Why are women so intelligent? The effect of maternal IQ on childhood mortality may be a relevant evolutionary factor
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses, 2009; 74: 401-2. in the press
*
Summary
Humans are an unusual species because they exhibit an economic division of labour. Most theories concerning the evolution of specifically human intelligence have focused either on economic problems or sexual selection mechanisms, both of which apply more to men than women. Yet while there is evidence for men having a slightly higher average IQ, the sexual dimorphism of intelligence is not obvious (except at unusually high and low levels). However, a more female-specific selection mechanism concerns the distinctive maternal role in child care during the offspring’s early years. It has been reported that increasing maternal intelligence is associated with reducing child mortality. This would lead to a greater level of reproductive success for intelligent women, and since intelligence is substantially heritable, this is a plausible mechanism by which natural selection might tend to increase female intelligence in humans. Any effect of maternal intelligence on improving child survival would likely be amplified by assortative mating for IQ by which people tend to marry others of similar intelligence – combining female maternal and male economic or sexual selection factors. Furthermore, since general intelligence seems to have the functional attribute of general purpose problem-solving and more rapid learning, the advantages of maternal IQ are likely to be greater as the environment for child-rearing is more different from the African hunter-gatherer society and savannah environment in which ancestral humans probably evolved. However, the effect of maternal IQ on child mortality would probably only be of major evolutionary significance in environments where childhood mortality rates were high. The modern situation is that population growth is determined mostly by birth rates; so in modern conditions, maternal intelligence may no longer have a significant effect on reproductive success; the effect of female IQ on reproductive success is often negative. Nonetheless, in the past it is plausible that the link between maternal IQ and child survival constituted a strong selection pressure acting specifically on women.
*
Humans are an unusual species because they exhibit an economic division of labour [1]. And most theories concerning the evolution of specifically human intelligence have either focused on the value of abstract thinking and rapid learning in solving economic problems such as hunting, gathering, farming and defence; or on sexual selection mechanisms in producing creative intelligence to entertain the prospective mate (for review see [2]).
Both types of theory apply more to men than women, and tend to regard high intelligence in women as having been somewhat passively pulled-along by rising male intelligence due to the relative slowness of evolving sexually dimorphic traits [2]. But, while there is evidence for men having a slightly higher average IQ (perhaps about four IQ points [3]), the sexual dimorphism is not striking except at very unusually high and low levels of intelligence [4].
However, there is some evidence of a more female-specific selection mechanism which concerns the distinctive female role in child care, especially during the offspring’s early years. I have located two studies which demonstrate a statistical relationship between increased maternal intelligence and reduced child mortality [5] and [6]. These are supported by a host of indirect studies which find the same negative correlation between proxy measures of IQ such as educational attainment or duration, and measures of child health which might plausibly correlate with mortality (e.g. [7] and [8]).
So it seems likely that there would be a selection pressure tending to increase maternal intelligence since (all else being equal) increased intelligence would lead to a greater chance of offspring surviving to adulthood. This would lead to a greater level of reproductive success for intelligent women, and intelligence is substantially heritable – so this is a plausible mechanism by which natural selection might tend to increase female intelligence in humans (all else being equal).
Any effect of a mother’s intelligence on improving survival of her children is likely to be amplified by assortative mating for IQ: in other words people tend to marry others of similar intelligence [1] and [9]. This suggests that a woman of higher-than-average-intelligence (who is more likely to keep her children safe) is also likely to have a higher-than-average-intelligence husband (who is likely to be a better economic provider). A more-intelligent wife would also be able more rapidly to learn to use these extra resources from her smarter husband in improving the health and survival of their offspring.
Furthermore, since intelligence seems to have the functional attribute of a general purpose problem-solving ‘module’ [10], the advantages of maternal IQ are likely to be greater as the environment for child-rearing is more different from the African hunter-gatherer society and savannah environment in which ancestral humans probably evolved. In an ancestral society and environment, it is likely that women have been equipped (by natural selection) with the ‘maternal instincts’ necessary for successful child-rearing. But as humans have moved further ‘out of Africa’ and into evolutionarily unfamiliar climates and ecologies, and have developed novel economic systems such as agriculture and cities – then the advantages of higher maternal IQ (including attributes of better ability to solve novel problems and more rapid ability to learn from experience) may have become more important. This would fit with some evidence (also consistent with explanations for higher male IQ) for varying human general intelligence according to multi-generational ancestral experience of higher latitude, agrarian economy, distance from Africa and some other indices of evolutionary novelty [11], [12], [13] and [14]. The effect of maternal IQ on child survival may make this a special case of Gottfredson’s ‘deadly innovations’ hypothesis [15].
However, the effect of maternal IQ would probably be of major evolutionary significance only in situations where childhood mortality rates were high: presumably, the higher the childhood mortality rates, the greater would be the differential effect on survival of higher maternal intelligence. Until the industrial revolution all societies experienced high childhood mortality rates due to factors such as birth problems, starvation, disease, parental death, predation and other types of violence [12]. Then in industrializing/developing countries from about 1800, mortality rates fell more rapidly than birth rates and populations began to grow and living standards to rise. The modern situation is that population growth is determined mostly by birth rates, and child mortality rates are low enough that some of the population groups with the highest child mortality are growing rapidly due to even-higher birth rates; and populations with the lowest child mortality may be shrinking due to sub-replacement birth rates [12] and [13]. Indeed, there is a strongly inverse relationship between IQ and reproductive success in women in modern societies (e.g. [16]).
So, in modernizing societies, maternal intelligence may no longer have a significant effect on reproductive success, or the relationship may be negative – nonetheless, in the past and especially in agrarian societies rich in evolutionarily novel situations that impact on child-rearing, it is plausible that the link between maternal IQ and child survival constituted a strong selection pressure acting specifically on women (it should, however, be remembered that most newly arising traits are initially inherited by both sexes, and that it takes longer for sexually dimorphic traits to evolve – see [2] for review).
This idea of maternal influence on childhood mortality driving an increase in female intelligence might potentially be testable. For example, specifically female intelligence might be measured in relation to the quantitatively evaluated degree of environmental evolutionary-unfamiliarity among ancestors (somewhat as in Ref. [11]), or perhaps in relation to differences in the nature and intensity of child-rearing practices and specific hazards (as in the study of the Ache tribe reported in [15]). And since the reason for women’s high IQ is postulated to be different from the reason for men’s high IQ (i.e., maternal benefits versus economic benefits), then it may be possible to generate and test predictions of how these sex differences would affect the nature and application not only of abstract reasoning, but also personality and other cognitive attributes.
For instance, the degree of selection probably on maternal psychology in situations of high child mortality in evolutionarily unfamiliar situations may affect the relative level of intelligence in women compared with men, or may affect the personality traits of higher conscientiousness and agreeableness/empathizing self-reported by women (for review see [9]). The population magnitude of such sexually dimorphic personality traits may vary in ways that can be predicted according to that population’s ancestral experience of maternal natural selection. Furthermore, Cochran and Harpending’s hypotheses that Ashkenazi Jewish men were under exceptionally powerful economic selection pressure for evolving higher intelligence over the past millennium [14] might be expected to create a larger than usual men-to-women IQ differential in this group.
In summary, differences in maternal psychology (intelligence and perhaps personality) could have had importance fitness effects by their influence on child survival in situations of high childhood mortality. This idea may provide a useful framework for understanding more about the evolution of human intelligence.
References
[1] M. Ridley, The origins of virtue: human instincts and the evolution of cooperation, Viking, London (1996).
[2] G. Miller, The mating mind: how sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature, Doubleday, London (2000).
[3] R. Lynn and P. Irwing, Sex differences on the progressive matrices: a meta analysis, Intelligence 32 (2004), pp. 481–498.
[4] H.J. Eysenck, Genius: the natural history of creativity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (1995).
[5] P. Sandiford, J. Cassell, G. Sanchez and C. Coldham, Does intelligence account for the link between maternal literacy and child survival?, Soc Sci Med 45 (1997), pp. 1231–1239.
[6] J. Čvorović, J.P. Rushton and L. Tenjevic, Maternal IQ and child mortality in 222 Serbian Roma (Gypsy) women, Pers Indiv Differ 44 (2008), pp. 1604–1609.
[7] J.G. Cleland and J.K. van Ginneken, Maternal education and child survival in developing countries, Soc Sci Med 27 (1988), pp. 1357–1368.
[8] S. Desai and S. Alva, Maternal education and child health: is there a strong causal relationship?, Demography 35 (1998), pp. 71–81.
[9] G. Miller, Spent: sex, evolution and human behavior, Viking, Penguin (2009).
[10] S. Kanazawa, General intelligence as a domain-specific adaptation, Psychol Rev 111 (2004), pp. 512–523.
[11] S. Kanazawa, Temperature and evolutionary novelty as forces behind the evolution of general intelligence, Intelligence 36 (2008), pp. 99–108.
[12] G. Clark, A farewell to alms: a brief economic history of the world, Princeton University Press, Princeton, USA (2007).
[13] R. Lynn, The global bell curve, Washington Summit Publishers, Atlanta, GA, USA (2008).
[14] G. Cochran and H. Harpending, The ten thousand year explosion: how civilization accelerated human evolution, Basic Books, Philadelphia, PA, USA (2009).
[15] L.S. Gottfredson, Innovation, fatal accidents, and the evolution of general intelligence. In: M.J. Roberts, Editor, Integrating the mind: domain general versus domain specific processes in higher cognition, Psychology Press, Hove, New York (2007).
[16] Nettle D, Pollet TV. Natural selection on male wealth in humans. Am Nat 2008;172:658–66.
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
Friday, 5 February 2010
Medical Hypotheses Affair - Geoff Watts interview - BMJ
Emasculating hypothetical oddities?
Geoff Watts, London, UK
BMJ 2010; 340: c726
Published 4 February 2010, doi:10.1136/bmj.c726
Accessed 16.30h, 4th Feb 2010
(A shortened version of this was published in the print edition of the BMJ as: Watts G. 'Will advent of peer review emasculate hypothetical oddities?' BMJ; 340: 337)
***
(Subtitle) "When Bruce Charlton recently proposed giving space in his journal to AIDS denier Peter Duesberg, Elsevier decided to look at the journal’s future. Geoff Watts asks if change would be for the better"
With postal deliveries comprising mainly junk mail, the monthly arrival of the journal Medical Hypotheses is a treat. But for how long? If its publishers have their way, what makes it so distinctive may in due course wither. Elsevier is demanding that the editorial decisions currently made by one man, Dr Bruce Charlton, should be overseen (and often, no doubt, over-ridden) by a group of peer reviewers. Subject to the constraints of an unfamiliar orthodoxy, the bright and sometimes highly coloured plumage of Medical Hypotheses would surely fade to grey.
Bruce Charlton—who combines his role as editor with those of reader in evolutionary psychiatry at Newcastle University and what he calls a "virtual professorship" at the University of Buckingham—has been in charge at Medical Hypotheses for some seven years. The journal was founded in 1975 by David Horrobin, another Newcastle doctor whose unconventional career was backed by a capacity for controversial and unorthodox thinking. Horrobin started it as a forum for new ideas because he believed that, compared with other sciences, medicine was short on good theorising with which to underpin its experimental work. He also saw the peer review process as intrinsically biased against any new idea, let alone a revolutionary one. Although peer review might be appropriate for assessing experimental work, this didn’t necessarily make it equally suitable for judging theoretical speculation, he thought.
Charlton became a member of the Medical Hypotheses advisory board in the late 1990s and took over as editor after Horrobin’s death in 2003. "I think he’d sized me up and decided I would be the person to take over. When he realised he was going to die he began giving me briefings, even on the ward while he was receiving chemo." Charlton clearly feels the weight of his inheritance; he talks not only of his own fears for the journal’s future, but how his deceased mentor would have felt about the proposed changes.
By his own admission, Charlton’s somewhat erratic career—a stint in neuroendocrinology followed by an MA in literature and philosophy and then by successive attachment to university departments of physiology, anatomy, epidemiology, and finally psychology—is evidence of rapidly changing interests. "But this was my qualification for Medical Hypotheses because it’s a journal that covers the whole of medicine." I asked how he would respond to the label "libertarian radical" as a shorthand means of describing the outlook that emerges from his editorials. He says this would have been right five years ago, and is still in his temperament. But he’s since moved, surprisingly perhaps, towards religion. Perhaps one shouldn’t make too much of it, but there is a whiff of the Old Testament about his views on contemporary science. He talks of corruption and dishonesty, of hype, and spin, of "impression management," of the loss of individual integrity. He can muster little enthusiasm for the managerial arrangements that increasingly govern science. "I’m quite creative but not very good at working on other people’s projects. I have an abrasive side to my personality. I’m not a team player."
Part of the fascination of Medical Hypotheses stems from the individuality of some of its editor’s decisions. "If I’ve been stimulated into thinking about something in a way I consider constructive," he says, "even if the paper itself is almost certainly not correct, I think it can be a valuable contribution to the scientific literature." That may be how some of the more exceptional papers find their way into the journal. In accounting for some of these off-the-wall contributions to Medical Hypotheses (a public health danger posed by showers, for example, or the effect of jet lag on mental illness, or the use of cashew nuts to cure tooth abscesses) he quotes Marc Abrahams, the man behind the annual Ignoble awards. "First they make you laugh, then they make you think." An academic publishing world in which all editors worked by these principles would be impossibly chaotic; one in which none is permitted to act in this manner would surely be the poorer.
Charlton is well aware that his emphasis on the role of editor as sole arbiter of what goes into the journal attracts charges of arrogance. "People do say this. It’s extraordinary how individual responsibility is nowadays regarded in that light, as if committee decisions are intrinsically superior. But nobody can place any responsibility on to anyone in a committee."
What prompted Elsevier to set about a rethink of its journal was Charlton’s intention to publish two papers which, so Elsevier claim, undermine the current understanding of AIDS. One of them, by the Stanford virologist Peter Duesberg, certainly tries to do this. He uses the instance of South Africa to argue against the HIV virus as the cause of the disease. One might suggest that Duesberg is a tiresome man and that Charlton’s intention to give him more space in which to argue his already familiar case was ill conceived. But is this sufficient reason to revamp the entire basis of the journal’s editorial selection procedure?
Even odder is the case of the other banned paper. Submitted by a group based in Florence it seems not to deny the viral origin of HIV, but to tease the Italian health authorities for the incompetence of their bureaucracy and procedures by suggesting that those authorities themselves behave as if they are "AIDS deniers." Whoever made the decision at Elsevier either hasn’t read it or didn’t understand it.
The future of Medical Hypotheses remains, for the moment, in limbo. The journal is currently profitable, with a good impact factor, and a board that includes many worthy and several celebrated academics. If Elsevier do put their intentions into practice they may lose some or all of the above—to say nothing of their editor.
Geoff Watts, London, UK
BMJ 2010; 340: c726
Published 4 February 2010, doi:10.1136/bmj.c726
Accessed 16.30h, 4th Feb 2010
(A shortened version of this was published in the print edition of the BMJ as: Watts G. 'Will advent of peer review emasculate hypothetical oddities?' BMJ; 340: 337)
***
(Subtitle) "When Bruce Charlton recently proposed giving space in his journal to AIDS denier Peter Duesberg, Elsevier decided to look at the journal’s future. Geoff Watts asks if change would be for the better"
With postal deliveries comprising mainly junk mail, the monthly arrival of the journal Medical Hypotheses is a treat. But for how long? If its publishers have their way, what makes it so distinctive may in due course wither. Elsevier is demanding that the editorial decisions currently made by one man, Dr Bruce Charlton, should be overseen (and often, no doubt, over-ridden) by a group of peer reviewers. Subject to the constraints of an unfamiliar orthodoxy, the bright and sometimes highly coloured plumage of Medical Hypotheses would surely fade to grey.
Bruce Charlton—who combines his role as editor with those of reader in evolutionary psychiatry at Newcastle University and what he calls a "virtual professorship" at the University of Buckingham—has been in charge at Medical Hypotheses for some seven years. The journal was founded in 1975 by David Horrobin, another Newcastle doctor whose unconventional career was backed by a capacity for controversial and unorthodox thinking. Horrobin started it as a forum for new ideas because he believed that, compared with other sciences, medicine was short on good theorising with which to underpin its experimental work. He also saw the peer review process as intrinsically biased against any new idea, let alone a revolutionary one. Although peer review might be appropriate for assessing experimental work, this didn’t necessarily make it equally suitable for judging theoretical speculation, he thought.
Charlton became a member of the Medical Hypotheses advisory board in the late 1990s and took over as editor after Horrobin’s death in 2003. "I think he’d sized me up and decided I would be the person to take over. When he realised he was going to die he began giving me briefings, even on the ward while he was receiving chemo." Charlton clearly feels the weight of his inheritance; he talks not only of his own fears for the journal’s future, but how his deceased mentor would have felt about the proposed changes.
By his own admission, Charlton’s somewhat erratic career—a stint in neuroendocrinology followed by an MA in literature and philosophy and then by successive attachment to university departments of physiology, anatomy, epidemiology, and finally psychology—is evidence of rapidly changing interests. "But this was my qualification for Medical Hypotheses because it’s a journal that covers the whole of medicine." I asked how he would respond to the label "libertarian radical" as a shorthand means of describing the outlook that emerges from his editorials. He says this would have been right five years ago, and is still in his temperament. But he’s since moved, surprisingly perhaps, towards religion. Perhaps one shouldn’t make too much of it, but there is a whiff of the Old Testament about his views on contemporary science. He talks of corruption and dishonesty, of hype, and spin, of "impression management," of the loss of individual integrity. He can muster little enthusiasm for the managerial arrangements that increasingly govern science. "I’m quite creative but not very good at working on other people’s projects. I have an abrasive side to my personality. I’m not a team player."
Part of the fascination of Medical Hypotheses stems from the individuality of some of its editor’s decisions. "If I’ve been stimulated into thinking about something in a way I consider constructive," he says, "even if the paper itself is almost certainly not correct, I think it can be a valuable contribution to the scientific literature." That may be how some of the more exceptional papers find their way into the journal. In accounting for some of these off-the-wall contributions to Medical Hypotheses (a public health danger posed by showers, for example, or the effect of jet lag on mental illness, or the use of cashew nuts to cure tooth abscesses) he quotes Marc Abrahams, the man behind the annual Ignoble awards. "First they make you laugh, then they make you think." An academic publishing world in which all editors worked by these principles would be impossibly chaotic; one in which none is permitted to act in this manner would surely be the poorer.
Charlton is well aware that his emphasis on the role of editor as sole arbiter of what goes into the journal attracts charges of arrogance. "People do say this. It’s extraordinary how individual responsibility is nowadays regarded in that light, as if committee decisions are intrinsically superior. But nobody can place any responsibility on to anyone in a committee."
What prompted Elsevier to set about a rethink of its journal was Charlton’s intention to publish two papers which, so Elsevier claim, undermine the current understanding of AIDS. One of them, by the Stanford virologist Peter Duesberg, certainly tries to do this. He uses the instance of South Africa to argue against the HIV virus as the cause of the disease. One might suggest that Duesberg is a tiresome man and that Charlton’s intention to give him more space in which to argue his already familiar case was ill conceived. But is this sufficient reason to revamp the entire basis of the journal’s editorial selection procedure?
Even odder is the case of the other banned paper. Submitted by a group based in Florence it seems not to deny the viral origin of HIV, but to tease the Italian health authorities for the incompetence of their bureaucracy and procedures by suggesting that those authorities themselves behave as if they are "AIDS deniers." Whoever made the decision at Elsevier either hasn’t read it or didn’t understand it.
The future of Medical Hypotheses remains, for the moment, in limbo. The journal is currently profitable, with a good impact factor, and a board that includes many worthy and several celebrated academics. If Elsevier do put their intentions into practice they may lose some or all of the above—to say nothing of their editor.
Saturday, 16 January 2010
Notturno on the Medical Hypotheses Affair
A comment by Mark A Notturno.
In recent years we have heard a lot of people talk as if the fact that two thousand scientists agree about something constitutes evidence, if not indeed proof, that it is true. So it may be a sign of the times that Elsevier is considering closing a scientific journal whose main sin is that it published an article that bucked the consensus belief that HIV is the cause of AIDS. Elsevier recently removed Peter Duesberg et al’s ‘HIV-AIDS hypothesis out of touch with South African AIDS a new perspective’ from MEDICAL HYPOTHESES’ online website and left a notice explaining its action. It correctly stated that the editorial policy of MEDICAL HYPOTHESES is to consider ‘radical, speculative, and non-mainstream scientific ideas’ but went on to say that Elsevier had ‘received serious expressions of concern about the quality of this article, which contains highly controversial opinions about the causes of AIDS, opinions that could potentially be damaging to global public health’.
The fact that the article contains controversial opinions about the causes of AIDS is part of the reason why it is preeminently suitable for publication in MEDICAL HYPOTHESES. But the idea that these opinions could be damaging to global public health is a clear beg of the very scientific question at issue. The opinion that HIV is not the cause of AIDS could be damaging to global public health if HIV is in fact the cause (or a cause) of AIDS. But if HIV is not the cause (or a cause) of AIDS, but a harmless passenger virus as Duesberg claims, then the HIV theory of AIDS, and the use of anti-HIV drugs to combat it, may itself be damaging to global public health.
In taking this action, Elsevier unwittingly took sides in what is essentially a philosophical disagreement regarding what science is and the criteria for scientific publication. We have heard a lot more in recent years about the scientific consensus behind certain theories than we have about the scientific evidence for and against them. We have also heard people who should know better say that certain theories have now been established once and for all, and are thus beyond rational dispute. And we have sometimes even heard them proclaim that whether or not you believe that a certain theory is true should now be regarded as a moral issue.
MEDICAL HYPOTHESES, however, was founded nearly thirty-five years ago in an attempt to provide an outlet for medical research that runs contrary to received opinion and is too controversial to be published in peer-reviewed medical journals. David Horrobin, our founding editor, believed that the peer-review system can impede the growth of science by systematically rejecting articles that fall outside the consensus of scientific belief.
Horrobin was attracted to Sir Karl Popper’s philosophy of science and enlisted Popper himself to serve as a kind of philosophical godfather on the journal’s first editorial advisory board. Popper taught that scientific knowledge is inherently fallible, that universal theories cannot be justified or shown to be true by empirical evidence, and that the best we can do is to test our theories against observation and reasoned argument. He said that scientific theories are distinguished from non-scientific theories by the fact that they can be refuted, or falsified, by empirical evidence. And he wrote that ‘the game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game’.
There can be little doubt that many scientists would like to suppress Peter Duesberg’s views about HIV and AIDS. I have actually heard well-meaning scientists say, nearly four hundred years after Galileo, that Duesberg should be imprisoned for them. But the scientific response for those who believe that the views articulated in an article are false is not to prevail upon a publisher to suppress them. It is to present credible evidence and reasoned argument to refute them.
Some scientists, especially those who are convinced of their own opinions, may say that this is a waste of time and effort since the HIV-AIDS hypothesis has been fully verified, and since Duesberg’s views are clearly false and pseudo-scientific. But this is not the attitude that has inspired MEDICAL HYPOTHESES. And it only means that we are still fighting a battle for the freedom of thought, nearly four hundred years after Galileo, and that some scientists have forgotten which side they are supposed to be on.
This may sound like hyperbole. It is not. I used to think that it would be too ironic, given the history of MEDICAL HYPOTHESES, if Elsevier were to subject our policy on peer review to peer review. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. The panel of experts that Elsevier enlisted to investigate how we came to accept Duesberg’s article for publication has now completed its report. It does, indeed, recommend that articles submitted to the journal be subject to peer review. It also recommends that Elsevier impose a list of forbidden topics of a controversial or politically-incorrect nature to be excluded from the journal.
Mark Amadeus Notturno
Member of the Editorial Advisory Board of MEDICAL HYPOTHESES
Washington DC
16 January 2010
In recent years we have heard a lot of people talk as if the fact that two thousand scientists agree about something constitutes evidence, if not indeed proof, that it is true. So it may be a sign of the times that Elsevier is considering closing a scientific journal whose main sin is that it published an article that bucked the consensus belief that HIV is the cause of AIDS. Elsevier recently removed Peter Duesberg et al’s ‘HIV-AIDS hypothesis out of touch with South African AIDS a new perspective’ from MEDICAL HYPOTHESES’ online website and left a notice explaining its action. It correctly stated that the editorial policy of MEDICAL HYPOTHESES is to consider ‘radical, speculative, and non-mainstream scientific ideas’ but went on to say that Elsevier had ‘received serious expressions of concern about the quality of this article, which contains highly controversial opinions about the causes of AIDS, opinions that could potentially be damaging to global public health’.
The fact that the article contains controversial opinions about the causes of AIDS is part of the reason why it is preeminently suitable for publication in MEDICAL HYPOTHESES. But the idea that these opinions could be damaging to global public health is a clear beg of the very scientific question at issue. The opinion that HIV is not the cause of AIDS could be damaging to global public health if HIV is in fact the cause (or a cause) of AIDS. But if HIV is not the cause (or a cause) of AIDS, but a harmless passenger virus as Duesberg claims, then the HIV theory of AIDS, and the use of anti-HIV drugs to combat it, may itself be damaging to global public health.
In taking this action, Elsevier unwittingly took sides in what is essentially a philosophical disagreement regarding what science is and the criteria for scientific publication. We have heard a lot more in recent years about the scientific consensus behind certain theories than we have about the scientific evidence for and against them. We have also heard people who should know better say that certain theories have now been established once and for all, and are thus beyond rational dispute. And we have sometimes even heard them proclaim that whether or not you believe that a certain theory is true should now be regarded as a moral issue.
MEDICAL HYPOTHESES, however, was founded nearly thirty-five years ago in an attempt to provide an outlet for medical research that runs contrary to received opinion and is too controversial to be published in peer-reviewed medical journals. David Horrobin, our founding editor, believed that the peer-review system can impede the growth of science by systematically rejecting articles that fall outside the consensus of scientific belief.
Horrobin was attracted to Sir Karl Popper’s philosophy of science and enlisted Popper himself to serve as a kind of philosophical godfather on the journal’s first editorial advisory board. Popper taught that scientific knowledge is inherently fallible, that universal theories cannot be justified or shown to be true by empirical evidence, and that the best we can do is to test our theories against observation and reasoned argument. He said that scientific theories are distinguished from non-scientific theories by the fact that they can be refuted, or falsified, by empirical evidence. And he wrote that ‘the game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game’.
There can be little doubt that many scientists would like to suppress Peter Duesberg’s views about HIV and AIDS. I have actually heard well-meaning scientists say, nearly four hundred years after Galileo, that Duesberg should be imprisoned for them. But the scientific response for those who believe that the views articulated in an article are false is not to prevail upon a publisher to suppress them. It is to present credible evidence and reasoned argument to refute them.
Some scientists, especially those who are convinced of their own opinions, may say that this is a waste of time and effort since the HIV-AIDS hypothesis has been fully verified, and since Duesberg’s views are clearly false and pseudo-scientific. But this is not the attitude that has inspired MEDICAL HYPOTHESES. And it only means that we are still fighting a battle for the freedom of thought, nearly four hundred years after Galileo, and that some scientists have forgotten which side they are supposed to be on.
This may sound like hyperbole. It is not. I used to think that it would be too ironic, given the history of MEDICAL HYPOTHESES, if Elsevier were to subject our policy on peer review to peer review. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. The panel of experts that Elsevier enlisted to investigate how we came to accept Duesberg’s article for publication has now completed its report. It does, indeed, recommend that articles submitted to the journal be subject to peer review. It also recommends that Elsevier impose a list of forbidden topics of a controversial or politically-incorrect nature to be excluded from the journal.
Mark Amadeus Notturno
Member of the Editorial Advisory Board of MEDICAL HYPOTHESES
Washington DC
16 January 2010
Saturday, 2 January 2010
Knowledge first, critique later
Knowledge first, critique later: Why it is a mistake for science education to encourage junior students to discuss, challenge and debate scientific knowledge
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2010; 74: 211-213.
Summary
In UK educational circles it has long been regarded as a platitude that a good scientific education at school and undergraduate level should aim to teach critical thinking and encourage students to challenge mainstream science, debate scientific issues and express their personal opinions. However, I believe that this strategy is usually mistaken, and that such educational strategies probably do more harm than good. For most students, at most levels, for most of the time; science education should be focused on the inculcation of established knowledge. This is for the simple reason that critique is educationally-counterproductive and scientifically-worthless unless or until underpinned by adequate knowledge and competence. Instead, for the early years of science teaching, the basic assumption ought to be that the student is there to learn science; not to confront science. The basic attitude being taught should be one of humility before the science being studied.
***
Should junior science students be encouraged to challenge and debate?
In UK educational circles it has long been regarded as a platitude that a good education at both school and undergraduate level should teach critical thinking, encourage students to challenge what they are taught and to debate scientific issues. The perceived need to encourage critique among students is especially asserted for science, since it is (correctly) recognized that scientific progress depends upon challenging and replacing pre-existing ideas.
So strong is this supposition of the virtue of classroom discussion of scientific knowledge, that people who state that science education ought to focus on training in critical thinking are not required to support or argue further for this belief – it is simply assumed to be correct. The model is that students from early school years up through undergraduate college should study science by (in a sense) simulating the scientific discovery process: by asking questions, generating hypotheses, doing ‘research’, framing criticisms, performing analysis and drawing conclusions (although, typically – and necessarily, it is pre-determined that only a narrow range of conclusions will count as acceptable).
I believe that the common conviction of the importance of critique or debate in basic scientific education is a serious mistake, with only a few unusual and particular exceptions to this stricture. On the contrary, to be helpful student dispute or classroom discussions of the validity of scientific questions must always be underpinned by high-level competence among the participants (teachers and students both), including sufficient knowledge and requisite skill in reasoning. Otherwise classroom discourse among student is of no greater educational value than if they were engaged in playground, pub or party gossip concerning current affairs – it is a mere venting of superficial views or ‘shooting the breeze’.
Indeed, insofar as barely-informed (or wholly un-informed) students discussion is taken seriously (by teachers or other students) it is counter-productive. Given the extreme difficulty of making a genuine contribution to science (and the fact that, sadly, even most professional scientists fail to do this); it is surely implausible to imagine that it is usually a useful exercise for uneducated non-scientists to engage in debate about the validity of scientific theories or data.
Requesting most students to spent a few hours ‘researching’ a topic may slightly-dent but will be far from demolishing their basic ignorance except when the student is exceptionally motivated, intelligent and well-prepared. Educationally-meaningful classroom discussion will requires a quorum of such bright and well-prepared students, and also careful management of the conversation. And, most students own personal evaluations and theories on scientific topic will very seldom meet even minimal intellectual standards: their educational value is mainly in (of course gently and tactfully) providing ‘bad examples’ for the teacher to critique and modify.
Pandering to self-esteem
My interpretation of the popularity of un-informed discussion and debate about scientific issues is that it is mainly a matter of pandering to the natural desire which some people have to pontificate and show-off, and to be taken seriously when doing so (a vice which is probably almost as common among students as it is among their teachers!). Semi-structured debate on topics about which students are essentially ignorant is at best a more-or-less amusing waste of time but more often is probably somewhat harmful, insofar as it creates a delusion of competence.
Perhaps class discussions are done to improve student ‘self-esteem’? (Self-esteem being a current mantra among educationalists.) Unfortunately for this idea, considerable evidence suggests that self-esteem is inversely correlated with educational attainment. High self-esteem apparently breeds complacency, while it seems that low self-esteem may be a motivation for students to learn. And in terms of scientific criteria an average student realistically ought to have low self-esteem; since most students most of the time are likely to be scientifically ignorant, unskilled and only minimally-interested in the subject of study.
Since the objective of science education is to teach a science, then it follows that the proper scientific role of classroom discussion in low-level education is not to air student’s opinions on a subject they are far from having learned; nor to allow them to pretend to engage in ‘research’, evaluate evidence, solve scientific problems or suggest new theories – but instead for teachers to ask and to answer questions.
And when the teacher is answering questions, the underlying assumption behind these questions must usually be that the science being taught is broadly correct and the student’s job is to understand and learn it. Where the student disagrees with the science being taught, the supposition must be on both sides that this question is needed because the student has not properly understood or lacks contextual information. So, when the student feels they disagree, the student should not be questioning the science, but implicitly asking for clarification.
A student’s need for clarification may be due to inattentiveness, ignorance, or inability on their part; or to something having gone wrong with the teaching; or simply because difficult concepts being encountered for the first time often need to be explained several times in several different ways. But as a rule, there is no warrant to challenge the validity of the science at this point.
Given that adolescence is often the stage at which personality is at its most prickly and arrogant (due to this being around the average age at which the traits of conscientiousness and agreeableness are at their lowest and levels of extraversion and neuroticism at their highest) it is particularly important that the educational system be consistent in instilling an appropriate degree of intellectual humility in line with students typically undeveloped levels of competence. Encouraging pre-teens or teenagers to believe that they can settle the debates of science (or other scholarly subjects) in class discussion on the basis of an evening of ‘Googling’ is simply telling people what they want to hear.
The presumption of ignorance and incompetence on the part of the student is, of course, one that naturally dwindles as a student advances through the educational system and specializes in a particular science. Eventually, if a good student studies a subject for long enough (probably during the doctoral stage) the presumption may switch around. At this point a bight student’s concerns in the area of their expertise may plausibly be taken to be to evidence of a potential problem in the science, rather than a problem in the ability or knowledge of the student.
Critical discussion by students then and now
If the above argument is accepted, then it is interesting to speculate how it was that the idea ever got off the ground that students had sufficient expertise to replicate (in a few hours) the discovery process, or to critique science. There is a large element of politically-correct nonsense, wishful-thinking and professional self-serving dishonesty about all this – of course – but perhaps there is also a germ of plausible observation as well. I personally suspect that the mistaken expectation of student expertise may arise from the elite selectivity and early specialized training of past generations of scientists.
In the UK during the mid-twentieth century, the university system used to take only about 5% of the age cohort – and by about 1980 it was still only around 15%. Furthermore, professional scientists had mostly been educated at selective ‘grammar schools’ in which academic specialization began at age 14. Universities only accepted students for science degrees if they had good qualifications at A-level (three scientific subjects studied for 2 years 16–18), and the UK undergraduate science degrees were further narrowly specialized, and built upon this advanced and specific level of preparation of selective schools.
Children at the most elite selective schools were then reaching a level of specialist knowledge that would seldom be attained at the bachelor’s degree level nowadays. Some such students would be capable of meaningful and useful critique of existing science even before they attended university, or more often within a couple of years at undergraduate level. Keen undergraduates at the best universities were rapidly able to advance their scientific knowledge to the cutting-edge; and during their undergraduate degree, or immediately after graduation, they would be capable of embarking on independent research.
But nowadays in the UK nearly half of 18 years old attend higher education institutions to study for some kind of undergraduate degree – nearly a 10-fold reduction in the selectivity of average undergraduates. Furthermore, the link between the subject matter of school study and university study has been broken, so that university teachers can no longer rely upon the students having studied specific relevant and advanced science at school.
Modern UK students with a bachelor’s degree may only have studied science for 3 years, and often in low-volume, low-intensity curricula where it is very unusual to fail examinations. Modern students therefore seldom get far enough in their subject to be able meaningfully to discuss science at the cutting-edge, until they have finished their undergraduate degree and are reasonably-advanced in their post-graduate/graduate school training.
Aiming-high and missing
A more practical pedagogical problem – but one which I would regard as highly significant – is that it is very hard for students to learn difficult concepts unless these concepts are presented as unambiguously as possible.
Ambiguity interferes with learning, since each additional possibility multiplies uncertainty in a geometric fashion. I am not sure whether this is numerically exact, but it seems as if adding the first uncertainty to an explanation doubles the cognitive load – because there are now two parallel and diverging possibilities; both of which must now be known, understood and compared. Adding a second uncertainty to the first therefore quadruples the cognitive load, a third uncertainty will render comprehension and memorizing 16-fold more difficult – and so on.
This analysis implies that the primary mode of most science teaching must be dogmatic; that is to say, a science teacher must initially make a choice about the single most correct interpretation of evidence and the single most correct conclusion – and must restrict the initial presentation to this clear and simple exposition.
Only after the teacher is confident that most students have understood this clear and simple account (and preferably after leaving this unified exposition to be assimilated over-night) should the teacher add layers of uncertainly, debate, dissention and complication to the simple account. Premature challenging of mainstream science, debates over competing hypotheses, and uncertainties engendered by free-form discussions are likely to interfere with learning.
Therefore, for many students studying science, it is better to leave them with a clear grasp of the single best version of a concept, than permanently to confuse them with further accounts; or potentially to drive-out or corrupt a clear and approximately-accurate memorization by interference from related – similar but not quite equivalent – explanations, qualifications and nuances.
Obviously, this does not mean the science classroom should be a wholly one-way street of discourse streaming from the teacher into the taught – of relentless pontification from one side and silent absorption on the other side. On the contrary, student feedback (via perceived visual signals and some spoken enquiries or comments) is necessary for the teacher to monitor the learning process. (This is one reason why real time, real life lectures retain their value; and why to be successful lectures need small-enough and well-designed lecture rooms such that the lecturer and his audience remain in sensory contact.)
Science teaching could and should be made more interesting for students than it usually is – but it should be made more interesting while still being science; and not at the cost of stopping studying science and instead engaging in mere science-themed chit-chat. In reality, the flow of scientific knowledge is likely to be unidirectional.
If teachers aim too-high for students whose motivation, intelligence and preparation are insufficient; or if teachers try to make students run before they can even crawl – especially for students who lack the background and ability ever to do anything more than walk; or if teachers overwrite their clearest and simplest message by smothering it in confused discussions and pseudo-scientific debates – then teachers risk failing to enable the attainment of even basic scientific knowledge and competence in their students.
Instead, for the early years of science teaching, the basic assumption ought to be that the student is there to learn science; not to confront science. The basic attitude being taught should be one of humility before the science being studied.
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2010; 74: 211-213.
Summary
In UK educational circles it has long been regarded as a platitude that a good scientific education at school and undergraduate level should aim to teach critical thinking and encourage students to challenge mainstream science, debate scientific issues and express their personal opinions. However, I believe that this strategy is usually mistaken, and that such educational strategies probably do more harm than good. For most students, at most levels, for most of the time; science education should be focused on the inculcation of established knowledge. This is for the simple reason that critique is educationally-counterproductive and scientifically-worthless unless or until underpinned by adequate knowledge and competence. Instead, for the early years of science teaching, the basic assumption ought to be that the student is there to learn science; not to confront science. The basic attitude being taught should be one of humility before the science being studied.
***
Should junior science students be encouraged to challenge and debate?
In UK educational circles it has long been regarded as a platitude that a good education at both school and undergraduate level should teach critical thinking, encourage students to challenge what they are taught and to debate scientific issues. The perceived need to encourage critique among students is especially asserted for science, since it is (correctly) recognized that scientific progress depends upon challenging and replacing pre-existing ideas.
So strong is this supposition of the virtue of classroom discussion of scientific knowledge, that people who state that science education ought to focus on training in critical thinking are not required to support or argue further for this belief – it is simply assumed to be correct. The model is that students from early school years up through undergraduate college should study science by (in a sense) simulating the scientific discovery process: by asking questions, generating hypotheses, doing ‘research’, framing criticisms, performing analysis and drawing conclusions (although, typically – and necessarily, it is pre-determined that only a narrow range of conclusions will count as acceptable).
I believe that the common conviction of the importance of critique or debate in basic scientific education is a serious mistake, with only a few unusual and particular exceptions to this stricture. On the contrary, to be helpful student dispute or classroom discussions of the validity of scientific questions must always be underpinned by high-level competence among the participants (teachers and students both), including sufficient knowledge and requisite skill in reasoning. Otherwise classroom discourse among student is of no greater educational value than if they were engaged in playground, pub or party gossip concerning current affairs – it is a mere venting of superficial views or ‘shooting the breeze’.
Indeed, insofar as barely-informed (or wholly un-informed) students discussion is taken seriously (by teachers or other students) it is counter-productive. Given the extreme difficulty of making a genuine contribution to science (and the fact that, sadly, even most professional scientists fail to do this); it is surely implausible to imagine that it is usually a useful exercise for uneducated non-scientists to engage in debate about the validity of scientific theories or data.
Requesting most students to spent a few hours ‘researching’ a topic may slightly-dent but will be far from demolishing their basic ignorance except when the student is exceptionally motivated, intelligent and well-prepared. Educationally-meaningful classroom discussion will requires a quorum of such bright and well-prepared students, and also careful management of the conversation. And, most students own personal evaluations and theories on scientific topic will very seldom meet even minimal intellectual standards: their educational value is mainly in (of course gently and tactfully) providing ‘bad examples’ for the teacher to critique and modify.
Pandering to self-esteem
My interpretation of the popularity of un-informed discussion and debate about scientific issues is that it is mainly a matter of pandering to the natural desire which some people have to pontificate and show-off, and to be taken seriously when doing so (a vice which is probably almost as common among students as it is among their teachers!). Semi-structured debate on topics about which students are essentially ignorant is at best a more-or-less amusing waste of time but more often is probably somewhat harmful, insofar as it creates a delusion of competence.
Perhaps class discussions are done to improve student ‘self-esteem’? (Self-esteem being a current mantra among educationalists.) Unfortunately for this idea, considerable evidence suggests that self-esteem is inversely correlated with educational attainment. High self-esteem apparently breeds complacency, while it seems that low self-esteem may be a motivation for students to learn. And in terms of scientific criteria an average student realistically ought to have low self-esteem; since most students most of the time are likely to be scientifically ignorant, unskilled and only minimally-interested in the subject of study.
Since the objective of science education is to teach a science, then it follows that the proper scientific role of classroom discussion in low-level education is not to air student’s opinions on a subject they are far from having learned; nor to allow them to pretend to engage in ‘research’, evaluate evidence, solve scientific problems or suggest new theories – but instead for teachers to ask and to answer questions.
And when the teacher is answering questions, the underlying assumption behind these questions must usually be that the science being taught is broadly correct and the student’s job is to understand and learn it. Where the student disagrees with the science being taught, the supposition must be on both sides that this question is needed because the student has not properly understood or lacks contextual information. So, when the student feels they disagree, the student should not be questioning the science, but implicitly asking for clarification.
A student’s need for clarification may be due to inattentiveness, ignorance, or inability on their part; or to something having gone wrong with the teaching; or simply because difficult concepts being encountered for the first time often need to be explained several times in several different ways. But as a rule, there is no warrant to challenge the validity of the science at this point.
Given that adolescence is often the stage at which personality is at its most prickly and arrogant (due to this being around the average age at which the traits of conscientiousness and agreeableness are at their lowest and levels of extraversion and neuroticism at their highest) it is particularly important that the educational system be consistent in instilling an appropriate degree of intellectual humility in line with students typically undeveloped levels of competence. Encouraging pre-teens or teenagers to believe that they can settle the debates of science (or other scholarly subjects) in class discussion on the basis of an evening of ‘Googling’ is simply telling people what they want to hear.
The presumption of ignorance and incompetence on the part of the student is, of course, one that naturally dwindles as a student advances through the educational system and specializes in a particular science. Eventually, if a good student studies a subject for long enough (probably during the doctoral stage) the presumption may switch around. At this point a bight student’s concerns in the area of their expertise may plausibly be taken to be to evidence of a potential problem in the science, rather than a problem in the ability or knowledge of the student.
Critical discussion by students then and now
If the above argument is accepted, then it is interesting to speculate how it was that the idea ever got off the ground that students had sufficient expertise to replicate (in a few hours) the discovery process, or to critique science. There is a large element of politically-correct nonsense, wishful-thinking and professional self-serving dishonesty about all this – of course – but perhaps there is also a germ of plausible observation as well. I personally suspect that the mistaken expectation of student expertise may arise from the elite selectivity and early specialized training of past generations of scientists.
In the UK during the mid-twentieth century, the university system used to take only about 5% of the age cohort – and by about 1980 it was still only around 15%. Furthermore, professional scientists had mostly been educated at selective ‘grammar schools’ in which academic specialization began at age 14. Universities only accepted students for science degrees if they had good qualifications at A-level (three scientific subjects studied for 2 years 16–18), and the UK undergraduate science degrees were further narrowly specialized, and built upon this advanced and specific level of preparation of selective schools.
Children at the most elite selective schools were then reaching a level of specialist knowledge that would seldom be attained at the bachelor’s degree level nowadays. Some such students would be capable of meaningful and useful critique of existing science even before they attended university, or more often within a couple of years at undergraduate level. Keen undergraduates at the best universities were rapidly able to advance their scientific knowledge to the cutting-edge; and during their undergraduate degree, or immediately after graduation, they would be capable of embarking on independent research.
But nowadays in the UK nearly half of 18 years old attend higher education institutions to study for some kind of undergraduate degree – nearly a 10-fold reduction in the selectivity of average undergraduates. Furthermore, the link between the subject matter of school study and university study has been broken, so that university teachers can no longer rely upon the students having studied specific relevant and advanced science at school.
Modern UK students with a bachelor’s degree may only have studied science for 3 years, and often in low-volume, low-intensity curricula where it is very unusual to fail examinations. Modern students therefore seldom get far enough in their subject to be able meaningfully to discuss science at the cutting-edge, until they have finished their undergraduate degree and are reasonably-advanced in their post-graduate/graduate school training.
Aiming-high and missing
A more practical pedagogical problem – but one which I would regard as highly significant – is that it is very hard for students to learn difficult concepts unless these concepts are presented as unambiguously as possible.
Ambiguity interferes with learning, since each additional possibility multiplies uncertainty in a geometric fashion. I am not sure whether this is numerically exact, but it seems as if adding the first uncertainty to an explanation doubles the cognitive load – because there are now two parallel and diverging possibilities; both of which must now be known, understood and compared. Adding a second uncertainty to the first therefore quadruples the cognitive load, a third uncertainty will render comprehension and memorizing 16-fold more difficult – and so on.
This analysis implies that the primary mode of most science teaching must be dogmatic; that is to say, a science teacher must initially make a choice about the single most correct interpretation of evidence and the single most correct conclusion – and must restrict the initial presentation to this clear and simple exposition.
Only after the teacher is confident that most students have understood this clear and simple account (and preferably after leaving this unified exposition to be assimilated over-night) should the teacher add layers of uncertainly, debate, dissention and complication to the simple account. Premature challenging of mainstream science, debates over competing hypotheses, and uncertainties engendered by free-form discussions are likely to interfere with learning.
Therefore, for many students studying science, it is better to leave them with a clear grasp of the single best version of a concept, than permanently to confuse them with further accounts; or potentially to drive-out or corrupt a clear and approximately-accurate memorization by interference from related – similar but not quite equivalent – explanations, qualifications and nuances.
Obviously, this does not mean the science classroom should be a wholly one-way street of discourse streaming from the teacher into the taught – of relentless pontification from one side and silent absorption on the other side. On the contrary, student feedback (via perceived visual signals and some spoken enquiries or comments) is necessary for the teacher to monitor the learning process. (This is one reason why real time, real life lectures retain their value; and why to be successful lectures need small-enough and well-designed lecture rooms such that the lecturer and his audience remain in sensory contact.)
Science teaching could and should be made more interesting for students than it usually is – but it should be made more interesting while still being science; and not at the cost of stopping studying science and instead engaging in mere science-themed chit-chat. In reality, the flow of scientific knowledge is likely to be unidirectional.
If teachers aim too-high for students whose motivation, intelligence and preparation are insufficient; or if teachers try to make students run before they can even crawl – especially for students who lack the background and ability ever to do anything more than walk; or if teachers overwrite their clearest and simplest message by smothering it in confused discussions and pseudo-scientific debates – then teachers risk failing to enable the attainment of even basic scientific knowledge and competence in their students.
Instead, for the early years of science teaching, the basic assumption ought to be that the student is there to learn science; not to confront science. The basic attitude being taught should be one of humility before the science being studied.
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
David Horrobin's inaugural editorial 1975
[NB: Here is a Christmas meditation from founding editor David F Horrobin on the role and functioning of Medical Hypotheses, as it has existed for the past 34 years - but probably not for very much longer. I doubt whether the real Medical Hypotheses, run on Horrobin's principles, will survive 2010. As Horrobin's successor, the ideals described in his inaugural editorial are the ideals I strive to maintain. As he instructed me, this type of journal can only in practice be run by the editor choosing papers himself (not by delegating decisions), and by his taking responsibility for these choices. This is the traditional sceintific method of editorial review, and entails eschewing the bureaucratic timidities and inefficiencies of mainstream peer review. Horrobin's conviction was that there were two lynch pins of Medical Hypotheses as he founded and maintained it: 1. aiming to publish revolutionary ideas, even when they 'seem improbable and perhaps even faintly ridiculous'; and 2. using editorial review in pursuit of this aim.]
***
Ideas in biomedical science: reasons for the foundation of Medical Hypotheses
David F. Horrobin, (1939–2003) Founder and first editor of Medical Hypotheses
Adapted from the inaugural editorial which appeared in the first issue of Medical Hypotheses (1975) 1(1), 1–2. Re-published in the first issue edited by Bruce G Charlton - Medical Hypotheses, Volume 62, Issue 1, January 2004, Pages 3-4
It is at least arguable that too much biomedical research is published rather than too little. Why then start a new journal?
Scientific progress depends on the existence of creative tension between ideas and observations. An observation is made which cries out for explanation. A hypothesis is proposed to account for this observation. The hypothesis is tested by making more observations which almost invariably require the abandonment of some part of the hypothesis. A new hypothesis is proposed. And so on…
The physical and chemical sciences long ago recognized that observations are not superior to hypotheses in generating scientific progress nor are hypotheses superior to observations. Both are necessary. While the ideal research worker may be one who is equally able to generate hypotheses and to test them experimentally, these sciences also recognized that such paragons are very rare indeed. Most scientists are much better at either one or the other activity. In physico-chemical fields this is fully accepted and the contributions of both theoretical and experimental scientists are recognized.
In contrast, in the biomedical sciences there seems to me much ignorance of the way in which scientific advance actually occurs. Physical scientists often dismiss biology and medicine as backward and the biologists quite legitimately react by pointing out that they are usually dealing with much more complex phenomena. But I have a suspicion that there is some truth in what the physical scientists say and that biology and medicine are backward because they have relied almost exclusively on observation. They have failed to recognize adequately that observation is always more effective when disciplined and channelled by hypothesis.
Many journals will occasionally publish a theoretical paper from a scientist with an outstanding reputation but will not consider similar papers from relative unknowns. The rule that is almost universally applied biology and medicine is that ideas can be presented or criticized only by those with a record of experimental work in a field. Even then they must be kept strictly to the discussion sections of papers and their presentation must usually be rigorously curtailed because ignorant and pedantic referees and editors object to ‘unjustified speculation’ and complain that the discussion ‘goes beyond the observed facts’. It is hardly surprising that the best physicists and chemists find medicine and biology primitive and unsophisticated.
The situation seems to be to be a tragedy. It leads to a total misrepresentation of the way in which science actually takes place. In 10,000 years time, a historian who had access only to the journals would be unable to build up anything like an accurate picture of what biomedical scientists actually do. This would not matter unduly but what does matter is that many scientists and most students also fail to understand how scientific advance actually occurs. As a result of this antipathy to theory the rate of progress is slowed because there is neither free presentation of new ideas nor open criticism of old ones. Outdated concepts can persist for prolonged periods because the evidence against them is scattered through hundreds of papers and no one is allowed to gather it together in one article to mount a sustained attack.
The refusal to accept the equal importance of ideas and observations leads to inefficiency. Most scientists now active in the biomedical field are competent observers whose ability to generate ideas is either naturally absent or has been stultified by the prevailing philosophy. As a result they spend their time in making more and more detailed observations of the same sorts of phenomena. In contrast, a few have far more ideas than they could possibly investigate but their potential contribution is largely nullified because they are allowed to publish only in those areas where they have done experimental or clinical work. If only these differences of ability and emphasis could be accepted and recognized then the people with ideas (who may often be inept experimenters) could generate a steady flow of new concepts which might rejuvenate the work of those whose primary skill is in observation.
Medical Hypotheses will be primarily devoted to publishing ideas and criticisms of ideas in the biomedical area. It will publish papers from anyone regardless of whether they have done experimental work in the field or not and regardless of the reputation of the authors or the institution from which they come. I shall be biased in favour of articles which clearly have some bearing on medicine. I shall try to ensure that all articles are written in a way which enables any intelligent medical scientist to obtain something useful from them. While specialization in research is essential, obscurity in the presentation of specialized ideas is not. I believe strongly in the ability of apparently unrelated fields to cross-fertilize one another and I hope that as a side result of editorial policy Medical Hypotheses may become an important medium for the continuing education of those medical scientists who have open and lively minds. There will be a correspondence column which I should like to make a major debating area as well as fun to read.
What sorts of papers will be published in Medical Hypotheses? Some will describe theories, ideas which already have a great deal of observational support; and some hypotheses, ideas where the experimental support is as yet fragmentary. Some will criticize theories and hypotheses without necessarily having anything to say in replacement. Some will discuss more philosophical aspects of the logical bases of science and of how science functions in practice. In the biomedical field I believe that ignorance of such philosophical considerations remains a serious impediment to progress.
I shall willingly and proudly plead guilty to the charge that I shall publish some ideas which seem improbable and perhaps even faintly ridiculous. Most scientists seem to be under the impression that the best hypotheses are those which seem most likely to be true. I follow Karl Popper in seeing the virtues of improbability. If a hypothesis which most people think is probably true does turn out to be true (or rather is not falsified by crucial and valid experimental tests) then little progress has been made. If a hypothesis which most think is improbable turns out to true then a scientific revolution occurs and progress is dramatic. Many and probably most of the hypotheses published in the journal will turn out in some way to be wrong. But if they stimulate determined experimental testing, progress is inevitable whether they are wrong or right.
The history of science has repeatedly shown that when hypotheses are proposed it is impossible to predict which will turn out to be revolutionary and which ridiculous. The only safe approach is to let all see the light and to let all be discussed, experimented upon, vindicated or destroyed. I hope the journal will provide a new battlefield open to all on which ideas can be tested and put through the fire.
***
Ideas in biomedical science: reasons for the foundation of Medical Hypotheses
David F. Horrobin, (1939–2003) Founder and first editor of Medical Hypotheses
Adapted from the inaugural editorial which appeared in the first issue of Medical Hypotheses (1975) 1(1), 1–2. Re-published in the first issue edited by Bruce G Charlton - Medical Hypotheses, Volume 62, Issue 1, January 2004, Pages 3-4
It is at least arguable that too much biomedical research is published rather than too little. Why then start a new journal?
Scientific progress depends on the existence of creative tension between ideas and observations. An observation is made which cries out for explanation. A hypothesis is proposed to account for this observation. The hypothesis is tested by making more observations which almost invariably require the abandonment of some part of the hypothesis. A new hypothesis is proposed. And so on…
The physical and chemical sciences long ago recognized that observations are not superior to hypotheses in generating scientific progress nor are hypotheses superior to observations. Both are necessary. While the ideal research worker may be one who is equally able to generate hypotheses and to test them experimentally, these sciences also recognized that such paragons are very rare indeed. Most scientists are much better at either one or the other activity. In physico-chemical fields this is fully accepted and the contributions of both theoretical and experimental scientists are recognized.
In contrast, in the biomedical sciences there seems to me much ignorance of the way in which scientific advance actually occurs. Physical scientists often dismiss biology and medicine as backward and the biologists quite legitimately react by pointing out that they are usually dealing with much more complex phenomena. But I have a suspicion that there is some truth in what the physical scientists say and that biology and medicine are backward because they have relied almost exclusively on observation. They have failed to recognize adequately that observation is always more effective when disciplined and channelled by hypothesis.
Many journals will occasionally publish a theoretical paper from a scientist with an outstanding reputation but will not consider similar papers from relative unknowns. The rule that is almost universally applied biology and medicine is that ideas can be presented or criticized only by those with a record of experimental work in a field. Even then they must be kept strictly to the discussion sections of papers and their presentation must usually be rigorously curtailed because ignorant and pedantic referees and editors object to ‘unjustified speculation’ and complain that the discussion ‘goes beyond the observed facts’. It is hardly surprising that the best physicists and chemists find medicine and biology primitive and unsophisticated.
The situation seems to be to be a tragedy. It leads to a total misrepresentation of the way in which science actually takes place. In 10,000 years time, a historian who had access only to the journals would be unable to build up anything like an accurate picture of what biomedical scientists actually do. This would not matter unduly but what does matter is that many scientists and most students also fail to understand how scientific advance actually occurs. As a result of this antipathy to theory the rate of progress is slowed because there is neither free presentation of new ideas nor open criticism of old ones. Outdated concepts can persist for prolonged periods because the evidence against them is scattered through hundreds of papers and no one is allowed to gather it together in one article to mount a sustained attack.
The refusal to accept the equal importance of ideas and observations leads to inefficiency. Most scientists now active in the biomedical field are competent observers whose ability to generate ideas is either naturally absent or has been stultified by the prevailing philosophy. As a result they spend their time in making more and more detailed observations of the same sorts of phenomena. In contrast, a few have far more ideas than they could possibly investigate but their potential contribution is largely nullified because they are allowed to publish only in those areas where they have done experimental or clinical work. If only these differences of ability and emphasis could be accepted and recognized then the people with ideas (who may often be inept experimenters) could generate a steady flow of new concepts which might rejuvenate the work of those whose primary skill is in observation.
Medical Hypotheses will be primarily devoted to publishing ideas and criticisms of ideas in the biomedical area. It will publish papers from anyone regardless of whether they have done experimental work in the field or not and regardless of the reputation of the authors or the institution from which they come. I shall be biased in favour of articles which clearly have some bearing on medicine. I shall try to ensure that all articles are written in a way which enables any intelligent medical scientist to obtain something useful from them. While specialization in research is essential, obscurity in the presentation of specialized ideas is not. I believe strongly in the ability of apparently unrelated fields to cross-fertilize one another and I hope that as a side result of editorial policy Medical Hypotheses may become an important medium for the continuing education of those medical scientists who have open and lively minds. There will be a correspondence column which I should like to make a major debating area as well as fun to read.
What sorts of papers will be published in Medical Hypotheses? Some will describe theories, ideas which already have a great deal of observational support; and some hypotheses, ideas where the experimental support is as yet fragmentary. Some will criticize theories and hypotheses without necessarily having anything to say in replacement. Some will discuss more philosophical aspects of the logical bases of science and of how science functions in practice. In the biomedical field I believe that ignorance of such philosophical considerations remains a serious impediment to progress.
I shall willingly and proudly plead guilty to the charge that I shall publish some ideas which seem improbable and perhaps even faintly ridiculous. Most scientists seem to be under the impression that the best hypotheses are those which seem most likely to be true. I follow Karl Popper in seeing the virtues of improbability. If a hypothesis which most people think is probably true does turn out to be true (or rather is not falsified by crucial and valid experimental tests) then little progress has been made. If a hypothesis which most think is improbable turns out to true then a scientific revolution occurs and progress is dramatic. Many and probably most of the hypotheses published in the journal will turn out in some way to be wrong. But if they stimulate determined experimental testing, progress is inevitable whether they are wrong or right.
The history of science has repeatedly shown that when hypotheses are proposed it is impossible to predict which will turn out to be revolutionary and which ridiculous. The only safe approach is to let all see the light and to let all be discussed, experimented upon, vindicated or destroyed. I hope the journal will provide a new battlefield open to all on which ideas can be tested and put through the fire.
Monday, 30 November 2009
Conscience in science
First and second things, and the operations of conscience in science
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2010; Volume 74: Pages 1-3
***
Summary
Why is modern science less efficient than it used to be, why has revolutionary science declined, and why has science become so dishonest? One plausible explanation behind these observations comes from an essay First and second things published by CS Lewis. First Things are the goals that are given priority as the primary and ultimate aim in life. Second Things are subordinate goals or aims – which are justified in terms of the extent to which they assist in pursuing First Things. The classic First Thing in human society is some kind of religious or philosophical world view. Lewis regarded it as a ‘universal law’ that the pursuit of a Second Thing as if it was a First Thing led inevitably to the loss of that Second Thing: ‘You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first’. I would argue that the pursuit of science as a primary value will lead to the loss of science, because science is properly a Second Thing. Because when science is conceptualized as a First Thing the bottom-line or operational definition of ‘correct behaviour’ is approval and high status within the scientific community. However, this does nothing whatsoever to prevent science drifting-away from its proper function; and once science has drifted then the prevailing peer consensus will tend to maintain this state of corruption. I am saying that science is a Second Thing, and ought to be subordinate to the First Thing of transcendental truth. Truth impinges on scientific practice in the form of individual conscience (noting that, of course, the strength and validity of conscience varies between scientists). When the senior scientists, whose role is to uphold standards, fail to posses or respond-to informed conscience, science will inevitably go rotten from the head downwards. What, then, motivates a scientist to act upon conscience? I believe it requires a fundamental conviction of the reality and importance of truth as an essential part of the basic purpose and meaning of life. Without some such bedrock moral underpinning, there is little possibility that individual scientific conscience would ever have a chance of holding-out against an insidious drift toward corruption enforced by peer consensus.
***
"You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first." C.S. Lewis. First and second things.
Why is modern science less efficient than it used to be [1], why has revolutionary science declined [2], and why has science become so dishonest? [3] One plausible explanation behind these observations comes from an essay published by CS Lewis in 1942: First and second things [4].
First Things are the goals that are given priority, by a person or a group, as the primary and ultimate aim in life. They are the bottom line in which terms other things are justified. Second Things are subordinate goals or aims – which are justified in terms of the extent to which they assist in pursuing First Things.
The classic First Thing in human society is some kind of transcendental world view – whether religious (such as Judaism or Christianity) or philosophical (such as Platonism or Stoicism). As examples of First Things, Lewis states about earlier societies ‘they cared at different times for all sorts of things, the will of God, for glory, for personal honour, for doctrinal purity, for justice.’
If these are examples of ‘First Things’ then in such a society science would be regarded as a Second Thing: science would ultimately be justified in terms of its assisting in the pursuit of the First Thing. So in a society where the will of God was primary for almost everyone, science would be pursued insofar as it was seen (overall and on average) to further the will of God. But in a society where science was the First Thing, then science would be pursued without further justification, and other societal pursuits would need to justify themselves in term of enhancing the goals of science.
Superficially, it sounds as though science would work better if it was a First Thing – freed from external constraints such as religion – and that such a ‘science first’ world would be a marvellous place to work as a scientist! And, for a while, it was...
But the essential nature of the most developed societies (e.g. of the USA, UK, Europe, East Asia) is that there is no single First Thing: not science, and not anything else [5]. Instead there are now only Second Things, pursued independently of each other. So the social systems – such as science, the arts, politics, public administration, law, the military, education, the mass media – are substantially independent and lack a common language. This is the idea of modernity, of a society based upon increasing autonomy of increasingly-specialized social systems.
The driving force behind modernity is increasing efficiency by means of functional differentiation, a general version of the principle that complexity is necessary to increased efficiency [5]. In its first formulation, in economics, it was noticed by Adam Smith that division of labour can lead to greater productivity [6]. At a societal level modern societies were conceptualized by Niklas Luhmann in terms that their continual functional differentiation enables all social systems to grow by increase in productivity but that no social system has priority over the others [7]. In Lewis’s terms there is no overall First Thing, but instead each social system is a First Thing for itself.
The problem with this conceptualization is to understand how all these First Things are integrated and coordinated. My earlier answer to this was to assume a kind of mutual regulation of a mosaic type, so that each social system is regulated by some others but none has overall control [5]. For instance, science depends on the educational system for expert manpower, the political system for peace, the economic system for resources etc. Then, in turn, the economic system depends on science for technological innovations and on the political system for international treaties and so on – with each system acting as a pressure group for some of the others, exerting influence to ensure that the other systems holds to their necessary functions and do not become too inefficient; thereby (I hoped!) this mosaic of mutual power and response acts to hold the whole society together [5].
I now find this proposed mechanism insufficient to ensure a stable society. It seems more likely that self-beneficial, even parasitic, change and growth within specific social systems has the potential to be much more rapid and parasitic than the evolution of mutual accommodation and symbiosis between autonomous systems that might ensure overall societal growth. Therefore, I would now expect a society of highly autonomous and rapidly-growing social systems that is lacking an overall First Thing to be much less cohesive and much more prone to collapse than I used to believe.
Another way of framing this issue is to ask what maintains the integrity of science. In other words, what keeps science pointing in the right direction, pursuing properly scientific goals as its main aim; and within the pursuit of these goals what keeps science honest in its internal dealings? In short, we need to understand the mechanism(s) that prevent science from becoming corrupt in the face of a continual tendency for short-termist and selfish behaviour to undermine cooperation and functionality. (This is the core problem which must be solved to enable the evolution of complex systems [5].)
My old idea [5] was that science would be kept honest and efficient by pressure from the main users of science – for example, engineers would keep physicists honest, agriculturalists would keep botanists honest, doctors would keep medical scientists honest, and so on. Yet science has, I now realize, become corrupted anyway [2], [3], [8] and [9] – which means that either these corrective mechanisms are non-existent, too slow or too weak.
In general, when people notice corruption of science they appeal to the idea that science ought to be a First Thing – the ‘Humboldtian’ ideal of disinterested pursuit of knowledge ‘for its own sake’. However, this is a mistake if in reality science ought to be a Second Thing, and not a First Thing; if it is only by remaining a Second Thing that science can avoid being corrupted. Indeed, Lewis regarded it as a ‘universal law’ that the pursuit of a Second Thing as if it was a First Thing led inevitably to the loss of that Second Thing: ‘You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first’ [4].
Lewis’s example (writing during World War Two) was that the Western Civilization had been putting the value of ‘civilization’ first for the last thirty years. He regarded civilization as including ‘Peace, a high standard of life, hygiene, transport, science and amusement’ – and as a result Western civilization had come very close to losing all these things. So, pursuit of civilization as a First Thing very nearly led to the loss of civilization. In particular Lewis focused on how pacifism, or pursuit of peace as a First Thing, had been a major contributor to the occurrence and destructiveness of World War Two: ‘I think many would now agree that a foreign policy dominated by desire for peace is one of the many roads that lead to war’ [4].
The idea, then, is that the pursuit of science as a primary value will lead to the loss of science, because science is properly a Second Thing.
This may happen because when science is conceptualized as a First Thing the bottom-line or operational definition of ‘correct behaviour’ is achieving approval and high status within the scientific community. Science as a First Thing is judged by scientists only – so success is winning the esteem of colleagues. And this amounts to the scientist seeking conformity with the prevailing peer consensus – either immediately, or over the longer time span of their career.
However, by this First Thing conceptualization of science, there is nothing whatsoever to prevent science drifting-away from its original function, from its proper mission. Real science is replaced by the infinite varieties of self-seeking among scientists. And once science has drifted, and a sufficient proportion of scientists are no longer seeking-truth nor speaking-truth, then the prevailing peer consensus will tend maintain this corrupt situation. So that a scientist seeking the esteem of his colleagues will himself need to abandon truth-seeking and truth-speaking.
The alternative conceptualization is for each scientist to regard science as a Second Thing, and for the individual scientist to evaluate his work and its context in terms of their contribution to transcendental truth [3]. When he regards the prevailing peer consensus as having diverged from truth in this transcendental sense, then the scientist may feel duty-bound to seek his own personal understanding of truth, and communicating what he personally regards as the truth, even when this conflicts with prevailing consensus and leads to lowered esteem among scientific colleagues and harms his career.
So, I am saying that science is a Second Thing, and the First Thing ought to be transcendental truth. A formulation of transcendental truth would be an attempted description of the nature of ultimate reality. But it may seem unclear how such a remote and abstract concept could affect scientific practice in real life situations. One answer would be that transcendental truth impinges on scientific practice in the form of conscience. In other words, transcendental truth in science could be ‘operationally-defined’ as the subjective workings of conscience in a scientist.
Conscience seems to be indicative of the First Thing as understood and appreciated in practice by an individual – and when science is a Second Thing, conscience is located outside of science, and science is judged by standards outside of science [3]. Conscience about First Things makes itself felt in science as an inner sense of the nature of reality; such as the nagging doubts and persistent suspicions which afflict a scrupulous scientist when he feels that the consensus of his scientific colleagues is wrong. He has reservations about the validity of prevailing idea of truth, and hunches that he personally has a better idea of the truth than the majority of his powerful scientific peers.
In saying that conscience is the operational definition of transcendental truth, it is important to note that the strength and validity of conscience varies between scientists. Some scientists are unscrupulous and have no conscience to speak of; while other scientists are so inexperienced – or lacking in requisite knowledge or skill – that their conscience with regard to truth is unreliable. And while all scientists need to listen to their conscience, the main consciences of relevance to science are those of the scientific leadership; those whose own behaviour serves as a model for more junior scientists; and those scientists who are themselves responsible for choosing, educating, employing and promoting scientific personnel. It is primarily the senior scientists whose job is to uphold ethical standards, to enforce incentives and sanctions. If (and when) scientific leaders are lacking in informed conscience, or ignore the promptings of conscience, then science will inevitably go rotten from the head downwards [3,10].
Having a conscience about truth is the first step – but what motivates a scientist to listen to his conscience and act upon it? Firstly, if science is regarded as being in service to truth, then ideals of truth might enforce conscience. But then, what is so important about ‘truth’? And the final answer to all that, would be a fundamental conviction that truth is an essential part of what we conceive to be ‘the good’ – in other words the basic purpose and meaning of life. This has the corollary that if a person does not actually have a concept of the basic purpose and meaning of life – then their world view will intrinsically be lacking any firm ground on which they can stand in a situation where the pursuit of truth causes here-and-now disadvantage.
In this respect, science is paradoxically stronger when a Second Thing than as a First Thing. Because science is stronger when science is embedded in the larger value of truth, and when truth is embedded in the still-larger value of a concept of the good life. Of course, not all concepts of the good life will be equally supportive of good science; indeed some transcendental concepts are anti-scientific.
However, without an ultimate, bedrock moral underpinning of some kind, then there seems no possibility that individual scientific conscience would ever have a chance of holding-out against the insidious drift toward corruption enforced by peer consensus.
References
[1] J. Ziman, Real science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (2000).
[2] Smolin L. The trouble with physics. London: Allen Lane Penguin; 2006.
[3] B.G. Charlton, The vital role of transcendental truth in science, Med Hypotheses 72 (2009), pp. 373–376.
[4] C.S. Lewis, First and second things. In: W. Hooper, Editor, First and second things: essays on theology and ethics, Collins, Fount, London (1985), pp. 19–24.
[5] Charlton B, Andras P. The modernization imperative. Imprint Academic: Exeter 2003.
[6] A. Smith, The wealth of nations, London, Dent (1910) [originally published 1776–7].
[7] N. Luhmann, Social systems, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, USA (1995).
[8] B.G. Charlton and A. Miles, The rise and fall of EBM, QJM 91 (1998), pp. 371–374.
[9] Healy D. Let them eat Prozac. New York University Press: NY, USA; 2004.
[10] B.G. Charlton and Figureheads, ghost-writers and pseudonymous quant bloggers: the recent evolution of authorship in science publishing, Med Hypotheses 71 (2008), pp. 475–480.
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2010; Volume 74: Pages 1-3
***
Summary
Why is modern science less efficient than it used to be, why has revolutionary science declined, and why has science become so dishonest? One plausible explanation behind these observations comes from an essay First and second things published by CS Lewis. First Things are the goals that are given priority as the primary and ultimate aim in life. Second Things are subordinate goals or aims – which are justified in terms of the extent to which they assist in pursuing First Things. The classic First Thing in human society is some kind of religious or philosophical world view. Lewis regarded it as a ‘universal law’ that the pursuit of a Second Thing as if it was a First Thing led inevitably to the loss of that Second Thing: ‘You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first’. I would argue that the pursuit of science as a primary value will lead to the loss of science, because science is properly a Second Thing. Because when science is conceptualized as a First Thing the bottom-line or operational definition of ‘correct behaviour’ is approval and high status within the scientific community. However, this does nothing whatsoever to prevent science drifting-away from its proper function; and once science has drifted then the prevailing peer consensus will tend to maintain this state of corruption. I am saying that science is a Second Thing, and ought to be subordinate to the First Thing of transcendental truth. Truth impinges on scientific practice in the form of individual conscience (noting that, of course, the strength and validity of conscience varies between scientists). When the senior scientists, whose role is to uphold standards, fail to posses or respond-to informed conscience, science will inevitably go rotten from the head downwards. What, then, motivates a scientist to act upon conscience? I believe it requires a fundamental conviction of the reality and importance of truth as an essential part of the basic purpose and meaning of life. Without some such bedrock moral underpinning, there is little possibility that individual scientific conscience would ever have a chance of holding-out against an insidious drift toward corruption enforced by peer consensus.
***
"You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first." C.S. Lewis. First and second things.
Why is modern science less efficient than it used to be [1], why has revolutionary science declined [2], and why has science become so dishonest? [3] One plausible explanation behind these observations comes from an essay published by CS Lewis in 1942: First and second things [4].
First Things are the goals that are given priority, by a person or a group, as the primary and ultimate aim in life. They are the bottom line in which terms other things are justified. Second Things are subordinate goals or aims – which are justified in terms of the extent to which they assist in pursuing First Things.
The classic First Thing in human society is some kind of transcendental world view – whether religious (such as Judaism or Christianity) or philosophical (such as Platonism or Stoicism). As examples of First Things, Lewis states about earlier societies ‘they cared at different times for all sorts of things, the will of God, for glory, for personal honour, for doctrinal purity, for justice.’
If these are examples of ‘First Things’ then in such a society science would be regarded as a Second Thing: science would ultimately be justified in terms of its assisting in the pursuit of the First Thing. So in a society where the will of God was primary for almost everyone, science would be pursued insofar as it was seen (overall and on average) to further the will of God. But in a society where science was the First Thing, then science would be pursued without further justification, and other societal pursuits would need to justify themselves in term of enhancing the goals of science.
Superficially, it sounds as though science would work better if it was a First Thing – freed from external constraints such as religion – and that such a ‘science first’ world would be a marvellous place to work as a scientist! And, for a while, it was...
But the essential nature of the most developed societies (e.g. of the USA, UK, Europe, East Asia) is that there is no single First Thing: not science, and not anything else [5]. Instead there are now only Second Things, pursued independently of each other. So the social systems – such as science, the arts, politics, public administration, law, the military, education, the mass media – are substantially independent and lack a common language. This is the idea of modernity, of a society based upon increasing autonomy of increasingly-specialized social systems.
The driving force behind modernity is increasing efficiency by means of functional differentiation, a general version of the principle that complexity is necessary to increased efficiency [5]. In its first formulation, in economics, it was noticed by Adam Smith that division of labour can lead to greater productivity [6]. At a societal level modern societies were conceptualized by Niklas Luhmann in terms that their continual functional differentiation enables all social systems to grow by increase in productivity but that no social system has priority over the others [7]. In Lewis’s terms there is no overall First Thing, but instead each social system is a First Thing for itself.
The problem with this conceptualization is to understand how all these First Things are integrated and coordinated. My earlier answer to this was to assume a kind of mutual regulation of a mosaic type, so that each social system is regulated by some others but none has overall control [5]. For instance, science depends on the educational system for expert manpower, the political system for peace, the economic system for resources etc. Then, in turn, the economic system depends on science for technological innovations and on the political system for international treaties and so on – with each system acting as a pressure group for some of the others, exerting influence to ensure that the other systems holds to their necessary functions and do not become too inefficient; thereby (I hoped!) this mosaic of mutual power and response acts to hold the whole society together [5].
I now find this proposed mechanism insufficient to ensure a stable society. It seems more likely that self-beneficial, even parasitic, change and growth within specific social systems has the potential to be much more rapid and parasitic than the evolution of mutual accommodation and symbiosis between autonomous systems that might ensure overall societal growth. Therefore, I would now expect a society of highly autonomous and rapidly-growing social systems that is lacking an overall First Thing to be much less cohesive and much more prone to collapse than I used to believe.
Another way of framing this issue is to ask what maintains the integrity of science. In other words, what keeps science pointing in the right direction, pursuing properly scientific goals as its main aim; and within the pursuit of these goals what keeps science honest in its internal dealings? In short, we need to understand the mechanism(s) that prevent science from becoming corrupt in the face of a continual tendency for short-termist and selfish behaviour to undermine cooperation and functionality. (This is the core problem which must be solved to enable the evolution of complex systems [5].)
My old idea [5] was that science would be kept honest and efficient by pressure from the main users of science – for example, engineers would keep physicists honest, agriculturalists would keep botanists honest, doctors would keep medical scientists honest, and so on. Yet science has, I now realize, become corrupted anyway [2], [3], [8] and [9] – which means that either these corrective mechanisms are non-existent, too slow or too weak.
In general, when people notice corruption of science they appeal to the idea that science ought to be a First Thing – the ‘Humboldtian’ ideal of disinterested pursuit of knowledge ‘for its own sake’. However, this is a mistake if in reality science ought to be a Second Thing, and not a First Thing; if it is only by remaining a Second Thing that science can avoid being corrupted. Indeed, Lewis regarded it as a ‘universal law’ that the pursuit of a Second Thing as if it was a First Thing led inevitably to the loss of that Second Thing: ‘You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first’ [4].
Lewis’s example (writing during World War Two) was that the Western Civilization had been putting the value of ‘civilization’ first for the last thirty years. He regarded civilization as including ‘Peace, a high standard of life, hygiene, transport, science and amusement’ – and as a result Western civilization had come very close to losing all these things. So, pursuit of civilization as a First Thing very nearly led to the loss of civilization. In particular Lewis focused on how pacifism, or pursuit of peace as a First Thing, had been a major contributor to the occurrence and destructiveness of World War Two: ‘I think many would now agree that a foreign policy dominated by desire for peace is one of the many roads that lead to war’ [4].
The idea, then, is that the pursuit of science as a primary value will lead to the loss of science, because science is properly a Second Thing.
This may happen because when science is conceptualized as a First Thing the bottom-line or operational definition of ‘correct behaviour’ is achieving approval and high status within the scientific community. Science as a First Thing is judged by scientists only – so success is winning the esteem of colleagues. And this amounts to the scientist seeking conformity with the prevailing peer consensus – either immediately, or over the longer time span of their career.
However, by this First Thing conceptualization of science, there is nothing whatsoever to prevent science drifting-away from its original function, from its proper mission. Real science is replaced by the infinite varieties of self-seeking among scientists. And once science has drifted, and a sufficient proportion of scientists are no longer seeking-truth nor speaking-truth, then the prevailing peer consensus will tend maintain this corrupt situation. So that a scientist seeking the esteem of his colleagues will himself need to abandon truth-seeking and truth-speaking.
The alternative conceptualization is for each scientist to regard science as a Second Thing, and for the individual scientist to evaluate his work and its context in terms of their contribution to transcendental truth [3]. When he regards the prevailing peer consensus as having diverged from truth in this transcendental sense, then the scientist may feel duty-bound to seek his own personal understanding of truth, and communicating what he personally regards as the truth, even when this conflicts with prevailing consensus and leads to lowered esteem among scientific colleagues and harms his career.
So, I am saying that science is a Second Thing, and the First Thing ought to be transcendental truth. A formulation of transcendental truth would be an attempted description of the nature of ultimate reality. But it may seem unclear how such a remote and abstract concept could affect scientific practice in real life situations. One answer would be that transcendental truth impinges on scientific practice in the form of conscience. In other words, transcendental truth in science could be ‘operationally-defined’ as the subjective workings of conscience in a scientist.
Conscience seems to be indicative of the First Thing as understood and appreciated in practice by an individual – and when science is a Second Thing, conscience is located outside of science, and science is judged by standards outside of science [3]. Conscience about First Things makes itself felt in science as an inner sense of the nature of reality; such as the nagging doubts and persistent suspicions which afflict a scrupulous scientist when he feels that the consensus of his scientific colleagues is wrong. He has reservations about the validity of prevailing idea of truth, and hunches that he personally has a better idea of the truth than the majority of his powerful scientific peers.
In saying that conscience is the operational definition of transcendental truth, it is important to note that the strength and validity of conscience varies between scientists. Some scientists are unscrupulous and have no conscience to speak of; while other scientists are so inexperienced – or lacking in requisite knowledge or skill – that their conscience with regard to truth is unreliable. And while all scientists need to listen to their conscience, the main consciences of relevance to science are those of the scientific leadership; those whose own behaviour serves as a model for more junior scientists; and those scientists who are themselves responsible for choosing, educating, employing and promoting scientific personnel. It is primarily the senior scientists whose job is to uphold ethical standards, to enforce incentives and sanctions. If (and when) scientific leaders are lacking in informed conscience, or ignore the promptings of conscience, then science will inevitably go rotten from the head downwards [3,10].
Having a conscience about truth is the first step – but what motivates a scientist to listen to his conscience and act upon it? Firstly, if science is regarded as being in service to truth, then ideals of truth might enforce conscience. But then, what is so important about ‘truth’? And the final answer to all that, would be a fundamental conviction that truth is an essential part of what we conceive to be ‘the good’ – in other words the basic purpose and meaning of life. This has the corollary that if a person does not actually have a concept of the basic purpose and meaning of life – then their world view will intrinsically be lacking any firm ground on which they can stand in a situation where the pursuit of truth causes here-and-now disadvantage.
In this respect, science is paradoxically stronger when a Second Thing than as a First Thing. Because science is stronger when science is embedded in the larger value of truth, and when truth is embedded in the still-larger value of a concept of the good life. Of course, not all concepts of the good life will be equally supportive of good science; indeed some transcendental concepts are anti-scientific.
However, without an ultimate, bedrock moral underpinning of some kind, then there seems no possibility that individual scientific conscience would ever have a chance of holding-out against the insidious drift toward corruption enforced by peer consensus.
References
[1] J. Ziman, Real science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (2000).
[2] Smolin L. The trouble with physics. London: Allen Lane Penguin; 2006.
[3] B.G. Charlton, The vital role of transcendental truth in science, Med Hypotheses 72 (2009), pp. 373–376.
[4] C.S. Lewis, First and second things. In: W. Hooper, Editor, First and second things: essays on theology and ethics, Collins, Fount, London (1985), pp. 19–24.
[5] Charlton B, Andras P. The modernization imperative. Imprint Academic: Exeter 2003.
[6] A. Smith, The wealth of nations, London, Dent (1910) [originally published 1776–7].
[7] N. Luhmann, Social systems, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, USA (1995).
[8] B.G. Charlton and A. Miles, The rise and fall of EBM, QJM 91 (1998), pp. 371–374.
[9] Healy D. Let them eat Prozac. New York University Press: NY, USA; 2004.
[10] B.G. Charlton and Figureheads, ghost-writers and pseudonymous quant bloggers: the recent evolution of authorship in science publishing, Med Hypotheses 71 (2008), pp. 475–480.
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Clever Sillies - Why the high IQ lack common sense
Clever sillies: Why high IQ people tend to be deficient in common sense
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2009;73: 867-870.
Summary
In previous editorials I have written about the absent-minded and socially-inept ‘nutty professor’ stereotype in science, and the phenomenon of ‘psychological neoteny’ whereby intelligent modern people (including scientists) decline to grow-up and instead remain in a state of perpetual novelty-seeking adolescence. These can be seen as specific examples of the general phenomenon of ‘clever sillies’ whereby intelligent people with high levels of technical ability are seen (by the majority of the rest of the population) as having foolish ideas and behaviours outside the realm of their professional expertise. In short, it has often been observed that high IQ types are lacking in ‘common sense’ – and especially when it comes to dealing with other human beings. General intelligence is not just a cognitive ability; it is also a cognitive disposition. So, the greater cognitive abilities of higher IQ tend also to be accompanied by a distinctive high IQ personality type including the trait of ‘Openness to experience’, ‘enlightened’ or progressive left-wing political values, and atheism. Drawing on the ideas of Kanazawa, my suggested explanation for this association between intelligence and personality is that an increasing relative level of IQ brings with it a tendency differentially to over-use general intelligence in problem-solving, and to over-ride those instinctive and spontaneous forms of evolved behaviour which could be termed common sense. Preferential use of abstract analysis is often useful when dealing with the many evolutionary novelties to be found in modernizing societies; but is not usually useful for dealing with social and psychological problems for which humans have evolved ‘domain-specific’ adaptive behaviours. And since evolved common sense usually produces the right answers in the social domain; this implies that, when it comes to solving social problems, the most intelligent people are more likely than those of average intelligence to have novel but silly ideas, and therefore to believe and behave maladaptively. I further suggest that this random silliness of the most intelligent people may be amplified to generate systematic wrongness when intellectuals are in addition ‘advertising’ their own high intelligence in the evolutionarily novel context of a modern IQ meritocracy. The cognitively-stratified context of communicating almost-exclusively with others of similar intelligence, generates opinions and behaviours among the highest IQ people which are not just lacking in common sense but perversely wrong. Hence the phenomenon of ‘political correctness’ (PC); whereby false and foolish ideas have come to dominate, and moralistically be enforced upon, the ruling elites of whole nations.
***
IQ and evolved problem-solving
On the whole, and all else being equal, in modern societies the higher a person’s general intelligence (as measured by the intelligence quotient or IQ), the better will be life for that person; since higher intelligence leads (among other benefits) to higher social status and salary, longer life expectancy and better health [1], [2], [3], [4] and [5]. However, at the same time, it has been recognized for more than a century that increasing IQ is biologically-maladaptive because there is an inverse relationship between IQ and fertility [6], [7] and [8]. Under modern conditions, therefore, high intelligence is fitness-reducing.
In the course of exploring this modern divergence between social-adaptation and biological-adaptation, Satoshi Kanazawa has made the insightful observation that a high level of general intelligence is mainly useful in dealing with life problems which are an evolutionary novelty. By contrast, performance in solving problems which were a normal part of human life in the ancestral hunter–gatherer era may not be helped (or may indeed be hindered) by higher IQ [9] and [10].
(This statement requires a qualification. When a person has suffered some form of brain damage, or a pathology affecting brain function, then this might well produce generalized impairment of cognition: reducing both general intelligence and other forms of evolved cognitive functioning, depending on the site and extent of the brain pathology. Since a population with low IQ would include some whose IQ had been lowered by brain pathology, the average level of social intelligence or common sense would probably also be lower in this population. This confounding effect of brain pathology would be expected to create a weak and non-causal statistical correlation between IQ and social intelligence/common sense, a correlation that would mainly be apparent at low levels of IQ.)
As examples of how IQ may help with evolutionary novelties, it has been abundantly-demonstrated that increasing measures of IQ are strongly and positively correlated with a wide range of abilities which require abstract reasoning and rapid learning of new knowledge and skills; such as educational outcomes, and abilities at most complex modern jobs [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] and [11]. Science and mathematics are classic examples of problem-solving activities that arose only recently in human evolutionary history and in which differential ability is very strongly predicted by relative general intelligence [12].
However, there are also many human tasks which our human ancestors did encounter repeatedly and over manifold generations, and natural selection has often produced ‘instinctive’, spontaneous ways of dealing with these. Since humans are social primates, one major such category is social problems, which have to do with understanding, predicting and manipulating the behaviours of other human beings [13], [14], [15] and [16]. Being able to behave adaptively in dealing with these basic human situations is what I will term having ‘common sense’.
Kanazawa’s idea is that there is therefore a contrast between recurring, mainly social problems which affected fitness for our ancestors and for which all normal humans have evolved behavioural responses; and problems which are an evolutionary novelty but which have a major impact on individual functioning in the context of modern societies [9] and [10]. When a problem is an evolutionary novelty, individual differences in general intelligence make a big difference to each individual’s abilities to analyze the problem, and learn to how solve it. So, the idea is that having a high IQ would predict a better ability in understanding and dealing with new problems; but higher IQ would not increase the level of a person’s common sense ability to deal with social situations.
IQ not just an ability, but also a disposition
Although general intelligence is usually conceptualized as differences in cognitive ability, IQ is not just about ability but also has personality implications [17].
For example, in some populations there is a positive correlation between IQ and the personality trait of Openness to experience (‘Openness’) [18] and [19]; a positive correlation with ‘enlightened’ or progressive values of a broadly socialist and libertarian type [20]; and a negative correlation with religiousness [21].
So, the greater cognitive ability of higher IQ is also accompanied by a somewhat distinctive high IQ personality type. My suggested explanation for this association is that an increasing level of IQ brings with it an increased tendency to use general intelligence in problem-solving; i.e. to over-ride those instinctive and spontaneous forms of evolved behaviour which could be termed common sense.
The over-use of abstract reasoning may be most obvious in the social domain, where normal humans are richly equipped with evolved psychological mechanisms both for here-and-now interactions (e.g. rapidly reading emotions from facial expression, gesture and posture, and speech intonation) and for ‘strategic’ modelling of social interactions to understand predict and manipulate the behaviour of others [16]. Social strategies deploy inferred knowledge about the dispositions, motivations and intentions of others. When the most intelligent people over-ride the social intelligence systems and apply generic, abstract and systematic reasoning of the kind which is enhanced among higher IQ people, they are ignoring an ‘expert system’ in favour of a non-expert system.
In suggesting that the most intelligent people tend to use IQ to over-ride common sense I am unsure of the extent to which this is due to a deficit in the social reasoning ability, perhaps due to a trade-off between cognitive abilities – as suggested by Baron-Cohen’s conceptualization of Asperger’s syndrome, including the male- versus female-type of systematizing/empathizing brain [22]. Or alternatively it could be more of an habitual tendency to over-use abstract analysis, that might (in principle) be overcome by effort or with training. Observing the apparent universality of ‘Silly Clevers’ in modernizing societies, I suspect that a higher IQ bias towards over-utilizing abstract reasoning would probably turn-out to be innate and relatively stable.
Indeed, I suggest that higher levels of the personality trait of Openness in higher IQ people may the flip-side of this over-use of abstraction. I regard Openness as the result of deploying abstract analysis for social problems to yield unstable and unpredictable results, when innate social intelligence would tend to yield predictable and stable results. This might plausibly underlie the tendency of the most intelligent people in modernizing societies to hold ‘left-wing’ political views [10] and [20].
I would argue that neophilia (or novelty-seeking) is a driving attribute of the personality trait of Openness; and a disposition common in adolescents and immature adults who display what I have termed ‘psychological neoteny’ [23] and [24]. When problems are analyzed using common sense ‘instincts’ the evaluative process would be expected to lead to the same answers in all normal humans, and these answers are likely to be stable over time. But when higher IQ people ignore or over-ride common sense, they generate a variety of uncommon ideas. Since these ideas are only feebly-, or wholly un-, supported by emotions; they are held more weakly than common sense ideas, and so are more likely to change over time.
For instance, a group of less intelligent people using instinctive social intelligence to analyze a social situation will presumably reach the same traditional conclusion as everyone else and this conclusion will not change with time; while a more intelligent group might by contrast use abstract analysis and generate a wider range of novel and less-compelling solutions. This behaviour appears as if motivated by novelty-seeking.
Applying abstract analysis to social situations might be seen as ‘creative’, and indeed Openness has been put forward as the major personality trait which supports creativity [19] and [25]. This is reasonable in the sense that an intellectual high in Openness would be likely to disregard common sense, and to generate multiple, unpredictable and unfamiliar answers to evolutionarily-familiar problems which would only yield a single ‘obvious’ solution to those who deployed evolved modes of intelligence. However, I would instead argue that a high IQ person applying abstract systemizing intelligence to activities which are more usually done by instinctive intelligence is not a truly ‘creative’ process.
Instead, following Eysenck, I would regard true psychological creativity as primarily an associative activity which Eysenck includes as part of the trait Psychoticism; cognitively akin to the ‘primary process’ thinking of sleep, delirium and psychotic illness [26] and [27]. A major difference between these two concepts of creativity is that while ‘Openness creativity’ is abstract, coolly-impartial and as if driven by novelty-seeking (neophilia); ‘Psychoticism creativity’ is validated by emotions: such that the high-Psychoticism creative person is guided by their emotional responses to their own creative production.
Clever sillies in the IQ meritocracy
It therefore seems plausible that the folklore or stereotypical idea of the eccentric, unworldly, absent-minded or obtuse scientist – who is brilliant at their job while being fatuous and incompetent in terms of their everyday life [28], might be the result of this psychological tendency to over-use abstract intelligence and use it in inappropriate situations.
However, there is a further aspect of this phenomenon. Modern societies are characterized by large population, extensive division of labour, and a ‘meritocratic’ form of social organization in which social roles (jobs, occupations) tend to be filled on the basis of educational credentials and job performance rather than on an hereditary basis (as was the case in most societies of the past). This means that in modern societies there is an unprecedented degree of cognitive stratification [29]. Cognitive stratification is the layering of social organization by IQ; such that residence, schooling and occupations are characterized by narrow bands of intelligence. Large modern countries are therefore ruled by concentrations of highly intelligent people in the major social systems such as politics, civil administration, law, science and technology, the mass media and education. Communication in these elites is almost-exclusively among the highly intelligent.
In such an evolutionarily-unprecedented, artificial ‘hothouse’ environment, it is plausible that any IQ-related behaviours are amplified: partly because there is little counter-pressure from the less intelligent people with less neophiliac personalities, and perhaps mainly because there is a great deal of IQ-advertisement. Indeed, it looks very much as if the elites of modern societies are characterized by considerable IQ-signalling [19]. Sometimes this is direct advertisement (e.g. when boasting about intellectual attainments or attendance at highly-selective colleges) and more often the signalling is subtly-indirect when people display the attitudes, beliefs, fashions, manners and hobbies associated with high intelligence. This advertising is probably based on sexual selection [30], if IQ has been a measure of general fitness during human evolutionary history, and was associated with a wide range of adaptive traits [31].
My hunch is that it is this kind of IQ-advertisement which has led to the most intelligent people in modern societies having ideas about social phenomena that are not just randomly incorrect (due to inappropriately misapplying abstract analysis) but are systematically wrong. I am talking of the phenomenon known as political correctness (PC) in which foolish and false ideas have become moralistically-enforced among the ruling intellectual elite. And these ideas have invaded academic, political and social discourse. Because while the stereotypical nutty professor in the hard sciences is a brilliant scientist but silly about everything else; the stereotypical nutty professor social scientist or humanities professor is not just silly about ‘everything else’, but also silly in their professional work.
Getting answers to problems relating to hard science is extremely intellectually-difficult and (because the subject is an evolutionary novelty) necessarily requires abstract reasoning [12] and [26]. Therefore the hard scientist is invariably vastly more competent at their science than the average member of the public, and he has no need to be novelty-seeking in order to advertise his intelligence.
But getting answers to problems in science involving human social behaviour is something which is already done very well by evolved human psychological mechanisms [13], [14], [15] and [16]. In this situation it is difficult to improve on common sense, and – even without being taught – normal people already have a pretty good understanding of human motivations, incentives and deterrents, and the basic cause and effect processes of society. Because psychological and social intelligence expertise is so widespread and adaptive; in order to advertise his intelligence the social scientist must produce something systematically-different from common sense, something novel and (necessarily) counter-intuitive. And because it goes against evolved psychology, in this instance something different is likely to be something wrong. So, the social scientist professional deploying abstract reasoning on social problems is often less likely to generate a correct answer than the average member of the public who is using the common sense of evolved, spontaneous social intelligence.
In the human and social sciences there is therefore a professional incentive to be perversely wrong – to be silly, in other words. And this is indeed what we see. The more that the subject matter of an academic field requires, or depends on, common sense; the sillier it will be.
The results of cognitive stratification and IQ-advertising are therefore bad enough to have destroyed the value of whole domains of the arts and academia, and in the domain of public policy the results have been simply disastrous. Over the past four decades the dishonest fantasy-world discourse of non-biological political correctness has evolved to dominate the intellectual arena of whole nations – perhaps the whole developed world – such that wrong and ridiculous ideas have become not just mainstream, but compulsory.
Because clever silliness is not just one of several competing ideas in the elite arena – it is both intellectually- and moralistically-enforced with such zeal as utterly to exclude alternatives [32]. The first level of defence is that denying a PC assertion is taken as proof of dumbness or derangement; such that flat-denial without refutation is regarded as sufficient response. But the toughest enforcement is moral: anyone smart and sane who disbelieves the silly clever falsehoods and asserts something different is not just denounced as dumb but actually pilloried as evil [33].
I infer that the motivation behind the moralizing venom of political correctness is the fact that spontaneous human instincts are universal and more powerfully-felt than the absurd abstractions of PC; plus the fact that common sense is basically correct while PC is perversely wrong. Hence, at all costs a fair debate must be prevented if the PC consensus is to be protected. Common sense requires to be stigmatized in order that it is neutralized.
Ultimately these manoeuvres serve to defend the power, status and distinctiveness of the intellectual elite [34]. They are socially-adaptive over the short-term, even as they are biologically-maladaptive over the longer-term.
Conclusion
Because evolved ‘common sense’ usually produces the right answers in the social domain, yet the most intelligent people have personalities which over-use abstract analysis in the social domain [9] and [10], this implies that the most intelligent people are predisposed to have silly ideas and to behave maladaptively when it comes to solving social problems.
Ever since the development of cognitive stratification in modernizing societies [29], the clever sillies have been almost monopolistically ‘in charge’. They really are both clever and silly – but the cleverness is abstract while the silliness is focused on the psychological and social domains. Consequently, the fatal flaw of modern ruling elites lies in their lack of common sense – especially the misinterpretations of human psychology and socio-political affairs. My guess is that this lack of common sense is intrinsic and incorrigible – and perhaps biologically-linked with the evolution of high intelligence and the rise of modernity [35].
Stanovich has also described the over-riding of the ‘Darwinian brain’ of autonomous systems by the analytic system, and has identified the phenomenon as underlying modern non-adaptive ethical reasoning [36]. Stanovich has also noted that IQ accounts for much (but not all) of the inter-individual differences in using analytic evaluations; however, Stanovich regards the increased use of abstraction to replace traditional ‘common sense’ very positively, not as ‘silly’ but as a vital aspect of what he interprets as the higher status of modern social morality.
Yet, whatever else, to be a clever silly is a somewhat tragic state; because it entails being cognitively-trapped by compulsive abstraction; unable to engage directly and spontaneously with what most humans have traditionally regarded as psycho-social reality; disbarred from the common experience of humankind and instead cut-adrift on the surface of a glittering but shallow ocean of novelties: none of which can ever truly convince or satisfy. It is to be alienated from the world; and to find no stable meaning of life that is solidly underpinned by emotional conviction [37]. Little wonder, perhaps, that clever sillies usually choose sub-replacement reproduction [6].
To term the Western ruling elite ‘clever sillies’ is of course a broad generalization, but is not merely name-calling. Because, as well as political correctness being systematically dishonest [33] and [34]; in relation to absolute and differential fertility, modern elite behaviour is objectively maladaptive in a strictly biological sense. It remains to be seen whether the genetic self-annihilation of the IQ elite will lead-on towards self-annihilation of the societies over which they rule.
Note: I should in all honesty point-out that I recognize this phenomenon from the inside. In other words, I myself am a prime example of a ‘clever silly’; having spent much of adolescence and early adult life passively absorbing high-IQ-elite-approved, ingenious-but-daft ideas that later needed, painfully, to be dismantled. I have eventually been forced to acknowledge that when it comes to the psycho-social domain, the commonsense verdict of the majority of ordinary people throughout history is much more likely to be accurate than the latest fashionably-brilliant insight of the ruling elite. So, this article has been written on the assumption, eminently-challengeable, that although I have nearly-always been wrong in the past – I now am right….
References
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[4] I.J. Deary, Intelligence: a very short introduction, Oxford, Oxford University Press (2001).
[5] G.D. Batty, I.J. Deary and L.S. Gottfredson, Pre-morbid (early life) IQ and later mortality risk: systematic review, Ann Epidemiol 17 (2007), pp. 278–288.
[6] R. Lynn, Dysgenics, Praeger, Westport, CT, USA (1996).
[7] R. Lynn and M. Van Court, New evidence for dysgenic fertility for intelligence in the United States, Intelligence 32 (2004), pp. 193–201.
[8] D. Nettle and T.V. Pollet, Natural selection on male wealth in humans, Am Nat 172 (2008), pp. 658–666.
[9] S. Kanazawa, General Intelligence as a domain-specific adaptation, Psychol Rev 111 (2004), pp. 512–523.
[10] S. Kanazawa, IQ and the values of nations, J Biosoc Sci 41 (2009), pp. 537–556.
[11] L.S. Gottfredson, Implications of cognitive differences for schooling within diverse societies. In: C.L. Frisby and C.R. Reynolds, Editors, Comprehensive handbook of multicultural school psychology, Wiley, New York (2005), pp. 517–554.
[12] D. Lubinski and C.P. Benbow, Study of mathematically precocious youth after 35 years: uncovering antecedents for the development of math-science expertise, Perspect Psychol Sci 1 (2006), pp. 316–345.
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[15] L. Brothers, The social brain: a project for integrating primate behavior and neurophysiology in a new domain, Concept Neurosci 1 (1990), pp. 27–51.
[16] B.G. Charlton, Theory of mind delusions and bizarre delusions in an evolutionary perspective: psychiatry and the social brain. In: Martin Brune, Hedda Ribbert and Wulf Schiefenhovel, Editors, The social brain – evolution and pathology, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester (2003), pp. 315–338.
[17] Charlton BG. Why it is ‘better’ to be reliable but dumb than smart but slapdash: are intelligence (IQ) and conscientiousness best regarded as gifts or virtues? Med Hypotheses; in press, doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2009.06.048.
[18] D. Nettle, Personality: what makes you the way you are, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK (2007).
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[21] R. Lynn, J. Harvey and H. Nyborg, Average intelligence predicts atheism rates across 137 nations, Intelligence 37 (2009), pp. 11–15.
[22] S. Baron-Cohen, The essential difference: men, women and the extreme male brain, Penguin/Basic Books, London (2003).
[23] B.G. Charlton, The rise of the boy-genius: psychological neoteny, science and modern life, Med Hypotheses 67 (2006), pp. 679–681.
[24] B.G. Charlton, Psychological neoteny and higher education: associations with delayed parenthood, Med Hypotheses 69 (2007), pp. 237–240.
[25] Penke L. Creativity: theories, prediction, and etiology. Diploma thesis. Department of Psychology, University of Bielefeld, Germany; 2003 [accessed 3.08.09].
[26] H.J. Eysenck, Genius: the natural history of creativity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (1995).
[27] B.G. Charlton, Why are modern scientists so dull? How science selects for perseverance and sociability at the expense of intelligence and creativity, Med Hypotheses 72 (2009), pp. 237–243.
[28] B.G. Charlton, From nutty professor to buddy love: personality types in modern science, Med Hypotheses 8 (2007), pp. 243–244.
[29] R.J. Herrnstein and C. Murray, The bell curve: intelligence and class structure in American life, New York, Forbes (1994).
[30] G. Miller, The mating mind: how sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature, Heinemann, London (2000).
[31] A. Pierce, G.F. Miller, R. Arden and L. Gottfredson, Why is intelligence correlated with semen quality? Biochemical pathways common to sperm and neurons, and the evolutionary genetics of general fitness, Commun Integr Biol 2 (2009), pp. 1–3.
[32] B.G. Charlton, Pioneering studies of IQ by G.H. Thomson and J.F. Duff – an example of established knowledge subsequently ‘hidden in plain sight’, Med Hypotheses 71 (2008), pp. 625–628.
[33] B.G. Charlton, First a hero of science and now a martyr to science: the James Watson Affair – political correctness crushes free scientific communication, Med Hypotheses 70 (2008), pp. 1077–1080.
[34] B.G. Charlton, Replacing education with psychometrics: how learning about IQ almost-completely changed my mind about education, Med Hypotheses 73 (2009), pp. 273–277.
[35] G. Clark, A Farewell to Alms: a brief economic history of the world, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA (2007).
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Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2009;73: 867-870.
Summary
In previous editorials I have written about the absent-minded and socially-inept ‘nutty professor’ stereotype in science, and the phenomenon of ‘psychological neoteny’ whereby intelligent modern people (including scientists) decline to grow-up and instead remain in a state of perpetual novelty-seeking adolescence. These can be seen as specific examples of the general phenomenon of ‘clever sillies’ whereby intelligent people with high levels of technical ability are seen (by the majority of the rest of the population) as having foolish ideas and behaviours outside the realm of their professional expertise. In short, it has often been observed that high IQ types are lacking in ‘common sense’ – and especially when it comes to dealing with other human beings. General intelligence is not just a cognitive ability; it is also a cognitive disposition. So, the greater cognitive abilities of higher IQ tend also to be accompanied by a distinctive high IQ personality type including the trait of ‘Openness to experience’, ‘enlightened’ or progressive left-wing political values, and atheism. Drawing on the ideas of Kanazawa, my suggested explanation for this association between intelligence and personality is that an increasing relative level of IQ brings with it a tendency differentially to over-use general intelligence in problem-solving, and to over-ride those instinctive and spontaneous forms of evolved behaviour which could be termed common sense. Preferential use of abstract analysis is often useful when dealing with the many evolutionary novelties to be found in modernizing societies; but is not usually useful for dealing with social and psychological problems for which humans have evolved ‘domain-specific’ adaptive behaviours. And since evolved common sense usually produces the right answers in the social domain; this implies that, when it comes to solving social problems, the most intelligent people are more likely than those of average intelligence to have novel but silly ideas, and therefore to believe and behave maladaptively. I further suggest that this random silliness of the most intelligent people may be amplified to generate systematic wrongness when intellectuals are in addition ‘advertising’ their own high intelligence in the evolutionarily novel context of a modern IQ meritocracy. The cognitively-stratified context of communicating almost-exclusively with others of similar intelligence, generates opinions and behaviours among the highest IQ people which are not just lacking in common sense but perversely wrong. Hence the phenomenon of ‘political correctness’ (PC); whereby false and foolish ideas have come to dominate, and moralistically be enforced upon, the ruling elites of whole nations.
***
IQ and evolved problem-solving
On the whole, and all else being equal, in modern societies the higher a person’s general intelligence (as measured by the intelligence quotient or IQ), the better will be life for that person; since higher intelligence leads (among other benefits) to higher social status and salary, longer life expectancy and better health [1], [2], [3], [4] and [5]. However, at the same time, it has been recognized for more than a century that increasing IQ is biologically-maladaptive because there is an inverse relationship between IQ and fertility [6], [7] and [8]. Under modern conditions, therefore, high intelligence is fitness-reducing.
In the course of exploring this modern divergence between social-adaptation and biological-adaptation, Satoshi Kanazawa has made the insightful observation that a high level of general intelligence is mainly useful in dealing with life problems which are an evolutionary novelty. By contrast, performance in solving problems which were a normal part of human life in the ancestral hunter–gatherer era may not be helped (or may indeed be hindered) by higher IQ [9] and [10].
(This statement requires a qualification. When a person has suffered some form of brain damage, or a pathology affecting brain function, then this might well produce generalized impairment of cognition: reducing both general intelligence and other forms of evolved cognitive functioning, depending on the site and extent of the brain pathology. Since a population with low IQ would include some whose IQ had been lowered by brain pathology, the average level of social intelligence or common sense would probably also be lower in this population. This confounding effect of brain pathology would be expected to create a weak and non-causal statistical correlation between IQ and social intelligence/common sense, a correlation that would mainly be apparent at low levels of IQ.)
As examples of how IQ may help with evolutionary novelties, it has been abundantly-demonstrated that increasing measures of IQ are strongly and positively correlated with a wide range of abilities which require abstract reasoning and rapid learning of new knowledge and skills; such as educational outcomes, and abilities at most complex modern jobs [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] and [11]. Science and mathematics are classic examples of problem-solving activities that arose only recently in human evolutionary history and in which differential ability is very strongly predicted by relative general intelligence [12].
However, there are also many human tasks which our human ancestors did encounter repeatedly and over manifold generations, and natural selection has often produced ‘instinctive’, spontaneous ways of dealing with these. Since humans are social primates, one major such category is social problems, which have to do with understanding, predicting and manipulating the behaviours of other human beings [13], [14], [15] and [16]. Being able to behave adaptively in dealing with these basic human situations is what I will term having ‘common sense’.
Kanazawa’s idea is that there is therefore a contrast between recurring, mainly social problems which affected fitness for our ancestors and for which all normal humans have evolved behavioural responses; and problems which are an evolutionary novelty but which have a major impact on individual functioning in the context of modern societies [9] and [10]. When a problem is an evolutionary novelty, individual differences in general intelligence make a big difference to each individual’s abilities to analyze the problem, and learn to how solve it. So, the idea is that having a high IQ would predict a better ability in understanding and dealing with new problems; but higher IQ would not increase the level of a person’s common sense ability to deal with social situations.
IQ not just an ability, but also a disposition
Although general intelligence is usually conceptualized as differences in cognitive ability, IQ is not just about ability but also has personality implications [17].
For example, in some populations there is a positive correlation between IQ and the personality trait of Openness to experience (‘Openness’) [18] and [19]; a positive correlation with ‘enlightened’ or progressive values of a broadly socialist and libertarian type [20]; and a negative correlation with religiousness [21].
So, the greater cognitive ability of higher IQ is also accompanied by a somewhat distinctive high IQ personality type. My suggested explanation for this association is that an increasing level of IQ brings with it an increased tendency to use general intelligence in problem-solving; i.e. to over-ride those instinctive and spontaneous forms of evolved behaviour which could be termed common sense.
The over-use of abstract reasoning may be most obvious in the social domain, where normal humans are richly equipped with evolved psychological mechanisms both for here-and-now interactions (e.g. rapidly reading emotions from facial expression, gesture and posture, and speech intonation) and for ‘strategic’ modelling of social interactions to understand predict and manipulate the behaviour of others [16]. Social strategies deploy inferred knowledge about the dispositions, motivations and intentions of others. When the most intelligent people over-ride the social intelligence systems and apply generic, abstract and systematic reasoning of the kind which is enhanced among higher IQ people, they are ignoring an ‘expert system’ in favour of a non-expert system.
In suggesting that the most intelligent people tend to use IQ to over-ride common sense I am unsure of the extent to which this is due to a deficit in the social reasoning ability, perhaps due to a trade-off between cognitive abilities – as suggested by Baron-Cohen’s conceptualization of Asperger’s syndrome, including the male- versus female-type of systematizing/empathizing brain [22]. Or alternatively it could be more of an habitual tendency to over-use abstract analysis, that might (in principle) be overcome by effort or with training. Observing the apparent universality of ‘Silly Clevers’ in modernizing societies, I suspect that a higher IQ bias towards over-utilizing abstract reasoning would probably turn-out to be innate and relatively stable.
Indeed, I suggest that higher levels of the personality trait of Openness in higher IQ people may the flip-side of this over-use of abstraction. I regard Openness as the result of deploying abstract analysis for social problems to yield unstable and unpredictable results, when innate social intelligence would tend to yield predictable and stable results. This might plausibly underlie the tendency of the most intelligent people in modernizing societies to hold ‘left-wing’ political views [10] and [20].
I would argue that neophilia (or novelty-seeking) is a driving attribute of the personality trait of Openness; and a disposition common in adolescents and immature adults who display what I have termed ‘psychological neoteny’ [23] and [24]. When problems are analyzed using common sense ‘instincts’ the evaluative process would be expected to lead to the same answers in all normal humans, and these answers are likely to be stable over time. But when higher IQ people ignore or over-ride common sense, they generate a variety of uncommon ideas. Since these ideas are only feebly-, or wholly un-, supported by emotions; they are held more weakly than common sense ideas, and so are more likely to change over time.
For instance, a group of less intelligent people using instinctive social intelligence to analyze a social situation will presumably reach the same traditional conclusion as everyone else and this conclusion will not change with time; while a more intelligent group might by contrast use abstract analysis and generate a wider range of novel and less-compelling solutions. This behaviour appears as if motivated by novelty-seeking.
Applying abstract analysis to social situations might be seen as ‘creative’, and indeed Openness has been put forward as the major personality trait which supports creativity [19] and [25]. This is reasonable in the sense that an intellectual high in Openness would be likely to disregard common sense, and to generate multiple, unpredictable and unfamiliar answers to evolutionarily-familiar problems which would only yield a single ‘obvious’ solution to those who deployed evolved modes of intelligence. However, I would instead argue that a high IQ person applying abstract systemizing intelligence to activities which are more usually done by instinctive intelligence is not a truly ‘creative’ process.
Instead, following Eysenck, I would regard true psychological creativity as primarily an associative activity which Eysenck includes as part of the trait Psychoticism; cognitively akin to the ‘primary process’ thinking of sleep, delirium and psychotic illness [26] and [27]. A major difference between these two concepts of creativity is that while ‘Openness creativity’ is abstract, coolly-impartial and as if driven by novelty-seeking (neophilia); ‘Psychoticism creativity’ is validated by emotions: such that the high-Psychoticism creative person is guided by their emotional responses to their own creative production.
Clever sillies in the IQ meritocracy
It therefore seems plausible that the folklore or stereotypical idea of the eccentric, unworldly, absent-minded or obtuse scientist – who is brilliant at their job while being fatuous and incompetent in terms of their everyday life [28], might be the result of this psychological tendency to over-use abstract intelligence and use it in inappropriate situations.
However, there is a further aspect of this phenomenon. Modern societies are characterized by large population, extensive division of labour, and a ‘meritocratic’ form of social organization in which social roles (jobs, occupations) tend to be filled on the basis of educational credentials and job performance rather than on an hereditary basis (as was the case in most societies of the past). This means that in modern societies there is an unprecedented degree of cognitive stratification [29]. Cognitive stratification is the layering of social organization by IQ; such that residence, schooling and occupations are characterized by narrow bands of intelligence. Large modern countries are therefore ruled by concentrations of highly intelligent people in the major social systems such as politics, civil administration, law, science and technology, the mass media and education. Communication in these elites is almost-exclusively among the highly intelligent.
In such an evolutionarily-unprecedented, artificial ‘hothouse’ environment, it is plausible that any IQ-related behaviours are amplified: partly because there is little counter-pressure from the less intelligent people with less neophiliac personalities, and perhaps mainly because there is a great deal of IQ-advertisement. Indeed, it looks very much as if the elites of modern societies are characterized by considerable IQ-signalling [19]. Sometimes this is direct advertisement (e.g. when boasting about intellectual attainments or attendance at highly-selective colleges) and more often the signalling is subtly-indirect when people display the attitudes, beliefs, fashions, manners and hobbies associated with high intelligence. This advertising is probably based on sexual selection [30], if IQ has been a measure of general fitness during human evolutionary history, and was associated with a wide range of adaptive traits [31].
My hunch is that it is this kind of IQ-advertisement which has led to the most intelligent people in modern societies having ideas about social phenomena that are not just randomly incorrect (due to inappropriately misapplying abstract analysis) but are systematically wrong. I am talking of the phenomenon known as political correctness (PC) in which foolish and false ideas have become moralistically-enforced among the ruling intellectual elite. And these ideas have invaded academic, political and social discourse. Because while the stereotypical nutty professor in the hard sciences is a brilliant scientist but silly about everything else; the stereotypical nutty professor social scientist or humanities professor is not just silly about ‘everything else’, but also silly in their professional work.
Getting answers to problems relating to hard science is extremely intellectually-difficult and (because the subject is an evolutionary novelty) necessarily requires abstract reasoning [12] and [26]. Therefore the hard scientist is invariably vastly more competent at their science than the average member of the public, and he has no need to be novelty-seeking in order to advertise his intelligence.
But getting answers to problems in science involving human social behaviour is something which is already done very well by evolved human psychological mechanisms [13], [14], [15] and [16]. In this situation it is difficult to improve on common sense, and – even without being taught – normal people already have a pretty good understanding of human motivations, incentives and deterrents, and the basic cause and effect processes of society. Because psychological and social intelligence expertise is so widespread and adaptive; in order to advertise his intelligence the social scientist must produce something systematically-different from common sense, something novel and (necessarily) counter-intuitive. And because it goes against evolved psychology, in this instance something different is likely to be something wrong. So, the social scientist professional deploying abstract reasoning on social problems is often less likely to generate a correct answer than the average member of the public who is using the common sense of evolved, spontaneous social intelligence.
In the human and social sciences there is therefore a professional incentive to be perversely wrong – to be silly, in other words. And this is indeed what we see. The more that the subject matter of an academic field requires, or depends on, common sense; the sillier it will be.
The results of cognitive stratification and IQ-advertising are therefore bad enough to have destroyed the value of whole domains of the arts and academia, and in the domain of public policy the results have been simply disastrous. Over the past four decades the dishonest fantasy-world discourse of non-biological political correctness has evolved to dominate the intellectual arena of whole nations – perhaps the whole developed world – such that wrong and ridiculous ideas have become not just mainstream, but compulsory.
Because clever silliness is not just one of several competing ideas in the elite arena – it is both intellectually- and moralistically-enforced with such zeal as utterly to exclude alternatives [32]. The first level of defence is that denying a PC assertion is taken as proof of dumbness or derangement; such that flat-denial without refutation is regarded as sufficient response. But the toughest enforcement is moral: anyone smart and sane who disbelieves the silly clever falsehoods and asserts something different is not just denounced as dumb but actually pilloried as evil [33].
I infer that the motivation behind the moralizing venom of political correctness is the fact that spontaneous human instincts are universal and more powerfully-felt than the absurd abstractions of PC; plus the fact that common sense is basically correct while PC is perversely wrong. Hence, at all costs a fair debate must be prevented if the PC consensus is to be protected. Common sense requires to be stigmatized in order that it is neutralized.
Ultimately these manoeuvres serve to defend the power, status and distinctiveness of the intellectual elite [34]. They are socially-adaptive over the short-term, even as they are biologically-maladaptive over the longer-term.
Conclusion
Because evolved ‘common sense’ usually produces the right answers in the social domain, yet the most intelligent people have personalities which over-use abstract analysis in the social domain [9] and [10], this implies that the most intelligent people are predisposed to have silly ideas and to behave maladaptively when it comes to solving social problems.
Ever since the development of cognitive stratification in modernizing societies [29], the clever sillies have been almost monopolistically ‘in charge’. They really are both clever and silly – but the cleverness is abstract while the silliness is focused on the psychological and social domains. Consequently, the fatal flaw of modern ruling elites lies in their lack of common sense – especially the misinterpretations of human psychology and socio-political affairs. My guess is that this lack of common sense is intrinsic and incorrigible – and perhaps biologically-linked with the evolution of high intelligence and the rise of modernity [35].
Stanovich has also described the over-riding of the ‘Darwinian brain’ of autonomous systems by the analytic system, and has identified the phenomenon as underlying modern non-adaptive ethical reasoning [36]. Stanovich has also noted that IQ accounts for much (but not all) of the inter-individual differences in using analytic evaluations; however, Stanovich regards the increased use of abstraction to replace traditional ‘common sense’ very positively, not as ‘silly’ but as a vital aspect of what he interprets as the higher status of modern social morality.
Yet, whatever else, to be a clever silly is a somewhat tragic state; because it entails being cognitively-trapped by compulsive abstraction; unable to engage directly and spontaneously with what most humans have traditionally regarded as psycho-social reality; disbarred from the common experience of humankind and instead cut-adrift on the surface of a glittering but shallow ocean of novelties: none of which can ever truly convince or satisfy. It is to be alienated from the world; and to find no stable meaning of life that is solidly underpinned by emotional conviction [37]. Little wonder, perhaps, that clever sillies usually choose sub-replacement reproduction [6].
To term the Western ruling elite ‘clever sillies’ is of course a broad generalization, but is not merely name-calling. Because, as well as political correctness being systematically dishonest [33] and [34]; in relation to absolute and differential fertility, modern elite behaviour is objectively maladaptive in a strictly biological sense. It remains to be seen whether the genetic self-annihilation of the IQ elite will lead-on towards self-annihilation of the societies over which they rule.
Note: I should in all honesty point-out that I recognize this phenomenon from the inside. In other words, I myself am a prime example of a ‘clever silly’; having spent much of adolescence and early adult life passively absorbing high-IQ-elite-approved, ingenious-but-daft ideas that later needed, painfully, to be dismantled. I have eventually been forced to acknowledge that when it comes to the psycho-social domain, the commonsense verdict of the majority of ordinary people throughout history is much more likely to be accurate than the latest fashionably-brilliant insight of the ruling elite. So, this article has been written on the assumption, eminently-challengeable, that although I have nearly-always been wrong in the past – I now am right….
References
[1] U. Neisser et al., Intelligence: knowns and unknowns, Am Psychol 51 (1996), pp. 77–101.
[2] N.J. Mackintosh, IQ and human intelligence, Oxford University Press (1998).
[3] A.R. Jensen, The g factor the science of mental ability, Praeger, Westport, CT, USA (1988).
[4] I.J. Deary, Intelligence: a very short introduction, Oxford, Oxford University Press (2001).
[5] G.D. Batty, I.J. Deary and L.S. Gottfredson, Pre-morbid (early life) IQ and later mortality risk: systematic review, Ann Epidemiol 17 (2007), pp. 278–288.
[6] R. Lynn, Dysgenics, Praeger, Westport, CT, USA (1996).
[7] R. Lynn and M. Van Court, New evidence for dysgenic fertility for intelligence in the United States, Intelligence 32 (2004), pp. 193–201.
[8] D. Nettle and T.V. Pollet, Natural selection on male wealth in humans, Am Nat 172 (2008), pp. 658–666.
[9] S. Kanazawa, General Intelligence as a domain-specific adaptation, Psychol Rev 111 (2004), pp. 512–523.
[10] S. Kanazawa, IQ and the values of nations, J Biosoc Sci 41 (2009), pp. 537–556.
[11] L.S. Gottfredson, Implications of cognitive differences for schooling within diverse societies. In: C.L. Frisby and C.R. Reynolds, Editors, Comprehensive handbook of multicultural school psychology, Wiley, New York (2005), pp. 517–554.
[12] D. Lubinski and C.P. Benbow, Study of mathematically precocious youth after 35 years: uncovering antecedents for the development of math-science expertise, Perspect Psychol Sci 1 (2006), pp. 316–345.
[13] N.K. Humphrey, The social function of intellect. In: P.P.G. Bateson and R.A. Hinde, Editors, Growing points in ethology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (1976).
[14] In: R.W. Byrne and A. Whiten, Editors, Machiavellian intelligence social expertise and the evolution of intellect in monkeys, apes and humans, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1988).
[15] L. Brothers, The social brain: a project for integrating primate behavior and neurophysiology in a new domain, Concept Neurosci 1 (1990), pp. 27–51.
[16] B.G. Charlton, Theory of mind delusions and bizarre delusions in an evolutionary perspective: psychiatry and the social brain. In: Martin Brune, Hedda Ribbert and Wulf Schiefenhovel, Editors, The social brain – evolution and pathology, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester (2003), pp. 315–338.
[17] Charlton BG. Why it is ‘better’ to be reliable but dumb than smart but slapdash: are intelligence (IQ) and conscientiousness best regarded as gifts or virtues? Med Hypotheses; in press, doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2009.06.048.
[18] D. Nettle, Personality: what makes you the way you are, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK (2007).
[19] G. Miller, Spent: sex, evolution and consumer behaviour, Viking, New York (2009).
[20] I.J. Deary, G.D. Batty and C.R. Gale, Bright children become enlightened adults, Psychol Sci 19 (2008), pp. 1–6.
[21] R. Lynn, J. Harvey and H. Nyborg, Average intelligence predicts atheism rates across 137 nations, Intelligence 37 (2009), pp. 11–15.
[22] S. Baron-Cohen, The essential difference: men, women and the extreme male brain, Penguin/Basic Books, London (2003).
[23] B.G. Charlton, The rise of the boy-genius: psychological neoteny, science and modern life, Med Hypotheses 67 (2006), pp. 679–681.
[24] B.G. Charlton, Psychological neoteny and higher education: associations with delayed parenthood, Med Hypotheses 69 (2007), pp. 237–240.
[25] Penke L. Creativity: theories, prediction, and etiology. Diploma thesis. Department of Psychology, University of Bielefeld, Germany
[26] H.J. Eysenck, Genius: the natural history of creativity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (1995).
[27] B.G. Charlton, Why are modern scientists so dull? How science selects for perseverance and sociability at the expense of intelligence and creativity, Med Hypotheses 72 (2009), pp. 237–243.
[28] B.G. Charlton, From nutty professor to buddy love: personality types in modern science, Med Hypotheses 8 (2007), pp. 243–244.
[29] R.J. Herrnstein and C. Murray, The bell curve: intelligence and class structure in American life, New York, Forbes (1994).
[30] G. Miller, The mating mind: how sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature, Heinemann, London (2000).
[31] A. Pierce, G.F. Miller, R. Arden and L. Gottfredson, Why is intelligence correlated with semen quality? Biochemical pathways common to sperm and neurons, and the evolutionary genetics of general fitness, Commun Integr Biol 2 (2009), pp. 1–3.
[32] B.G. Charlton, Pioneering studies of IQ by G.H. Thomson and J.F. Duff – an example of established knowledge subsequently ‘hidden in plain sight’, Med Hypotheses 71 (2008), pp. 625–628.
[33] B.G. Charlton, First a hero of science and now a martyr to science: the James Watson Affair – political correctness crushes free scientific communication, Med Hypotheses 70 (2008), pp. 1077–1080.
[34] B.G. Charlton, Replacing education with psychometrics: how learning about IQ almost-completely changed my mind about education, Med Hypotheses 73 (2009), pp. 273–277.
[35] G. Clark, A Farewell to Alms: a brief economic history of the world, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA (2007).
[36] K.E. Stanovitch, The robot’s rebellion: finding meaning in the age of Darwin, University of Chicago Press, Chicago (2004).
[37] B.G. Charlton, Alienation, recovered animism and altered states of consciousness, Med Hypotheses 68 (2007), pp. 727–731.
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Truthfulness in science should be an iron law
Are you an honest scientist? Truthfulness in science should be an iron law, not a vague aspiration
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2009; Volume 73: 633-635
***
Summary
Anyone who has been a scientist for more than a couple of decades will realize that there has been a progressive and pervasive decline in the honesty of scientific communications. Yet real science simply must be an arena where truth is the rule; or else the activity simply stops being science and becomes something else: Zombie science. Although all humans ought to be truthful at all times; science is the one area of social functioning in which truth is the primary value, and truthfulness the core evaluation. Truth-telling and truth-seeking should not, therefore, be regarded as unattainable aspirations for scientists, but as iron laws, continually and universally operative. Yet such is the endemic state of corruption that an insistence on truthfulness in science seems perverse, aggressive, dangerous, or simply utopian. Not so: truthfulness in science is not utopian and was indeed taken for granted (albeit subject to normal human imperfections) just a few decades ago. Furthermore, as Jacob Bronowski argued, humans cannot be honest only in important matters while being expedient in minor matters: truth is all of a piece. There are always so many incentives to lie that truthfulness is either a habit or else it declines. This means that in order to be truthful in the face of opposition, scientists need to find a philosophical basis which will sustain a life of habitual truth and support them through the pressure to be expedient (or agreeable) rather than honest. The best hope of saving science from a progressive descent into Zombiedom seems to be a moral Great Awakening: an ethical revolution focused on re-establishing the primary purpose of science: which is the pursuit of truth. Such an Awakening would necessarily begin with individual commitment, but to have any impact it would need to progress rapidly to institutional forms. The most realistic prospect is that some sub-specialties of science might self-identify as being engaged primarily in the pursuit of truth, might form invisible colleges, and (supported by strong ethical systems to which their participants subscribe) impose on their members a stricter and more honest standard of behaviour. From such seeds of truth, real science might again re-grow. However, at present, I can detect no sign of any such thing as a principled adherence to perfect truthfulness among our complacent, arrogant and ever-more-powerful scientific leadership – and that is the group of which a Great Awakening would need to take-hold even if the movement were originated elsewhere.
***
The decline of honesty in science
Anyone who has been a scientist for more than 20 years will realize that there has been a progressive decline in the honesty of communications between scientists, between scientists and their institutions, and between scientists and their institutions and the outside world.
Yet real science must be an arena where truth is the rule; or else the activity simply stops being science and becomes something else: Zombie science. Zombie science is a science that is dead, but is artificially kept moving by a continual infusion of funding. From a distance Zombie science looks like the real thing, the surface features of a science are in place – white coats, laboratories, computer programming, Ph.D’s, papers, conferences, prizes, etc. But the Zombie is not interested in the pursuit of truth – its actions are externally-controlled and directed at non-scientific goals, and inside the Zombie everything is rotten.
The most egregious domain of untruthfulness is probably where scientists comment or write about their own work. Indeed, so pervasive are the petty misrepresentations and cautious lies, that it is likely that many scientists are now dishonest even with themselves, in the privacy of their own thoughts. Such things can happen to initially honest people either by force of habit, or because they know no better; and because lies breed lies in order to explain the discrepancies between predictions and observations.
Lying to oneself may be one cause of the remarkable incoherence of so much modern scientific thinking. It is much easier to be coherent, and to recognize incoherence, when discourse is uncontaminated by deliberate misrepresentations. There is less to cover-up. Most scientists can think-straight only by being completely honest. If scientists are not honest even with themselves, then their work will be a mess.
Scientists are usually too careful and clever to risk telling outright lies, but instead they push the envelope of exaggeration, selectivity and distortion as far as possible. And tolerance for this kind of untruthfulness has greatly increased over recent years. So it is now routine for scientists deliberately to ‘hype’ the significance of their status and performance, and ‘spin’ the importance of their research.
Furthermore, it is entirely normal and unremarkable for scientists to spend their entire professional life doing work they know in their hearts to be trivial or bogus – preferring that which promotes their career over that which has the best chance of advancing science. Indeed, such misapplication of effort is positively encouraged in many places, including some of what were the very best places, because careerism is a more reliable route to high productivity than real science – and because senior scientists in the best places are expert at hyping mundane research to create a misleading impression of revolutionary importance.
What is going on? How have matters reached this state? Everyone should be honest at all times and about everything, but especially scientists. Everyone should seriously aim for truthfulness – yet scientists, of all people, must not just aim but actually be truthful: otherwise the very raison d’etre of science is subverted.
So although truthfulness is a basic, universal moral rule; science is the one area of social functioning in which truth is the primary value, and truthfulness the core evaluation. Truth-telling and truth-seeking should not, therefore, be regarded as unattainable ideals within science, but as iron laws, continually and universally operative.
Causes of dishonesty in science
Although some scientists are selfishly dishonest simply in order to promote their own careers, for most people quasi-altruistic arguments for lying (dishonesty in a good cause of helping others, or to be an agreeable colleague) are likely to be a more powerful inducement to routine untruthfulness than is the gaining of personal advantage.
For example, scientists are pressured to be less-than-wholly-truthful for the benefit of their colleagues or institutions, or for official/political reasons. Often, scientists are unable to opt-out of administrative or managerial exercises which almost insist-upon dishonest responses – and for which colleagues expect dishonesty in order to promote the interests of the group. Project leaders may feel responsible for raising money to support their junior team members; and feel obliged to do whatever type of research is most generously funded, and to say or write whatever is necessary to obtain that funding.
So, in a bureaucratic context where cautious dishonesty is rewarded, strict truthfulness is taboo and will cause trouble for colleagues, for teams, for institutions – there may be a serious risk that funding is removed, status damaged, or worse. When everyone else is exaggerating their achievement then any precisely accurate person will, de facto, be judged as even worse than their already modest claims. In this kind of situation, individual truthfulness may be interpreted as an irresponsible indulgence.
Clearly then, even in the absence of the sort of direct coercion which prevails in many un-free societies, scientists may be subjected to such pressure that they are more-or-less forced to be dishonest; and this situation can (in decent people) lead to feelings of regret, or to shame and remorse. Unfortunately, regret and shame may not lead to remorse but instead to rationalization, to the elaborate construction of excuses, and eventually a denial of dishonesty.
Yet, whatever are the motivations and reasons for dishonesty, it has been by such means that modern scientists have become inculcated into habitual falsity; until we have become used-to dishonesty, don’t notice dishonesty, eventually come to expect dishonesty.
Roots of dishonesty in science
My belief is that science has rotted from the head down – and the blame mostly lies with senior scientists in combination with the massive expansion and influence of peer review until it has become the core process of scientific evaluation.
Overall, senior scientists have set a bad example of untruthfulness and self-seeking in their own behaviour, and they have also tended to administer science in such a way as to reward hype and careful-dishonesty, and punish modesty and strict truth-telling. And although some senior scientists have laudably refused to compromise their honesty, they have done this largely by quietly ‘opting out’, and not much by using their power and influence to create and advertise alternative processes and systems in which honest scientists might work.
The corruption of science has been (mostly unintentionally) amplified by the replacement of ‘peer usage’ with peer review as the major mechanism of scientific evaluation. Peer review (of ever greater complexity) has been applied everywhere: to job appointments and promotions, to scientific publications and conferences, to ethical review and funding, to prizes and awards. And peer review processes are set-up and dominated by senior scientists.
Peer usage was the traditional process of scientific evaluation during the Golden Age of science (extending up to about the mid-1960s). Peer usage means that the validity of science is judged retrospectively by whether or not it has been used by peers, i.e. whether ideas or facts turned-out to be useful in further science done by researchers in the same field. For example, a piece of research might be evaluated by its validity in predicting future observations or as a basis for making effective interventions. Peer usage is distinctive to science, probably almost definitive of science.
Peer review, by contrast, means that science is judged by the opinion of other scientists in the same field. Peer review is not distinctive to science, but is found in all academic subjects and in many formal bureaucracies. When peer usage was replaced by peer review, then all the major scientific evaluation processes – their measurement metrics, their rewards and their sanctions - were brought under the direct control of senior scientists whose opinions thereby became the ultimate arbiter of validity. By making its validity a mere matter of professional opinion, the crucial link between science and the natural world was broken, and the door opened to unrestrained error as well as to corruption.
The over-expansion and domination of peer review in science is therefore a sign of scientific decline and decadence, not (as so commonly asserted) a sign of increased rigour. Peer review as the ultimate arbiter represents the conversion of science to generic bureaucracy; a replacement of testing by opinion; a replacement of objectivity by subjectivity. And the increased role for subjectivity in science has created space into which dishonesty has expanded.
In a nutshell, the inducements to dishonesty have come from outside of science – from politics, government administration and the media (for example) all of whom are continually attempting to distort science to the needs of their own agendas and covert real science to Zombie science. But whatever the origin of the pressures to corrupt science, it is sadly obvious that scientific leaders have mostly themselves been corrupted by these pressures rather than courageously resisting them. And these same leaders have degraded hypothesis-testing real science into an elaborate expression of professional opinion (‘peer review’) that is formally indistinguishable from bureaucratic power-games.
Is there a future for honesty?
Such is our state of pervasive corruption that an insistence on truthfulness in science seems perverse, aggressive, dangerous, or simply utopian. Not so. Truthfulness in science is not utopian. Indeed it was mundane reality, taken for granted (albeit subject to normal human imperfections) just a few decades ago. Old-style science had many faults, but deliberate and systematic misrepresentation was not one of them.
To become systematically truthful in a modern scientific environment would be to inflict damage on one’s own career; on one’s chances of getting jobs, promotions, publications, grants and so on. And in a world of dishonesty, of hype, spin and inflated estimations – the occasional truthful individual will be judged by the prevailing corrupt standards. To be truthful would also be to risk becoming exceedingly unpopular with colleagues and employers – since a strictly honest scientist would be perceived as endangering the status and security of those around them.
Nonetheless, science must be honest, and the only answer to dishonesty is honesty; and this is up to individuals. The necessary first step is for scientists who are concerned about truth to acknowledge the prevailing state of corruption, and then to make a personal resolution to be truthful in all things at all times: to become both truth-tellers and truth-seekers.
Honest individuals are clearly necessary for an honest system of science – they are the basis of all that is good in science. However, honest individuals do not necessarily create an honest system. Individual honesty is not sufficient but needs to be supported by new social structures. Scientific truth cannot, over the long stretch, be a product of solitary activity. A solitary truth-seeker who is unsupported either by tradition or community will degenerate into mere eccentricity, eventually to be intimidated and crushed by the organized power of untruthfulness.
Furthermore, as Jacob Bronowski argued, humans cannot be honest only in important matters while being expedient in minor matters: truth is all of a piece. There are so many incentives to be untruthful that truthfulness is either a habit, or else truthfulness declines. This means that in order to retain their principles in the face of opposition, scientists need to find a philosophical basis which will sustain a life of habitual truth and support them through the pressure to be expedient (or agreeable) rather than honest.
A Great Awakening to truth in science
The best hope of saving science from a progressive descent into complete Zombiedom seems to be a moral Great Awakening: an ethical revolution focused on re-establishing the primary purpose of science: the pursuit of truth.
In using the phrase, I am thinking of something akin to the periodic evangelical Great Awakenings which have swept the USA throughout its history, and have (arguably) served periodically to roll-back the advance of societal corruption, and generate improved ethical behaviour.
Such an Awakening would necessarily begin with individual commitment, but to have any impact it would need to progress rapidly to institutional forms. In effect there would need to be a ‘Church’ of truth; or, rather, many such Churches – especially in the different scientific fields or invisible colleges of active scholars and researchers.
I use the word ‘Church’ because nothing less morally-potent than a Church would suffice to overcome the many immediate incentives for seeking status, power, wealth and security. Nothing less powerfully-motivating could, I feel, nurture and sustain the requisite individual commitment. If truth-pursuing groups were not actually religiously-based (and, given the high proportion of atheists in science, this is probable), then such groups would need to be sustained by secular ethical systems of at least equal strength to religion, equally devoted to transcendental ideals, equally capable of eliciting courage, self-sacrifice and adherence to principle.
The most realistic prospect is that some sub-specialties of science might self-identify as being engaged primarily in the pursuit of truth and (supported by strong ethical systems to which their participants subscribe) impose on their members a stricter and more honest standard of behaviour. Since science must be truthful in order to thrive qua science, any such truthful sub-specialities would be expected to thrive over the long term (this is assuming they can attract scientists of sufficient calibre backed-up with sufficient resources). From such seeds of truth, real science might again re-grow.
Could it happen? – could there really be a Great Awakening to truth in science in which scientists in specific disciplines or en masse would simply start being truthful about all things great and small, and would swiftly organize to support each other in this principle? I am hopeful that some kind of moral renewal might potentially occur in science, but I am not optimistic. I am hopeful – or else I would not be writing this. But I am not optimistic, because there appears to be little awareness of the endemic state of corruption – presumably because the relentless but incremental expansion of dishonesty has been so gradual that it failed to cause sufficient alarm; and at each step in the decline scientists quickly habituated to the new situation.
At present, I can detect no sign of anything like a principled adherence to perfect truthfulness among our complacent, arrogant and ever-more-powerful scientific leadership – and that is the group among which a Great Awakening would need to take-hold; even if, as seems likely, the movement originated elsewhere.
Further reading: The above polemical essay builds upon the argument of several of my previous publications including: ‘Peer usage versus peer review’ (BMJ 2007; 335:451); Zombie science’ (Medical Hypotheses 2008; 71:327–329); ‘The vital role of transcendental truth in science’ (Medical Hypotheses 2009; 72:373–376); and ‘Are you an honest academic?’ (Oxford Magazine 2009; 287:8–10).
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2009; Volume 73: 633-635
***
Summary
Anyone who has been a scientist for more than a couple of decades will realize that there has been a progressive and pervasive decline in the honesty of scientific communications. Yet real science simply must be an arena where truth is the rule; or else the activity simply stops being science and becomes something else: Zombie science. Although all humans ought to be truthful at all times; science is the one area of social functioning in which truth is the primary value, and truthfulness the core evaluation. Truth-telling and truth-seeking should not, therefore, be regarded as unattainable aspirations for scientists, but as iron laws, continually and universally operative. Yet such is the endemic state of corruption that an insistence on truthfulness in science seems perverse, aggressive, dangerous, or simply utopian. Not so: truthfulness in science is not utopian and was indeed taken for granted (albeit subject to normal human imperfections) just a few decades ago. Furthermore, as Jacob Bronowski argued, humans cannot be honest only in important matters while being expedient in minor matters: truth is all of a piece. There are always so many incentives to lie that truthfulness is either a habit or else it declines. This means that in order to be truthful in the face of opposition, scientists need to find a philosophical basis which will sustain a life of habitual truth and support them through the pressure to be expedient (or agreeable) rather than honest. The best hope of saving science from a progressive descent into Zombiedom seems to be a moral Great Awakening: an ethical revolution focused on re-establishing the primary purpose of science: which is the pursuit of truth. Such an Awakening would necessarily begin with individual commitment, but to have any impact it would need to progress rapidly to institutional forms. The most realistic prospect is that some sub-specialties of science might self-identify as being engaged primarily in the pursuit of truth, might form invisible colleges, and (supported by strong ethical systems to which their participants subscribe) impose on their members a stricter and more honest standard of behaviour. From such seeds of truth, real science might again re-grow. However, at present, I can detect no sign of any such thing as a principled adherence to perfect truthfulness among our complacent, arrogant and ever-more-powerful scientific leadership – and that is the group of which a Great Awakening would need to take-hold even if the movement were originated elsewhere.
***
The decline of honesty in science
Anyone who has been a scientist for more than 20 years will realize that there has been a progressive decline in the honesty of communications between scientists, between scientists and their institutions, and between scientists and their institutions and the outside world.
Yet real science must be an arena where truth is the rule; or else the activity simply stops being science and becomes something else: Zombie science. Zombie science is a science that is dead, but is artificially kept moving by a continual infusion of funding. From a distance Zombie science looks like the real thing, the surface features of a science are in place – white coats, laboratories, computer programming, Ph.D’s, papers, conferences, prizes, etc. But the Zombie is not interested in the pursuit of truth – its actions are externally-controlled and directed at non-scientific goals, and inside the Zombie everything is rotten.
The most egregious domain of untruthfulness is probably where scientists comment or write about their own work. Indeed, so pervasive are the petty misrepresentations and cautious lies, that it is likely that many scientists are now dishonest even with themselves, in the privacy of their own thoughts. Such things can happen to initially honest people either by force of habit, or because they know no better; and because lies breed lies in order to explain the discrepancies between predictions and observations.
Lying to oneself may be one cause of the remarkable incoherence of so much modern scientific thinking. It is much easier to be coherent, and to recognize incoherence, when discourse is uncontaminated by deliberate misrepresentations. There is less to cover-up. Most scientists can think-straight only by being completely honest. If scientists are not honest even with themselves, then their work will be a mess.
Scientists are usually too careful and clever to risk telling outright lies, but instead they push the envelope of exaggeration, selectivity and distortion as far as possible. And tolerance for this kind of untruthfulness has greatly increased over recent years. So it is now routine for scientists deliberately to ‘hype’ the significance of their status and performance, and ‘spin’ the importance of their research.
Furthermore, it is entirely normal and unremarkable for scientists to spend their entire professional life doing work they know in their hearts to be trivial or bogus – preferring that which promotes their career over that which has the best chance of advancing science. Indeed, such misapplication of effort is positively encouraged in many places, including some of what were the very best places, because careerism is a more reliable route to high productivity than real science – and because senior scientists in the best places are expert at hyping mundane research to create a misleading impression of revolutionary importance.
What is going on? How have matters reached this state? Everyone should be honest at all times and about everything, but especially scientists. Everyone should seriously aim for truthfulness – yet scientists, of all people, must not just aim but actually be truthful: otherwise the very raison d’etre of science is subverted.
So although truthfulness is a basic, universal moral rule; science is the one area of social functioning in which truth is the primary value, and truthfulness the core evaluation. Truth-telling and truth-seeking should not, therefore, be regarded as unattainable ideals within science, but as iron laws, continually and universally operative.
Causes of dishonesty in science
Although some scientists are selfishly dishonest simply in order to promote their own careers, for most people quasi-altruistic arguments for lying (dishonesty in a good cause of helping others, or to be an agreeable colleague) are likely to be a more powerful inducement to routine untruthfulness than is the gaining of personal advantage.
For example, scientists are pressured to be less-than-wholly-truthful for the benefit of their colleagues or institutions, or for official/political reasons. Often, scientists are unable to opt-out of administrative or managerial exercises which almost insist-upon dishonest responses – and for which colleagues expect dishonesty in order to promote the interests of the group. Project leaders may feel responsible for raising money to support their junior team members; and feel obliged to do whatever type of research is most generously funded, and to say or write whatever is necessary to obtain that funding.
So, in a bureaucratic context where cautious dishonesty is rewarded, strict truthfulness is taboo and will cause trouble for colleagues, for teams, for institutions – there may be a serious risk that funding is removed, status damaged, or worse. When everyone else is exaggerating their achievement then any precisely accurate person will, de facto, be judged as even worse than their already modest claims. In this kind of situation, individual truthfulness may be interpreted as an irresponsible indulgence.
Clearly then, even in the absence of the sort of direct coercion which prevails in many un-free societies, scientists may be subjected to such pressure that they are more-or-less forced to be dishonest; and this situation can (in decent people) lead to feelings of regret, or to shame and remorse. Unfortunately, regret and shame may not lead to remorse but instead to rationalization, to the elaborate construction of excuses, and eventually a denial of dishonesty.
Yet, whatever are the motivations and reasons for dishonesty, it has been by such means that modern scientists have become inculcated into habitual falsity; until we have become used-to dishonesty, don’t notice dishonesty, eventually come to expect dishonesty.
Roots of dishonesty in science
My belief is that science has rotted from the head down – and the blame mostly lies with senior scientists in combination with the massive expansion and influence of peer review until it has become the core process of scientific evaluation.
Overall, senior scientists have set a bad example of untruthfulness and self-seeking in their own behaviour, and they have also tended to administer science in such a way as to reward hype and careful-dishonesty, and punish modesty and strict truth-telling. And although some senior scientists have laudably refused to compromise their honesty, they have done this largely by quietly ‘opting out’, and not much by using their power and influence to create and advertise alternative processes and systems in which honest scientists might work.
The corruption of science has been (mostly unintentionally) amplified by the replacement of ‘peer usage’ with peer review as the major mechanism of scientific evaluation. Peer review (of ever greater complexity) has been applied everywhere: to job appointments and promotions, to scientific publications and conferences, to ethical review and funding, to prizes and awards. And peer review processes are set-up and dominated by senior scientists.
Peer usage was the traditional process of scientific evaluation during the Golden Age of science (extending up to about the mid-1960s). Peer usage means that the validity of science is judged retrospectively by whether or not it has been used by peers, i.e. whether ideas or facts turned-out to be useful in further science done by researchers in the same field. For example, a piece of research might be evaluated by its validity in predicting future observations or as a basis for making effective interventions. Peer usage is distinctive to science, probably almost definitive of science.
Peer review, by contrast, means that science is judged by the opinion of other scientists in the same field. Peer review is not distinctive to science, but is found in all academic subjects and in many formal bureaucracies. When peer usage was replaced by peer review, then all the major scientific evaluation processes – their measurement metrics, their rewards and their sanctions - were brought under the direct control of senior scientists whose opinions thereby became the ultimate arbiter of validity. By making its validity a mere matter of professional opinion, the crucial link between science and the natural world was broken, and the door opened to unrestrained error as well as to corruption.
The over-expansion and domination of peer review in science is therefore a sign of scientific decline and decadence, not (as so commonly asserted) a sign of increased rigour. Peer review as the ultimate arbiter represents the conversion of science to generic bureaucracy; a replacement of testing by opinion; a replacement of objectivity by subjectivity. And the increased role for subjectivity in science has created space into which dishonesty has expanded.
In a nutshell, the inducements to dishonesty have come from outside of science – from politics, government administration and the media (for example) all of whom are continually attempting to distort science to the needs of their own agendas and covert real science to Zombie science. But whatever the origin of the pressures to corrupt science, it is sadly obvious that scientific leaders have mostly themselves been corrupted by these pressures rather than courageously resisting them. And these same leaders have degraded hypothesis-testing real science into an elaborate expression of professional opinion (‘peer review’) that is formally indistinguishable from bureaucratic power-games.
Is there a future for honesty?
Such is our state of pervasive corruption that an insistence on truthfulness in science seems perverse, aggressive, dangerous, or simply utopian. Not so. Truthfulness in science is not utopian. Indeed it was mundane reality, taken for granted (albeit subject to normal human imperfections) just a few decades ago. Old-style science had many faults, but deliberate and systematic misrepresentation was not one of them.
To become systematically truthful in a modern scientific environment would be to inflict damage on one’s own career; on one’s chances of getting jobs, promotions, publications, grants and so on. And in a world of dishonesty, of hype, spin and inflated estimations – the occasional truthful individual will be judged by the prevailing corrupt standards. To be truthful would also be to risk becoming exceedingly unpopular with colleagues and employers – since a strictly honest scientist would be perceived as endangering the status and security of those around them.
Nonetheless, science must be honest, and the only answer to dishonesty is honesty; and this is up to individuals. The necessary first step is for scientists who are concerned about truth to acknowledge the prevailing state of corruption, and then to make a personal resolution to be truthful in all things at all times: to become both truth-tellers and truth-seekers.
Honest individuals are clearly necessary for an honest system of science – they are the basis of all that is good in science. However, honest individuals do not necessarily create an honest system. Individual honesty is not sufficient but needs to be supported by new social structures. Scientific truth cannot, over the long stretch, be a product of solitary activity. A solitary truth-seeker who is unsupported either by tradition or community will degenerate into mere eccentricity, eventually to be intimidated and crushed by the organized power of untruthfulness.
Furthermore, as Jacob Bronowski argued, humans cannot be honest only in important matters while being expedient in minor matters: truth is all of a piece. There are so many incentives to be untruthful that truthfulness is either a habit, or else truthfulness declines. This means that in order to retain their principles in the face of opposition, scientists need to find a philosophical basis which will sustain a life of habitual truth and support them through the pressure to be expedient (or agreeable) rather than honest.
A Great Awakening to truth in science
The best hope of saving science from a progressive descent into complete Zombiedom seems to be a moral Great Awakening: an ethical revolution focused on re-establishing the primary purpose of science: the pursuit of truth.
In using the phrase, I am thinking of something akin to the periodic evangelical Great Awakenings which have swept the USA throughout its history, and have (arguably) served periodically to roll-back the advance of societal corruption, and generate improved ethical behaviour.
Such an Awakening would necessarily begin with individual commitment, but to have any impact it would need to progress rapidly to institutional forms. In effect there would need to be a ‘Church’ of truth; or, rather, many such Churches – especially in the different scientific fields or invisible colleges of active scholars and researchers.
I use the word ‘Church’ because nothing less morally-potent than a Church would suffice to overcome the many immediate incentives for seeking status, power, wealth and security. Nothing less powerfully-motivating could, I feel, nurture and sustain the requisite individual commitment. If truth-pursuing groups were not actually religiously-based (and, given the high proportion of atheists in science, this is probable), then such groups would need to be sustained by secular ethical systems of at least equal strength to religion, equally devoted to transcendental ideals, equally capable of eliciting courage, self-sacrifice and adherence to principle.
The most realistic prospect is that some sub-specialties of science might self-identify as being engaged primarily in the pursuit of truth and (supported by strong ethical systems to which their participants subscribe) impose on their members a stricter and more honest standard of behaviour. Since science must be truthful in order to thrive qua science, any such truthful sub-specialities would be expected to thrive over the long term (this is assuming they can attract scientists of sufficient calibre backed-up with sufficient resources). From such seeds of truth, real science might again re-grow.
Could it happen? – could there really be a Great Awakening to truth in science in which scientists in specific disciplines or en masse would simply start being truthful about all things great and small, and would swiftly organize to support each other in this principle? I am hopeful that some kind of moral renewal might potentially occur in science, but I am not optimistic. I am hopeful – or else I would not be writing this. But I am not optimistic, because there appears to be little awareness of the endemic state of corruption – presumably because the relentless but incremental expansion of dishonesty has been so gradual that it failed to cause sufficient alarm; and at each step in the decline scientists quickly habituated to the new situation.
At present, I can detect no sign of anything like a principled adherence to perfect truthfulness among our complacent, arrogant and ever-more-powerful scientific leadership – and that is the group among which a Great Awakening would need to take-hold; even if, as seems likely, the movement originated elsewhere.
Further reading: The above polemical essay builds upon the argument of several of my previous publications including: ‘Peer usage versus peer review’ (BMJ 2007; 335:451); Zombie science’ (Medical Hypotheses 2008; 71:327–329); ‘The vital role of transcendental truth in science’ (Medical Hypotheses 2009; 72:373–376); and ‘Are you an honest academic?’ (Oxford Magazine 2009; 287:8–10).
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