so that the organism will be able to use this information in the future in order better to survive and reproduce (i.e., to increase its ‘fitness’). The kind of thing which is ‘stored’ in the long term memory system includes external stimuli (perceived via the five senses) and internal body states (perceived via the autonomic nervous system and messenger molecules such as hormones) [2]. Long term memories (LTMs) are typically conceptualized in terms of changes to brain circuitry [3], for example changes in the pattern of synaptic sensitivities [4].

The vast capacity of human long term memory implies that memory must be an extremely complex system, and all complex systems share basic formal properties [1], [5] and [6].

The usual description has memories as ‘representations’ of environmental entities being formed while an animal is awake and alert; after which these memories are edited, sorted, combined, selected or pruned (i.e., ‘consolidated’) while the animal is asleep. This could be termed an awake elaboration–sleep simplification theory of memory, or an awake representation–sleep consolidation theory.

In contrast, we propose almost the opposite idea: that memories are elaborated mostly during sleep (when the brain is more-or-less cut-off from interaction with its environment) and these memories are then selected or ‘pruned’ by interaction with other brain communications when awake. Our theory could be termed the Sleep Elaboration–Awake Pruning (or SEAP) theory of memory.

The traditional ‘representation–consolidation’ view of memory is ‘instructionist’ because the environment is seen as instructing the brain during awake periods. In other words, the complexity of memory is ‘exogenous’ because it originates in the environment; and complexity is transferred from the environment into the brain such that brain complexity ‘represents’, or in-effect mirrors, environmental complexity; then subsequently this complex information in the brain is summarized and thereby simplified mainly during sleep (i.e., the ‘consolidation’ phase).

By contrast, we see the complexity of memories as having an endogenous origin: i.e., originating within the brain. We suggest that complexity of memories is generated within the brain during sleep, to create elaborate memories which are then simplified (‘pruned’) mainly during the awake period of alertness, when the brain is brought into a more intense interaction with both its internal and external environment.

So the SEAP theory sees complexity as arising in the brain (mostly during sleep), and the editing of this complexity as a secondary consequence of the brain interacting with the environment when the animal is awake and behaving. Instead of the complexity of memories deriving from the environment, the complexity of memories is reduced by interaction with the environment – such that (for instance) in response to experience some memories are lost, others are abbreviated, while other connected memories are separated.

The SEAP theory is therefore akin to ‘selectionist’ accounts of neurobiology such as those provided by Edelman [7] and Gazzaniga [8]. SEAP is a selectionist theory of memory in which random variation and combination generates non-adaptive complexity; and in which complexity is reduced and adaptiveness emerges by a competitive selection mechanism of differential growth and extinction of complex systems. The complex systems which survive selection and grow are those which are more adaptive in that particular selection environment.

Like Edelman and Gazzaniga we regard memories as a consequence of the generation of diversity and selection among variants. But we also believe that only systems of communications [5] undergo selection, and therefore it is not necessarily or usually the brain’s physical units (such as neurons) which are selected [1] and [6].

SEAP is therefore based on the axiom derived from Luhmann’s theory of complex systems [5] that systems of communications are primary, and the communicating components of these systems (such as neurons) are secondary [6]. So that long term memories should properly be conceptualized as abstract systems of communications between neurons; and not the particular pattern of anatomical entities such as neurons or synapses.

Growth of memory systems

Memory systems need to be self-reproducing in order to maintain their complexity of communications over time in the face of the universal tendency for entropic loss of organised complexity: i.e., loss of information. In other words, the intrinsic tendency is for memories to be lost [4], and memory systems need a mechanism whereby complexity can be generated and information can be maintained despite this entropic tendency.

According to the SEAP theory, self-reproduction of memories generates surplus memory communications and a tendency for expansion in complexity of the memory system. So that self-reproduction of the memory system randomly generates memory complexity, and growth of new memories and combinations of memories will in turn create competition between the newly-generated memories.

This competition between new memories leads to differential survival and extinction of memories and is the basis of the process of selection among memories in a manner precisely analogous to natural selection in biology, or the selection processes of the immune system. All types of selection share basic formal properties [6] and [9]. Natural selection and immune system selection both lead to adaptation to the environment, but by the generation of random complexity being subjected to pruning of ‘maladaptive’ (or, more exactly, less-adaptive) variants via interaction with the environment.

Hence memory systems must tend to grow to ensure their own survival, and growth in this systemic sense entails growth in complexity. So the conclusion is that memory systems must have a tendency to grow in complexity; and superimposed on this tendency to growth are selection mechanisms that enforce adaptiveness.

Selection of endogenously-generated memories occurs by interaction with other memories within the long term memory system, and also from the memory system’s interaction with other brain systems. Interaction between memories and their environment probably happens at the level of neurons – which are the units generating and receiving communications in the memory system. Presumably, individual long term memory (LTM) neurons will typically participate in ‘coding’ (communicating) more than one memory; and some LTM neurons will also participate in other neural systems.

Selection of memory systems

Selection is a consequence of these interactions at the neuron level between more than one memory sharing a particular neuron, and between memories and other brain functions in which that neuron participates. For example, a cortical neuron may participate in several memories relating to an individual person, and also in the awake processing relating to visual perception [4]. Some of these networks of communication will be compatible, and memories then may be combined and thus grow to generate more complex memories by including more neurons into the communications network, or by triggering more frequent communications from neurons already in the network.

This may be conceptualized as memories being selected by their compatibility with ongoing personal experience. ‘False’ memories are therefore those contradicted by perceptions, while ‘true’ memories are those compatible with perceptions.

And memories will also conflict and interfere, such that one memory system may suppress neuronal participation in another memory system; and such memories cannot be combined and cannot grow in complexity. Such memory systems are more likely to become extinct, and these memories be lost.

The rationale by which memories either grow and increase in complexity, or interfere and reduce in complexity, are the structural and functional properties of the long term memory system – which are currently poorly understood. Presumably the sketchy current knowledge of how and why memory associations form, or how and why some memories rapidly disappear, are preliminary evidence concerning the structural and functional properties of the long term memory system.

Memories are therefore subject to continual selection and reshaping by the organism’s ongoing waking experience, and each night memories will be elaborated and combined, so that the interaction between nocturnal memory growth and diurnal pruning means that memories will tend to evolve over time. Most memories will become extinct, but those which are not ‘contradicted’ by awake experience will continue to increase in complexity (mainly during sleep) until such a point that they do eventually lead to contradiction after which the erroneous memories will be pruned-back.

Cyclical nocturnal growth of complexity and diurnal competitive pruning by the perceptual system is therefore the process by which long term memories on the one hand overcome the continuous tendency to loss of information by random entropic processes, and on the other hand maintain their adaptive relevance such that the long term memories (on average, and in the environment where they evolved) will tend to be fitness-increasing.

The function of sleep in memory

While sleep is advantageous to reproductive fitness in most (although not all [4] and [10]) animals, nonetheless understanding the ‘function of sleep’ has proved elusive [11]. While sleep very probably has to do with the editing and maintenance of long term memory [4], the specifics of this have proved hard to pin-down (e.g. [12] and [13]).

The reason sleep remains poorly understood, we suggest, is that sleep does not really have ‘a function’ in terms of the organism as a whole. Rather, according to SEAP theory, sleep is the behavioural state during which most of the internal processing of the system of long term memory (LTM) occurs. The primary ‘function’ of sleep is therefore maintenance and increase of LTM complexity. Or, the function of sleep is the expansion of long term memories.

This implies that serving as an adaptive ‘memory’ system for the organism is merely a secondary function of memory; and that sleep does not exist to improve the ‘accuracy’ (or adaptive relevance) of memories but instead to generate the complexity of memories.

The main requirement for LTM is among complex animals living in complex and changing environments – i.e., situations in which organisms have a repertoire of potential behaviours, where each day generates different challenges, and when therefore animals stand potentially to benefit from memories of their previous experiences [4]. In such animals (including humans) LTM often has a vast information capacity, and therefore necessarily memory is vastly complex.

The complexity of a system can be defined in terms of its having a much greater density of internal communication than its interactions with the non-system environment: in principle, the quantitative differential between internal communications and external interactions is a measure of system complexity [5] and [6]. Such internal complexity appears to an external observer as memory activity ‘autonomous’ from the rest of the organism, and with little or no communication between the LTM and its environment.

In other words, the memory system (like any complex system) needs to be relatively cut-off from environmental interactions (especially the computationally-heavy load of visual stimulation). The long term memory system likewise needs to be all – but disengaged from initiating ‘action’ – therefore not engaged in purposive movement, with the organism either temporarily inert or merely performing repetitive and stereotyped motor behaviour. This set of conditions is closely approximated by the state of sleep [3] and [4].

Sleep may therefore be considered as the cycle during which memory systems are most engaged in their primary activity of internal processing. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that sleep is important for memory functions [14] – but the perspective of abstract communication systems goes considerably further than this.

From the perspective of the long term memory (LTM) system, sleep processing is its main activity; sleep allows its maintenance, self-reproduction and increase in complexity, and the ‘memory function’ of the LTM system is a subordinate activity which has evolved to enable the LTM system to emerge, survive and thrive in the context of the rest of the brain.

In a metaphorical sense, the ‘memory function’ is merely rent paid by the LTM system to the organism.

Clinical and behavioural implications of the SEAP theory

Sleep

Sleep disturbances – reduced amount or quality of sleep – are an extremely common aspect of clinical practice. Lack of alertness is another common clinical problem. According to the SEAP theory, both sleep disturbance and impaired alertness would both be expected to impair memory – but in different ways.

Insufficient or too-often-interrupted sleep would presumably result in a reduction of complexity of communication in LTM: that is, a reduction in informational capacity of LTM. In summary, after sleep deprivation memories would be accurate and correct, but there would be a loss of content. The consequences of reduced complexity might include a reduction in potential total memory capacity of LTM, simplification of memories (less informational content, less combination of individual memories to form scenarios), and a greater probability of loss and extinction of memories. All of these predicted effects would be in principle measurable by properly designed memory tests.

Because the SEAP theory predicts that the accuracy of memories is mainly a consequence of selection processes during the awake and alert period; so that a major consequence of reduced alertness would be reduced accuracy of memories. So long as sleep was un-impaired; lack of alertness would be expected to produce inaccurate or false memories but not to cause memory losses. There would be plenty of memories, and memories would not be lost to entropy, but memory information would be inaccurate, unreliable, maladaptive. This inaccuracy would happen because memories had not undergone effective selection by interaction with perceptual systems and other pre-existing memories which had themselves undergone selection. So memories might be incompatible with direct experience and also with previous knowledge.

This situation of distorted and incoherent memories resembles the bizarre delusions which occur in psychotic states; and many psychotic states are associated with impaired alertness or ‘delirium’ [15]. Of course, sleep deprivation can itself be a cause of reduced alertness by causing increased sleepiness/impaired consciousness [16].

So specific states of insufficient alertness would be expected to produce errors of commission (memory distortion, false memories, memory inaccuracy), while sleep deprivation would produce errors of memory omission (memory loss). These predictions are testable, given the development of specific psychological measurement instruments to distinguish these types of memory error.

However, the specific consequences of sleep deprivation may be hard to predict without knowledge of the principles (or contingencies) of internal organization of the LTM. Furthermore, there may be various combinations of sleep loss and lack of alertness. One confusing factor is that sleep loss can itself produce drowsiness/delirium/lack of alertness (see below). These factors might explain the difficulties that sleep and memory researchers have experienced in precisely defining the function of sleep. For instance, the effects of ‘pure’ sleep deficiency on memory would be expected to be seen in terms of impairing the complexity of memories – but not necessarily on reducing the accuracy of memories.

Psychopharmacology

The SEAP theory implies that there is likely to be a trade-off and a phasic effect in the memory effects of some psychotropic drugs.

There are many sedative drugs (e.g., benzodiazepines, sedative antihistamines) that improve sleep; and also several psychostimulant drugs (e.g., dexamphetamine, methylphenidate) that improve alertness. However, these mainstream drugs lack specificity of action, because sedatives tend to have hangover effects of drowsiness after wakening, while stimulant drugs tend to have ‘hangover’ effects of insomnia and other types of sleep disturbance [17].

Therefore, the expected memory effect of sedatives might (assuming that sleep really is improved) be first to improve the recall of memories; but the secondary effect would be to impair the accuracy of memories (due to hangover and reduced alertness). The effect of psycho-stimulants might be the opposite: firstly to improve the accuracy of memories, then (when sleep disturbance became a problem) secondarily to impair sleep and increase the problem of memory losses.

Perhaps no single drug would therefore be expected to improve memory, and the most likely possibility for pharmacological enhancement of memory would be alternate and sequential circadian dosages of short-acting stimulants and short-acting sedatives.

Another possibility for memory enhancement might be methods for direct and specific brain stimulation – if it became possible technologically to initiate at will both restorative sleep and an awake and alert state of consciousness, and to impose these states alternately and sequentially.

Creative trance

It can be seen that the elaborative phase of long term memory bears considerable resemblance with the process of creativity as we usually understand it [18]. This suggests that most creative activity is likely to occur during sleep – indeed the characteristic ‘wide associative field’ of creative thinking has long been recognized as similar to the mental processes of dreaming. However, some creative people seem able to engage in associative thinking while relatively awake and alert – especially in a ‘trance’ state of altered consciousness of a kind traditionally associated with religious, spiritual, artistic and scientific breakthroughs and ‘eureka’ moments [19].

Since the process of elaborative memory is prone to maladaptive errors of commission, the SEAP theory emphasises that the creative trance is also likely to suffer from the same errors of commission as occur during other states of impaired alertness – and the products of a creative trance state therefore typically require pruning or ‘editing’ by the alert mind (or by other people) in order to eliminate this type of error.

Indeed, this two stage procedure of generation of raw material in a trance state of ‘impaired consciousness’ followed by the period of revision of critique in a state of alertness and clear consciousness is frequently seen in accounts of creativity. For example, the English poet and novelist Robert Graves described his writing procedure in precisely these terms: as firstly a self-induced trance state which generated the primary ‘raw material’, then a stage of making multiple revisions and re-shapings to the raw material when in a ‘normal’ state of alertness and concentration [20]. And the same stages are also observed in some examples of scientific creativity – the ‘breakthrough’ coming in a visionary state of actual sleep, sleepiness or some other altered state of consciousness – followed by a period of checking and validating [19].

This model may also explain the role of alcohol in creativity, since a high proportion of creative geniuses (especially in the arts) also ‘abuse’ alcohol [18] and [22]. A very intelligent and knowledgeable person may find their creativity limited, and use the sedative (alertness-reducing) properties of alcohol to enable the associations which form the basic raw material of their creativity (so long as the dose of alcohol is not so great as to lead to inertia). The alcohol-fuelled raw material is then selected, pruned and revised when sober.

Furthermore, creative geniuses may exhibit a phasic pattern of asocial versus social behaviour: a phase of solitude when they are cut-off from interaction with others so that their ideas (memories) may increase in complexity; followed by social engagement when these ideas are selected by interaction with the peer group.

Autodidacts, who lack interaction with a peer group; are often very creative and original but their ideas often also tend to be wrong or ‘crazy’ because they have lacked the selection process of peer interaction. They have too much solitary introspective brooding, and not enough interaction. However, professionals working in institutions tend to generate ideas that are sensible and correct but which tend to be dull and unoriginal – merely incremental extrapolations from existing knowledge. They exhibit too much peer interaction, and not enough solitary brooding.

The SEAP theory may therefore explain why most creative people are introverted [18], but that intermittent periods of peer interaction are also usually necessary.
Conclusion

The Sleep Elaboration–Awake Pruning theory of memory is not merely a reversal of the mainstream instructionist theory of memory since the putative memory processes are quite distinct. In particular, SEAP regards the complexity of memories as being endogenously-derived rather than ‘representing’ environmental complexity; and SEAP replaces the concept of ‘consolidation’ during sleep with interactional pruning while awake. Ultimately, the main argument in favour of SEAP (or something similar) is that long term memory must be a complex adaptive system, and that complex systems arise and are sustained along the lines we have described, and not in the way assumed by ‘representation–consolidation’ theories of memory.

Therefore, by re-conceptualizing the relationship between memory, sleep and the environment; SEAP provides a radically new framework for memory research, with implications for the measurement of memory and the design of empirical investigations in clinical, psychopharmacological and creative domains.

References

[1] Charlton BG, Andras P. Complex biological memory conceptualized as an abstract communication system–human long term memories grow in complexity during sleep and undergo selection while awake. In: Perlovsky LI, Kozma R, editors. Understanding complex systems (series): neurodynamics of cognition and consciousness, www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/publications/books/papers/315.pdf; 2007 [accessed 12 March 2009].

[2] A.R. Damasio, Descartes error: emotion, reason and the human brain, Putnam, New York (1994).

[3] J.A. Hobson, The dream drugstore, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA (2002).

[4] J.L. Kavanau, Memory, sleep and dynamic stabilization of neural circuitry: evolutionary perspectives, Neurosci Biobehav Rev 20 (1996), pp. 289–311.

[5] N. Luhmann, Social systems, Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, CA (1996).

[6] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, The modernization imperative, Imprint Academic, Exeter, UK (2003).

[7] G.M. Edelman, Neural Darwinism: the theory of neuronal group selection, Basic Books, New York (1987).

[8] M. Gazzaniga, Nature’s mind: biological roots of thinking, emotions, sexuality and intelligence, Penguin, London (1994).

[9] D.L. Hull, Science and selection, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (2001).

[10] J.L. Kavanau, Is sleep’s ’supreme mystery’ unraveling? An evolutionary analysis of sleep encounters no mystery; nor does life’s earliest sleep, recently discovered in jellyfish, Med Hypotheses 66 (2006), pp. 3–9.

[11] J.M. Siegel, Why we sleep, Sci Am (November) (2003), pp. 92–97. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (18)

[12] P. Maquet, The role of sleep in learning and memory, Science 294 (2001), pp. 1048–1052.

[13] J.M. Siegel, The REM sleep–memory consolidation hypothesis, Science 294 (2001), pp. 1058–1063.

[14] M.P. Walker and R. Stickgold, Sleep, memory, and plasticity, Ann Rev Psychol 57 (2006), pp. 139–166.

[15] B.G. Charlton, Theory of mind delusions and bizarre delusions in an evolutionary perspective: psychiatry and the social brain. In: M. Brune, H. Ribbert and W. Schiefenhovel, Editors, The social brain – evolution and pathology, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester (2003), pp. 315–338.

[16] B.G. Charlton and J.L. Kavanau, Delirium and psychotic symptoms – an integrative model, Med Hypotheses 58 (2002), pp. 24–27.

[17] D. Healy, Psychiatric drugs explained (4th ed.), Churchill Livingstone, Oxford (2004).

[18] H.J. Eysenck, Genius: the natural history of creativity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (1995).

[19] B.G. Charlton, Alienation, recovered animism and altered states of consciousness, Med Hypotheses 68 (2007), pp. 727–731.

[20] M. Seymour-Smith, Robert Graves: his life and work, Paladin, London (1982) p. 99–100 [1987 edition].

[22] B.G. Charlton, Scientific discovery, peak experiences and the Col-oh-nell Flastratus! phenomenon, Med Hypotheses 69 (2007), pp. 475–477.

Robert 'Humphrey' Havard - Medical 'Inkling'

Charlton, BG. Reflections on a scientific paper of 1926 by the medical ‘Inkling’ Robert Emlyn ‘Humphrey’ Havard (1901–1985). Medical Hypotheses. 2009; Volume 72: Pages 619-620

Summary

Robert Emlyn Havard (1901–1985; general practitioner and sometimes medical scientist) was the only non-literary member of the Inklings – a1930s and 1940s Oxford University club which included Lewis and Tolkien. Despite spending most of his time in family medicine, Havard was a productive medical scientist. While still a student at Cambridge University, Havard co-authored an influential study published in the Journal of Physiology of 1926 entitled ‘The influence of exercise on the inorganic phosphates in the blood and urine’. The style and structure of this paper provides a charming window into the elite medical science of the 1920s.
Article Outline

Havard: The medical Inkling

The Inklings was a group of friends and colleagues who gathered around Lewis in Oxford University during the 1930s and 1940s [1]. The group would meet weekly after dinner in the evening at Lewis’s rooms in Magdalen College to read works-in-progress, and more informally to converse in the Eagle and Child (‘Bird and Baby’) pub in St Giles.

Lewis is now world famous as author of the Narnia fairy stories, and was probably the greatest lay Christian writer of the 20th century. The other world famous Inkling was Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Charles Williams the novelist, poet and theologian was a later member. Other well-known Inklings included the philosopher Owen Barfield, Nevill Coghill – who became known as a Shakespearian director and published the best known modern English version of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the ‘angry young man’ novelist and literary scholar John Wain, and the biographer Lord David Cecil. Lewis’s brother Warren (‘Warnie’) was usually in attendance: he was a popular historian of the France of Louis XIV. Tolkien’s youngest son Christopher later joined, and is now the only surviving Inkling – Christopher Tolkien is the most important scholar of his father’s work.

In a recent book on the Inklings, The company they kept [2], Diana Pavlac Glyer notes that almost all of the regular members of the group were active authors – producing academic books, essays, novels, stories, plays and poems. The Inklings essentially functioned as a writers’ group that provided mutual encouragement, criticism and editorial assistance. Superficially at least, the odd-man-out was Robert Emlyn Havard (1901–1985), who was a general practitioner and sometimes medical scientist and the family physician for both Lewis and Tolkien.

Havard appears in fictional form as the somnolent but shrewd character ‘Dolbear’ in Tolkien’s posthumously published story The Notion Club papers [3]; and Lewis’s Prince Caspian is dedicated to Havard’s daughter [4]. He had various nicknames bestowed on him by the group including ‘Humphrey’, ‘the Red Admiral’ (due to a beard grown while in the navy) and UQ – which stood for the ‘Useless Quack’. Indeed, in his sneering and pervasively unreliable biography of Lewis, Havard is depicted by AN Wilson as something of a buffoon [5].

This was far from the case, as can be seen from Havard’s early career as a medical scientist. The most complete account of Havard’s life so-far is by Walter Hooper in his Lewis: a companion and guide [6]. Havard began by taking a first class degree in chemistry at Keble College, Oxford then studying medicine at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and Guy’s Hospital in London to graduate with the Oxford medical degree of BM BCh in 1927. He took an Oxford DM (Doctor of Medicine) in 1934 while working at Leeds University in the Biochemistry Department, and in the same year returned to Oxford as a research fellow in The Queen’s College, and around this time became a general practitioner.

Despite spending most of his time in general medical practice, Havard was a productive medical scientist with his name on more than two dozen papers published in first rank journals such as Nature, the Lancet, Biochemical Journal and the Journal of Physiology. He had three spells of research and publication – the first mainly to do with human biochemistry during the mid 1920s while he was still a medical student; a second studying more clinical aspects of biochemistry from the early 1930s as a medical graduate doing a doctorate in Leeds and Oxford, and the third from the early 1940s when working on anti-malarial drugs while an above-conscription-age volunteer for military service during world war two [2].

Exercise, phosphates and fun

During his days as a medical undergraduate in Cambridge, Havard co-authored (with George Adam Reay) an influential study published in the Journal of Physiology of 1926 entitled ’The influence of exercise on the inorganic phosphates in the blood and urine’. It was this amiable paper, with its depictions of a time when doing science was akin to an undergraduate ‘jape’, that provoked the following reflections.

This paper was certainly not earth-shattering, nonetheless seems to have been one of the most cited of that year’s volume of J. Physiol. There are currently 13 references to be found on the Google Scholar database (http://scholar.google.co.uk) (quite a lot for such an old paper) with the most recent reference in 1971.

The style and structure provides a charming window onto the very different science of the early 1920s; with its un-translated ‘varsity’ slang, ‘clubby’ style of referencing which lists only authors surnames without initials (in 1926 the membership of the Physiological Society was less than 400 [7]) and delightful vignettes concerning the conduct of experiments.

One striking feature is that the experimental methodology reported in the paper is described as having changed significantly throughout the period of the experiment, and results are given both for before and after these trial-and-error modifications. A modern scientific paper would surely omit the earlier failed attempts. Indeed, the style of this article is less like a modern paper than a slice of laboratory life. The impression is that these scientific pioneers wanted to share not just their results, but the nuts and bolts of how results were generated.

Havard and Reay describe how ‘the exercise took the form of the subject running up and down the laboratory stairs, 40 ft in height, until he was exhausted’ during and after which many one cubic centimetre blood samples were taken from the subject’s finger in order to measure the phosphate etc. – which seems likely to have been a painful procedure. However, one of the main subjects listed was ‘R.E.H.’ himself, so he could not be accused of inflicting on others something he avoided himself.

Indeed, all the experimental subjects are listed by their initials, and presumably therefore identifiable by those ‘in the know’ (so, none of our present-day worries about ‘confidentiality’ are in evidence). In one of the tables we are told that that subjects include G.B. described as ‘A rowing man’, W.E.T. a ‘Rugby “Blue”’ (a ‘Blue’ was awarded to Oxford undergraduates for competing at the highest level of university sport), H.K.B.O. a ‘Running “Blue”’, E.H.F a ‘Sprinter’; and again Havard himself who is, by contrast to these athletes, only ‘Partly trained’.

Collecting urine samples was a problem – we are informed that H.K.B.O. (despite – or maybe because? – of being a Running Blue) was unable to produce a urine sample for 7 min after his exercise. In another experiment R.H.B (‘Running’) was ‘as exhausted and distressed as any of the untrained subjects’ – which must have been rather humiliating for him. But then R.H.B seems not to have been a Blue.

Three women were included as subjects. Miss (I assume it was a Miss) M.M. did exercise which was rather disdainfully dismissed as ‘not very vigorous’; Miss B.E.H. managed ‘more vigorous’ exercise; while the Amazonian Miss C.E.L. was able to perform ‘very vigorous’ exercise – unfortunately however after these exertions she was depicted as ‘very exhausted’. Havard noted, with obvious regret, that the women produced ‘anomalous results’ which were ‘difficult to account for’.

In conclusion the authors reported that phosphate goes up a little then markedly down on exercise, and that trained men show less of these exercise-induced changes in their blood inorganic phosphate.

A snapshot from a lost era

My interest in this paper was stimulated because it presents in microcosm a snapshot of science from an all-but lost era of the ‘invisible college’ of collaborating and competing researchers who knew each other well-enough to dispense with formalities, and whose world was essentially private despite publication in widely circulated journals [8]. To the hard-nosed professional modern scientist, such early 20th century papers look eccentric and idiosyncratic. The paper is indeed ‘amateur’, but mostly in a desirable sense of describing science as an avocation done for intrinsic reasons and the esteem of peers, rather than a vocation rewarded by a secure income and managerial power.

But much more important and striking is the total absence of exaggeration, hype, or spin: the paper’s openness, candour – in a word honesty. This marks the biggest and most dismaying contrast between publications of the science of 80 years ago and of modern science. There has indeed been a loss of innocence, collegiality and fun; but a loss of unvarnished truthfulness is the most serious change against current practice [9].

I have said that Havard was not himself a writer, but on the evidence of this early article, Havard was an unusually vivid scientific author from his mid-twenties. Indeed he wrote essays and journalistic reviews dating back to his student days and continuing through into the 1950s. Furthermore, Havard contributed posthumous memoirs of both Lewis [10] and Tolkien [11].

All of which helps explain why, despite not being a literary man, ‘Humphrey’s’ presence at the Inklings meetings was so highly valued.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Robert Havard’s eldest son John, who kindly gave me a list of some of his father’s publications, and provided fascinating background information by means of e-mail and telephone conversations. John Havard’s brother Mark (i.e. RE Havard’s second son) also corresponded, and reminded me that the doctor in CS Lewis’s 1943 novel Perelandra was named ‘Humphrey’.
References

[1] H. Carpenter, The inklings, George Allen and Unwin, London (1981).

[2] D.P. Glyer, The company they keep: CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien and writers in community, Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio (2007).

[3] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Notion Club papers, Morgoth’s ring: history of middle earth volume IX, HarperCollins, London (1992).

[4] C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian, Geoffrey Bles, London (1951).

[5] A.N. Wilson, CS Lewis: A biography, Collins, London (1990).

[6] R.E. Havard and G.A. Reay, The influence of exercise on the inorganic phosphates of the blood and urine, J Physiol 61 (1926), pp. 35–48.

[7] W.F. Bynum, A short history of the physiological society 1926–1976, J Physiol 263 (1976), pp. 23–72. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (0)

[8] T. Kealey, Sex, science and profits: how people evolved to make money, William Heinemann, London (2008).

[9] B.G. Charlton, The vital role of transcendental truth in science, Med Hypotheses 72 (2009), pp. 373–376.

[10] R.E. Havard, Philia: Jack at ease. In: T. James and C.S. Como, Editors, Lewis at the breakfast table and other reminiscences, Harvest/HBJ Book, New York (1979), pp. 215–228.

[11] R.E. Havard and J.R.R. Professor, Tolkien: a personal memoir, Mythlore 17 (1990), pp. 61–62.

Electroshock and Pirsig

Electroshock in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Fictional, not factual

David Healy and Bruce G. Charlton

Medical Hypotheses; 2009: 72: 485-6.

(Healy) North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine, Cardiff University, Bangor, Wales LL57 2PW, United Kingdom Tel.: +44 1248 384452; fax: +44 1248 371397

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Summary

Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT/electroshock) features in a number of books and movies, but always unfavourably. ECT plays a major role in Robert Pirsig’s philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (‘ZAMM’). This has sold more than five million copies; making Pirsig perhaps the most widely read philosopher alive. ZAMM is apparently autobiographical, and describes the author suffering a psychotic breakdown which was treated by ECT. ECT led to a ‘cure’ but supposedly by deleting all memories of the author’s earlier self, producing a lost personality called Phaedrus. The presentation of ECT in ZAMM is chilling: ‘Destroyed by order of the court, enforced by the transmission of high-voltage alternating current through the lobes of his brain. Approximately 800 mills of amperage at durations of 0.5–1.5 s had been applied on twenty-eight consecutive occasions, in a process known technologically as ‘Annihilation ECS’. A whole personality had been liquidated without a trace in a technologically faultless act ....’. Yet newly published biographical information on Pirsig from Mark Richardson (Zen and now: on the trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. New York: Knopf; 2008) has documented that the role of ECT in ZAMM is a ‘literary device’, added at a late stage in drafting the book. In reality the ECT had erased some short-term memory, but Pirsig’s long-term memory had quickly returned. Richardson obtained this information from Robert Pirsig’s (then) wife, from his sister, and also from his friend John Sutherland (who appears as a character in ZAMM). It seems that one of the most famous depictions of ECT, one that had appeared factual, was actually fictional.

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Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT/electroshock) features in a number of books and movies. Never favourably.

Van Atta [1], Abbott [2], and Freeman [3] while starting with mental illness portray a treatment that seems based largely on imagined imagery. Gotkin and Gotkin [4], Thomas [5], Frame [6] and Helfgott [7] have an autobiographical core with a possibly fictional overlay, but portray ECT in more realistic terms. In general, all these books view ECT as a punishment. Where recovery happens after ECT, it is put down to a loving relationship or other factors that enables the person to survive this treatment among other things.

The best known portrayal of ECT appears in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest [8]. In book and movie, an older unmodified ECT is portrayed relatively realistically but ECT is used punitively as a device to move the plot along rather than as a treatment. Kesey’s own views of ECT may have been somewhat at odds with the use to which treatment is put in the book, in that he appears to have rigged up a device at his home in an effort to induce a convulsion, probably to explore whether it might have a consciousness expanding effect [9]. The use of ECT in Cuckoo’s Nest is well-known, but Kesey’s own experiments with ECT are almost unknown.

Another book in which ECT features is Robert Pirsig’s philosophical novel [10] B. Charlton, A Philosophical Novel: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, Durham Univ J 84 (1992), pp. 111–117.[10] Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (‘ZAMM’; [11]). This has sold more than five million copies; making Pirsig perhaps the most widely read philosopher alive [12].

The book is apparently autobiographical, and describes the author suffering a psychotic breakdown which was treated by ECT. ECT led to a ‘cure’ but supposedly by deleting all memories of the author’s earlier self, producing a lost personality called Phaedrus.

The presentation of ECT in ZAMM is chilling. ‘[The personality of Phaedrus was d]estroyed by order of the court, enforced by the transmission of high-voltage alternating current through the lobes of his brain. Approximately 800 mills of amperage at durations of 0.5–1.5 s had been applied on twenty-eight consecutive occasions, in a process known technologically as ‘Annihilation ECS’. A whole personality had been liquidated without a trace in a technologically faultless act ...’ [11]; pp. 84.

Yet newly published biographical information on Pirsig from Mark Richardson [13] has documented that the role of ECT in ZAMM, as in Cuckoo’s nest, is a ‘literary device’, added at a late stage in drafting the book: ‘in truth the shock treatments had erased some short-term memory, but his long-term memory had quickly returned. Robert Pirsig the author could recall everything about Phaedrus just fine: it was Robert Pirsig the narrator who was still delusional’. ([13]; pp. 188–189). Richardson obtained this information from Robert Pirsig’s (then) wife, from his sister, and also from his friend John Sutherland (who appears as a character in ZAMM) [14].

It would appear therefore that yet another of the most famous depictions of ECT, one that had appeared factual, was fictional. While ZAMM is prefaced with the disclaimer that ‘much has been changed for rhetorical purposes’ [11]; pp. iii, Pirzig has never given any indication that the side effects ascribed to ECT were fictional.
References

[1] W. Van Atta, Shock treatment, Doubleday & Co., Garden City, NY (1961).

[2] J.H. Abbott, In the belly of the beast: letters from prison, Random House, NY (1981).

[3] H. Freeman, Judge, jury and executioner, Talking Leaves Publishing Co., Urbana IL (1986).

[4] J. Gotkin and P. Gotkin, Too much anger, too many tears. A personal triumph over psychiatry, Quadrangle Books, NY (1975).

[5] M. Thomas, Home from 7-North: a psychological journey, Libra Publishers, NY (1984).

[6] J. Frame, An angel at my table, Flamingo, Hammersmith London (1987).

[7] G. Helfgott, Love you to bits and pieces, Penguin Books, Australia (1996).

[8] K. Kesey, One flew over the Cuckoo’s nest, Viking Press, NY (1962).

[9] E. Shorter and D. Healy, Electroshock: a history of electroconvulsive treatment in mental illness, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, USA (2007).

[10] B. Charlton, A Philosophical Novel: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, Durham Univ J 84 (1992), pp. 111–117.

[11] M. Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Corgi, London (1976) [Originally published 1974].

[12] Tim Adams. The interview: Robert Pirsig, http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/nov/19/fiction; 2008 [Accessed 8 12 2008].

[13] Richardson Mark, Zen and now: on the trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Knopf, New York (2008).

[14] Mark Richardson – Personal communication with BG Charlton by e-mail. 8th Dec 2008.

Transcendental truth in science

The vital role of transcendental truth in science

Bruce G. Charlton; University of Buckingham, UK

Medical Hypotheses. Volume 72, Issue 4, April 2009, Pages 373-376

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Summary

I have come to believe that science depends for its long-term success on an explicit and pervasive pursuit of the ideal of transcendental truth. ‘Transcendental’ implies that a value is ideal and ultimate – it is aimed-at but can only imperfectly be known, achieved or measured. So, transcendental truth is located outside of science; beyond scientific methods, processes and peer consensus. Although the ultimate scientific authority of a transcendental value of truth was a view held almost universally by the greatest scientists throughout recorded history, modern science has all-but banished references to truth from professional scientific discourse – these being regarded as wishful, mystical and embarrassing at best, and hypocritical or manipulative at worst. With truth excluded, the highest remaining evaluation mechanism is ‘professional consensus’ or peer review – beyond which there is no higher court of appeal. Yet in Human accomplishment, Murray argues that cultures which foster great achievement need transcendental values (truth, beauty and virtue) to be a live presence in the culture; such that great artists and thinkers compete to come closer to the ideal. So a scientific system including truth as a live presence apparently performs better than a system which excludes truth. Transcendental truth therefore seems to be real in the pragmatic sense that it makes a difference. To restore the primacy of truth to science a necessary step would be to ensure that only truth-seekers were recruited to the key scientific positions, and to exclude from leadership those who are untruthful or exhibit insufficient devotion to the pursuit of truth. In sum, to remain anchored in its proper role, science should through ‘truth talk’ frequently be referencing normal professional practice to transcendental truth values. Ultimately, science should be conducted at every level, from top to bottom, on the basis of what Bronowski termed the ’habit of truth’. Such a situation currently seems remote and fanciful. But within living memory, routine truthfulness and truth-seeking were simply facts of scientific life – taken for granted among real scientists.

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Introduction

I have come to believe that science depends for its long-term success on an explicit and pervasive pursuit of the ideal of transcendental truth.

‘Transcendental’ implies that a value is ideal and ultimate – it is aimed-at but can be known, achieved or measured only imperfectly. So, transcendental truth is located outside of science; beyond scientific methods, processes and peer consensus.

Transcendental truth is not, therefore, evaluated by science; but is instead the proper aim of science. Especially truth is the proper aim of scientists as individuals. In other words, science should be a social system dominated by scientists who are dedicated truth-seekers: who practice ’the habit of truth’ and whose practice of science includes ‘truth talk’ that references current actuality to ideal aspirations.

(Henceforth in this essay, the word ‘truth’ should always be understood to refer to ‘transcendental truth’.)

An experiment in excluding truth from scientific discourse

Although the ultimate scientific authority of a transcendental value of truth was a view almost universally held by the greatest scientists throughout recorded history, and was a frequent topic of discourse among scientists and in the literature until the mid-20th century; modern science has pretty much dispensed with the idea of truth. References to truth in an ultimate sense have by now been all-but banished from professional scientific literature and discourse; being regarded by a younger generation of hard-nosed and technically-orientated researchers as wishful, mystical and embarrassing at best – and hypocritical or manipulative at worst. Instead, all disputes are constrained to operate within an evaluation system of proximate methodology and peer approved standard practice.

Such exclusion of references to truth from scientific discourse could be regarded as an experiment which has been gathering support for about 50 years – although the overlapping of scientific generations meant that senior scientists continued to discuss truth in a transcendental fashion at least into the 1980s, and a handful still continue. The experiment in exclusion of truth talk was driven (presumably) by the desire for greater efficiency – on the belief that transcendental values are nonsense, and serve no function except to waste time and energy, to confuse and mislead. The assumption was that science could more-efficiently be done using just internal evaluations.

This profound shift within science is described most tellingly in Real Science by the late John Ziman [1] – a British physicist of great distinction as well as a philosopher and sociologist of science. He termed the transformation a change from ‘academic science’ to ‘post-academic science’. Post-academic discourse is framed such that questions of truth have lost their meaning.

When truth was excluded, what replaced it? The answer is that without truth ‘professional consensus’ is left as the highest remaining evaluation mechanism. Peer review is now the ultimate validation procedure beyond which there is no higher court of appeal. Yet in science up to the last quarter of the twentieth century, peer review had a modest and inessential role [2] and [3]. Furthermore, peer review is not distinctive to science; but is a characteristic of all academic disciplines. In so far as peer review is the highest court of appeal in science, then science has been replaced with generic administrative procedure. In sum, peer review is neither necessary nor sufficient as a definition of science; and domination by peer review marks the disappearance of ’real science’ and the inclusion of its activities within the system of large, complex trans-national bureaucracies.

The lack of any anchor of practice to transcendental truth has rendered many areas of modern science a kind of ‘glass bead game’ [4], disciplines that are free-spinning cogs with little or no explanatory, predictive or manipulative connection with the natural world. By its ultimate reliance on professional evaluations (various different versions of peer review applied to research funding, publication, prizes, promotions, etc. [5]) some branches of modern science have become structurally indistinguishable from academic literary criticism: arcane, rigorous, sometimes brilliant – but ultimately a fashion-driven pastime of ringing variations for the sake of career advancement.

This experiment in trying to do science without reference to transcendental truth has – I believe – failed, as evidenced by several linked phenomena including the decline of scientific genius [6] and [7], impaired efficiency in science (i.e. escalating input of resources with declining or static substantive scientific production) [8], and a pathological dependence upon social consensus as the ultimate arbiter of reality [5] and [9].

Charles Murray’s Human accomplishment

In his magisterial book Human accomplishment [6], Murray suggests that the highest level of genius is attained more frequently in societies which explicitly and pervasively incorporate concepts of the transcendental values of ‘the good’ ‘the true’ and ‘the beautiful’; or virtue, truth and beauty:

“…A culture that fosters great accomplishment needs a coherent sense of the transcendental goods. Coherent sense means that the goods are a live presence in the culture, and that great artists and thinkers compete to come closer to the ideal that captivates them.”

Murray used bibliometric methods to evaluate the importance of individuals in the sciences, arts, music, philosophy and literature from the earliest recorded times up to 1950. In essence, he created a representative sample of standard authoritative historical texts of different types, and used a variety of methods for measuring the relative attention devoted to different individuals or the numbers of their achievements. When these measures were totalled and ranked, Murray discovered (or confirmed) the relative importance of specific individuals.

So that, for example, Beethoven and Mozart were given most attention in texts of the Western Classical Music Tradition; in Literature it was Shakespeare; in Western Philosophy – Aristotle; in Western Art – Michelangelo. To turn to the sciences: in Chemistry number one was Lavoisier; in Physics – jointly Newton and Einstein, in Mathematics – Euler; in Biology the top 10 are Darwin, followed by Aristotle, Lamarck, Cuvier, Morgan, Linnaeus, Harvey, Schwann, Hales and Swammerdam; in Medicine the top ten are Pasteur, Hippocrates, Koch, Galen, Paracelsus, Paul Erlich, Laennec, McCollum, Fleming and Pare.

Murray also performed quantitative analyses across historical periods and between countries and tested several putative explanatory variables (mainly using multiple regression statistical methods) to try and understand why the highest levels of individual human accomplishment are often clustered spatio-temporally – e.g. Classical Greece and Renaissance Italy.

Murray’s suggestion when applied to science is that a system of science which fosters a significant rate of great accomplishment by individuals (i.e. genius at an above-random or more-than-sporadic incidence of occurrence) needs to incorporate the concept of transcendental truth as a ‘live presence’ in its functional discourse [6].

Transcendental truth therefore seems to be real in the pragmatic sense that it makes a difference. The difference is systemic: one scientific system out-performing another [10] according to scientific criteria. A scientific system including truth as a ‘live presence’ seems to perform measurably better than a system which excludes truth – at least it performs better in terms of generating geniuses attaining the highest level of accomplishment.

But transcendental truth cannot be proven to exist in any direct way since it is neither detectable nor measurable – it is an ideal. Truth cannot be extracted, isolated, cloned or photographed. Truth is not a ‘fact’ within a discipline. Any real world measure of truth is approximate, incomplete and subject to distortion. So proximate ‘performance’ measures such as positions, prizes and awards, publications, citations, or amount of research funding are not the same as truth, and need to be distinguished from truth. Therefore – although real – truth is not scientifically demonstrable.

It is, in a sense, obvious that science must aim at something outside science; because if science was guided only by values from within science, then science would simply revert to an axiomatic or circular activity in which science validated science – so that false or useless science would be indistinguishable from true or useful science so long as it did not contradict its own internal rules.

Ultimately the value of science is measured in terms of its performance as judged from outside science, using non-scientific criteria. Science as a whole is evaluated on a criterion of truth, since what the rest of human life wants from science is reliable knowledge [11].

The habit of truth or a habit of hype?

Truth-seeking science is a product of the domination of the social system of science by intrinsically truthful scientists – and such a system will also evolve social mechanisms for the enforcement of truthfulness. One example of a practice of science that embodies truth-seeking is that which Bronowski termed the habit of truth [12].

Bronowski argues that for science to be truthful as a whole it is not sufficient to aim at truth as an ultimate outcome, scientists must also be habitually truthful in the ‘minute particulars’ of their scientific lives. The end does not justify the means, instead the means are indivisible from the end: scientific work is ‘of a piece, in the large and in detail; so that if we silence one scruple about our means, we infect ourselves and our ends together’ [12].

I believe that Bronowski’s understanding of truth is a profound insight. However, it can readily be observed that at all levels of modern science, but especially among the scientific leadership, quite the opposite to a habit of truth applies: scientists practice a ‘habit of hype’.

Routine modern scientific discourse, especially at the highest levels, is often as dishonest as it can get-away-with [13]. It is not merely that people are failing to aim-at truthfulness, which would be bad enough; scientists are too often aiming at the maximum amount of self-serving falsehood that is compatible with a fear of being denounced by those powerful enough to harm them. And when such denunciation is unlikely – i.e. when self-serving falsehood is compatible with the needs of established power – then the level of dishonesty among modern scientific leaders can be very great indeed.

The habit of hype is inculcated by the fact that scientific self-promotion has become a daily, even hourly, requirement for optimizing career-survival and success [1]. That social reality is itself a consequence of the experiment in excluding truth from science, since hype is unlikely to be confronted with truth talk. And for a successful modern scientist, there is a pervasive need for competitive self-justification to promote demands, activities and achievements – expressed in papers, grant and fellowship proposals, requests for space and personnel, actions to attract and retain staff and leaders, engagement in media activities… the list is endless, the task continuous, and the consequence is that scientists receive a thorough training in marketing their research to any and all powerful stakeholders, until the activity becomes habitual.

Some scientists have so deeply ingrained a habit of hype that they never switch-it-off – even in private and off the record. Others have developed a dualistic cynicism whereby their public face is denied and mocked by their private opinions [14]. So that world famous scientists may privately and off the record acknowledge the triviality or falsity of work for which they are honoured and rewarded; work which they will advertise and hype to the skies when they appear in the public domain.

Dishonesty among powerful scientists is not necessarily selfish – often enough hype is done for the benefit of the research team, members of whom are dependent on the ability of their leader to ‘spin’ the team’s research in a highly competitive marketplace of science. And anyway, in the environment of modern science, a one-off individual scientist who behaved with scrupulous honesty would nevertheless usually be assumed to be engaged in hype like everyone else; and would see the magnitude of their achievement discounted on this assumption.

But whatever the motivations, whether good or bad, selfish or altruistic, the pervasive abandonment of the scientific imperative for truth-telling has debased the currency of communication and eroded the integrity of modern science in the same way that monetary hyper-inflation damages the economy [13].

Is truth true, or just a convenient fiction?

It seems that transcendental truth is needed in science for many reasons.

One reason relates to the motivation for individual scientists to aim as high as their abilities allow. Only when science is truth-seeking can its practice mobilize the most profound dedication from its practitioners – a level of motivation far greater than that elicited by peer-approval-seeking science, or science done from a sense of duty [6]. Another reason for valuing truth is the need for science as a social system to tolerate (and if possible actively support) individuals who seek truth – even when this generates greater risk and a short term reduction in performance. Likewise to tolerate also the fact that the most brilliant and creative scientists will often have unworldly, erratic or abrasive personalities [15]. In other words, only the living presence of truth may provide a higher context for decision-making in which considerations of social expediency can potentially be transcended.

A third factor is that without transcendental truth the professional practice of science will drift away from its proper end and become something else. I believe that this has already happened – especially in medical science, which is the dominant world science – and the results are perceived by observers outside of science [8]. Yet the situation of ineffective, inefficient and misguided science is tolerated due to the apparent lack of viable alternatives. It is in order to generate alternatives that a greater understanding of the role of truth in science is needed.

But despite these advantages, the ‘big question’ for any modern scientist is whether transcendental truth really is ‘true’ or is merely a convenient fiction.

By ‘convenient fiction’ I mean the idea that even if it could convincingly be argued that scientists work better when they believe in transcendental truth; such ’truth’ is actually no more than a delusion, albeit a useful delusion. The convenient fiction argument is that in reality there is no such thing as truth but it is a good thing for science and for society when scientists act as if truth is real.

Early scientists generally assumed that the truth was a property of the universe created by a God, communicated in outline to humans by divine revelation, understood by God-given reason, and applied to the study of Nature by God-given human ingenuity. They believed in both God and truth. Later scientists were atheists about God and realists about truth. For example Albert Einstein had an abstract, pantheistic view of the universe and a belief in the fortunate (but not God-given) rational and intuitive ability of humans to understand the nature of reality. Another generation or two onwards, and most of the best scientists were atheists about God and also did not believe in the reality of truth. They disbelieved in both God and truth, nonetheless the best scientists behaved as if they did regard truth as real. For example Richard Feynman was not religious and did not believe in transcendental truth but anyway lived and worked by a strict ethic of truthfulness and truth-seeking. Modern scientists have abandoned all this as so much useless baggage. They are atheists about God, relativists about truth, and careerists in their behaviour: they neither believe, nor behave as if they believe in transcendental truth.

How a scientist behaves is clearly more important than his or her belief system. But – viewed through the ’retrospectoscope’ – I am not convinced of the coherence or long-term sustainability of Feynman’s views – nor even Einstein’s. The problem is that while the overall performance of science can serve as an empirical justification for the necessity of truth-seeking, if the truthfulness of science is a product of individual truthfulness of a multitude of scientists in the minute particulars of their everyday practice, then a goal of enhancing the overall performance of science seems too remote and weak an incentive to enforce a personal ethic of truth-seeking. A more proximate and powerful reason for truthfulness may be required if the endemic corruptions of parasitic selfish expediency are to be avoided.

So, in retrospect, Einstein and Feynman’s attitudes both look like steps along the path which has led to the modern exclusion of truth from science. I suspect that for science to function over the long term might entail a basis of faith in ‘scientific revelation’ – specifically the revelations of transcendental truth transmitted by the great scientists of the past, upon whom modern scientists rely for a basic understanding of the reality of truth. For those who are both dedicated and fortunate, this basic understanding of the nature of truth may be validated and supplemented by the experience of personal revelations of truth.

In a nutshell, it seems that there are several ways to live by transcendental truth – ranging from formal theology to the assumption that an apprehension of truth and the validity of rationality were hit upon by chance, but amplified by natural selection mechanisms because they led to better results than the available alternatives. Some belief systems relating to truth may be more stable and coherent than others, but for scientists the crucial matter is that each should work according to an ethic of transcendental truth.
Recruiting only truth-seekers and truth tellers, encouraging truth-talk

Even when they regard it as desirable that science be truth-guided, modern scientists may find it puzzling to understand how truth could be operationalized in scientific practice; despite the fact that truth actually was operationalized in science until a couple of generations ago.

Essentially, what is needed is that the social system of science should be staffed by devoted truth-seekers and that transcendental truth should be (to adapt Murray’s quote) a live presence in the culture of science such that scientific leaders compete to come closer to the ideal of truth that captivates them. Once such a system is established, then science should grow by recruitment of similar personnel – by a kind of ‘apostolic succession’ in which genuine truth-seekers recognize others sharing their own motivations. So science depends on a restoration of the truth-seeking apostolic succession of scientists.

(This mechanism of apostolic succession is most clearly seen in a field such as classical music, where the abilities and motivations of composers, conductors and solo performers are so refined and subtle that they can only be recognized and measured by the best of the previous generation by direct personal apprehension. So there are lineages of elite composers, conductors and performers – of pupils and teachers – stretching-back over many generations. But for music the ruling transcendental value would be beauty, not truth [16].)

One consequence of a restoration of the apostolic succession of truth-seeking scientists would be a return of ‘truth-talk’ in mainstream scientific discourse. Such an outcome would probably irritate philosophers of science (who might well see scientists’ truth discussions as unacceptably lacking in rigour or question-begging) and also the large proportion of scientists who are actually technicians in terms of having a purely professional and instrumental perspective. It would also, no doubt, lead to a great deal of hot air and hypocrisy. Nonetheless, it is a necessary development.

Following this might come a restoration of the ‘habit of truth’ [12] at all levels within all legitimate branches of science. In other words a reinforcement of the primacy of truth evaluations that tend to hold science to its core function; and a focusing upon truth evaluations rather than – as so often at present [5] – a focus upon discriminating validity solely on the basis of secondary matters of standard technique, or peer evaluation, or non-scientific evaluations whether political, moral, financial, marketing or whatever.

The first necessary step is then to ensure that truth-seekers are recruited to the key scientific positions, and to exclude from leadership those who – no matter how valuable are their other qualities – have a record of untruthfulness either in minutiae or in big things; or exhibit lack of devotion to the ideal of truth. A further step would then be to enforce truthfulness within the system, with scientific sanctions against those who infringe this imperative. And individual scientists also need recurrently to reference their thoughts and activities to truth, if they are to mobilize their best efforts and strongest motivations for truth-seeking, and to direct their purpose toward transcendental goals.

In sum, to remain anchored in its proper role, science must frequently through ‘truth talk’ be referencing current professional opinion, standard practice and long-term strategy to the values of transcendental truth – a matter of modelling and comparing science as it is with science as ideally it should be. Ultimately, science should be conducted at every level, from top to bottom, on the basis of an habitual ethic of truth. Such a situation currently seems a remote and fanciful prospect. But within living memory, routine truthfulness and truth-seeking were simply facts of scientific life - taken for granted among real scientists.

References

[1] J. Ziman, Real science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (2000).

[2] D.F. Horrobin, The philosophical basis of peer review and the suppression of innovation, JAMA 263 (1990), pp. 1438–1441.

[3] B.G. Charlton, Conflicts of interest in medical science: peer usage, peer review and ‘CoI consultancy’, Med Hypotheses 63 (2004), pp. 181–186.

[4] H. Hesse, The glass bead game, Penguin, London (1975) (Originally published 1943).

[5] B.G. Charlton, Figureheads, ghost-writers and pseudonymous quant bloggers: the recent evolution of authorship in science publishing, Med Hypotheses 71 (2008), pp. 475–480.

[6] C. Murray, Human accomplishment: the pursuit of excellence in the arts and sciences, 800 BC to 1950, HarperCollins, New York (2003).

[7] B.G. Charlton, The last genius? – reflections on the death of Francis Crick, Med Hypotheses 63 (2004), pp. 923–924.

[8] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, Medical research funding may have over-expanded and be due for collapse, QJM 98 (2005), pp. 53–55.

[9] B.G. Charlton, Peer usage versus peer review, BMJ 335 (2007), p. 451. Full Text via CrossRef

[10] B. Charlton and P. Andras, The modernization imperative, Imprint Academic, Exeter, UK (2003).

[11] J. Ziman, Reliable knowledge: an exploration of the grounds for belief in science, Cambridge University Press, New York (1978).

[12] J. Bronowski, Science and human values, Penguin, London (1964).

[13] B. Charlton and P. Andras, Hype and spin in the NHS, Brit J Gen Practice 52 (2002), pp. 520–521.

[14] P. Sloterdijk, Critique of cynical reason, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis (1988).

[15] H.J. Eysenck, Genius: the natural history of creativity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (1995).

[16] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, The future of ‘pure’ medical science. The need for a new specialist professional research system, Med Hypotheses 65 (2005), pp. 419–425.

Why are modern scientists so dull?

Why are modern scientists so dull? How science selects for perseverance and sociability at the expense of intelligence and creativity

Medical Hypotheses. Volume 72, Issue 3, Pages 237-243

Bruce G. Charlton

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Summary

Question: why are so many leading modern scientists so dull and lacking in scientific ambition? Answer: because the science selection process ruthlessly weeds-out interesting and imaginative people. At each level in education, training and career progression there is a tendency to exclude smart and creative people by preferring Conscientious and Agreeable people. The progressive lengthening of scientific training and the reduced independence of career scientists have tended to deter vocational ‘revolutionary’ scientists in favour of industrious and socially adept individuals better suited to incremental ‘normal’ science. High general intelligence (IQ) is required for revolutionary science. But educational attainment depends on a combination of intelligence and the personality trait of Conscientiousness; and these attributes do not correlate closely. Therefore elite scientific institutions seeking potential revolutionary scientists need to use IQ tests as well as examination results to pick-out high IQ ‘under-achievers’. As well as high IQ, revolutionary science requires high creativity. Creativity is probably associated with moderately high levels of Eysenck’s personality trait of ‘Psychoticism’. Psychoticism combines qualities such as selfishness, independence from group norms, impulsivity and sensation-seeking; with a style of cognition that involves fluent, associative and rapid production of many ideas. But modern science selects for high Conscientiousness and high Agreeableness; therefore it enforces low Psychoticism and low creativity. Yet my counter-proposal to select elite revolutionary scientists on the basis of high IQ and moderately high Psychoticism may sound like a recipe for disaster, since resembles a formula for choosing gifted charlatans and confidence tricksters. A further vital ingredient is therefore necessary: devotion to the transcendental value of Truth. Elite revolutionary science should therefore be a place that welcomes brilliant, impulsive, inspired, antisocial oddballs – so long as they are also dedicated truth-seekers.

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Introduction

Why are so many leading modern scientists intellectually dull and lacking in scientific ambition? The short answer is: because the science selection process ruthlessly weeds-out interesting and imaginative people [1].

At each level in education, training and career progression there is a tendency to exclude smart and creative people by preferring conscientious and sociable people. As science becomes ever-more dominated by ‘peer review’ mechanisms, pro-social behaviour in scientists has been accorded primacy over the brilliant and inspired – but abrasive and rebellious – type of truth-seekers who used to be common among the best scientists.

A majority of senior professional scientists have been through a rigorous and prolonged process of education, selection and training to become professional researchers. Yet the nature of the rigour and the duration of the process in modern science ensures that those who come out at the end and attain long-term scientific employment are not the kind of people capable of top level, revolutionary science. They will very probably be extremely productive and socially compliant, but of only moderately high intelligence and likely to be lacking in imagination [2].

(Of course, such an accusation of dullness is less likely to fit those scientists who are reading this article than the average scientist, since it is generally acknowledged that people who read or publish in Medical Hypotheses are atypical and tend to come from the more vividly colourful end of the scientific spectrum!)

Dullness-inducing trends in modern science

Modern science is just too dull an activity to attract, retain or promote many of the most intelligent and creative people. In particular the requirement for around 10, 15, even 20 years of postgraduate ‘training’ before even having a chance at doing some independent research of one’s own choosing, is enough to deter almost anyone with a spark of vitality or self-respect; and utterly exclude anyone with an urgent sense of vocation for creative endeavour. Even after a decade or two of ‘training’ the most likely scientific prospect is that of researching a topic determined by the availability of funding rather than scientific importance, or else functioning as a cog in someone else’s research machine. Either way, the scientist will be working on somebody else’s problem – not his own. Why would any serious intellectual wish to aim for such a career?

The whole process and texture of doing science has slowed-up. Read the memoirs of scientists active up to the middle 1960s – doing science then was nimble and fast-moving in texture and also longer-termist in ambition. Unexpected leads could be pursued. It was common for people to begin independent (really independent) research in their early- to mid-twenties. For the individuals concerned there was a palpable sense of progress, a crackling excitement.

Nowadays, training to be a scientist is an exercise in almost-endlessly-deferred satisfaction. There is an always-increasing requirement for years of training (i.e., extra years of doing what other people decide you ‘need’ to do, and not what interests you) – and also for more advance-planning, application for committee permissions, and demand for logistical organization; combined with a proliferation of scientifically-irrelevant and energy-sapping bureaucracy.

The timescale of scientific action and discourse has gone up from days, weeks and months to months, years and decades. Yet at the same time, the requirement for unremitting annual high productivity means that the timescale for research pay-off has contracted to a maximum of 3–5 years. It is usually career suicide to take the time and risks entailed by scientifically-ambitious research [2]. In sum, the tempo of science has slowed but the time-horizon of science has contracted. Modern science is both duller and more short-termist: the worst of both worlds!

Demanding superhuman perseverance filters-out intelligence and creativity

The kind of person who can thrive in the world of modern science is likely to be characterized primarily by an almost superhuman level of the personality attribute of perseverance – the ability doggedly to continue a course of action in pursuit of a goal, over a long period and despite difficulties, setbacks and the lack of immediate rewards (and indeed the lack of any guaranteed ultimate rewards); with simultaneous, continuous productivity.

Modern science therefore imposes an extraordinarily high minimum threshold for perseverance – lacking which will deter many individuals from going into science in the first place, and which will cull and exclude many others during the process of accumulating sufficient qualifications and experience to allow them to embark on independent research. Other near-synonyms for perseverance are ‘self-discipline’ or ‘grit’ [3], [4] and [5] and the ‘Big Five’ personality trait called ‘Conscientiousness’ (abbreviated here as ‘C’) [6].

Secondarily such an individual will usually need to have high levels of the Big Five personality trait termed ‘Agreeableness’ (abbreviated here as ‘A’) – which encompasses the ability to empathize with others, get along with groups, and compliantly to put the interests of the group above one’s own concerns [6].

Now, both Conscientiousness and Agreeableness are admirable traits in terms of society as a whole. Most people would wish to live in a society where Conscientious and Agreeable people predominated. Furthermore, a higher level of Conscientiousness, in particular, is predictive of better job performance [7]. But, success in top level revolutionary science demands somewhat different qualities than society as a whole. While high levels of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness make a person an excellent citizen and employee; high average levels of these traits in selected personnel are attainable only at the cost of accepting lower average levels of other attributes (such as IQ and creativity).

This is a serious problem because Conscientiousness and Agreeableness are not the most important traits required for doing ‘revolutionary’ science at the highest level [9] and [10]. (Revolutionary science is that type of science which changes the direction of science [9]; a revolutionary scientist is one whose activates are directed at this goal, someone trying to develop qualitatively new theories or methods [10].) Instead, for success in revolutionary science intelligence and creativity are the most important qualities [8]. Further, there is evidence to suggest that very high levels of the traits of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness may actually be hostile to – or even incompatible with – scientific genius; because to be hard-working and pleasant is useful only when these virtues are mobilized in pursuit of worthwhile scientific goals – and not when they become the highest scientific value in their own right.

The vital importance of high IQ in revolutionary science

The personnel requirements for being a good science employee on the one hand and on the other hand an original and ambitious ‘revolutionary’ scientist are, in some respects, in opposition. This should not really be surprising – but the implications have been ignored and flouted for several decades.

For an employee in ‘normal’ science – that is, science which aims at incrementally building on existing ideas and knowledge – reliability and technical competence are primary [9] and [10]. The great bulk of modern science is ‘normal’ science – that has been the major focus of expansion in funding and manpower over the past 60 years [11] and [12]. Such scientists do not need to be original; rather they need to be hard-working, meticulous and conservative in terms of their ideas and methods. And since normal science is increasingly collaborative, it is beneficial if normal scientists enjoy working socially and within group norms. High intelligence is also valuable in normal science, as it is in almost all employment activities [13], but perhaps especially valuable in the ‘troubleshooting’ aspects of normal science – making methods work.

So, for normal science it seems that high Conscientiousness is essential, high intelligence and Agreeableness are both useful, but creativity is probably detrimental.

But for revolutionary science intelligence and creativity are both vital ingredients. By contrast, Conscientiousness is necessary in revolutionary science only to the degree that a scientist must be able and willing to work long and hard at his chosen scientific problem, the problem which fascinates him. And working on your own problem requires much less perseverance than working hard for many years at non-scientific problems (as happens at school or during the first college degree), or working hard for many years at other peoples’ scientific problems (as required at graduate school or when working as a post-doc).

General intelligence (or ‘g factor’ intelligence), as measured by formal IQ tests, is a very important psychological ingredient in the ability to perform top level scientific research [8]. Indeed, to understand both the nature of g factor intelligence and the nature of elite science is to recognize as obvious the value of high general intelligence to research in revolutionary science [14]. Studies of the best scientists suggest that these typically have very high IQ of several standard deviations above average [8]. (Note: for the UK the average IQ of a random population sample is defined as 100 with a standard deviation defined as 15 points – other nations may have a different average/ distribution when calibrated against UK IQ norms.)

Cox’s study of 1926 retrospectively and indirectly estimated the average IQ of ‘genius’ scientists from the past as between 135 and 175, which is in the top 1% of the population (cited in [8]) – however the methodology generated only imprecise measurements During the 1950s Roe performed direct IQ tests on 23 highly-eminent US scientists [15] and found a median verbal IQ of 166 with a range from 121 to 177 (177 is about 5 standard deviations above average and was the ceiling of the tests; otherwise some subjects would have scored even higher).

Since very high IQ is found to be a near-universal feature of top scientists, it is presumably a necessary factor in becoming a top scientist. One way of looking at this is that successful revolutionary scientists are apparently among the most intelligent humans alive. And Roe’s work suggests that the minimum IQ for successful revolutionary science may be about 120 – which is in the top 10% of the UK population; or about the top 7% of the US population which has a slightly lower average IQ than the UK; or about 15% of the population of some East Asian countries such as Taiwan, Singapore or Hong Kong, which have a higher average IQ than the UK [16].

Furthermore, prospective follow-up cohort studies of ‘gifted’ children (i.e., children with very high formally-measured IQs [17] and [18]) have demonstrated much higher than average ability in science examinations, with greatly increased rates of achieving the highest levels of educational attainment (e.g., pure science, medical or engineering doctorates at elite universities); also a strong tendency to study science subjects as a career (e.g., mathematics, pure sciences, engineering and medicine) at both Bachelors and Doctoral level; and much higher than average attainment of measures of elite scientific performance such as election to major scholarly societies. However, it is important to recognize that most of these measures do not differentiate between normal science and revolutionary science.

In sum, achievement in revolutionary science almost certainly requires a very high IQ; and a high IQ was in the past often associated with a career choice towards, and aptitude in, scientific subjects. However, nowadays it is seldom that direct IQ measurements are explicitly used as a selection method in modern science; and instead examination performance or other educational measures are usually given the greatest weighting. Hence we simply do not know the size of effect of modern selection, education, training and career structure on the average and peak IQ of scientists who stay the course to become long-term researchers.

But although the size of effect is not known, and making the assumption that the intellectual quality of scientific recruits has not risen significantly and the size of the population of professional scientists has not fallen to make a more selected elite (in fact science employment has grown several-fold), then the effect of modern scientific selection practices is very probably in the direction of reducing average IQ among long-term researchers.

Intelligence and Conscientiousness predict educational attainment

It has been known for more than a century that many types of attainment, including educational qualifications such as examination results, are predicted by a combination of ‘capacity’ or ‘ability’ with ‘zeal’ or ‘motivation’ (summarized in [19]). In more modern terms, this implies that general (g factor) intelligence (IQ) and Big Five Conscientiousness (C) are the main contributors to educational attainment.

The relationship between IQ and C can be expressed as an equation

IQ×C≈Educational attainment

(Note that because the relationship between IQ and C is multiplicative, this equation correctly implies that ‘zero’ (or very low) levels of either IQ or C would prevent significant educational attainment.)

The above equation derives from Lynn [19], who actually proposed the more general formulation of “IQ × Conscientiousness × opportunity = Achievement”. However, I have left-out the multiplication by opportunity, as this is hard to evaluate, and (within the normal bounds of developed societies) there is little evidence that variations in opportunity create significant systematic differences in achievement when IQ (and perhaps personality) are controlled [14] and [20].

Therefore, at a first approximation, the best established personal attributes that predict educational attainment are IQ [13], [14] and [21] and C [3], [22], [23], [24] and [25]. Intelligence and Conscientiousness are certainly not the only factors contributing to educational attainment, but they are probably the most important and – since other factors are less certain or harder to measure – I will focus exclusively on IQ and C.

The measured level of correlations between IQ, C and educational attainment depend on the population studied, the subject and nature of the educational measurement, and the methodology. Traditionally IQ has been more powerful at predicting educational performance than personality [13], [14], [21] and [22], but not always [3]; and my guess is that over recent decades the predictive ability of IQ will very likely have declined, and that of C increased, due to increased demands for C in the educational process.
IQ and C are not highly correlated – so selection for Conscientiousness tends to depress average IQ

At an individual level there is little or no observable correlation between intelligence and Conscientiousness. Some group studies – especially sampling across very diverse social classes, ethnic groups or nations – show a positive correlation between IQ and measures correlated with C [16], [19] and [26], many studies show no significant correlation [5] and [27], and other studies show a significant negative correlation between IQ and C [28].

Probably the reason for this observed discrepancy between studies relates to subject selection. My guess is that when a population sample is very diverse in terms of educational attainment, class or ethnicity there will be a positive correlation between IQ and C; but when the sample is controlled for class or educational attainment (as in university student samples) the correlation may disappear or become inverse because the same level of educational attainment can be the result of various combinations of IQ and C. For example, a harder working person with lower IQ may get the same examination results as a higher IQ person who works less hard.

In other words; when educational attainment is held constant by sampling only a narrow stratum of educational attainment then there may be an inverse relationship between IQ and C, as indicated by a reversed version of the above equation: Educational attainment ≈ IQ × C.

But the lack of a strong correlation between IQ and Conscientiousness means that when very high levels of perseverance are a pre-requisite for scientists (i.e., only people who have competed a PhD and 6 years of postdoctoral research are eligible for selection) then this increased average level of C will inevitably be attainable only at the cost of sacrificing other personal abilities including IQ. This effect would be more powerful where educational attainment is held constant and IQ and C have a reciprocal relationship – but selecting for C would tend to depress average IQ even when there is no significant relationship between the variables.

For instance, imagine a university was selecting the top 10% of applicants for a PhD program. The average accepted person might be in the top 10% for IQ and also the top 10% for C – and around this average some would be harder working but less bright and others would be brighter but less diligent. (Students who were higher than the top 10% in both IQ and C would probably attend a higher ranked and more selective university.)

Now suppose that there was an increased level of Conscientiousness required to reach a given level of educational attainment – for example there was a shift from infrequent formal exams to frequent coursework, plus an extra 3 years were added to the formal educational process. The imaginary university would still have the same degree of selectivity (i.e., taking the top 10% of students) and would still be taking the top 10% on the basis of exam attainment – but now students would need to be in the top 5% for C.

With a requirement for C in the top 5%, many of the top 10% IQ students who had previously been eligible would no longer be able (or willing) to complete their educational evaluations; and their places would be taken by students of lower IQ but in the top 5% of C. The university might need to dredge down to include (say) the top 20% for IQ. Average IQ of successful applicants would reduce, and the newly-excluded high IQ but lower C students would then drop down the system to attend universities with a lower degree of selectivity (and they would thereby probably lose some of their competitive career edge).

When requirements for perseverance are increased, throughout the educational system there would be an assortment process such that higher C people will move up the system to more selective institutions and lower C individuals will move down the system. Students with the very best examination results would still have both very high IQ and very high C – but there would not be many such students since there is no strong positive correlation between IQ and C. In essence, students with higher C would now be valued more than those with higher IQ.

Typically, and all else being equal, greater selectivity for C therefore entails lesser selectivity for IQ.

A long-lasting, step-wise, hierarchical and competitive educational system tends to filter-out high IQ

Intelligence becomes progressively more powerful at predicting educational and occupational success as the cognitive demands of the job increase. IQ probably becomes more important the more advanced the educational level, and the higher the level of scientific activity. Conversely, it would be expected that non-IQ factors, especially C, will be more important at lower levels of scientific education, training and professional practice. So, a level of intelligence which suffices for excellence in routine, technical science could be grossly inadequate for cutting edge, revolutionary science.

The implication is that there is an intrinsic tendency for lower levels of the educational system, including scientific education, to select for different personal qualities than are required at higher levels. The tendency is for lower levels to favour higher Conscientiousness candidates at the expense of higher IQ candidates. Because at early stages of science perseverance is relatively more valuable than it is at advanced levels of science, and IQ is less valuable (since the cognitive demands are easier).

In the absence of specific IQ testing (used to identify and retain or promote the most intelligent candidates); a long-lasting, step-wise, hierarchical and competitive educational system – in which progression to more advanced stages depends on differentially successful performance at easier and less cognitively-demanding stages – will favour the most Conscientious individuals and select-out some individuals whose higher IQ would be expected to generate higher performance at advanced levels of the profession.

The result is that the highest levels of science almost certainly have a lower average IQ than would be optimal – due to the cohort having been selected so strongly for a higher level of C at lower (less cognitively-demanding) levels of the hierarchy. Since very high IQ is likely to be necessary for successful revolutionary science, the implication is that too many high level scientists are prevented (by their too-low IQ) from operating as revolutionary scientists. Instead they (presumably) become normal scientists – but unusually productive normal scientists (due to their vast capacity for hard work and self-discipline).

Of course, the loss of high IQ individuals could be compensated by the selective sieve causing a reduction in the number of people retained as the ladder is ascended – so that even if half of the high IQ people were lost, then this might not be noticed if only a quarter of people were retained. However, the long-term expansion of science funding with several-fold increase in the numbers of professional scientific personnel over recent decades [2] and [12] means that this kind of increasingly selectivity is unlikely to be operative.

In essence, high level scientific personnel should be a ‘highest IQ elite’ most of whom are capable of revolutionary science; but in modern science the leadership is more like a ‘highest perseverance elite’ who are typically incapable of revolutionary science and instead do a great deal of normal science [2].

Combining examination results with IQ testing can indirectly estimate Conscientiousness

A vital step should be to do a lot more IQ testing throughout science. IQ tests are powerfully predictive in many ways [29], including being highly predictive of job performance (in all jobs, but especially cognitively-complex jobs) [13] and there are many reasons why IQ testing should be much more widely deployed in our society. However, widespread (and deliberate) politically-motivated misrepresentation and disinformation currently prevents this situation [30].

Intelligence testing is particularly valuable in science because the ability to understand science and do scientific research is highly dependent on IQ. And formal IQ testing has probably become more necessary over recent decades as the educational system has evolved to be more selective for Conscientiousness (hence less selective for IQ). For example, in the UK and the USA educational systems there have been greatly increased demands for course work instead of less-frequent formal, supervised and timed examinations; as well as the above-mentioned lengthening duration of education and training.

The point of measuring IQ in a candidate would be to look for discrepancies between IQ testing and examination performance. If there is a large difference in ranked performance in examinations and IQ tests this will imply that the subject’s Conscientiousness is unusually high or low.

This can be expressed in the form of a rearranged equation relating IQ and C

[View the MathML source]

or expressed in terms of rank orderings:

[View the MathML source]

In other words, measures of educational attainment and intelligence can, together, be used as an indirect estimate of Conscientiousness.

(It seems to me that in the context of institutional selection and career decisions this indirect method of estimating Conscientiousness is likely to be more valid than the usual method of self-rating personality questionnaires [6] because it is much harder to cheat. It is facile for high IQ people to cheat in self-rating questionnaires by learning the correct responses that are marked to indicate high (or low) conscientiousness. But the only way for applicants to ‘fake’ this indirect method of estimating C would be to perform deliberately badly on either the IQ test or the examination – which would usually be a career-damaging strategy. For example, a candidate who dishonestly wished to signal high C could do so by deliberately performing badly on their IQ test, so that their exam ranking was higher than their IQ ranking. But there are not many selection or employment situations when this would be an adaptive strategy. Conversely, a person could make themselves look like an ‘underachiever’ by deliberately messing up their exams but trying hard on the IQ test – so their IQ rank was higher than their exam rank – however this would only be achievable at the cost of lowering their exam results, which is not often going to be a helpful thing to do.)

The object of this exercise in comparing exam results with IQ tests is to enable revolutionary science educational or research institutions to select under-achievers in preference to over-achievers. If, for example, a person is in the top 2% of the population for IQ but the exam results are only in the top 20%, then it is plausible that the relatively weak exam performance happened because the subject is relatively lower in C (although still above average). This is under-achievement.

If population norms are not available, then an institution could simply place its candidates into relative order for their examination results compared with their performance in an IQ test. Any significant discrepancies in rank ordering between the two lists would suggest either over- or under-achieving. For example, an under-achiever might be ranked second out of 20 for IQ and 16 out of 20 for exam results.

The opposite situation – ‘over-performers’ – are those who have significantly higher ranked exam results than IQ test results. The interpretation is that over-performers are higher in C lower and lower in IQ (harder working but less intelligent).
Agreeableness versus Psychoticism and creativity

High IQ is required for revolutionary science, but high IQ people are not necessarily creative – indeed some people with the highest recorded IQs have been (apparently) uncreative. And creativity as well as high IQ is required by revolutionary scientists – indeed revolutionary science is one of the primary arenas of human creativity with iconic figures such as Newton, Darwin and Einstein [8].

Perhaps surprisingly, creativity has often been found to be predicted by moderately high levels of Eysenck’s personality trait of ‘Psychoticism’ [31]. The trait of Psychoticism has been well-validated [6] and [32]; high psychoticism combines low-Agreeableness (e.g., higher selfishness, independence from group norms), low Conscientiousness (for example impulsivity, sensation-seeking) with a style of cognition that involves fluent, associative and rapid production of many ideas. So, although a trait of low Psychoticism implies a rational and pro-social personality (which are usually highly desirable traits); moderately high Psychoticism is not merely antisocial but has positive aspects as well – since it has flavours of independence of spirit and a more spontaneous and fantasy-like mode of thinking. This style of cognition seems to be a basis for creativity.

The highest levels of Psychoticism are maladaptive (as the name implies) since the individuals’ behaviour is so impulsive as to render impossible any sustained effort, so antisocial as to be psychopathic (and lead to prison or expulsion from society) and their thought processes are so disorganized as to be psychotic with hallucinations, delusions and thought-disorder (and lead to incoherence, un-employability and perhaps hospitalization). But Eysenck showed that a moderately high degree of the trait of Psychoticism is associated with creativity (whether creativity is measured by achievement, by laboratory tests, or by measurement of creativity in psychosis-prone individuals [8], [31] and [32]). Moderately high Psychoticism is often a feature of individuals exhibiting the highest levels of achievement (not just in the sciences, but in the arts too) [8].

If the focus is revolutionary science, this makes sense in that setting science onto a new direction requires considerable independence from group norms, a certain selfish indifference to the feelings of others, as well as a mode of thinking which generates novelty. By contrast, a low Psychoticism individual would probably be too inclined to obey orders and too fearful to risk societal sanctions and too logical in their thought processes to generate and pursue disruptively original (i.e., creative) work. Low Psychoticism would therefore be a desirable trait for normal scientists, but undesirable for revolutionary scientists.

In conclusion, ‘genius’ probably entails moderately high Psychoticism. And, if correct, this has important implications for the selection of scientific personnel, since creativity is inversely correlated with Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. Therefore the modern type of scientific career structure – which enforces high levels of Conscientiousness, and which favours an Agreeable and socially compliant personality type – will not merely fail to select creative scientists: such a career structure will actually tend to exclude creative people.

Revolutionary science institutions should be selecting positively for high IQ and creativity/ moderately high Psychoticism

So, assuming that top level, elite scientific education and training institutions aim to select the highest levels of genius – i.e., those potential revolutionary scientists who are capable of changing the direction of their subjects – then modern selection methods and career structures will both need to change.

In the first place, elite institutions will need to know the IQ of applicants. As explained above, the particular value of IQ testing comes in identifying under-achievers whose high IQ is not reflected in high exam performance. These people may have lower Conscientiousness which impairs their performance at tasks which do not much interest or engage them. However, if their level of perseverance is sufficient to get them to the point of independent research, then their Conscientiousness may be high-enough to allow for very hard and sustained work at self-chosen problems which provide much more immediate reward. So that someone who found school and undergraduate college boring, and was thereby lacking motivation, may be altogether more driven when tackling a self-chosen problem. And selecting high IQ scientists of only-sufficiently-high Conscientiousness should also serve to increase the proportion of moderately high Psychoticism individuals – hence those who have the potential to become creative and revolutionary scientists.

Creativity cannot, at present, be directly selected-for. Although there are some psychological tests of creativity [6], [8], [31] and [32], these are of uncertain validity especially at predicting the high levels of creativity required by revolutionary science. However, elite scientific institutes could and certainly should avoid their present practice of (unintentionally) selecting against creativity.

For example many elite college application procedures (inadvertently) currently select against creativity when they ask for evidence of altruistic and sociable behaviours from their applicants – evidence of such activities as community service, participation in team sports, administrative responsibility, or memberships of drama or musical groups. Choosing the most ‘Agreeable’ students may make for a more pleasant and stimulating social environment and a more friendly and compliant student body. However, this strategy of excluding asocial or awkward individuals is a policy that is highly likely to lower the ceiling of achievement of the best science graduates.

On the other hand, less-selective ‘normal science’ educational and training institutions – who aim to educate and train personnel for reliable but more routine accomplishment at technical and administrative tasks, or functions that require close attention to detail – may be more legitimately interested in selecting for a higher average C – but inevitably at the cost of lower IQ. They may thus recruit a population of ‘overachiever’ students, whose attributes include the capacity for long hours of steady work; and such institutions may also wish to select for high Agreeableness which should improve the capacity for cooperative teamwork.

Whatever the aims of selection of scientific personnel might be – a combination of the results of examinations with IQ tests allows a more precise, informative and objective estimate of individual aptitudes than the current situation of using examinations alone.
Transcendental truth-seekers

In a nutshell, I am suggesting that:

1. Educational attainment depends on IQ × C; but IQ and C are not closely-correlated.

2. Modern education has progressively raised the floor for C (by lengthening the educational process and by changes in educational evaluation methods).

3. Educational attainment therefore nowadays increasingly rewards C in preference to IQ.

4. Yet revolutionary science still requires high levels of IQ, and the higher the better.

5. So, in revolutionary science where IQ is vital, selection of personnel should not be determined only or mainly by educational attainments; but this information needs to be supplemented with direct, formal IQ testing.

6. Furthermore, revolutionary science requires high levels of creativity; which are associated with moderately high Psychoticism trait – yet modern education and science selects very strongly in favour of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness and therefore enforces low Psychoticism.

7. So, the education, training and career structure of modern science tends to depress average IQ and cull creativity – which are the prime qualities requires for success in revolutionary science. Consequently, modern top scientists are likely to be less intelligent and creative than is desirable, and probably significantly less intelligent and creative than top scientists used to be.

In the past, the education and training of a scientist was a much shorter process – with many scientists reaching a position to do independent research by their middle-twenties. This shorter process imposed a much lower requirement for both Conscientiousness and Agreeableness – because for a moderately conscientious person the end was not impossibly remote and relatively few years of unpleasant effort provided access to desired goal, and a dis-Agreeable person did need to get along with a long series of bosses and their teams – any of whom might sabotage his career.

Also, in the past educational ability was more often measured using relatively-infrequent, timed and supervised, previously-unseen formal examinations during which the examinee would need to work fast to organize their knowledge. Such formal examinations are likely to be more ‘g-loaded’ (i.e., correlate more strongly with IQ) than the greater emphasis on frequent ‘course work’ which has characterized educational systems over recent decades – course work tends to reward Conscientiousness over IQ compared with formal exams and be preferred by more Conscientious and less intelligent students [33].

To return to the original question of why top scientists are so dull nowadays – the conclusion is that scientists are dull mainly because the progressive increase in the requirements for long-term plodding perseverance and social inoffensiveness has the effect of deterring, driving-out and failing to reward too many smart and creative potential scientists before they ever get a chance to engage in independent research. And maybe even more smart and interesting people are lost from science due later on to the requirement for so much planning and administration. Since the people who nowadays eventually emerge from the ever-lengthening pipeline of scientific training are quite different from the scientists of 50 years ago, they naturally tend to move science even further in the direction which created their own success. So that modern scientific leader often elevate the requirements for very long periods of tedious and scientifically-irrelevant activity, and judge scientists mainly by their capacity for steady and reliable production and teamwork. These requirements will tend to act against both creativity and intelligence.

It seem inevitable that the changes in selection process in science over the past several decades will have reduced both average IQ and creativity among those who have been through the full professional training process. Such changes would be expected particularly to damage performance in revolutionary science, but might even enhance performance in normal science where perseverance and sociability (assuming at least moderately high IQ) are likely to be more crucial to success. Indeed, this is presumably the reason why such changes have occurred, since the great majority of scientists are working in normal science, so the requirements of normal science therefore tend to dominate [2]. However, the magnitude of the effect on reducing IQ and creativity has not been measured and constitutes a subject deserving of future empirical study.

Instead of having an educational and career structure which selects for superhuman Conscientiousness and makes-do with whatever intelligence and creativity happen to be left-over; in revolutionary science we need a system which selects for superhuman intelligence and high creativity – and requires only enough Conscientiousness to ensure that independent scientists with a vocation for their work are motivated to put in the long, hard hours to solve those self-chosen problems that have come to enthral them, and only enough Agreeableness to exclude psychotics and psychopaths.

Selecting elite scientists on the basis of high and IQ and moderately high Psychoticism – implied by Eysenck’s research [8] – may sound like a recipe for disaster, since these ingredients resemble a formula for gifted charlatans and con artists. A further vital ingredient is necessary: that elite scientists must have a vocational devotion to transcendental values of truth. In his magisterial study of the pinnacles of human accomplishment [34], Charles Murray concluded that achievement of genius was nurtured by social systems in which transcendental values were a living presence. Great revolutionary science is therefore a product of transcendental truth-seeking individuals working in a truth-seeking milieu.

It is truth-seeking which distinguishes a great independent-spirited scientist from mere brilliant charlatans and confidence tricksters who seek nothing higher than to use professional science in pursuit of their own selfish ends. Of course, making such a distinction, i.e., detecting truth-seeking, requires a scientific system that explicitly and in practice values transcendental truth-seeking above social virtues of perseverance and sociability – and such a perspective is uncommon within science nowadays. Lacking the living presence of such transcendental values, science has lapsed back into valuing social virtues for their own sake, with peer approval as the highest court of appeal, the ultimate validation [35]. Unsurprisingly such a science will over-promote C and A, and undervalue IQ and creativity.

The problem is that the current scientific leadership themselves often lack the trait of truth-seeking, and would not be able to detect it in others. This implies that revolutionary science (or ‘pure’ science) may need to be rebuilt on the basis of a new ‘apostolic succession’ of truth-seekers; starting from that minority of intelligent and imaginative top scientists who have managed to buck the trends and land professional positions of high status and authority [36].

People characterized by very high IQ, and moderately high Psychoticism might well be regarded as brilliant, but too selfish, unstable and/or foolish for everyday social purposes. But strange and luminous fools seem to be precisely what is most needed for successful revolutionary science. And modern society needs a place where clever, antisocial, imaginative people can do good and be prevented from inflicting the social harm than can result from ability and fantasy unconstrained by common sense, generosity or sensitivity to group norms. Science should be one such place: a place which should welcome and nurture inspired oddballs – so long as they are also vocational truth-seekers.
Acknowledgements

Richard Lynn, Phil Rushton, Wendy Johnson and Ian Deary have all (sometime inadvertently) made extremely helpful contributions to this polemic – however they bear no responsibility whatsoever for the use I have made of their ideas and insights. Of course, the main intellectual debt is to the late Hans Eysenck, especially his book Genius: the natural history of creativity [8].


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