*Since writing this piece my understanding has changed and I now believe it contains fundamental flaws. Anyone who would like further clarification is welcome to e-mail me at hklaxnessat- yahoo.com*
Genospirituality: Genetic engineering for spiritual and religious enhancement
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2008; Volume 71: 825-828
Summary
The most frequently discussed role for genetic engineering is in relation to medicine, and a second area which provokes discussion is the use of genetic engineering as an enhancement technology. But one neglected area is the potential use of genetic engineering to increase human spiritual and religious experience – or genospirituality. If technologies are devised which can conveniently and safely engineer genes causal of spiritual and religious behaviours, then people may become able to choose their degree of religiosity or spiritual sensitivity. For instance, it may become possible to increase the likelihood of direct religious experience – i.e. ‘revelation’: the subjective experience of communication from the deity. Or, people may be able to engineer ‘animistic’ thinking, a mode of cognition in which the significant features of the world – such as large animals, trees, distinctive landscape features – are regarded as sentient and intentional beings; so that the individual experiences a personal relationship with the world. Another potentially popular spiritual ability would probably be shamanism; in which states of altered consciousness (e.g. trances, delirium or dreams) are induced and the shaman may undergo the experience of transformations, ‘soul journeys’ and contact with a spirit realm. Ideally, shamanistic consciousness could be modulated such that trances were self-induced only when wanted and when it was safe and convenient; and then switched-off again completely when full alertness and concentration are necessary. It seems likely that there will be trade-offs for increased spirituality; such as people becoming less ‘driven’ to seek status and monetary rewards – as a result of being more spiritually fulfilled people might work less hard and take more leisure. On the other hand, it is also possible that highly moral, altruistic, peaceable and principled behaviours might become more prevalent; and the energy and joyousness of the best churches might spread and be strengthened. Overall, genospirituality would probably be used by people who were unable to have the kind of spiritual or religious experiences which they wanted (or perhaps even needed) in order to lead the kind of life to which they aspired.
***
The genetic engineering imperative
The future continuation of modernizing societies (characterized by growth and progress in science, technology and the economy [1]) may depend upon rapid progress in, and widespread usage of, genetic engineering, since there are numerous processes of natural selection at work in advanced societies which are likely to have been increasing the proportion of deleterious genes and reducing the proportion of socially-useful genes over several generations – at least in developed nations [2], [3] and [4].
Because these demographic trends seem to be so strong – yet unacknowledged and therefore socio-politically irreversible – one probable implication is that the development of genetic engineering (including gene therapy and related stem cell and embryonic biotechnologies, etc.) should be regarded as a social imperative, and pursued as rapidly as possible [5] and [6].
It is widely – although not universally – appreciated that genetic engineering might potentially be very useful. The most frequently discussed role for genetic engineering is in relation to medicine, where deleterious and disease-causing genes could potentially be corrected. Assuming genetic engineering were safe, available and affordable; many people would be pleased to utilize medical genetic engineering.
The second area which provokes discussion is the use of genetic engineering as an enhancement technology. For example, biotechnology will probably be able to increase intelligence, to improve happiness, and to boost physical skills or specific abilities such as music or mathematics. This is more controversial than the medical deployment of genetic engineering – nonetheless it seems probable that safe and effective genetic enhancements would be used by many people if they were given the choice.
But one neglected area of enhancement technology is the potential use of genetic engineering to increase human spiritual and religious experience – genospirituality or genospiritual engineering. I suggest that if, or when, such technologies become a potential choice – then genospiritual engineering will find plenty of takers.
Who would want to use genospiritual technologies?
Genospirituality would not be of interest to everyone, indeed I would expect there might be hostility to the idea both from convinced atheists who regard religious and spiritual matters as false, nonsensical and probably harmful; and from some traditionally religious people who would be suspicious of such apparently un-spontaneous and artificial religiosity.
However, other people will take the view that spirituality and religious experiences are real and definable subjective psychological states or human experiences. Leaving aside the question of whether these real psychological states and experiences refer to anything external, objective or supernatural; it could be argued that spiritual and religious subjective states may be regarded as valuable, desirable and/or biologically adaptive for at least some people in some circumstances.
So, whatever the cause of religiousness and spirituality, even if the cause is not accepted to be supernatural, it is at least plausible that significant numbers of people would choose to have such experiences if they could.
What benefits might be obtained from enhanced religiousness or spirituality?
The quest for a ‘meaningful’ life is of obvious and compelling importance for many people. Of course, there are plenty of people who find life meaningful and significant without the inclusion of any spiritual or religious elements. They are content to live their lives without either spirituality or religion.
But other people – probably the majority of the population in most countries – look for something more, or something else. They may find what they need from one (or more) of the major world religions, or from other churches, or from New Age type spiritual movements.
But a large proportion of the population of most countries apparently do not find what they are looking for in these social structures. These are the people sometimes termed ‘seekers’ [7] whose life is spent searching for ‘meaning’ – this may take the form of trying-out many churches and spiritual movements, exploring art and culture, trying psychopharmacology (either from prescribed drugs or using self-medication with drugs such as alcohol), or sampling from the many types of counselling, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.
However, despite this multiplicity of possible sources of potential assistance, there are people who feel that their life or the world itself is lacking in meaning, they feel alienated and cut-off from experience, they do not feel properly alive [8]. These are the people who may in future seek a solution to their insoluble problems in changing themselves by means of genetic engineering so that they can enhance their spiritual and/or religious capacity.
Other people who practice organized religion may nonetheless wish for more powerful experience, or for the potential to shape their own behaviours in a direction in-line with their hopes and beliefs. They are already religious, but wish to become more so.
Some potential uses of genospiritual engineering
It seems likely that soon the genes associated with an increased religiousness or capacity to have spiritual experiences will become known by genome mapping methods (which link variations in the genome with traits and behaviours) becoming ever-cheaper, more sensitive and reliable, and more powerful. Some of the discovered gene-behaviour associations will on further investigation then turn-out to be causal – and this would potentially enable genetic engineering (and therapy) to modify the behaviours.
If technologies are devised which can conveniently and safely engineer these genes causal of spiritual and religious behaviours, then people may become able to choose their degree of religiosity or spiritual sensitivity. In other words genospirituality may emerge with the potential to become a popular option among spiritual seekers and those engaged in a religious quest.
In order to clarify what might be the uses, I will describe a few sample spiritual or religious experiences that might be enhanced by genospiritual engineering.
It may become possible to increase the likelihood of direct religious experience – i.e. ‘revelation’, or the subjective experience of communication from the deity/deities [9]. In the past it was unusual to experience direct communication with God/s, but perhaps this could be changed, and revelation might become accessible to a much greater number of people.
As another possible option, people may be able to engineer themselves to experience ‘animistic’ thinking – a mode of cognition in which the significant features of the world (such as large animals, trees, distinctive landscape features, or even some types of complex organization or technology) are regarded as sentient and intentional beings [10]. Animistic thinking is typical of early childhood in all societies, and is also believed to be universal among those hunter-gatherers who were the ancestors of modern humans.
One advantage of such changes could be that an animistic person has a personal relationship with the world, because the world is seen as composed of active agents. By contrast, the more typical modern mode of thinking sees the world as an abstract system of passive objects moved by impersonal forces – and this can create feelings of alienation, loneliness and pointlessness.
Another spiritual experience which would likely be popular is shamanism [11] and [12]. Shaman is the term used for the healers and ‘medicine men’ (or women) of many societies who may also do divination and make important decisions for the tribe – and characteristically their work is done by means of states of altered consciousness (e.g. trances, delirium or dreams) in which they may undergo transformations, ‘soul journeys’ and contact a spirit realm.
In modern societies, it seems that only a minority of people are able to enter shamanistic trances without some kind of technological assistance. Some artists and other creative people (including scientists) apparently do important work (for example experience inspiration, or gain sudden insight) in states of somewhat-altered consciousness [8] and [10]. These mental states need not be regarded as supernatural; but may simply offer a different, more associative, way of thinking.
Shamanistic trance states can be difficult or impossible for people to achieve spontaneously and safely, and they may require the use of fairly extreme-measures such as prolonged dancing, drumming in groups, use of mind-impairing hallucinogenic agents or other technologies. Indeed, the measures necessary for modern individuals to induce a trance state at minimum time consuming and at the extreme are dangerous. It may also be several hours or more before the side-effects of a trance, or the method used to induce a trance, wears off, so that the person would be mentally unable to do responsible tasks such as child-care, driving a car, or operating equipment.
However, in principle, it may be possible to make genetic changes such that such trance states might be spontaneously attainable at will. Ideally, shamanistic consciousness could be modulated such that trances could self-induced only when wanted and when it is safe and convenient; and then switched-off again completely when full alertness and concentration are necessary.
Trade-offs and priorities
It seems likely that spirituality and religiousness will not be found to be under the control of single genes or even just a few genes, but rather caused by the combination of suites of alleles, each of which exerts a relatively small effect. Furthermore, some of these genes will probably be pleiotropic or multi-functional – such that altering spirituality will have side-effects in terms of altering other functions or behaviours.
Indeed, except where genospiritual engineering is merely correcting deleterious single mutations; it seems likely that there will be trade-offs (as there are likely to be trade-offs for most conceivable forms of enhancement technology). For example, higher IQ is predictive of longer life expectancy and greater wealth and social status in modern societies – yet increasing IQ may (at least above a certain point) also be associated in modern cultures with impairments from an increased tendency for short-sightedness to reduced fertility rates [13] and [14].
So we should anticipate trade-offs for increased spirituality. One possible example could be the possibility that increasing spiritual fulfilment might make people less ‘driven’ to seek status and monetary rewards. Greater contentment might benefit the individual but perhaps may not benefit society as a whole – if as a result of being more spiritually fulfilled more people worked less hard and took more leisure.
While greater religiousness may be associated with greater happiness, more altruistic behaviours and higher fertility [9], and these may turn-out to be significantly causal – it is possible that genetically-enhanced religiousness might lead to other problems. Perhaps churches would get too powerful and attempt to control science, technology and the economy with disastrous effects. Or perhaps church members might become fanatically loyal and too easily manipulated into dangerous behaviours.
On the other hand, it is also possible that highly moral, altruistic, peaceable and principled behaviours might become more prevalent; and the energy and joyousness of the best churches might spread and be strengthened.
Conclusion
In considering the desirability of genospiritual engineering, it is possible to take an ‘agnostic’ stance over whether or not spiritual and religious experience refers to an external and objective supernatural world. It might be agreed that, whatever the underlying objective facts might be, some types of religiousness and spirituality are plausibly associated with some good outcomes both in terms of subjective states of mind (making people feel better) and in terms of objectively observable social behaviours (making people behave better). There are also some disadvantages of spirituality and religiousness – so the outcome is likely to vary between individuals, according to the extremity of spirituality or religiousness, between religions and spiritualities, and between societies.
Whatever the answer in a specific instance, genospirituality would probably – if available – be used by people who were unable to have the kind of spiritual or religious experiences which they wanted (or perhaps even needed) in order to lead the kind of life to which they aspired.
References
[1] B. Charlton and P. Andras, The modernization imperative, Imprint Academic, Exeter, UK (2003).
[2] R.A. Fisher, The genetical theory of natural selection, Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK (1930).
[3] W.D. Hamilton, The narrow roads of Gene Land vol. 2, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK (2002).
[4] R. Lynn and J. Harvey, The decline of the world’s IQ, Intelligence 36 (2008), pp. 112–120.
[5] D. Pearce, The Hedonistic Imperative. www.hedweb.com [Accessed 10.6.2008].
[6] R. Baschetti, Evolutionary biological origins of morality: Implications for research with human embryonic stem cells, Stem Cells Develop 14 (2005), pp. 239–247.
[7] W.C. Roof, Spiritual Marketplace: baby boomers and the remaking of American religion, Princeton University Press, Princeton, USA (1999).
[8] B.G. Charlton, Alienation, recovered animism and altered states of consciousness, Med Hypotheses 68 (2007), pp. 727–731.
[9] R. Stark, Discovering God: the origins of the great religions and the evolution of belief, HarperOne, London (2007).
[10] B.G. Charlton, Scientific discovery, peak experiences and the col-oh-nell flastratus! phenomenon, Med Hypotheses 69 (2007), pp. 475–477.
[11] D.C. Noel, The soul of shamanism, Continuum, New York (1998).
[12] R. Hutton, Shamans: Siberian spirituality and the Western Imagination, Hambledon and London, London, UK (2007).
[13] W. Mak, M. Kwan, T. Cheng, K. Chan, R. Cheung and S. Ho, Myopia as a latent phenotype of a pleiotropic gene positively selected for facilitating neurocognitive development, and the effects of environmental factors, Med Hypotheses 66 (2006), pp. 1209–1215.
[14] R. Lynn and M. Van Court, New evidence for dysgenic fertility for intelligence in the United States, Intelligence 32 (2004), pp. 193–201
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
Tuesday, 30 September 2008
Pioneering studies of IQ
Pioneering studies of IQ by G.H. Thomson and J.F. Duff – An example of established knowledge subsequently ‘hidden in plain sight’
Bruce G. Charlton. Medical Hypotheses. 2008; 71: 625-628
Summary
Perhaps the earliest authoritative measurement of a social class gradient in IQ, with a stratification of occupations among the parents of children with different IQs, is seen in two fascinating papers published in 1923 and 1929 in the British Journal of Psychology. The authors were GH Thomson and JF Duff (both of whom were later knighted) and the papers’ main findings were confirmed by later researchers. Results of an intelligence test administered to 13419 children aged 11–12 were analyzed according to parent’s occupation. The average children’s IQ at extremes of social class among their parents included clergymen-121, teachers-116 and bankers and managers-112 at the upper end; while at the lower end there were ‘cripples and invalids’-94, cattlemen-93, hawkers and chimneysweeps-91, and the ‘insane, criminal’-88. More than 100 specific categories of parental occupations were then combined into 13 social classes, with their children’s average IQ as follows: Professional-112; Managers-110; Higher Commercial-109; Army, Navy, Police, Postmen-106; Shopkeeping-105; Engineers [ie. apprenticed craftsmen, such as mining engineers]-103; Foremen-103; Building trades-102; Metal workers, shipbuilders-101; Miscellaneous industrial workers-101; Miners and quarrymen-98; Agriculture-98; Labourers-96. A follow-up study compared an ‘intelligent’ group (IQ 136 plus) with a matched IQ 95–105 ‘control’ group. IQ testing at age 11–12 was predictive of teacher’s reports of higher levels of intelligence and health at age 16; and better performance in official examinations. The occupations of fathers, grandfathers and uncles were consistent with occupation being indicative of ‘an inherited quality’ (i.e. IQ) and there was regression from parents to grandparents and uncles among the ’intelligent’ but not among controls. Other findings included a wider variance in intelligence among boys than girls, and descriptions of the predictive value of IQ in estimating future education, examinations and health. Although the distribution, heredity and predictive value of childhood IQ measurements was once quite widely understood, for the last few decades IQ research has been regarded as morally-suspect and IQ scientists subjected to vilification, persecution and sanctions. Ignorance and misunderstanding of IQ is the norm among intellectual elites in schools, universities, the media, politics and public administration. Consequently IQ research is actively-shunned, and has near-zero influence on public policies. Since this area of science has been so comprehensively ‘disappeared’ from public consciousness as a result of socio-political pressure; it seems probable that other similarly solid and vital domains of scientific knowledge may also be ‘hidden in plain sight’.
***
Perhaps the earliest authoritative measurement of a social class gradient among the parents of children with different IQs is seen in two fascinating papers published in 1923 [1] and 1929 [2] in the British Journal of Psychology.
The authors were Godfrey H Thomson and James Fitzjames Duff – both of whom were later knighted. The research was done from Armstrong College of Durham University in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne, England – Armstrong College later became a part of King’s College which then became the independent University of Newcastle [3]. Thomson was Professor of Education in Newcastle, then later moved to the Chair of Education in Edinburgh from where he provided ‘Eleven plus’ examinations for much of Britain [4] and [5]. Duff moved to Manchester University and ultimately returned to Durham to become Warden (equivalent to Vice Chancellor – the senior administrative position in UK universities) of the collegiate Durham division of the university [3] and [6]. Duff is credited with initiating Durham’s ascent from a tiny theological and teaching college to become one of the premier UK universities [3].
As well as the intrinsic fascination of these trail-blazing researches, the two papers provoke reflection on the effect on science of changes in the national socio-political ethos. The fate of Sir Godfrey and Sir James’s papers provides an example of how once widely-accepted knowledge, generated by very senior and prestigious establishment figures, can later become generally disregarded or even denied, despite abundant scientific confirmation and elaboration by later researchers.
It seems that even in modern times, and in a liberal democratic society such as the UK where information is freely and easily accessible, scientific knowledge can apparently be ‘disappeared’ when it comes into conflict with the dominant socio-political agenda: can become, as it were, ‘hidden in plain sight’.
The social distribution of intelligence in Northumberland
The 1923 Duff and Thomson study began when an intelligence test was administered on February 24 1922, to all children aged 11 and 12 at state elementary schools in Northumberland excluding Newcastle and Tynemouth; yielding an enormous sample of 13419 children (6930 boys; 6695 girls). Further information on parental occupation was provided by teachers. The children’s IQ was then tabulated according to their parent’s (implicitly father’s) occupation.
Average IQ was 99.6, 877 children had an IQ of 120 plus and 1337 had an IQ less than 80. Boys exhibited a slightly larger apparent standard deviation than girls (no specific numbers were given by the authors), with a greater proportion of the most intelligent children being boys (IQ 130-9 - 80 boys, 49 girls; IQ above 140 – 12 boys, 4 girls) and also a greater proportion of the least intelligent being boys (IQ below 80 – 715 boys, 622 girls).
Although private schools were not sampled, and consequently there were no children with parents of the very highest social classes, nonetheless the parents social classes ranged widely from clergymen, lawyers, teachers, chemists, bankers and managers at the top; to farm labourers, brewery and mineral-water workers, ‘cripples and invalids’, cattlemen, ‘hawkers and chimneysweeps’ and the ‘insane, criminal’ at the bottom.
The average IQ (rounded to the nearest integer) of the children of some well-represented extremes of social class among the parents was clergymen-121, teachers-116 and bankers and managers-112 at the upper end; while at the lower end there were farm labourers-94; brewery workers-94; ‘cripples and invalids’-94, cattlemen-93, hawkers and chimneysweeps-91, and the ‘insane, criminal’-88. In between, by far the largest number of parents was the 5659 coal miners (average IQ of children-98).
One surprising statistic is that the children of n = 16 ‘Doctors, dentists, vets’ [i.e. veterinarians] had a reported average IQ of only 102 – the same as builders and below plumbers! My guess is that (in this particular time and place) most rural or semi-rural resident ’doctors, dentists, vets’ who sent their children to state schools were not college-educated, but had instead been trained by apprenticeship: more like craftsmen than professionals.
More than 100 specific categories of parental occupations were then combined into 13 social classes, with their children’s average IQ as follows: Professional-112; Managers-110; Higher Commercial-109; Army, Navy, Police, Postmen-106; Shopkeeping-105; Engineers [ie. apprenticed craftsmen, such as mining engineers]-103; Foremen-103; Building trades-102; Metal workers, shipbuilders-101; Miscellaneous industrial workers-101; Miners and quarrymen-98; Agriculture-98; Low grade occupations, labourers-96.
Finally the parents occupations were divided into two simple divisions of ‘brain work’ having an average IQ of 107 versus ‘hand work’ having an average of IQ 99.
Duff and Thomson also comment that although there are striking stepwise average differences in IQ by parental social class, the parental occupation according to the 13 social classes only predicted child’s IQ with a Pearson correlation of 0.28. In other words, each social class contained a range of IQs, with considerable overlapping between classes.
Following-up the children of highest intelligence
The 1929 Duff paper was a follow-up of the highest-IQ children (IQ 136 plus) which were termed the ‘intelligent’ group with an IQ 95-105 ‘control’ group matched from the same schools. Parents and teachers were asked for information, but the replies were incomplete; and data was obtained on only 64 ‘intelligent’ and 28 ‘control’ subjects.
It was found that IQ testing at age 11–12 was predictive of teacher’s reports of higher levels of intelligence and health at age 16; higher career aspirations; and also better performance in the Durham School Certificate examinations, especially the highest levels of examination results.
Occupations of fathers, grandfathers and uncles were surveyed in terms of their social class. The most striking analysis was in terms of the percentage of fathers that were at the level of skilled labourer or higher: there were 64% of fathers in the intelligent group at this level and 28% of fathers in the control group. By comparison among the intelligent group 49% of grandfathers and 52% of uncles were at this level; while in the control group 33% of grandfathers and 40% of uncles.
Duff commented that this pattern was consistent with occupation being indicative of ‘an inherited quality’ with a regression from parents to grandparents and uncles among the intelligent – but no consistent regression among the average control group when the data as a whole is analyzed. He concludes: “Intelligence is not the sole factor that determines occupation; but that it is an important factor cannot be doubted.”
Science then and now
Reading the articles after eighty years there are striking differences when compared with modern practice. Most surprisingly there is no Reference section and only five footnotes (in the earliest paper). My impression is that this paucity is partly due to embryonic nature of the field – with very little prior relevant published research; and partly due to the fact that the authors were writing for a small, familiar audience of scientific peers, who did not need to have spelled-out precisely how this piece of research fitted into the development of the subject. In those days background assumptions were often simply taken for granted, rather than referenced. The methodology was, by modern standards, skimpy – supplemented with an offer to supply extra detail to ‘anyone interested’. The general tone of these papers is therefore somewhat like a letter addressed to other members of an exclusive club.
At this early stage in the science, researchers were almost simultaneously devising methods and applying them to gather data. The social class categories used were generated specifically for this paper, and apparently on ‘commonsense’ grounds – since no detail is given about the principles underlying the classification.
Yet, for all the apparent arbitrariness and subjectivism of style (as is seems to us nowadays), and the incompleteness of the follow-up study, these two papers seem to have been both prescient and essentially correct (as judged by subsequent knowledge) and their main findings have been substantially replicated or expanded:
1. It has been confirmed that men have a wider variance in intelligence than women – with a greater proportion of both high-scorers and low-scorers [7].
2. Although Duff and Thomson’s studies did not directly measure parental IQ, the authors’ assumption was that occupations reflected IQ. Many later studies have confirmed that there is a significant social class/occupational gradient in average IQ – the size of this gradient depending upon the degree of specificity with which social class is defined e.g. [8], [9], [10] and [11].
3. Thomson and Duff’s 1923 analysis demonstrated what later epidemiologists of the 1990s re-discovered for health and social class [12] – that socio-economic differences are not absolute or fixed in size; rather the gradient is much greater when socio-economic position is analyzed precisely than when measured imprecisely. Here there was a gradient of 33 IQ points from 121 down to 88 when 100-plus specific occupations are used; a gradient of 16 IQ points from 112 down to 96 when specific occupations are collapsed into 13 groups; and a gradient of only 8 IQ points from 107 down to 99 for the dual categories of head-work versus hand-work.
4. Childhood IQ has been confirmed to be predictive of future educational (and also occupational) attainments e.g. [13], [14], [15] and [16].
5. It has been confirmed that childhood measurements of IQ are predictive of subsequent health e.g. [9], [17] and [18].
6. IQ is confirmed to be substantially heritable, and exhibits regression to the mean consistent with the degree of heritability e.g. [13], [14] and [15].
The contemporary invisibility of IQ research
Duff and Thomson were both knighted, ending their careers as highly respected and influential figures in the UK educational establishment. The main findings of these papers from the 1920s have been amply replicated in the modern consensus on IQ [e.g. [20] and see above]. And the basic understanding of the distribution, heredity and predictive value of childhood IQ measurements which they pioneered was widely appreciated.
However, for the last few decades IQ research has generally been regarded as a morally-suspect activity and the candid discussion of IQ is taboo among the intellectual elites in schools, universities, the media, politics and public administration. IQ scientists have been – and still are – subjected to vilification, persecution and sanctions [15], [19], [21], [22] and [23]. This 80 year old knowledge is typically regarded by mainstream public discourse as surprising, shocking and controversial – or the facts may even be denied outright.
Consequently, despite its remarkable prescience and importance, this pioneering work on IQ, plus three generations of supporting scientific literature, is ignored or actively-shunned – and has near-zero influence on modern public policies.
Since this area of science has so been comprehensively ‘disappeared’ from public consciousness in the face of socio-political pressure, it seems probable that other similarly solid and vital domains of scientific knowledge may also be hidden in plain sight.
References
[1] J.F. Duff and G.H. Thomson, The social and geographical distribution of intelligence in Northumberland, Brit J Psychol 14 (1923), pp. 193–198.
[2] J.F. Duff, Children of high intelligence: a following-up enquiry, Brit J Psychol 29 (1929), pp. 413–438.
[3] E.M. Bettenson, The University of Newcastle upon Tyne: a historical introduction, 1834–1971, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (1971).
[4] G.H. Thomson, Education of an Englishman, Moray House, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh (1968).
[5] Wikipedia. Godfrey Thomson. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfrey_Thomson; 2008 [accessed 10.07.2008].
[6] Sir James Fitzjames Duff. thePeerage.com: A genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain as well as the royal families of Europe. http://thepeerage.com/p18060.htm; 2008 [accessed 10.07.2008].
[7] L.V. Hedges and A. Nowell, Sex differences in mental test scores, variability, and numbers of high-scoring individuals, Science 269 (1995), pp. 41–45.
[8] M. Argyle, The psychology of social class, Routledge, London (1994).
[9] C.L. Hart, I.J. Deary, M.D. Taylor, P.L. MacKinnon, G. Davey Smith and L.J. Whalley et al., Scottish mental health survey 1932 linked to the Midspan Studies: a prospective investigation of childhood intelligence and future health, Public Health 117 (2003), pp. 187–195.
[10] D. Nettle, Intelligence and class mobility in the British population, Brit J Psychol 94 (2003), pp. 551–561.
[11] R. Lynn and T. Vanhanen, IQ and global inequality, Washington Summit, Augusta, Georgia, USA (2006).
[12] G.D. Smith, M.J. Shipley and G. Rose, Magnitude and causes of socioeconomic differentials in mortality: further evidence from the Whitehall Study, J Epidemiol Commun Health 44 (1990), pp. 265–270.
[13] L.M. Terman and L.H. Oden, The gifted child grows up: Volume 4 (Twenty five years follow up of a superior group), Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, USA (1959).
[14] A.R. Jensen, The g factor Praeger: the science of mental ability, Westport, CT, USA (1998) p. 15.
[15] R.J. Herrnstein and C. Murray, The bell curve, Forbes, New York (1994).
[16] G. Park, D. Lubinski and C.P. Benbow, Contrasting intellectual patterns predict creativity in the arts and sciences, Psychol Sci 18 (2007), pp. 948–952.
[17] G.D. Batty, I.J. Deary and G.S. Gottfredson, Premorbid (early life) IQ and later mortality risk: systematic review, Annals Epidemiol 17 (2007), pp. 278–288.
[18] L.S. Gottfredson, Intelligence: is it the epidemiologists elusive ‘fundamental cause’ of social class inequalities in health?, J Personality Social Psychol 86 (2004), pp. 174–199.
[19] H.J. Eysenck, Rebel with a cause: autobiography of Hans Eysenck, W.H. Allen, London (1990).
[20] U. Neisser et al., Intelligence: knowns and unknowns, Amer Psychol 51 (1996), pp. 77–101.
[21] I.J. Deary, Intelligence: a very short introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2001).
[22] L.S. Gottfredson, Applying double-standards to ‘divisive’ ideas, Perspect Psychol Sci 2 (2007), pp. 216–220.
[23] J. Malloy, James Watson tells the inconvenient truth: faces the consequences, Med Hypotheses 70 (2008), pp. 1081–1091.
Bruce G. Charlton. Medical Hypotheses. 2008; 71: 625-628
Summary
Perhaps the earliest authoritative measurement of a social class gradient in IQ, with a stratification of occupations among the parents of children with different IQs, is seen in two fascinating papers published in 1923 and 1929 in the British Journal of Psychology. The authors were GH Thomson and JF Duff (both of whom were later knighted) and the papers’ main findings were confirmed by later researchers. Results of an intelligence test administered to 13419 children aged 11–12 were analyzed according to parent’s occupation. The average children’s IQ at extremes of social class among their parents included clergymen-121, teachers-116 and bankers and managers-112 at the upper end; while at the lower end there were ‘cripples and invalids’-94, cattlemen-93, hawkers and chimneysweeps-91, and the ‘insane, criminal’-88. More than 100 specific categories of parental occupations were then combined into 13 social classes, with their children’s average IQ as follows: Professional-112; Managers-110; Higher Commercial-109; Army, Navy, Police, Postmen-106; Shopkeeping-105; Engineers [ie. apprenticed craftsmen, such as mining engineers]-103; Foremen-103; Building trades-102; Metal workers, shipbuilders-101; Miscellaneous industrial workers-101; Miners and quarrymen-98; Agriculture-98; Labourers-96. A follow-up study compared an ‘intelligent’ group (IQ 136 plus) with a matched IQ 95–105 ‘control’ group. IQ testing at age 11–12 was predictive of teacher’s reports of higher levels of intelligence and health at age 16; and better performance in official examinations. The occupations of fathers, grandfathers and uncles were consistent with occupation being indicative of ‘an inherited quality’ (i.e. IQ) and there was regression from parents to grandparents and uncles among the ’intelligent’ but not among controls. Other findings included a wider variance in intelligence among boys than girls, and descriptions of the predictive value of IQ in estimating future education, examinations and health. Although the distribution, heredity and predictive value of childhood IQ measurements was once quite widely understood, for the last few decades IQ research has been regarded as morally-suspect and IQ scientists subjected to vilification, persecution and sanctions. Ignorance and misunderstanding of IQ is the norm among intellectual elites in schools, universities, the media, politics and public administration. Consequently IQ research is actively-shunned, and has near-zero influence on public policies. Since this area of science has been so comprehensively ‘disappeared’ from public consciousness as a result of socio-political pressure; it seems probable that other similarly solid and vital domains of scientific knowledge may also be ‘hidden in plain sight’.
***
Perhaps the earliest authoritative measurement of a social class gradient among the parents of children with different IQs is seen in two fascinating papers published in 1923 [1] and 1929 [2] in the British Journal of Psychology.
The authors were Godfrey H Thomson and James Fitzjames Duff – both of whom were later knighted. The research was done from Armstrong College of Durham University in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne, England – Armstrong College later became a part of King’s College which then became the independent University of Newcastle [3]. Thomson was Professor of Education in Newcastle, then later moved to the Chair of Education in Edinburgh from where he provided ‘Eleven plus’ examinations for much of Britain [4] and [5]. Duff moved to Manchester University and ultimately returned to Durham to become Warden (equivalent to Vice Chancellor – the senior administrative position in UK universities) of the collegiate Durham division of the university [3] and [6]. Duff is credited with initiating Durham’s ascent from a tiny theological and teaching college to become one of the premier UK universities [3].
As well as the intrinsic fascination of these trail-blazing researches, the two papers provoke reflection on the effect on science of changes in the national socio-political ethos. The fate of Sir Godfrey and Sir James’s papers provides an example of how once widely-accepted knowledge, generated by very senior and prestigious establishment figures, can later become generally disregarded or even denied, despite abundant scientific confirmation and elaboration by later researchers.
It seems that even in modern times, and in a liberal democratic society such as the UK where information is freely and easily accessible, scientific knowledge can apparently be ‘disappeared’ when it comes into conflict with the dominant socio-political agenda: can become, as it were, ‘hidden in plain sight’.
The social distribution of intelligence in Northumberland
The 1923 Duff and Thomson study began when an intelligence test was administered on February 24 1922, to all children aged 11 and 12 at state elementary schools in Northumberland excluding Newcastle and Tynemouth; yielding an enormous sample of 13419 children (6930 boys; 6695 girls). Further information on parental occupation was provided by teachers. The children’s IQ was then tabulated according to their parent’s (implicitly father’s) occupation.
Average IQ was 99.6, 877 children had an IQ of 120 plus and 1337 had an IQ less than 80. Boys exhibited a slightly larger apparent standard deviation than girls (no specific numbers were given by the authors), with a greater proportion of the most intelligent children being boys (IQ 130-9 - 80 boys, 49 girls; IQ above 140 – 12 boys, 4 girls) and also a greater proportion of the least intelligent being boys (IQ below 80 – 715 boys, 622 girls).
Although private schools were not sampled, and consequently there were no children with parents of the very highest social classes, nonetheless the parents social classes ranged widely from clergymen, lawyers, teachers, chemists, bankers and managers at the top; to farm labourers, brewery and mineral-water workers, ‘cripples and invalids’, cattlemen, ‘hawkers and chimneysweeps’ and the ‘insane, criminal’ at the bottom.
The average IQ (rounded to the nearest integer) of the children of some well-represented extremes of social class among the parents was clergymen-121, teachers-116 and bankers and managers-112 at the upper end; while at the lower end there were farm labourers-94; brewery workers-94; ‘cripples and invalids’-94, cattlemen-93, hawkers and chimneysweeps-91, and the ‘insane, criminal’-88. In between, by far the largest number of parents was the 5659 coal miners (average IQ of children-98).
One surprising statistic is that the children of n = 16 ‘Doctors, dentists, vets’ [i.e. veterinarians] had a reported average IQ of only 102 – the same as builders and below plumbers! My guess is that (in this particular time and place) most rural or semi-rural resident ’doctors, dentists, vets’ who sent their children to state schools were not college-educated, but had instead been trained by apprenticeship: more like craftsmen than professionals.
More than 100 specific categories of parental occupations were then combined into 13 social classes, with their children’s average IQ as follows: Professional-112; Managers-110; Higher Commercial-109; Army, Navy, Police, Postmen-106; Shopkeeping-105; Engineers [ie. apprenticed craftsmen, such as mining engineers]-103; Foremen-103; Building trades-102; Metal workers, shipbuilders-101; Miscellaneous industrial workers-101; Miners and quarrymen-98; Agriculture-98; Low grade occupations, labourers-96.
Finally the parents occupations were divided into two simple divisions of ‘brain work’ having an average IQ of 107 versus ‘hand work’ having an average of IQ 99.
Duff and Thomson also comment that although there are striking stepwise average differences in IQ by parental social class, the parental occupation according to the 13 social classes only predicted child’s IQ with a Pearson correlation of 0.28. In other words, each social class contained a range of IQs, with considerable overlapping between classes.
Following-up the children of highest intelligence
The 1929 Duff paper was a follow-up of the highest-IQ children (IQ 136 plus) which were termed the ‘intelligent’ group with an IQ 95-105 ‘control’ group matched from the same schools. Parents and teachers were asked for information, but the replies were incomplete; and data was obtained on only 64 ‘intelligent’ and 28 ‘control’ subjects.
It was found that IQ testing at age 11–12 was predictive of teacher’s reports of higher levels of intelligence and health at age 16; higher career aspirations; and also better performance in the Durham School Certificate examinations, especially the highest levels of examination results.
Occupations of fathers, grandfathers and uncles were surveyed in terms of their social class. The most striking analysis was in terms of the percentage of fathers that were at the level of skilled labourer or higher: there were 64% of fathers in the intelligent group at this level and 28% of fathers in the control group. By comparison among the intelligent group 49% of grandfathers and 52% of uncles were at this level; while in the control group 33% of grandfathers and 40% of uncles.
Duff commented that this pattern was consistent with occupation being indicative of ‘an inherited quality’ with a regression from parents to grandparents and uncles among the intelligent – but no consistent regression among the average control group when the data as a whole is analyzed. He concludes: “Intelligence is not the sole factor that determines occupation; but that it is an important factor cannot be doubted.”
Science then and now
Reading the articles after eighty years there are striking differences when compared with modern practice. Most surprisingly there is no Reference section and only five footnotes (in the earliest paper). My impression is that this paucity is partly due to embryonic nature of the field – with very little prior relevant published research; and partly due to the fact that the authors were writing for a small, familiar audience of scientific peers, who did not need to have spelled-out precisely how this piece of research fitted into the development of the subject. In those days background assumptions were often simply taken for granted, rather than referenced. The methodology was, by modern standards, skimpy – supplemented with an offer to supply extra detail to ‘anyone interested’. The general tone of these papers is therefore somewhat like a letter addressed to other members of an exclusive club.
At this early stage in the science, researchers were almost simultaneously devising methods and applying them to gather data. The social class categories used were generated specifically for this paper, and apparently on ‘commonsense’ grounds – since no detail is given about the principles underlying the classification.
Yet, for all the apparent arbitrariness and subjectivism of style (as is seems to us nowadays), and the incompleteness of the follow-up study, these two papers seem to have been both prescient and essentially correct (as judged by subsequent knowledge) and their main findings have been substantially replicated or expanded:
1. It has been confirmed that men have a wider variance in intelligence than women – with a greater proportion of both high-scorers and low-scorers [7].
2. Although Duff and Thomson’s studies did not directly measure parental IQ, the authors’ assumption was that occupations reflected IQ. Many later studies have confirmed that there is a significant social class/occupational gradient in average IQ – the size of this gradient depending upon the degree of specificity with which social class is defined e.g. [8], [9], [10] and [11].
3. Thomson and Duff’s 1923 analysis demonstrated what later epidemiologists of the 1990s re-discovered for health and social class [12] – that socio-economic differences are not absolute or fixed in size; rather the gradient is much greater when socio-economic position is analyzed precisely than when measured imprecisely. Here there was a gradient of 33 IQ points from 121 down to 88 when 100-plus specific occupations are used; a gradient of 16 IQ points from 112 down to 96 when specific occupations are collapsed into 13 groups; and a gradient of only 8 IQ points from 107 down to 99 for the dual categories of head-work versus hand-work.
4. Childhood IQ has been confirmed to be predictive of future educational (and also occupational) attainments e.g. [13], [14], [15] and [16].
5. It has been confirmed that childhood measurements of IQ are predictive of subsequent health e.g. [9], [17] and [18].
6. IQ is confirmed to be substantially heritable, and exhibits regression to the mean consistent with the degree of heritability e.g. [13], [14] and [15].
The contemporary invisibility of IQ research
Duff and Thomson were both knighted, ending their careers as highly respected and influential figures in the UK educational establishment. The main findings of these papers from the 1920s have been amply replicated in the modern consensus on IQ [e.g. [20] and see above]. And the basic understanding of the distribution, heredity and predictive value of childhood IQ measurements which they pioneered was widely appreciated.
However, for the last few decades IQ research has generally been regarded as a morally-suspect activity and the candid discussion of IQ is taboo among the intellectual elites in schools, universities, the media, politics and public administration. IQ scientists have been – and still are – subjected to vilification, persecution and sanctions [15], [19], [21], [22] and [23]. This 80 year old knowledge is typically regarded by mainstream public discourse as surprising, shocking and controversial – or the facts may even be denied outright.
Consequently, despite its remarkable prescience and importance, this pioneering work on IQ, plus three generations of supporting scientific literature, is ignored or actively-shunned – and has near-zero influence on modern public policies.
Since this area of science has so been comprehensively ‘disappeared’ from public consciousness in the face of socio-political pressure, it seems probable that other similarly solid and vital domains of scientific knowledge may also be hidden in plain sight.
References
[1] J.F. Duff and G.H. Thomson, The social and geographical distribution of intelligence in Northumberland, Brit J Psychol 14 (1923), pp. 193–198.
[2] J.F. Duff, Children of high intelligence: a following-up enquiry, Brit J Psychol 29 (1929), pp. 413–438.
[3] E.M. Bettenson, The University of Newcastle upon Tyne: a historical introduction, 1834–1971, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (1971).
[4] G.H. Thomson, Education of an Englishman, Moray House, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh (1968).
[5] Wikipedia. Godfrey Thomson. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfrey_Thomson; 2008 [accessed 10.07.2008].
[6] Sir James Fitzjames Duff. thePeerage.com: A genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain as well as the royal families of Europe. http://thepeerage.com/p18060.htm; 2008 [accessed 10.07.2008].
[7] L.V. Hedges and A. Nowell, Sex differences in mental test scores, variability, and numbers of high-scoring individuals, Science 269 (1995), pp. 41–45.
[8] M. Argyle, The psychology of social class, Routledge, London (1994).
[9] C.L. Hart, I.J. Deary, M.D. Taylor, P.L. MacKinnon, G. Davey Smith and L.J. Whalley et al., Scottish mental health survey 1932 linked to the Midspan Studies: a prospective investigation of childhood intelligence and future health, Public Health 117 (2003), pp. 187–195.
[10] D. Nettle, Intelligence and class mobility in the British population, Brit J Psychol 94 (2003), pp. 551–561.
[11] R. Lynn and T. Vanhanen, IQ and global inequality, Washington Summit, Augusta, Georgia, USA (2006).
[12] G.D. Smith, M.J. Shipley and G. Rose, Magnitude and causes of socioeconomic differentials in mortality: further evidence from the Whitehall Study, J Epidemiol Commun Health 44 (1990), pp. 265–270.
[13] L.M. Terman and L.H. Oden, The gifted child grows up: Volume 4 (Twenty five years follow up of a superior group), Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, USA (1959).
[14] A.R. Jensen, The g factor Praeger: the science of mental ability, Westport, CT, USA (1998) p. 15.
[15] R.J. Herrnstein and C. Murray, The bell curve, Forbes, New York (1994).
[16] G. Park, D. Lubinski and C.P. Benbow, Contrasting intellectual patterns predict creativity in the arts and sciences, Psychol Sci 18 (2007), pp. 948–952.
[17] G.D. Batty, I.J. Deary and G.S. Gottfredson, Premorbid (early life) IQ and later mortality risk: systematic review, Annals Epidemiol 17 (2007), pp. 278–288.
[18] L.S. Gottfredson, Intelligence: is it the epidemiologists elusive ‘fundamental cause’ of social class inequalities in health?, J Personality Social Psychol 86 (2004), pp. 174–199.
[19] H.J. Eysenck, Rebel with a cause: autobiography of Hans Eysenck, W.H. Allen, London (1990).
[20] U. Neisser et al., Intelligence: knowns and unknowns, Amer Psychol 51 (1996), pp. 77–101.
[21] I.J. Deary, Intelligence: a very short introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2001).
[22] L.S. Gottfredson, Applying double-standards to ‘divisive’ ideas, Perspect Psychol Sci 2 (2007), pp. 216–220.
[23] J. Malloy, James Watson tells the inconvenient truth: faces the consequences, Med Hypotheses 70 (2008), pp. 1081–1091.
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
Figureheads, ghost-writers and quant bloggers
Figureheads, ghost-writers and pseudonymous quant bloggers: The recent evolution of authorship in science publishing
Editorial - Bruce G. Charlton, Editor-in-Chief–Medical Hypotheses
Medical Hypotheses. 2008; 71: 475-480
doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2008.06.023
Summary
Traditionally, science has been published only under the proper names and postal addresses of the scientists who did the work. This is no longer the case, and over recent decades science authorship has fundamentally changed its character. At one extreme, prestigious scientists writing from high status institutions are used as mere figureheads to publish research that has been performed, analyzed and ‘ghost-written’ by commercial organizations. At the other extreme ‘quant bloggers’ are publishing real science with their personal identity shielded by pseudonyms and writing from internet addresses that give no indication of their location or professional affiliation. Yet the paradox is that while named high status scientists from famous institutions are operating with suspect integrity (e.g. covertly acting as figureheads) and minimal accountability (i.e. failing to respond to substantive criticism); pseudonymous bloggers – of mostly unknown identity, unknown education or training, and unknown address – are publishing interesting work and interacting with their critics on the internet. And at the same time as ‘official’ and professional science is increasingly timid careerist and dull; the self-organized, amateur realm of science blogs displays curiosity, scientific motivation, accountability, responsibility – and often considerable flair and skill. Quant bloggers and other internet scientists are, however, usually dependent on professional scientists to generate databases. But professional science has become highly constrained by non-scientific influences: increasingly sluggish, rigid, bureaucratic, managerial, and enmeshed with issues of pseudo-ethics, political correctness, public relations, politics and marketing. So it seems that professional science needs the quant bloggers. One possible scenario is that professional scientists may in future continue to be paid to do the plodding business of generating raw data (dull work that no one would do unless they were paid); but these same professional scientists (functioning essentially as either project managers or technicians) may be found to lack the boldness, flair, sheer ‘smarts’ or genuine interest in the subject to make sense of what they have discovered. Some branches of future science may then come to depend on a swarm of gifted ‘amateurs’ somewhat like the current quant bloggers; for analysis and integration of their data, for understanding its implications, and for speculating freely about the potential applications.
***
Traditionally, science has been published only under the proper names of the scientists who did the work. This is no longer the case, and – especially in the biomedical sciences – authorship has fundamentally changed its character. At one extreme, real names of prestigious scientists writing from high status institutions are used as figureheads to publish research that has been performed, analyzed and written by commercial organizations; while at the other extreme ‘quant bloggers’ are engaged in real science but with their personal identity shielded by pseudonyms and from web addresses that give no indication of their status, location, education or professional affiliation.
Personal status and accountability
Early science was mostly not published, but on the contrary kept secret and exploited for personal prestige and commercial gain [1]. It was an innovation of the Royal Society of London that science ought to be published – and the incentive to publish was gaining personal status among that elite Royal Society, and similar scientific societies. The earliest ‘publications’ were in the form of letters to other society members (which explains why the articles in the journal Nature are still called ‘letters’) and in the form of talks and lectures (records of which were preserved in volumes called ‘proceedings’ or ‘annals’ of these societies). The convention arose that status would be awarded to the first to publish new information – and these conventions served to overcome the incentive for secrecy and instead rapidly disseminate science which enabled the new recording and sharing of knowledge to lead to more rapid progress [1].
The tradition of publishing science only under real names served a variety of functions. One was self-interest, in that each scientist was usually motivated by competing for scientific prestige by striving to be the first to publish an idea, technique or new data. This required each publication to have an unique provenance. Scientific prestige was primarily allocated by logging and totalling each individual’s accumulated contribution.
Scientific accountability was another important principle. Anonymous publication was generally forbidden because it was unaccountable – if nobody knew who was making an anonymous assertion the author could not be called-upon to provide clarification or defend their data or reasoning; whereas by contrast science published under a specific person’s name was regarded as their personal responsibility. For accountability to be enforced also required that the work be published from a postal address, since most scientific communication that was not face to face, was done by postal correspondence. From this practice of named scientists publishing from specific (usually institutional) addresses, there emerged an informal convention that a scientist should respond to all reasonable written queries about their work, even up to the point of sharing raw data where substantive issues were involved.
For example, if a substantive critical letter was published in a professional venue referring to an scientific author’s work, then the author was obliged to respond; and the research was considered suspect until such time as the author had responded adequately to deal with the criticism. If an author failed to respond to a critical letter, or responded irrelevantly or without answering the substantive criticisms, then it would usually be assumed that – by default – the criticism had been correct.
So, in science, by contrast with the law, a scientist accused of error in a rational communication from a competent critic was traditionally regarded as “guilty until proven innocent” – this being a consequence of regarding newly-published science as merely conjectural (or ‘false’) until it had been validated by further (preferably independent) research.
The unaccountability of high status scientists
Over the past few decades, these ideas of personal responsibility and accountability seem to have broken down – at least in medical science. Scientists’ names no longer guarantee the provenance of the work published under that name, and a specific name and address no longer implies accountability. Especially has accountability broken down in relation to the highest status scientists.
From numerous informal observations over the past two decades, it seems clear that high status scientists are no longer required to respond to requests for clarification or to published criticism, but can ignore it with impunity. The traditional default that criticism was regarded as correct unless it was refuted, no longer seems to apply to high status scientists when a criticism comes from a lower-status scientist. This applies even when clarification is clearly necessary, when the criticism is potentially devastating, and even when critical communications are published as articles or correspondence in high impact journals. The fact is that, nowadays, high status scientists are seldom sanctioned in any way for ignoring criticism by the scientific community.
The current default assumption seems to be along the lines that high status scientists are always right unless and until conclusively demonstrated otherwise – in other words, high status scientists are now regarded as innocent until proved guilty. So that science published under the name of high status scientists from prestigious institutions is apparently regarded as intrinsically correct until such time as it is proven false.
And high status scientists are now placed under no obligation to co-operate with their critics in discovering the truth – in the first place high status scientists usually do not need to acknowledge or respond at all to criticism; if they respond they are not compelled to provide relevant refutation but are allowed to bluster, change the subject, and make ad hominem attacks on their critics; requests for extra methodological detail or raw data can be ignored. Sometimes, criticism is met with legal threats – for example accusations of libel.
This kind of blocking of critique happens precisely because the onus of proof in science has now reversed – at least in relation to high status scientists. I believe that it is precisely this lack of accountability of high status scientists for sloppiness, error, incompleteness or bias in their published research which has made it possible for them to act as figureheads to publish other people’s work under their own name.
Because of the prevailing lack of accountability, published scientific work is now seen as an undivided benefit for a scientist’s career. The consequence is a system in which the more research that is published under an author’s name, the better for that authors career: good quality published science accrues credit while poor quality published science does not attract sanctions and does not diminish the reputation of the scientist who published it – at worst bad science is merely ignored. And anyway, the ‘badness’ of science done by high status scientists must now be established using a new – and extraordinarily demanding – standard of proof.
The peer review cartel of high status scientists
The deep, underlying cause of the immunity to criticism of high status scientists is probably the greater role of peer review in science, and the domination of peer review by a minority (‘cartel’) of high status scientists. Peer review mechanisms are now used not only to evaluate completed science, but pre-emptively in allocating resources.
Modern science uses peer review mechanisms at many levels: defining overall research strategies, awarding research grants, granting ethical permission to do research, journal refereeing processes prior to publication, organizing conferences… indeed it is hard to find an area of science which is not dominated by peer review. This means that a low status scientist can have their career damaged (perhaps without knowing it) if s/he makes a powerful enemy of a high status scientist who is influential within the all-important peer review system. The problem is that peer review processes are systematically biased to give more weight to negative than positive evaluations (ie. a bad report has a greater impact on the review process than a good report [2]) – so having a high status enemy involved in the peer review system is likely to have a significantly damaging impact on a scientist’s career.
The result is that high status scientists are feared to the extent that the mass of lower-ranked scientists will not call them to account for their errors and misdemeanours in case they provoke reprisals via the peer review systems.
Another very important result of the centrality of peer review is that while traditional science was mostly a marketplace of ideas, modern science is dominated by a ‘cartel’ of scientists who are powerful within peer review and have quasi-monopolistic power. (In economics a cartel usually refers to a group of persons or organizations who cooperate to act as if a monopoly; to control production and prices and to protect themselves against competition, for example by lobbying government to introduce favourable regulations.)
Many of the trends of modern science which de-emphasize actual science and increase the emphasis on the activities which surround science can be understood as ways in which the cartel of high status scientists protect their research organizations (hence their own reputations) against competition. I am thinking of the increasing requirements for planning and coordination, the vast expansion of procedural and financial regulations, or the shift away from judging science by its accomplishments towards judging science by its ‘inputs’ (e.g. grant income, expensive technologies, numbers employed) – i.e. the whole style of ‘Big Science’ [3].
It is noticeable that the most prestigious branches of biomedical science (i.e. ‘prestigious’ as defined by the peer review cartel) are high capitalization specialties. For example, over the past couple of decades the use of extremely expensive brain imaging technologies in neuroscience has served to restrict participation in this field to those few who could afford to buy, maintain and run the latest version of these machines. Or, in the recent era of the human genome project, the high status laboratories were those which could afford to employ armies of sequencers. To those outside these fields it sometimes seemed as if the published output of novel brain imaging and large scale sequencing projects did not need to earn its status as breakthrough major science but rather had been pre-defined as significant.
The cost of technologies such as brain scanners, or huge work forces such as gene sequencers, therefore constitutes the minimum ‘capital’ a scientist must have before s/he can enter the marketplace of science and compete with the ‘incumbent’ high status scientists. The ‘market entry’ costs for doing high status science have risen and risen, and are now extraordinarily high compared with a few decades ago. In sum, high market entry costs (enforced by peer review) function as barriers which protect the scientific incumbents from competition.
Furthermore, once in the market and competing, the ‘overheads’ of science are another formidable barrier. The resources required for grant applications (including increasingly detailed planning, costing, billing and financial estimates) and for recruiting (including the expansion of employment and safety regulations) mean that the resources required for running a research team may now be very great indeed. A small researcher needs to cover the same fixed costs, therefore their overheads are higher relative to the actual science; and the large scale scientist also has the advantage of economies of scale. In the not-so-distant past a scientist could start work on a shoe-string and build-up; now the combination of high capital barriers and increased fixed administration costs are so onerous and so time-consuming as to make it extremely difficult, or impossible, for aspiring individuals or small teams to compete with the incumbent high status scientists.
How did this situation arise? Simple: all that high status scientists needed to do to secure their protected cartel was to acquiesce to external (e.g. governmental) pressures to over-regulate science. Incumbent high status scientists, who had already built-up a large administrative infrastructure, found that over-regulation gifted them with enormous structural advantages in perpetuating their scientific ‘empires’ because of this new protection against rivals.
The benefits to incumbent high status scientists may explain why science has been so easily subjected to over-regulation with barely a squeak of protest, and no significant resistance from the cartel of high status scientists who also control the peer review systems.
The greatly increased power of this cartel of incumbent high status scientists who participate in the ever-more-important processes of peer review is probably the underlying reason why high status scientists have now become de facto unaccountable – and how they can get away with flagrant scientific abuses such as ghost-writing.
Science ghost-writing
It has long been the case that high status scientists function as team leaders; and that their role in much research published under their name is managerial. However, it has recently emerged that some high status scientists – associated with the most prestigious universities and research institutions – do not even manage the research which appears under their names; but are functioning as little more than a figurehead, their names merely tagged-onto ready-made scientific publications for which the research was planned, prosecuted and analyzed by pharmaceutical companies, and the writing was done by commercial agencies [4], [5], [6] and [7].
The bottom-line function of such ghost-written publications is marketing rather than scientific enquiry. Naturally, the aim is that the named ‘authors’ of ghost-written publications should be high status scientists from prestigious institutions. Such names are apparently forthcoming. Very high impact ‘peer reviewed’ journals often publish such papers, and such papers attract more than usual levels of citations [4]. After all, they are professionally-written, have famous authors from famous institutions – and publication may be followed by very large scale purchases of thousands of ‘offprints’ (used by corporations for marketing purposes) which may yield extra income of many tens of thousands of dollars for journals.
This practice of figurehead authorship has been largely ignored, and the many individuals who have functioned as figureheads for ghost-written research have not yet been investigated or called to account – again it seems that immunity has been de facto accorded to high status scientists for practices which are dubious at best and corrupt at worst.
It seems apparent that although contemporary medical science still operates using the superficial forms of traditional science, such as crediting scientific publications to individuals identified by personal names and specific postal addresses, behind this apparent continuity the scientific practices have utterly transformed such that many of the most prestigious modern scientists now wield scientific power without scientific accountability.
The pseudonymous ‘quant bloggers’
It is a bizarre paradox of modern science that while named high status scientists with postal addresses at prestigious institutions are operating with suspect integrity and minimal accountability; by contrast, science bloggers – of (mostly) pseudonymous and unknown identity, unknown education or training, and writing from unknown addresses – are nonetheless publishing interesting work and having exciting interactions, on the internet.
The recent emergence of (frequently pseudonymous) ‘quant bloggers’ and other internet scientists is a phenomenon at the opposite extreme from the high status scientists who seem to be operating as individuals but in fact function as ‘front-men’ (or women) for anonymous teams with inscrutable agendas.
In what follows I provide only a very selective picture of blog science, based on my personal interests and tastes, and noting only the blogs that I have been reading for months or years. Clearly there are many, many other examples – but the blogosphere is now so vast that no individual can experience and evaluate more than a tiny fraction of the output.
The term ‘quant blogger’ (i.e. quantitative analysis blogger) was invented by Steve Sailer [8] who is the practicing ‘blogfather’ of an interconnected group of mostly pseudonymous bloggers that have been in some way inspired by Sailer’s example and his (often distinctly ‘non-PC’) interests in issues such as IQ; immigration; evolution; education; politics and sports – often analyzed by sex, class and race. Sailer has blogged many interesting quantitative analyses, including an influential hypothesis of the relationship between ‘affordable family formation’ and politics in the USA.
The Sailer-influenced quant bloggers include the pseudonymous Razib who hosts GNXP (Gene Expression) which includes several other quant bloggers such as the pseudonymous Agnostic and (his real name) Jason Malloy [9]. Other pseudonymous quant bloggers in this Sailer-descended group include Inductivist [10], Half-Sigma [11] and the Audacious Epigone [12].
Unrelated, not-Sailer-connected, quant bloggers include Engram who posts almost daily quantitative analyses on mainly socio-political or policy topics [13]; and who discovered an inverse relationship between capital punishment and murder rates in four developed nations. La Griffe du Lion has focused on IQ [14] and developed many hypotheses including the ‘smart fraction’ theory of economic development. The Climate Audit blog has been influential in its field, and is associated with discrediting the ‘hockey stick’ graph that was supposed to illustrate climate change over the past millenium [15].
In most of the above examples, typically the blogger presents analysis, tabulations or graphs of already-published data sets – such as population surveys or questionnaires; or does a re-analysis of a published scientific paper; or synthesizes several studies; or draws out applied implications of published science which are neglected (or obfuscated) by the primary authors. (Of course, quant bloggers usually also post chatty ‘opinion’ pieces and responses to current news.)
Although often the blogger’s true identify and location may be unknown, there is an accountability mechanism via the comments section of the blog which follows the primary blog posting, and potentially also by other blogs linking and critiquing the original blog. Most of the above named bloggers form a broadly-sympathetic network who comment-on and critique each others work. But the crucial point is that a quant blogger must behave such as to earn the trust of their readers – and this typically involves engaging with their critics, and refuting relevant criticisms to the satisfaction of their readership.
Presumably, the reason why most of these bloggers are pseudonymous is their subject matter: they are often dealing with population differences in relation to sex, class and race; focusing on controversial matters such as IQ, personality, educational achievement or crime. At present, in USA and Western Europe – and especially in universities – such issues are virtually taboo except when treated using elaborately euphemistic language and reaching politically correct conclusions [16]. This means that mainstream human sciences may err in ignoring robust, but politically-incorrect, interpretations for their data [e.g. 17].
Pseudonyms are used because scientists (and other media commentators) who work in these non-PC ‘taboo’ fields may be subject to the risk of denunciation by the media and to professional or institutional arbiters of coercive political correctness. The sanctions have ranged from the moderate unpleasantness of unpopularity among professional colleagues, up to deliberate misrepresentation and false ascription of opinions or motivations, mob-vilification, hate campaigns, persecution by employers (failure to get academic jobs, failure to get promotion or tenure, sacking etc.), legal sanctions, aggression and personal violence. Even the most distinguished scientists are vulnerable to onslaught: the hugely-influential psychologist Hans Eysenck was one of the earliest victims from the mid 1960s, the sociobiologist E.O Wilson was similarly attacked in the late 1970s, and more recently Harvard President Larry Summers and the great James D. Watson both lost their jobs after transgressing the bound of political correctness.
In such a context of endemic intimidation, a scientist’s natural wish to get maximum personal credit for their research by using their real name and address is often overwhelmed by sheer survival instinct – and pseudonyms and web addresses are regarded as safer. For such reasons, some of the most exciting and potentially important current scientific discourse is forced to be pseudonymous; even though – in a more honest, tolerant and rational world – it would surely be better to have scientific discussion between people using their real identities.
The future of internet science
There is a sense in which quant bloggers and other internet scientists are secondary-to and dependent-on professional science – which, after all, typically generates the databases. Professional scientists have the infrastructure, time and resources to do large and sustained projects; by contrast amateur or part-time internet scientists usually have only their brains, web-community, computers and spare time. On the other hand, a great deal of highly-prestigious mainstream quantitative science, published in the highest impact journals, also involves re-analysis and combination of already-collected data.
But professional science is significantly disadvantaged too, because modern science has become so highly constrained. Even compared with just a few decades ago, modern science is now over-planned, slow, rigid and bureaucratic. In fact, much modern science often has little to do with ‘science’ at all – but has become more like some kind of mega ‘project management’ task, analogous to building a new public hospital or major road bridge. Such large-scale and long-term activity makes modern scientists risk averse – and the leaders will avoid doing or saying things which may prevent them winning the next major research grant upon which depends their livelihood (and also the livelihoods of the large research teams which depend upon the leader’s continued ability to raise funds). So the nimble quant bloggers, lacking such baggage, are able do and say things which the professional scientists cannot, or will not, do and say.
The pedestrian nature of modern science means that the activity will fail to attract and retain the kind of creative people it used to. Future professional scientists will probably tend to comprise a large majority of specialized technicians being co-ordinated by a small minority of high status project managers. Both technicians and managers will typically lack the genuine ‘interest in the subject’ of old-style scientists – they will also lack boldness, flair, and either the motivation or the ability to get the most from the information they have gathered. Then professional science will become dependent on people like the science bloggers to understand and analyze their data.
One possible future outcome is that professional scientists will continue to be essential for the routine, highly-organized business of collecting or generating raw data. Professional scientists might therefore get paid to plod through the mechanical work of accumulating information (work that people will only do when they are paid to do it). But since they are too dull and timid to understand what they have amassed, gifted amateur scientists will be needed for the clever work. And spontaneously creative people like the best quant bloggers actually enjoy this kind of activity.
‘Serious’ science must have space for the fun of discovery, the play of skill, and the joy of insight; and this seems to be an increasing role for the blogosphere.
References
[1] D.L. Hull, Science as a process, Chicago University Press, Chicago (1988).
[2] D.F. Horrobin, The philosophical basis of peer review and the suppression of innovation, JAMA 263 (1990), pp. 1438–1441. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (70)
[3] J. Ziman, Real science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (2000).
[4] D. Healy and D. Cattell, Interface between authorship, industry and science in the domain of therapeutics, Brit J Psychiat 183 (2003), pp. 22–27.
[5] S. Sismondo, Ghost management: how much of the medical literature is shaped behind the scenes by the pharmaceutical industry?, PLoS Med 4 (2007), pp. 1429–1433.
[6] B. Moffat and C. Elliott, Ghost marketing: pharmaceutical companies and ghostwritten joural articles, Perspect Biol Med 50 (2007), pp. 18–31.
[7] D. Healy, Mania: a short history of bipolar disorder, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, USA (2008).
[8] Sailer S. Steve Sailer’s iSteve Blog,; 2008 [accessed 25.06.08].
[9] Gene expression,; 2008 [accessed 25.06.08].
[10] Inductivist,; 2008 [accessed 25.06.08].
[11] Half Sigma,; 2008 [accessed 25.06.08].
[12] The Audacious Epigone.; 2008 [accessed 25.06.08].
[13] Engram. Back Talk,; 2008 [accessed 25.06.08].
[14] La Griffe du Lion,; 2008 [accessed 25.06.08].
[15] McIntyre S. Climate Audit,; 2008 [accessed 25.06.08].
[16] 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.
[17] Half Sigma. Breastfeeding does not cause higher IQ.; 2008 [accessed 25.06.08].
Editorial - Bruce G. Charlton, Editor-in-Chief–Medical Hypotheses
Medical Hypotheses. 2008; 71: 475-480
doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2008.06.023
Summary
Traditionally, science has been published only under the proper names and postal addresses of the scientists who did the work. This is no longer the case, and over recent decades science authorship has fundamentally changed its character. At one extreme, prestigious scientists writing from high status institutions are used as mere figureheads to publish research that has been performed, analyzed and ‘ghost-written’ by commercial organizations. At the other extreme ‘quant bloggers’ are publishing real science with their personal identity shielded by pseudonyms and writing from internet addresses that give no indication of their location or professional affiliation. Yet the paradox is that while named high status scientists from famous institutions are operating with suspect integrity (e.g. covertly acting as figureheads) and minimal accountability (i.e. failing to respond to substantive criticism); pseudonymous bloggers – of mostly unknown identity, unknown education or training, and unknown address – are publishing interesting work and interacting with their critics on the internet. And at the same time as ‘official’ and professional science is increasingly timid careerist and dull; the self-organized, amateur realm of science blogs displays curiosity, scientific motivation, accountability, responsibility – and often considerable flair and skill. Quant bloggers and other internet scientists are, however, usually dependent on professional scientists to generate databases. But professional science has become highly constrained by non-scientific influences: increasingly sluggish, rigid, bureaucratic, managerial, and enmeshed with issues of pseudo-ethics, political correctness, public relations, politics and marketing. So it seems that professional science needs the quant bloggers. One possible scenario is that professional scientists may in future continue to be paid to do the plodding business of generating raw data (dull work that no one would do unless they were paid); but these same professional scientists (functioning essentially as either project managers or technicians) may be found to lack the boldness, flair, sheer ‘smarts’ or genuine interest in the subject to make sense of what they have discovered. Some branches of future science may then come to depend on a swarm of gifted ‘amateurs’ somewhat like the current quant bloggers; for analysis and integration of their data, for understanding its implications, and for speculating freely about the potential applications.
***
Traditionally, science has been published only under the proper names of the scientists who did the work. This is no longer the case, and – especially in the biomedical sciences – authorship has fundamentally changed its character. At one extreme, real names of prestigious scientists writing from high status institutions are used as figureheads to publish research that has been performed, analyzed and written by commercial organizations; while at the other extreme ‘quant bloggers’ are engaged in real science but with their personal identity shielded by pseudonyms and from web addresses that give no indication of their status, location, education or professional affiliation.
Personal status and accountability
Early science was mostly not published, but on the contrary kept secret and exploited for personal prestige and commercial gain [1]. It was an innovation of the Royal Society of London that science ought to be published – and the incentive to publish was gaining personal status among that elite Royal Society, and similar scientific societies. The earliest ‘publications’ were in the form of letters to other society members (which explains why the articles in the journal Nature are still called ‘letters’) and in the form of talks and lectures (records of which were preserved in volumes called ‘proceedings’ or ‘annals’ of these societies). The convention arose that status would be awarded to the first to publish new information – and these conventions served to overcome the incentive for secrecy and instead rapidly disseminate science which enabled the new recording and sharing of knowledge to lead to more rapid progress [1].
The tradition of publishing science only under real names served a variety of functions. One was self-interest, in that each scientist was usually motivated by competing for scientific prestige by striving to be the first to publish an idea, technique or new data. This required each publication to have an unique provenance. Scientific prestige was primarily allocated by logging and totalling each individual’s accumulated contribution.
Scientific accountability was another important principle. Anonymous publication was generally forbidden because it was unaccountable – if nobody knew who was making an anonymous assertion the author could not be called-upon to provide clarification or defend their data or reasoning; whereas by contrast science published under a specific person’s name was regarded as their personal responsibility. For accountability to be enforced also required that the work be published from a postal address, since most scientific communication that was not face to face, was done by postal correspondence. From this practice of named scientists publishing from specific (usually institutional) addresses, there emerged an informal convention that a scientist should respond to all reasonable written queries about their work, even up to the point of sharing raw data where substantive issues were involved.
For example, if a substantive critical letter was published in a professional venue referring to an scientific author’s work, then the author was obliged to respond; and the research was considered suspect until such time as the author had responded adequately to deal with the criticism. If an author failed to respond to a critical letter, or responded irrelevantly or without answering the substantive criticisms, then it would usually be assumed that – by default – the criticism had been correct.
So, in science, by contrast with the law, a scientist accused of error in a rational communication from a competent critic was traditionally regarded as “guilty until proven innocent” – this being a consequence of regarding newly-published science as merely conjectural (or ‘false’) until it had been validated by further (preferably independent) research.
The unaccountability of high status scientists
Over the past few decades, these ideas of personal responsibility and accountability seem to have broken down – at least in medical science. Scientists’ names no longer guarantee the provenance of the work published under that name, and a specific name and address no longer implies accountability. Especially has accountability broken down in relation to the highest status scientists.
From numerous informal observations over the past two decades, it seems clear that high status scientists are no longer required to respond to requests for clarification or to published criticism, but can ignore it with impunity. The traditional default that criticism was regarded as correct unless it was refuted, no longer seems to apply to high status scientists when a criticism comes from a lower-status scientist. This applies even when clarification is clearly necessary, when the criticism is potentially devastating, and even when critical communications are published as articles or correspondence in high impact journals. The fact is that, nowadays, high status scientists are seldom sanctioned in any way for ignoring criticism by the scientific community.
The current default assumption seems to be along the lines that high status scientists are always right unless and until conclusively demonstrated otherwise – in other words, high status scientists are now regarded as innocent until proved guilty. So that science published under the name of high status scientists from prestigious institutions is apparently regarded as intrinsically correct until such time as it is proven false.
And high status scientists are now placed under no obligation to co-operate with their critics in discovering the truth – in the first place high status scientists usually do not need to acknowledge or respond at all to criticism; if they respond they are not compelled to provide relevant refutation but are allowed to bluster, change the subject, and make ad hominem attacks on their critics; requests for extra methodological detail or raw data can be ignored. Sometimes, criticism is met with legal threats – for example accusations of libel.
This kind of blocking of critique happens precisely because the onus of proof in science has now reversed – at least in relation to high status scientists. I believe that it is precisely this lack of accountability of high status scientists for sloppiness, error, incompleteness or bias in their published research which has made it possible for them to act as figureheads to publish other people’s work under their own name.
Because of the prevailing lack of accountability, published scientific work is now seen as an undivided benefit for a scientist’s career. The consequence is a system in which the more research that is published under an author’s name, the better for that authors career: good quality published science accrues credit while poor quality published science does not attract sanctions and does not diminish the reputation of the scientist who published it – at worst bad science is merely ignored. And anyway, the ‘badness’ of science done by high status scientists must now be established using a new – and extraordinarily demanding – standard of proof.
The peer review cartel of high status scientists
The deep, underlying cause of the immunity to criticism of high status scientists is probably the greater role of peer review in science, and the domination of peer review by a minority (‘cartel’) of high status scientists. Peer review mechanisms are now used not only to evaluate completed science, but pre-emptively in allocating resources.
Modern science uses peer review mechanisms at many levels: defining overall research strategies, awarding research grants, granting ethical permission to do research, journal refereeing processes prior to publication, organizing conferences… indeed it is hard to find an area of science which is not dominated by peer review. This means that a low status scientist can have their career damaged (perhaps without knowing it) if s/he makes a powerful enemy of a high status scientist who is influential within the all-important peer review system. The problem is that peer review processes are systematically biased to give more weight to negative than positive evaluations (ie. a bad report has a greater impact on the review process than a good report [2]) – so having a high status enemy involved in the peer review system is likely to have a significantly damaging impact on a scientist’s career.
The result is that high status scientists are feared to the extent that the mass of lower-ranked scientists will not call them to account for their errors and misdemeanours in case they provoke reprisals via the peer review systems.
Another very important result of the centrality of peer review is that while traditional science was mostly a marketplace of ideas, modern science is dominated by a ‘cartel’ of scientists who are powerful within peer review and have quasi-monopolistic power. (In economics a cartel usually refers to a group of persons or organizations who cooperate to act as if a monopoly; to control production and prices and to protect themselves against competition, for example by lobbying government to introduce favourable regulations.)
Many of the trends of modern science which de-emphasize actual science and increase the emphasis on the activities which surround science can be understood as ways in which the cartel of high status scientists protect their research organizations (hence their own reputations) against competition. I am thinking of the increasing requirements for planning and coordination, the vast expansion of procedural and financial regulations, or the shift away from judging science by its accomplishments towards judging science by its ‘inputs’ (e.g. grant income, expensive technologies, numbers employed) – i.e. the whole style of ‘Big Science’ [3].
It is noticeable that the most prestigious branches of biomedical science (i.e. ‘prestigious’ as defined by the peer review cartel) are high capitalization specialties. For example, over the past couple of decades the use of extremely expensive brain imaging technologies in neuroscience has served to restrict participation in this field to those few who could afford to buy, maintain and run the latest version of these machines. Or, in the recent era of the human genome project, the high status laboratories were those which could afford to employ armies of sequencers. To those outside these fields it sometimes seemed as if the published output of novel brain imaging and large scale sequencing projects did not need to earn its status as breakthrough major science but rather had been pre-defined as significant.
The cost of technologies such as brain scanners, or huge work forces such as gene sequencers, therefore constitutes the minimum ‘capital’ a scientist must have before s/he can enter the marketplace of science and compete with the ‘incumbent’ high status scientists. The ‘market entry’ costs for doing high status science have risen and risen, and are now extraordinarily high compared with a few decades ago. In sum, high market entry costs (enforced by peer review) function as barriers which protect the scientific incumbents from competition.
Furthermore, once in the market and competing, the ‘overheads’ of science are another formidable barrier. The resources required for grant applications (including increasingly detailed planning, costing, billing and financial estimates) and for recruiting (including the expansion of employment and safety regulations) mean that the resources required for running a research team may now be very great indeed. A small researcher needs to cover the same fixed costs, therefore their overheads are higher relative to the actual science; and the large scale scientist also has the advantage of economies of scale. In the not-so-distant past a scientist could start work on a shoe-string and build-up; now the combination of high capital barriers and increased fixed administration costs are so onerous and so time-consuming as to make it extremely difficult, or impossible, for aspiring individuals or small teams to compete with the incumbent high status scientists.
How did this situation arise? Simple: all that high status scientists needed to do to secure their protected cartel was to acquiesce to external (e.g. governmental) pressures to over-regulate science. Incumbent high status scientists, who had already built-up a large administrative infrastructure, found that over-regulation gifted them with enormous structural advantages in perpetuating their scientific ‘empires’ because of this new protection against rivals.
The benefits to incumbent high status scientists may explain why science has been so easily subjected to over-regulation with barely a squeak of protest, and no significant resistance from the cartel of high status scientists who also control the peer review systems.
The greatly increased power of this cartel of incumbent high status scientists who participate in the ever-more-important processes of peer review is probably the underlying reason why high status scientists have now become de facto unaccountable – and how they can get away with flagrant scientific abuses such as ghost-writing.
Science ghost-writing
It has long been the case that high status scientists function as team leaders; and that their role in much research published under their name is managerial. However, it has recently emerged that some high status scientists – associated with the most prestigious universities and research institutions – do not even manage the research which appears under their names; but are functioning as little more than a figurehead, their names merely tagged-onto ready-made scientific publications for which the research was planned, prosecuted and analyzed by pharmaceutical companies, and the writing was done by commercial agencies [4], [5], [6] and [7].
The bottom-line function of such ghost-written publications is marketing rather than scientific enquiry. Naturally, the aim is that the named ‘authors’ of ghost-written publications should be high status scientists from prestigious institutions. Such names are apparently forthcoming. Very high impact ‘peer reviewed’ journals often publish such papers, and such papers attract more than usual levels of citations [4]. After all, they are professionally-written, have famous authors from famous institutions – and publication may be followed by very large scale purchases of thousands of ‘offprints’ (used by corporations for marketing purposes) which may yield extra income of many tens of thousands of dollars for journals.
This practice of figurehead authorship has been largely ignored, and the many individuals who have functioned as figureheads for ghost-written research have not yet been investigated or called to account – again it seems that immunity has been de facto accorded to high status scientists for practices which are dubious at best and corrupt at worst.
It seems apparent that although contemporary medical science still operates using the superficial forms of traditional science, such as crediting scientific publications to individuals identified by personal names and specific postal addresses, behind this apparent continuity the scientific practices have utterly transformed such that many of the most prestigious modern scientists now wield scientific power without scientific accountability.
The pseudonymous ‘quant bloggers’
It is a bizarre paradox of modern science that while named high status scientists with postal addresses at prestigious institutions are operating with suspect integrity and minimal accountability; by contrast, science bloggers – of (mostly) pseudonymous and unknown identity, unknown education or training, and writing from unknown addresses – are nonetheless publishing interesting work and having exciting interactions, on the internet.
The recent emergence of (frequently pseudonymous) ‘quant bloggers’ and other internet scientists is a phenomenon at the opposite extreme from the high status scientists who seem to be operating as individuals but in fact function as ‘front-men’ (or women) for anonymous teams with inscrutable agendas.
In what follows I provide only a very selective picture of blog science, based on my personal interests and tastes, and noting only the blogs that I have been reading for months or years. Clearly there are many, many other examples – but the blogosphere is now so vast that no individual can experience and evaluate more than a tiny fraction of the output.
The term ‘quant blogger’ (i.e. quantitative analysis blogger) was invented by Steve Sailer [8] who is the practicing ‘blogfather’ of an interconnected group of mostly pseudonymous bloggers that have been in some way inspired by Sailer’s example and his (often distinctly ‘non-PC’) interests in issues such as IQ; immigration; evolution; education; politics and sports – often analyzed by sex, class and race. Sailer has blogged many interesting quantitative analyses, including an influential hypothesis of the relationship between ‘affordable family formation’ and politics in the USA.
The Sailer-influenced quant bloggers include the pseudonymous Razib who hosts GNXP (Gene Expression) which includes several other quant bloggers such as the pseudonymous Agnostic and (his real name) Jason Malloy [9]. Other pseudonymous quant bloggers in this Sailer-descended group include Inductivist [10], Half-Sigma [11] and the Audacious Epigone [12].
Unrelated, not-Sailer-connected, quant bloggers include Engram who posts almost daily quantitative analyses on mainly socio-political or policy topics [13]; and who discovered an inverse relationship between capital punishment and murder rates in four developed nations. La Griffe du Lion has focused on IQ [14] and developed many hypotheses including the ‘smart fraction’ theory of economic development. The Climate Audit blog has been influential in its field, and is associated with discrediting the ‘hockey stick’ graph that was supposed to illustrate climate change over the past millenium [15].
In most of the above examples, typically the blogger presents analysis, tabulations or graphs of already-published data sets – such as population surveys or questionnaires; or does a re-analysis of a published scientific paper; or synthesizes several studies; or draws out applied implications of published science which are neglected (or obfuscated) by the primary authors. (Of course, quant bloggers usually also post chatty ‘opinion’ pieces and responses to current news.)
Although often the blogger’s true identify and location may be unknown, there is an accountability mechanism via the comments section of the blog which follows the primary blog posting, and potentially also by other blogs linking and critiquing the original blog. Most of the above named bloggers form a broadly-sympathetic network who comment-on and critique each others work. But the crucial point is that a quant blogger must behave such as to earn the trust of their readers – and this typically involves engaging with their critics, and refuting relevant criticisms to the satisfaction of their readership.
Presumably, the reason why most of these bloggers are pseudonymous is their subject matter: they are often dealing with population differences in relation to sex, class and race; focusing on controversial matters such as IQ, personality, educational achievement or crime. At present, in USA and Western Europe – and especially in universities – such issues are virtually taboo except when treated using elaborately euphemistic language and reaching politically correct conclusions [16]. This means that mainstream human sciences may err in ignoring robust, but politically-incorrect, interpretations for their data [e.g. 17].
Pseudonyms are used because scientists (and other media commentators) who work in these non-PC ‘taboo’ fields may be subject to the risk of denunciation by the media and to professional or institutional arbiters of coercive political correctness. The sanctions have ranged from the moderate unpleasantness of unpopularity among professional colleagues, up to deliberate misrepresentation and false ascription of opinions or motivations, mob-vilification, hate campaigns, persecution by employers (failure to get academic jobs, failure to get promotion or tenure, sacking etc.), legal sanctions, aggression and personal violence. Even the most distinguished scientists are vulnerable to onslaught: the hugely-influential psychologist Hans Eysenck was one of the earliest victims from the mid 1960s, the sociobiologist E.O Wilson was similarly attacked in the late 1970s, and more recently Harvard President Larry Summers and the great James D. Watson both lost their jobs after transgressing the bound of political correctness.
In such a context of endemic intimidation, a scientist’s natural wish to get maximum personal credit for their research by using their real name and address is often overwhelmed by sheer survival instinct – and pseudonyms and web addresses are regarded as safer. For such reasons, some of the most exciting and potentially important current scientific discourse is forced to be pseudonymous; even though – in a more honest, tolerant and rational world – it would surely be better to have scientific discussion between people using their real identities.
The future of internet science
There is a sense in which quant bloggers and other internet scientists are secondary-to and dependent-on professional science – which, after all, typically generates the databases. Professional scientists have the infrastructure, time and resources to do large and sustained projects; by contrast amateur or part-time internet scientists usually have only their brains, web-community, computers and spare time. On the other hand, a great deal of highly-prestigious mainstream quantitative science, published in the highest impact journals, also involves re-analysis and combination of already-collected data.
But professional science is significantly disadvantaged too, because modern science has become so highly constrained. Even compared with just a few decades ago, modern science is now over-planned, slow, rigid and bureaucratic. In fact, much modern science often has little to do with ‘science’ at all – but has become more like some kind of mega ‘project management’ task, analogous to building a new public hospital or major road bridge. Such large-scale and long-term activity makes modern scientists risk averse – and the leaders will avoid doing or saying things which may prevent them winning the next major research grant upon which depends their livelihood (and also the livelihoods of the large research teams which depend upon the leader’s continued ability to raise funds). So the nimble quant bloggers, lacking such baggage, are able do and say things which the professional scientists cannot, or will not, do and say.
The pedestrian nature of modern science means that the activity will fail to attract and retain the kind of creative people it used to. Future professional scientists will probably tend to comprise a large majority of specialized technicians being co-ordinated by a small minority of high status project managers. Both technicians and managers will typically lack the genuine ‘interest in the subject’ of old-style scientists – they will also lack boldness, flair, and either the motivation or the ability to get the most from the information they have gathered. Then professional science will become dependent on people like the science bloggers to understand and analyze their data.
One possible future outcome is that professional scientists will continue to be essential for the routine, highly-organized business of collecting or generating raw data. Professional scientists might therefore get paid to plod through the mechanical work of accumulating information (work that people will only do when they are paid to do it). But since they are too dull and timid to understand what they have amassed, gifted amateur scientists will be needed for the clever work. And spontaneously creative people like the best quant bloggers actually enjoy this kind of activity.
‘Serious’ science must have space for the fun of discovery, the play of skill, and the joy of insight; and this seems to be an increasing role for the blogosphere.
References
[1] D.L. Hull, Science as a process, Chicago University Press, Chicago (1988).
[2] D.F. Horrobin, The philosophical basis of peer review and the suppression of innovation, JAMA 263 (1990), pp. 1438–1441. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (70)
[3] J. Ziman, Real science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (2000).
[4] D. Healy and D. Cattell, Interface between authorship, industry and science in the domain of therapeutics, Brit J Psychiat 183 (2003), pp. 22–27.
[5] S. Sismondo, Ghost management: how much of the medical literature is shaped behind the scenes by the pharmaceutical industry?, PLoS Med 4 (2007), pp. 1429–1433.
[6] B. Moffat and C. Elliott, Ghost marketing: pharmaceutical companies and ghostwritten joural articles, Perspect Biol Med 50 (2007), pp. 18–31.
[7] D. Healy, Mania: a short history of bipolar disorder, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, USA (2008).
[8] Sailer S. Steve Sailer’s iSteve Blog,
[9] Gene expression,
[10] Inductivist,
[11] Half Sigma,
[12] The Audacious Epigone.
[13] Engram. Back Talk,
[14] La Griffe du Lion,
[15] McIntyre S. Climate Audit,
[16] 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.
[17] Half Sigma. Breastfeeding does not cause higher IQ.
Saturday, 26 July 2008
Zombie Science - dead but won't lie down
Editorial - Bruce G. Charlton
Zombie science: A sinister consequence of evaluating scientific theories purely on the basis of enlightened self-interest. Medical Hypotheses. 2008; Volume 71: 327-329
***
Summary
Although the classical ideal is that scientific theories are evaluated by a careful teasing-out of their internal logic and external implications, and checking whether these deductions and predictions are in-line-with old and new observations; the fact that so many vague, dumb or incoherent scientific theories are apparently believed by so many scientists for so many years is suggestive that this ideal does not necessarily reflect real world practice. In the real world it looks more like most scientists are quite willing to pursue wrong ideas for so long as they are rewarded with a better chance of achieving more grants, publications and status. The classic account has it that bogus theories should readily be demolished by sceptical (or jealous) competitor scientists. However, in practice even the most conclusive ‘hatchet jobs’ may fail to kill, or even weaken, phoney hypotheses when they are backed-up with sufficient economic muscle in the form of lavish and sustained funding. And when a branch of science based on phoney theories serves a useful but non-scientific purpose, it may be kept-going indefinitely by continuous transfusions of cash from those whose interests it serves. If this happens, real science expires and a ‘zombie science’ evolves. Zombie science is science that is dead but will not lie down. It keeps twitching and lumbering around so that (from a distance, and with your eyes half-closed) zombie science looks much like the real thing. But in fact the zombie has no life of its own; it is animated and moved only by the incessant pumping of funds. If zombie science is not scientifically-useable – what is its function? In a nutshell, zombie science is supported because it is useful propaganda to be deployed in arenas such as political rhetoric, public administration, management, public relations, marketing and the mass media generally. It persuades, it constructs taboos, it buttresses some kind of rhetorical attempt to shape mass opinion. Indeed, zombie science often comes across in the mass media as being more plausible than real science; and it is precisely the superficial face-plausibility which is the sole and sufficient purpose of zombie science.
***
How do scientists decide whether a theory is ‘valid’?
In contrast to the ideal of impartial and objective analysis, in the real world it looks more like most scientists are quite willing to pursue wrong ideas – so long as they are rewarded for doing so with a better chance of achieving more grants, publications and status.
Thus is ‘enlightened self-interest’ a powerful factor in scientific evaluation. ‘Self-interest’ because the primary criterion of the ‘validity’ of a theory is whether or not acting-upon-it will benefit the career of the individual scientist; ‘enlightened’ because the canny career scientist will be looking ahead a few years in order to prefer that theory which offers the best prospect of netting the next grant, tenure, promotion or prestigious job opportunity.
When a new theory is launched upon the population of scientists, it is unlikely to win converts unless the early-adopters are rewarded in a fairly obvious fashion – usually with a greater chance of generous research funding, the opportunity to publish in prestigious journals (plus a raft of new second-string specialist journals – to provide a home for the more modest and less-important papers), and the hope of increased status exemplified by interest, admiration and respect from other scientists.
How do bogus theories survive?
While it is simply human nature to respond to immediate incentives, this phenomenon does imply that theories may become popular or even dominant purely because of their association with immediate incentives – and despite their scientific weaknesses.
In terms of the classical theory of science; bogus theories should be readily demolished by sceptical (or jealous) competitor scientists, who will denounce the weaknesses of merely-fashionable theories in conferences and in print. However, in practice it seems that even the most conclusive ‘hatchet jobs’ done on phoney theories will fail to kill, or even weaken, them when the phoney theories are backed-up with sufficient economic muscle in the form of funding. Scientists will – at the margin – gravitate to where the money is; and the paraphernalia of specialist conferences (to present results at) journals (to publish in) and academic jobs (to work in) will follow as day follows night; so long as the funding stream is sufficiently deep and sustained.
Classical theory has it that a bogus hypothesis will be rejected when it fails to predict ‘reality’ as determined by controlled observations and experiments. But such a catastrophe can be deferred almost indefinitely by the elaboration of secondary hypotheses to explain why not fitting the facts is not – after all – fatal to the theory; but instead merely implies the need for a more complex theory – which then requires further testing (and generates more work for the bogus believers).
Furthermore, since the new version of the bogus theory, with its many auxiliary secondary hypotheses, is so complex – this complexity makes it that much harder to test: further putting-off the time when the bogus theory needs to be abandoned.
(Meanwhile, a much simpler rival theory – i.e. that the first theory is phoney, and always was phoney, and this is why it so singularly fails to predict reality – is regarded as simplistic, crass, merely a sign of lack of sophistication …)
And anyway, there are massive ‘sunk costs’ associated with the phoney theory including the reputations of numerous scientists who are now successful and powerful on the back of the phoney theory, and who by-now control the peer review process (including allocation of grants, publications and jobs) so there is a powerful disincentive against upsetting the apple cart.
False theories, theories which never did have anything in their favour except careerism, can therefore prove very long-lived. However, they are probably not immortal. Eventually, the branch of science which is underpinned by a bogus hypotheses will be evaluated as a whole.
People will ask: what is the good of all this activity, effort and expense? And the answer will be – no good at all. An area of science underpinned by a bogus theory is really only a species of job-creation or make-work. Perhaps there will be some by-products – for example the development of new methods and technologies. But since these are an accidental spin-off, they do not serve to justify the field as a whole. And the plug may be pulled – so a whole branch of science goes down the drain.
The zombification of science
On the other hand, when a branch of science based on phoney theories is serving a useful but non-scientific purpose it may be kept-going by continuous transfusions of cash from those whose interests it serves.
For example, if a branch of pseudo-science based on a phoney theory is nonetheless valuable for political purposes (e.g. to justify government policies) or for marketing purposes (to provide a rationale for sales) then real science expires and a ‘zombie science’ evolves.
Zombie science is science that is dead but will not lie down. It keeps twitching and lumbering around so that (from a distance, and with your eyes half-closed) zombie science looks much like real science. But in fact the zombie has no life of its own; it is animated and moved only by the incessant pumping of funds.
Proper science finds its use, and gets its validation, from being deployed in technology. So proper medical science is underpinned by the effectiveness of medical treatments based upon its theories and results; proper physics is underpinned by successful engineering – and so on. But the findings of zombie science do not have value for technology because any technology built using bogus theories would likely not work in the first place; and if it did happen to survive construction then would soon fall from the sky, collapse, or otherwise crash and burn.
(Of course, such technical disasters can sometimes themselves be explained-away – and thereby covered-up – by yet further phoney theoretical elaborations, especially when there is monopolistic control of information. However, so long as there are rival competing technologies being chosen by those who use them and depend on them, the inferiority of technologies based on bogus science is usually apparent.)
So, zombie science is not useable by applied science. What, then, is its function? In a nutshell, zombie science is supported because it is useful propaganda. Zombie science is deployed in arenas such as political rhetoric, public administration, management, public relations, marketing and the mass media generally. It persuades, it constructs taboos, it buttresses some kind of rhetorical attempt to shape mass opinion.
Indeed, zombie science often comes across in the mass media as being more plausible than real science; and it is precisely the superficial face-plausibility which in actuality is the sole and sufficient purpose of zombie science.
Can zombie science be killed?
Zombie science can be seen as the ultimate consequence of the practice of scientists evaluating theories in terms of their propensity to enhance scientific careers in the short- to medium-term – when this propensity is unconstrained by the imperative to use science in applied technology. Immediate personal careerist benefits seem easily able to overwhelm the more theoretical and abstract scientific benefits of trying to establish and adhere to the ‘real world’ truth.
What does this mean and what can be done about it? For one thing it suggests that the process by which science moves towards the truth may be much slower and coarser than it apparently used to be. In current science, there seems to be a greater possibility that large scale change may be fashion rather than progress, and such change may be serving propagandistic goals rather than advancing scientific understanding.
The emergent slowness in self-correction may perhaps be a consequence of the greatly increased size of the scientific enterprise as it has grown over recent decades – science now has a great deal of inertia. Science in the past was fast, light and nimble; and as easily redirected as a fleeing antelope. By comparison modern science may have a lumbering pace, but its vast bulk means that once it has begun moving in a particular direction, trying to deflect its path is like stopping a charging rhinoceros.
Any realistic prospect of reversing the expansion of zombie science would seem to involve greater competition among the suppliers of research grants. Where science funders are few, it is easier for a bogus theory to survive uncontested – whereas in situations where there are many potential sources of funding there is likely to be some competition among funders to debunk and replace bogus theories supported by rival grant givers.
(This model assumes that grant-awarders are engaged in some kind of competition to become the agency that supports the best, most revolutionary and most technologically useful scientific research – however, it is uncertain whether funders do in fact operate in this way. Certainly it would be desirable if grant agencies did compete to fund the best science and scientists – but perhaps funders cooperate, coordinate and collude, and therefore should instead be regarded as a cartel.)
In a world of competition among science funders, a particular research foundation (so long as it was sufficiently large and influential) could use its resources to help build-up a rival new theory to challenge, then supplant, an old and scientifically unsuccessful (because phoney) theory. By backing a winner and thereby triggering a scientific revolution, a competitive research foundation could expect to grow in fame and influence.
The natural desire of one scientist to thrive, even at the expense of another scientist’s reputation and livelihood, would in this instance be additionally fuelled by the incentive of new sources of research support.
The resulting combination of individual ambition and acquisitiveness should ensure a sufficient supply of would-be debunkers to keep the gardens of science weeded of bogus theories, and to banish the zombies of science to the graveyards where they belong.
Zombie science: A sinister consequence of evaluating scientific theories purely on the basis of enlightened self-interest. Medical Hypotheses. 2008; Volume 71: 327-329
***
Summary
Although the classical ideal is that scientific theories are evaluated by a careful teasing-out of their internal logic and external implications, and checking whether these deductions and predictions are in-line-with old and new observations; the fact that so many vague, dumb or incoherent scientific theories are apparently believed by so many scientists for so many years is suggestive that this ideal does not necessarily reflect real world practice. In the real world it looks more like most scientists are quite willing to pursue wrong ideas for so long as they are rewarded with a better chance of achieving more grants, publications and status. The classic account has it that bogus theories should readily be demolished by sceptical (or jealous) competitor scientists. However, in practice even the most conclusive ‘hatchet jobs’ may fail to kill, or even weaken, phoney hypotheses when they are backed-up with sufficient economic muscle in the form of lavish and sustained funding. And when a branch of science based on phoney theories serves a useful but non-scientific purpose, it may be kept-going indefinitely by continuous transfusions of cash from those whose interests it serves. If this happens, real science expires and a ‘zombie science’ evolves. Zombie science is science that is dead but will not lie down. It keeps twitching and lumbering around so that (from a distance, and with your eyes half-closed) zombie science looks much like the real thing. But in fact the zombie has no life of its own; it is animated and moved only by the incessant pumping of funds. If zombie science is not scientifically-useable – what is its function? In a nutshell, zombie science is supported because it is useful propaganda to be deployed in arenas such as political rhetoric, public administration, management, public relations, marketing and the mass media generally. It persuades, it constructs taboos, it buttresses some kind of rhetorical attempt to shape mass opinion. Indeed, zombie science often comes across in the mass media as being more plausible than real science; and it is precisely the superficial face-plausibility which is the sole and sufficient purpose of zombie science.
***
How do scientists decide whether a theory is ‘valid’?
In contrast to the ideal of impartial and objective analysis, in the real world it looks more like most scientists are quite willing to pursue wrong ideas – so long as they are rewarded for doing so with a better chance of achieving more grants, publications and status.
Thus is ‘enlightened self-interest’ a powerful factor in scientific evaluation. ‘Self-interest’ because the primary criterion of the ‘validity’ of a theory is whether or not acting-upon-it will benefit the career of the individual scientist; ‘enlightened’ because the canny career scientist will be looking ahead a few years in order to prefer that theory which offers the best prospect of netting the next grant, tenure, promotion or prestigious job opportunity.
When a new theory is launched upon the population of scientists, it is unlikely to win converts unless the early-adopters are rewarded in a fairly obvious fashion – usually with a greater chance of generous research funding, the opportunity to publish in prestigious journals (plus a raft of new second-string specialist journals – to provide a home for the more modest and less-important papers), and the hope of increased status exemplified by interest, admiration and respect from other scientists.
How do bogus theories survive?
While it is simply human nature to respond to immediate incentives, this phenomenon does imply that theories may become popular or even dominant purely because of their association with immediate incentives – and despite their scientific weaknesses.
In terms of the classical theory of science; bogus theories should be readily demolished by sceptical (or jealous) competitor scientists, who will denounce the weaknesses of merely-fashionable theories in conferences and in print. However, in practice it seems that even the most conclusive ‘hatchet jobs’ done on phoney theories will fail to kill, or even weaken, them when the phoney theories are backed-up with sufficient economic muscle in the form of funding. Scientists will – at the margin – gravitate to where the money is; and the paraphernalia of specialist conferences (to present results at) journals (to publish in) and academic jobs (to work in) will follow as day follows night; so long as the funding stream is sufficiently deep and sustained.
Classical theory has it that a bogus hypothesis will be rejected when it fails to predict ‘reality’ as determined by controlled observations and experiments. But such a catastrophe can be deferred almost indefinitely by the elaboration of secondary hypotheses to explain why not fitting the facts is not – after all – fatal to the theory; but instead merely implies the need for a more complex theory – which then requires further testing (and generates more work for the bogus believers).
Furthermore, since the new version of the bogus theory, with its many auxiliary secondary hypotheses, is so complex – this complexity makes it that much harder to test: further putting-off the time when the bogus theory needs to be abandoned.
(Meanwhile, a much simpler rival theory – i.e. that the first theory is phoney, and always was phoney, and this is why it so singularly fails to predict reality – is regarded as simplistic, crass, merely a sign of lack of sophistication …)
And anyway, there are massive ‘sunk costs’ associated with the phoney theory including the reputations of numerous scientists who are now successful and powerful on the back of the phoney theory, and who by-now control the peer review process (including allocation of grants, publications and jobs) so there is a powerful disincentive against upsetting the apple cart.
False theories, theories which never did have anything in their favour except careerism, can therefore prove very long-lived. However, they are probably not immortal. Eventually, the branch of science which is underpinned by a bogus hypotheses will be evaluated as a whole.
People will ask: what is the good of all this activity, effort and expense? And the answer will be – no good at all. An area of science underpinned by a bogus theory is really only a species of job-creation or make-work. Perhaps there will be some by-products – for example the development of new methods and technologies. But since these are an accidental spin-off, they do not serve to justify the field as a whole. And the plug may be pulled – so a whole branch of science goes down the drain.
The zombification of science
On the other hand, when a branch of science based on phoney theories is serving a useful but non-scientific purpose it may be kept-going by continuous transfusions of cash from those whose interests it serves.
For example, if a branch of pseudo-science based on a phoney theory is nonetheless valuable for political purposes (e.g. to justify government policies) or for marketing purposes (to provide a rationale for sales) then real science expires and a ‘zombie science’ evolves.
Zombie science is science that is dead but will not lie down. It keeps twitching and lumbering around so that (from a distance, and with your eyes half-closed) zombie science looks much like real science. But in fact the zombie has no life of its own; it is animated and moved only by the incessant pumping of funds.
Proper science finds its use, and gets its validation, from being deployed in technology. So proper medical science is underpinned by the effectiveness of medical treatments based upon its theories and results; proper physics is underpinned by successful engineering – and so on. But the findings of zombie science do not have value for technology because any technology built using bogus theories would likely not work in the first place; and if it did happen to survive construction then would soon fall from the sky, collapse, or otherwise crash and burn.
(Of course, such technical disasters can sometimes themselves be explained-away – and thereby covered-up – by yet further phoney theoretical elaborations, especially when there is monopolistic control of information. However, so long as there are rival competing technologies being chosen by those who use them and depend on them, the inferiority of technologies based on bogus science is usually apparent.)
So, zombie science is not useable by applied science. What, then, is its function? In a nutshell, zombie science is supported because it is useful propaganda. Zombie science is deployed in arenas such as political rhetoric, public administration, management, public relations, marketing and the mass media generally. It persuades, it constructs taboos, it buttresses some kind of rhetorical attempt to shape mass opinion.
Indeed, zombie science often comes across in the mass media as being more plausible than real science; and it is precisely the superficial face-plausibility which in actuality is the sole and sufficient purpose of zombie science.
Can zombie science be killed?
Zombie science can be seen as the ultimate consequence of the practice of scientists evaluating theories in terms of their propensity to enhance scientific careers in the short- to medium-term – when this propensity is unconstrained by the imperative to use science in applied technology. Immediate personal careerist benefits seem easily able to overwhelm the more theoretical and abstract scientific benefits of trying to establish and adhere to the ‘real world’ truth.
What does this mean and what can be done about it? For one thing it suggests that the process by which science moves towards the truth may be much slower and coarser than it apparently used to be. In current science, there seems to be a greater possibility that large scale change may be fashion rather than progress, and such change may be serving propagandistic goals rather than advancing scientific understanding.
The emergent slowness in self-correction may perhaps be a consequence of the greatly increased size of the scientific enterprise as it has grown over recent decades – science now has a great deal of inertia. Science in the past was fast, light and nimble; and as easily redirected as a fleeing antelope. By comparison modern science may have a lumbering pace, but its vast bulk means that once it has begun moving in a particular direction, trying to deflect its path is like stopping a charging rhinoceros.
Any realistic prospect of reversing the expansion of zombie science would seem to involve greater competition among the suppliers of research grants. Where science funders are few, it is easier for a bogus theory to survive uncontested – whereas in situations where there are many potential sources of funding there is likely to be some competition among funders to debunk and replace bogus theories supported by rival grant givers.
(This model assumes that grant-awarders are engaged in some kind of competition to become the agency that supports the best, most revolutionary and most technologically useful scientific research – however, it is uncertain whether funders do in fact operate in this way. Certainly it would be desirable if grant agencies did compete to fund the best science and scientists – but perhaps funders cooperate, coordinate and collude, and therefore should instead be regarded as a cartel.)
In a world of competition among science funders, a particular research foundation (so long as it was sufficiently large and influential) could use its resources to help build-up a rival new theory to challenge, then supplant, an old and scientifically unsuccessful (because phoney) theory. By backing a winner and thereby triggering a scientific revolution, a competitive research foundation could expect to grow in fame and influence.
The natural desire of one scientist to thrive, even at the expense of another scientist’s reputation and livelihood, would in this instance be additionally fuelled by the incentive of new sources of research support.
The resulting combination of individual ambition and acquisitiveness should ensure a sufficient supply of would-be debunkers to keep the gardens of science weeded of bogus theories, and to banish the zombies of science to the graveyards where they belong.
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
Mavericks versus team players
Mavericks versus team players: The trade-off between shared glory and making a personal contribution
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2008; 71: 165-167.
***
Summary
The modern world is characterized by progressive specialization of function and ever-larger-scale coordination of these ever-more-specialized functions. More and more of science is done by increasing-sized teams of specialists, and the ability to engage in ‘teamwork’ is regarded as an almost essential attribute for most scientists. But teamwork does not suit all personality types. Some ‘maverick’ individuals would rather have personal credit for a relatively modest scientific contribution which they achieved (mostly) by themselves, than a share of credit in a much larger scientific contribution generated by a large team. The present system of medical science is organized to discourage mavericks and, on the whole, this is probably justifiable on the basis that scientists are not natural team players. Extra inducements are necessary to get people to adopt the relatively self-effacing behaviours necessary for building the large organizations of complementary specialists that are necessary for tackling many of the most intractable modern scientific problems. However, an ethos of teamwork does carry substantial disadvantages. Although most scientists are dispensable, and do not make a significant personal contribution, the very best scientists do make a difference to the rate of progress of science. And top notch scientists are wasted as team players. The very best scientists can function only as mavericks because they are doing science for vocational reasons. The highest intensity of personal commitment requires individual rewards from distinctive contributions. In conclusion, the current incentive system that encourages teamwork involves a trade-off. The majority of modestly talented scientists can probably achieve more when working as members of a team. But the very best scientists probably need to work as mavericks.
***
Science, like most aspects of the modern world, is characterized by progressive specialization of function and ever-larger-scale coordination of these ever-more-specialized functions.
This applies to scientific careers also. More and more of science is done by increasing-sized teams of specialists, and the ability to engage in ‘teamwork’ is regarded as an almost essential attribute for most scientists.
So far, so good. But one consequence of teamwork may be a reduced sense of personal satisfaction for the individual scientist. The direction of research is often dictated by the availability of grants, specific work content and patterns may be scheduled by the needs of the team, interpretation may be a group affair, and publication a compromise between multiple authors (not to mention the potential for further distortion by referees and editors). And the glory from any resulting scientific attainments will also be shared.
This situation resembles that which Karl Marx termed ‘alienation’; in which the ‘worker’ is separated from the product, and where the need to perform as a cog in a complex machine of production strips ‘labour’ of its intrinsic satisfactions.
Of course, for many people there are other sources of satisfaction from scientific work such as (perhaps most importantly) wages, a relatively great degree of discretion in organizing work, the social life of the laboratory, and the satisfactions of a job well done. Nonetheless for some people this is not enough. Those who were drawn into science by a sense of vocation may feel that the life of a typical modern scientist fails to satisfy their yearning to make a personal contribution.
Teamwork is, more-or-less, the mainstream mode of modern medical science; but it does not suit all personality types. Not everyone is a ‘team player’ and there are some ‘maverick’ individuals who would (perhaps selfishly) rather have personal credit for a relatively modest scientific contribution which they achieved (mostly) by themselves, than a share of credit in a much larger scientific contribution generated by a large team.
In general, it could be predicted that working as a maverick increases an individual’s potential maximum contribution to science (by generating greater personal motivation); but working as a team player is on avearage more efficient overall.
There is not much doubt that the present system of medical science is organized to discourage mavericks. On the whole, this is probably justifiable on the basis that scientists (and human beings in general) are not naturally team players, so that extra inducements are necessary to get people to adopt the relatively self-effacing behaviours necessary in building the large organizations of complementary specialists that are necessary for tackling many of the most intractable modern scientific problems. However, an ethos of teamwork does carry substantial disadvantages.
The most important way that team players are rewarded over mavericks is the practice of multiple counting. This works at every level in the scientific process.
For instance, everyone associated with a successful grant award typically states the full amount of the grant to their own credit (and not, for example, the amount of the grant divided by all the other grant holders). An unspecified share of a high-profile multi-centre ten million dollar grant (running over several years) sounds very impressive – and this credit is to some extent accrued by all the team players. By contrast, the lone maverick might have attained a much less-impressive-sounding annual grant of one hundred thousand dollars.
However, using another mode of calculation, a maverick’s 100K dollars per year might equal or exceed each team players individual share of a highly publicized lump-sum of ten million pounds, when the money is spread over several institutions and several years. Furthermore, the maverick has control of who is appointed to jobs, and the specific work they do – while a team player may find that these decisions are made by committees over which s/he has little influence.
Credit for publications is another system that rewards team players above mavericks. In round numbers it seems likely that the average production of scientific papers per author has been about one per year for many decades – but the average number of publications credited to each scientist has increased due to larger numbers of authors on each publication.
This implies that a maverick author who publishes two or three single-author papers per year is probably high-performing; yet this productivity can (apparently) be swamped by a large team players who may (with the same, or less, amount of work) have a share in maybe a dozen publications per year – with perhaps one as first author. After a few years the team player may have accumulated a hundred-plus publications while even a gifted maverick may still number just a dozen or so single-author publications.
A further aspect of grant-getting and publication relates to the statistics of small numbers. An individual scientist working (mostly) alone and averaging (say) a grant every two to four years and two or three papers per years would expect – by sheer chance – to have some ‘lean years’: gaps of several years with no grants, and several years with no publications. If a promotion or job application happens to fall during one of these randomly occurring lean years it might-well look bad; as if the maverick had burned-out and become unproductive.
By contrast, an similarly productive team player who worked as part of a ten-plus person team (of similarly productive people) would have these extreme fluctuations in productivity averaged-out, and would not be expected to suffer any lean years without grants or publications. When the time comes for applying for jobs or promotions, the team player can be assured of a decent recent CV.
Does it matter that the current mode of medical science encourages team players at the expense of mavericks? Mostly not, because the harsh truth is that most scientists are dispensable, and most do not make a significant personal contribution. However, the very best scientists do make a difference to the rate of progress of science. And top notch scientists are wasted as team players.
My guess is that the very best scientists can function only as mavericks; in charge of their own activities, or else as collaborators working on a scientific problem with just one other equal partner. The reason is that great scientists are doing science for vocational reasons; and the highest intensity of personal commitment absolutely needs individual rewards from distinctive contributions.
If correct, this means that we need to recognize the downside of current incentives that encourage teamwork in modern medical science. There is a trade-off. Modestly talented people can probably achieve more when working as members of a team. But the kind of intensely vocational motivation necessary for the highest level of scientific work is not an attribute of team players. To have a chance of achieving their greatest potential, the most-talented scientists need to work as mavericks.
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2008; 71: 165-167.
***
Summary
The modern world is characterized by progressive specialization of function and ever-larger-scale coordination of these ever-more-specialized functions. More and more of science is done by increasing-sized teams of specialists, and the ability to engage in ‘teamwork’ is regarded as an almost essential attribute for most scientists. But teamwork does not suit all personality types. Some ‘maverick’ individuals would rather have personal credit for a relatively modest scientific contribution which they achieved (mostly) by themselves, than a share of credit in a much larger scientific contribution generated by a large team. The present system of medical science is organized to discourage mavericks and, on the whole, this is probably justifiable on the basis that scientists are not natural team players. Extra inducements are necessary to get people to adopt the relatively self-effacing behaviours necessary for building the large organizations of complementary specialists that are necessary for tackling many of the most intractable modern scientific problems. However, an ethos of teamwork does carry substantial disadvantages. Although most scientists are dispensable, and do not make a significant personal contribution, the very best scientists do make a difference to the rate of progress of science. And top notch scientists are wasted as team players. The very best scientists can function only as mavericks because they are doing science for vocational reasons. The highest intensity of personal commitment requires individual rewards from distinctive contributions. In conclusion, the current incentive system that encourages teamwork involves a trade-off. The majority of modestly talented scientists can probably achieve more when working as members of a team. But the very best scientists probably need to work as mavericks.
***
Science, like most aspects of the modern world, is characterized by progressive specialization of function and ever-larger-scale coordination of these ever-more-specialized functions.
This applies to scientific careers also. More and more of science is done by increasing-sized teams of specialists, and the ability to engage in ‘teamwork’ is regarded as an almost essential attribute for most scientists.
So far, so good. But one consequence of teamwork may be a reduced sense of personal satisfaction for the individual scientist. The direction of research is often dictated by the availability of grants, specific work content and patterns may be scheduled by the needs of the team, interpretation may be a group affair, and publication a compromise between multiple authors (not to mention the potential for further distortion by referees and editors). And the glory from any resulting scientific attainments will also be shared.
This situation resembles that which Karl Marx termed ‘alienation’; in which the ‘worker’ is separated from the product, and where the need to perform as a cog in a complex machine of production strips ‘labour’ of its intrinsic satisfactions.
Of course, for many people there are other sources of satisfaction from scientific work such as (perhaps most importantly) wages, a relatively great degree of discretion in organizing work, the social life of the laboratory, and the satisfactions of a job well done. Nonetheless for some people this is not enough. Those who were drawn into science by a sense of vocation may feel that the life of a typical modern scientist fails to satisfy their yearning to make a personal contribution.
Teamwork is, more-or-less, the mainstream mode of modern medical science; but it does not suit all personality types. Not everyone is a ‘team player’ and there are some ‘maverick’ individuals who would (perhaps selfishly) rather have personal credit for a relatively modest scientific contribution which they achieved (mostly) by themselves, than a share of credit in a much larger scientific contribution generated by a large team.
In general, it could be predicted that working as a maverick increases an individual’s potential maximum contribution to science (by generating greater personal motivation); but working as a team player is on avearage more efficient overall.
There is not much doubt that the present system of medical science is organized to discourage mavericks. On the whole, this is probably justifiable on the basis that scientists (and human beings in general) are not naturally team players, so that extra inducements are necessary to get people to adopt the relatively self-effacing behaviours necessary in building the large organizations of complementary specialists that are necessary for tackling many of the most intractable modern scientific problems. However, an ethos of teamwork does carry substantial disadvantages.
The most important way that team players are rewarded over mavericks is the practice of multiple counting. This works at every level in the scientific process.
For instance, everyone associated with a successful grant award typically states the full amount of the grant to their own credit (and not, for example, the amount of the grant divided by all the other grant holders). An unspecified share of a high-profile multi-centre ten million dollar grant (running over several years) sounds very impressive – and this credit is to some extent accrued by all the team players. By contrast, the lone maverick might have attained a much less-impressive-sounding annual grant of one hundred thousand dollars.
However, using another mode of calculation, a maverick’s 100K dollars per year might equal or exceed each team players individual share of a highly publicized lump-sum of ten million pounds, when the money is spread over several institutions and several years. Furthermore, the maverick has control of who is appointed to jobs, and the specific work they do – while a team player may find that these decisions are made by committees over which s/he has little influence.
Credit for publications is another system that rewards team players above mavericks. In round numbers it seems likely that the average production of scientific papers per author has been about one per year for many decades – but the average number of publications credited to each scientist has increased due to larger numbers of authors on each publication.
This implies that a maverick author who publishes two or three single-author papers per year is probably high-performing; yet this productivity can (apparently) be swamped by a large team players who may (with the same, or less, amount of work) have a share in maybe a dozen publications per year – with perhaps one as first author. After a few years the team player may have accumulated a hundred-plus publications while even a gifted maverick may still number just a dozen or so single-author publications.
A further aspect of grant-getting and publication relates to the statistics of small numbers. An individual scientist working (mostly) alone and averaging (say) a grant every two to four years and two or three papers per years would expect – by sheer chance – to have some ‘lean years’: gaps of several years with no grants, and several years with no publications. If a promotion or job application happens to fall during one of these randomly occurring lean years it might-well look bad; as if the maverick had burned-out and become unproductive.
By contrast, an similarly productive team player who worked as part of a ten-plus person team (of similarly productive people) would have these extreme fluctuations in productivity averaged-out, and would not be expected to suffer any lean years without grants or publications. When the time comes for applying for jobs or promotions, the team player can be assured of a decent recent CV.
Does it matter that the current mode of medical science encourages team players at the expense of mavericks? Mostly not, because the harsh truth is that most scientists are dispensable, and most do not make a significant personal contribution. However, the very best scientists do make a difference to the rate of progress of science. And top notch scientists are wasted as team players.
My guess is that the very best scientists can function only as mavericks; in charge of their own activities, or else as collaborators working on a scientific problem with just one other equal partner. The reason is that great scientists are doing science for vocational reasons; and the highest intensity of personal commitment absolutely needs individual rewards from distinctive contributions.
If correct, this means that we need to recognize the downside of current incentives that encourage teamwork in modern medical science. There is a trade-off. Modestly talented people can probably achieve more when working as members of a team. But the kind of intensely vocational motivation necessary for the highest level of scientific work is not an attribute of team players. To have a chance of achieving their greatest potential, the most-talented scientists need to work as mavericks.
Thursday, 5 June 2008
False, trivial, obvious - new theories
False, trivial, obvious: Why new and revolutionary theories are typically disrespected
Bruce G. Charlton,
Medical Hypotheses 2008; 71: 1-3
***
Summary
An old joke about the response to revolutionary new scientific theories states that there are three phases on the road to acceptance: 1. The theory is not true; 2. The theory is true, but it is unimportant; 3. The theory is true, and it is important – but we knew it all along. The point of this joke is that (according to scientific theorists) new theories are never properly appreciated. The ‘false’ phase happens because a defining feature of a revolutionary theory is that it contradicts the assumptions of already-existing mainstream theory. The second ‘trivial’ phase follows from a preliminary analysis which suggests that the new idea is not in fact contradicted by the major existing evidence, but the new theory seems unimportant because its implications do not seem to lead anywhere interesting when explored in the light of current theory. A stronger version of this second phase happens when the implications of a theory are regarded as not merely unimportant but actually dangerous, because a scientific revolution is certainly destructive (especially of established reputations) yet its potential benefits are conjectural. However, once a new and revolutionary theory is in place, its importance is ‘obvious’ such that it becomes hard to imagine how anybody could ever have believed anything else. Theory for scientists is like water for fish: the invisible medium in which they swim. Observations and experiments, on the other hand, are like toys in the fish tank. New toys are attention-grabbing; but when the tank gets cloudy, its water needs changing.
***
Like water for fish
One of the most annoying experiences for those advocating revolutionary new theories occurs when their ideas are prematurely or erroneously rejected. Perhaps even more annoying is when a theory is adopted but its originator is not credited with the discovery.
This is embodied in the cynical description of the acceptance of revolutionary new scientific theories as having three stages in which the idea is first rejected as false, then dismissed as trivial, and finally accepted as obvious.
The three phases of response to a new theory on the road to its acceptance are
1. The theory is not true.
2. The theory is true, but it is unimportant.
3. The theory is true, and it is important – but we knew it all along.
The point of this joke is that (according to scientific theorists) new theories are never properly appreciated.
There is a superficial, but correct and important, level of critique in which premature or incorrect rejection of new theories is often a consequence of either the lack of sufficient attention being paid to the new theory, so that the critic never considers the new theory with sufficient care; or the sheer ignorance or incompetence of the critic such that – even if critics do pay sufficient attention – they are simply unable to comprehend the new theory due to knowledge deficiencies or a lack of brain-power.
Quantitatively, therefore, even when it is not ignored, a new idea tends get buried beneath shallow and dumb criticisms.
1. False: the theory is not true
At a deeper level, however, the ‘false, trivial, obvious’ joke implies that the reason theories are seldom appreciated is related to the primacy of theory in science.
Theories come before facts, since facts only get their ‘factual’ status from the theory in which they are embedded; such that science can most simply be conceptualized as a process of generating and testing theories against observations.
The defining feature of a revolutionary theory is precisely that it seeks to replace the assumptions of an already-existing theory – so a new theory cannot be evaluated on the basis of the assumptions of the old theory. This is why a new and revolutionary theory will almost invariably strike people as false.
In a sense, a new theory is perceived by an old theory as if the new theory were an observation. When a new theory is revolutionary, then it is perceived as an observation which is incompatible with the old theory. From this perspective either the new theory must be rejected, or else the old theory abandoned.
2. Trivial: the theory is true, but it is unimportant
The second phase is dismissing a revolutionary idea as ‘trivial’. This follows from a preliminary analysis which suggests that the new idea is not, after all, contradicted by the major existing evidence – so the new theory cannot simply be rejected as ‘false’.
However, although it may be true, the new theory seems unimportant; because its implications do not seem to lead anywhere interesting from the perspective of current theory.
A new theory may, therefore, seem trivial because it is trivial in the context of the old theory. Only from the perspective of the new theory itself can its importance be recognized.
In this sense, a theory must be ‘accepted’ (at least provisionally) before its importance can be appreciated.
2. (a) Trivial: the theory is true, and it is important, but dangerous
A stronger version of this second ‘trivial’ phase happens when the implications of a theory are regarded not merely as unimportant but actually dangerous.
It is never possible absolutely to exclude in advance the possibility of some catastrophe from a wide range of potential disasters. Nor is it possible to prove that the adoption of a new theory will almost certainly provide greater overall and general benefit compared with the old theory.
New theories often seem dangerous because their destructive effect is proximate and certain, while their potential to serve as a basis for future progress is distal and unpredictable.
In fact, the most compelling ‘danger’ of a new revolutionary theory is the real and present harm its acceptance would inflict on the power, wealth or prestige of adherents to the already-existing theory.
3. Obvious: the theory is true, and it is important – but we knew it all along
However, for reasons good or bad, and against these odds, some revolutionary theories do become adopted and displace the theories that went before.
Once a new theory is in place, its explanatory and predictive power is evident, its importance is ‘obvious’ (since the new theory now forms the framework for scientific investigation and communication), and indeed it becomes hard to imagine how anybody could ever (rationally) have believed anything else.
After a successful scientific revolution it seems (it ‘feels like’) everyone had always known that the new theory was true; because looking-back it is clear that the new theory makes sense-of, is explanatory-of, all observations of current-significance that went before.
Precursors and partial expressions of the new theory apparently abound, and it can become hard to recognize or acknowledge that past (‘pre-revolution’) scientists were operating on the basis of quite different over-arching theories.
Forgotten are the vast difficulties a new theory originally overcame in getting attention, refuting shallow and dumb criticisms, and demonstrating its validity and importance – so the achievement of the originating theorist may seem slight (and this is assuming the discoverer has not by this time been overlooked, forgotten, or robbed of credit by a more powerful colleague).
The path to fame as a theorist surely is long, winding and replete with pitfalls.
Like water for fish
So – theory for scientists is like water for fish: the invisible medium in which they swim. Observations and experiments, on the other hand, are like toys in the fish tank.
New toys are attention-grabbing; but when the tank gets cloudy, its water needs changing.
Bruce G. Charlton,
Medical Hypotheses 2008; 71: 1-3
***
Summary
An old joke about the response to revolutionary new scientific theories states that there are three phases on the road to acceptance: 1. The theory is not true; 2. The theory is true, but it is unimportant; 3. The theory is true, and it is important – but we knew it all along. The point of this joke is that (according to scientific theorists) new theories are never properly appreciated. The ‘false’ phase happens because a defining feature of a revolutionary theory is that it contradicts the assumptions of already-existing mainstream theory. The second ‘trivial’ phase follows from a preliminary analysis which suggests that the new idea is not in fact contradicted by the major existing evidence, but the new theory seems unimportant because its implications do not seem to lead anywhere interesting when explored in the light of current theory. A stronger version of this second phase happens when the implications of a theory are regarded as not merely unimportant but actually dangerous, because a scientific revolution is certainly destructive (especially of established reputations) yet its potential benefits are conjectural. However, once a new and revolutionary theory is in place, its importance is ‘obvious’ such that it becomes hard to imagine how anybody could ever have believed anything else. Theory for scientists is like water for fish: the invisible medium in which they swim. Observations and experiments, on the other hand, are like toys in the fish tank. New toys are attention-grabbing; but when the tank gets cloudy, its water needs changing.
***
Like water for fish
One of the most annoying experiences for those advocating revolutionary new theories occurs when their ideas are prematurely or erroneously rejected. Perhaps even more annoying is when a theory is adopted but its originator is not credited with the discovery.
This is embodied in the cynical description of the acceptance of revolutionary new scientific theories as having three stages in which the idea is first rejected as false, then dismissed as trivial, and finally accepted as obvious.
The three phases of response to a new theory on the road to its acceptance are
1. The theory is not true.
2. The theory is true, but it is unimportant.
3. The theory is true, and it is important – but we knew it all along.
The point of this joke is that (according to scientific theorists) new theories are never properly appreciated.
There is a superficial, but correct and important, level of critique in which premature or incorrect rejection of new theories is often a consequence of either the lack of sufficient attention being paid to the new theory, so that the critic never considers the new theory with sufficient care; or the sheer ignorance or incompetence of the critic such that – even if critics do pay sufficient attention – they are simply unable to comprehend the new theory due to knowledge deficiencies or a lack of brain-power.
Quantitatively, therefore, even when it is not ignored, a new idea tends get buried beneath shallow and dumb criticisms.
1. False: the theory is not true
At a deeper level, however, the ‘false, trivial, obvious’ joke implies that the reason theories are seldom appreciated is related to the primacy of theory in science.
Theories come before facts, since facts only get their ‘factual’ status from the theory in which they are embedded; such that science can most simply be conceptualized as a process of generating and testing theories against observations.
The defining feature of a revolutionary theory is precisely that it seeks to replace the assumptions of an already-existing theory – so a new theory cannot be evaluated on the basis of the assumptions of the old theory. This is why a new and revolutionary theory will almost invariably strike people as false.
In a sense, a new theory is perceived by an old theory as if the new theory were an observation. When a new theory is revolutionary, then it is perceived as an observation which is incompatible with the old theory. From this perspective either the new theory must be rejected, or else the old theory abandoned.
2. Trivial: the theory is true, but it is unimportant
The second phase is dismissing a revolutionary idea as ‘trivial’. This follows from a preliminary analysis which suggests that the new idea is not, after all, contradicted by the major existing evidence – so the new theory cannot simply be rejected as ‘false’.
However, although it may be true, the new theory seems unimportant; because its implications do not seem to lead anywhere interesting from the perspective of current theory.
A new theory may, therefore, seem trivial because it is trivial in the context of the old theory. Only from the perspective of the new theory itself can its importance be recognized.
In this sense, a theory must be ‘accepted’ (at least provisionally) before its importance can be appreciated.
2. (a) Trivial: the theory is true, and it is important, but dangerous
A stronger version of this second ‘trivial’ phase happens when the implications of a theory are regarded not merely as unimportant but actually dangerous.
It is never possible absolutely to exclude in advance the possibility of some catastrophe from a wide range of potential disasters. Nor is it possible to prove that the adoption of a new theory will almost certainly provide greater overall and general benefit compared with the old theory.
New theories often seem dangerous because their destructive effect is proximate and certain, while their potential to serve as a basis for future progress is distal and unpredictable.
In fact, the most compelling ‘danger’ of a new revolutionary theory is the real and present harm its acceptance would inflict on the power, wealth or prestige of adherents to the already-existing theory.
3. Obvious: the theory is true, and it is important – but we knew it all along
However, for reasons good or bad, and against these odds, some revolutionary theories do become adopted and displace the theories that went before.
Once a new theory is in place, its explanatory and predictive power is evident, its importance is ‘obvious’ (since the new theory now forms the framework for scientific investigation and communication), and indeed it becomes hard to imagine how anybody could ever (rationally) have believed anything else.
After a successful scientific revolution it seems (it ‘feels like’) everyone had always known that the new theory was true; because looking-back it is clear that the new theory makes sense-of, is explanatory-of, all observations of current-significance that went before.
Precursors and partial expressions of the new theory apparently abound, and it can become hard to recognize or acknowledge that past (‘pre-revolution’) scientists were operating on the basis of quite different over-arching theories.
Forgotten are the vast difficulties a new theory originally overcame in getting attention, refuting shallow and dumb criticisms, and demonstrating its validity and importance – so the achievement of the originating theorist may seem slight (and this is assuming the discoverer has not by this time been overlooked, forgotten, or robbed of credit by a more powerful colleague).
The path to fame as a theorist surely is long, winding and replete with pitfalls.
Like water for fish
So – theory for scientists is like water for fish: the invisible medium in which they swim. Observations and experiments, on the other hand, are like toys in the fish tank.
New toys are attention-grabbing; but when the tank gets cloudy, its water needs changing.
Sunday, 4 May 2008
The James Watson Affair
Editorial
First a hero of science and now a martyr to science: The James Watson Affair – Political correctness crushes free scientific communication
Medical Hypotheses. Volume 70, Issue 6, 2008, Pages 1077-1080
Bruce G. Charlton, Editor-in-Chief – Medical Hypotheses
Available online 16 April 2008.
Summary
In 2007 James D. Watson, perhaps the most famous living scientist, was forced to retire from his position and retreat from public life in the face of international mass media condemnation following remarks concerning genetically-caused racial differences in intelligence. Watson was punished for stating forthright views on topics that elite opinion has determined should be discussed only with elaborate caution, frequent disclaimers, and solemn deference to the currently-prevailing pieties. James Watson has always struck many people as brash; however this blunt, truth-telling quality was intrinsic to his role in one of the greatest scientific discoveries. Much more importantly than ‘good manners’, Watson has consistently exemplified the cardinal scientific virtue: he speaks what he understands to be the truth without regard for the opinion of others. The most chilling aspect of the Watson Affair was the way in which so many influential members of the scientific research community joined the media condemnation directed against Watson. Perhaps the most egregious betrayal of science was an article by editorialists of the premier UK scientific journal Nature. Instead of defending the freedom of discourse in pursuit of scientific truth, Nature instead blamed Watson for being ‘crass’ and lacking ‘sensitivity’ in discussing human genetic differences. But if asked to choose between the ‘sensitive’ editors of Nature or the ‘crass’ genius of James D. Watson, all serious scientists must take the side of Watson. Because when a premier researcher such as Watson is hounded from office by a vicious, arbitrary and untruthful mob; all lesser scientists are made vulnerable to analogous treatment at the whim of the media. A zealous and coercive brand of ‘political correctness’ is now making the biological truth of human genetic differences intolerably difficult to discover and discuss in US and UK. This needs to change. My hope is that truth will prevail over political correctness and James Watson will not just be exonerated but vindicated as an exemplar of the true morality of science: that scientific communication needs to be allowed to be clear, direct – even crass – in the pursuit of truth. James Watson has been a hero of science for the achievements of his career, and also a martyr for science at the end of his career.
***
In 2007 James D. Watson, perhaps the most famous living scientist, was forced to retire from his position as Chair of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and to retreat from public life in the face of international mass media condemnation following some remarks he made concerning genetically-caused racial differences in intelligence [1].
The substance of Watson’s remark was the speculation that the low average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans may be a contributory cause for slow economic development [1] and [2].
The Watson Affair is, so far, the most shocking example of coercive ‘political correctness’ imposed by the US and UK ‘mandarin’ intellectual class (i.e. the cultural elite who run public administration, education and the media). In other words, Watson was pilloried and punished for stating forthright views on topics (which include sexual, class and racial differences) that elite opinion has determined should be discussed only with elaborate caution, frequent disclaimers, and solemn deference to the currently-prevailing pieties.
Watson’s ‘brash’ personal style has also been his scientific strength
But ‘nuance’ has never been Watson’s style. Watson has always struck many people as disturbingly bold, direct, and brash [3], [4] and [5]. Not to put too fine a point on it, Watson has apparently often been rude and harsh in his personal relationships, and terse to the point of being elliptical or ambiguous in his pronouncements – seeming especially so to the vast majority of people whose intellectual powers are nowhere near a match for Watson’s, or who do not pick-up on his unusual sense of humor.
However, in the conduct of science, there are many things which are much more important than good manners, and many of the greatest scientists have been difficult characters [6]. But James Watson displays – in extreme and stark form – the cardinal scientific virtue: he speaks what he understands to be the truth, and does so without regard for the opinion of others [3] and [7].
And of course this blunt, truth-telling quality was absolutely intrinsic to his role in one of the greatest scientific discoveries – establishing the structure of DNA in 1953 [3] and [4]. And Watson’s directness/brashness was essential to other great career achievements including his role in establishing the science of molecular biology from a base in Harvard, in fund-raising and building-up the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and in launching the human genome project [5].
Indeed the world has abundant cause to be grateful for James Watson’s brash personal style since this was inherent in his achievement, and few individuals have contributed more to human well-being.
Nature’s editorialists betray science
While it is perfectly understandable that non-scientific zealots of political correctness (as well as those who have been hurt or offended by Watson’s brashness in the past) would be delighted at the opportunity to destroy James Watson’s career and reputation – the most chilling aspect of the Watson Affair was the way in which so many powerful and influential members of the scientific research community joined the howling mob of media condemnation directed against Watson [1].
Perhaps the most egregious example was the article by editorialists of the premier UK scientific journal Nature – that same journal where Crick and Watson published the original paper describing structure of DNA [8].
Instead of publishing a clear and uncompromising defence of the freedom of untrammelled discourse in pursuit of the scientific truth; in an editorial entitled ‘Watson’s folly’ Nature instead chose to support political correctness as being more important than science.
In the context of just 500 words, the anonymous Nature authors spent most of the space attacking Watson’s interpersonal style, with a veritable diatribe of outrage. The editorial included such comments as: ‘his notorious propensity for making outrageous statements’, ‘a track record of making distasteful remarks’, ‘on many previous occasions voiced unpalatable views tinged with racism and sexism’, ‘his views have finally been deemed beyond the pale’, ‘demonstrates a sheer unacceptable offensiveness’, ‘unpleasant […] utterances’, and ‘crass comments’.
In a brief respite from attacking Watson’s personality, the Nature editorialists make two factually incorrect statements. Firstly they wrongly state that ‘Watson has apologized and retracted’ his ‘outburst’. Secondly they state that Watson ‘acknowledged that there is no evidence for what he claimed about racial differences in intelligence’. This is doubly false in that Watson never made such retractions or acknowledgments [9], and for the very good reason that any such retraction or acknowledgement would be untrue.
Indeed, the opposite is more nearly true, as Jason Malloy describes in the current issue of Medical Hypotheses [1]. There is no evidence that all human races have identical intelligence despite many generations of genetic separation and with widely different selection pressures, and on good theoretical grounds it is extremely unlikely. On the contrary, there is a very large and robust literature documenting significant racial and ethnic differences in average IQ [1]. But the Nature editorialists did not even attempt to argue the falsity of this large evidential database – instead, they simply denied its existence.
‘Sensitivity’ versus truth-telling
What the Nature editorialists advocate is described in the subtitle: ‘Debate about scientific issues needs to be forthright but not crass’. It is Watson’s ‘crassness’ that Nature seems to hate more than anything else.
This is later amplified in remarks about the investigation of racial differences which is described as a ‘sensitive task’; “‘race” is an emotive and unscientific word’ – according to Nature; and so is the investigation of the ‘equally sensitive genetics of ‘desirable’ traits’.
It is clear that Nature sees the crucial issue of the Watson Affair as one of crassness versus sensitivity. It is the ‘sensitive’ people (such as the Nature editorialists – i.e., the people who have ‘deemed’ Watson’s views ‘beyond the pale’) who stand as a bulwark against a ‘crass’ individual whose ‘outbursts’ are ‘lending succour and comfort to racists around the globe’, and whose behaviour will ‘undermine our very ability to debate such issues’.
In other words, Nature states that genetic differences can only be studied and discussed within a framework of political correctness as defined by the cultural mandarins of the US and UK, or else such matters had better not be studied or discussed at all.
If scientists are now being asked to choose between being sensitive or crass – between picking sides with either the anonymous editors of Nature or the ‘crass’ genius of James D. Watson – then it should be no contest: serious scientists must take the side of Watson.
But if Nature’s editorial comments are an index of elite intellectual opinion in the Anglosphere – which sadly seems to be the case – then this is evidence of an anti-scientific ‘fifth column’ of coercive, dishonest and vindictive political correctness which has infiltrated into the very heart of high-level scientific discourse.
The real ‘Science Wars’ of our time
When asking who it really is that is most likely to ‘undermine the ability to debate race and sex differences’, it seems clear that the US and UK zealots of coercive political correctness are the ones causing the problems, not people like Watson who are trying to move the science of human genetics forward as fast as possible.
When a premier league researcher such as Watson is hounded by elite commentators in such a vicious, arbitrary and untruthful fashion, then any and all scientists are potentially vulnerable to similar treatment at the whim of the mass media if – for whatever reason – they happen to step over a line defining the boundary of sufficiently ‘sensitive’ discourse. And any single such step over the sensitivity-line into ‘crassness’ is enough to undo a lifetime of stratospheric attainment.
This, then, is the real ‘science war’ of our era: a war of the ‘sensitive’ versus the ‘crass’ – in other words, the escalating conflict by which coercive political correctness in the UK and USA increasingly-successfully intimidates and controls scientific communication.
Biology is poised on the brink of extraordinary insights into the genetic determinants of human differences [10]; including sexual, class and racial differences. In order to make progress on all fronts (whether scientific, medical or social), we need to know the facts about humanity and genetics. But political correctness is making this truth harder to discover and discuss: almost impossibly hard in the US and the UK where scientists are at constant risk of being ‘denounced’ and demonized at the caprice of the mass media in collaboration with the cultural elite. This needs to change.
If UK and US mandarins are too squeamish even to mention or discuss research into the most exciting areas of human genetics in a clear and honest fashion, perhaps they should stand aside and allow other nations – for example from East Asia – to get-on with this vital work without harassment. If the anonymous Nature editorialists are too ‘sensitive’ to hear the truth about genetics from ‘crass’ individuals such as James D. Watson, then they should perhaps make way for those who are more emotionally-robust.
The scientific necessity for a major journal such as Nature is not merely to allow discussion of human genetic differences under sufferance and hedged-about with complex linguistic constraints; but actually to encourage straightforward and forceful scientific communication on human genetic differences without the slightest regard to notions of political correctness. Nature should be fighting political correctness on behalf of science, not joining a vigilante gang of self-appointed moral guardians who are crushing forthright scientific discourse under the banner of ‘sensitivity’.
From hero to martyr
James Watson has – for more than 60 years – been an exemplar of the essential morality of science; advocating by his words and displaying in his deeds the necessary freedom that scientific communication must be allowed to be clear, direct – even crass – in the pursuit of truth.
I believe that science is the most powerful cognitive system yet discovered by humanity [6] and [7], so that eventually truth will prevail and James Watson will be not just exonerated but vindicated. My hope is that soon there will be general recognition among scientists that James Watson was not just a hero of science for the achievements of his career, but also a martyr for science at the end of his career.
References
[1] J. Malloy, James Watson tells the inconvenient truth: faces the consequences, Med Hypotheses 70 (2008), pp. 1081–1091.
[2] Milmo C. Fury at DNA pioneer’s theory: africans are less intelligent than Westerners. The Independent,; Published 17 October 2007 [accessed 10.03.08].
[3] Watson JD. In: Gunther S. Stent, editor (critical edition). The double helix; a personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. London, UK: Weidenfeld and Nicolson; 1981.
[4] H.F. Judson, The eighth day of creation: makers of the revolution in biology, Jonathan Cape, London (1979).
[5] V. McElheny, Watson and DNA: making a scientific revolution, John Wiley and Sons, London, UK (2003).
[6] D.L. Hull, Science as a process, Chicago University Press, Chicago (1988).
[7] J. Bronowski, The ascent of man, BBC, London (1973).
[8] Editorial. Watson’s folly. Nature 2007;449:948.
[9] J. Watson. To question genetic intelligence is not racism. The Independent,; Published 19 October 2007 [accessed 10.03.08].
[10] E. Pennisi, Breakthrough of the year: human genetic variation, Science 318 (2007), pp. 1842–1843.
First a hero of science and now a martyr to science: The James Watson Affair – Political correctness crushes free scientific communication
Medical Hypotheses. Volume 70, Issue 6, 2008, Pages 1077-1080
Bruce G. Charlton, Editor-in-Chief – Medical Hypotheses
Available online 16 April 2008.
Summary
In 2007 James D. Watson, perhaps the most famous living scientist, was forced to retire from his position and retreat from public life in the face of international mass media condemnation following remarks concerning genetically-caused racial differences in intelligence. Watson was punished for stating forthright views on topics that elite opinion has determined should be discussed only with elaborate caution, frequent disclaimers, and solemn deference to the currently-prevailing pieties. James Watson has always struck many people as brash; however this blunt, truth-telling quality was intrinsic to his role in one of the greatest scientific discoveries. Much more importantly than ‘good manners’, Watson has consistently exemplified the cardinal scientific virtue: he speaks what he understands to be the truth without regard for the opinion of others. The most chilling aspect of the Watson Affair was the way in which so many influential members of the scientific research community joined the media condemnation directed against Watson. Perhaps the most egregious betrayal of science was an article by editorialists of the premier UK scientific journal Nature. Instead of defending the freedom of discourse in pursuit of scientific truth, Nature instead blamed Watson for being ‘crass’ and lacking ‘sensitivity’ in discussing human genetic differences. But if asked to choose between the ‘sensitive’ editors of Nature or the ‘crass’ genius of James D. Watson, all serious scientists must take the side of Watson. Because when a premier researcher such as Watson is hounded from office by a vicious, arbitrary and untruthful mob; all lesser scientists are made vulnerable to analogous treatment at the whim of the media. A zealous and coercive brand of ‘political correctness’ is now making the biological truth of human genetic differences intolerably difficult to discover and discuss in US and UK. This needs to change. My hope is that truth will prevail over political correctness and James Watson will not just be exonerated but vindicated as an exemplar of the true morality of science: that scientific communication needs to be allowed to be clear, direct – even crass – in the pursuit of truth. James Watson has been a hero of science for the achievements of his career, and also a martyr for science at the end of his career.
***
In 2007 James D. Watson, perhaps the most famous living scientist, was forced to retire from his position as Chair of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and to retreat from public life in the face of international mass media condemnation following some remarks he made concerning genetically-caused racial differences in intelligence [1].
The substance of Watson’s remark was the speculation that the low average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans may be a contributory cause for slow economic development [1] and [2].
The Watson Affair is, so far, the most shocking example of coercive ‘political correctness’ imposed by the US and UK ‘mandarin’ intellectual class (i.e. the cultural elite who run public administration, education and the media). In other words, Watson was pilloried and punished for stating forthright views on topics (which include sexual, class and racial differences) that elite opinion has determined should be discussed only with elaborate caution, frequent disclaimers, and solemn deference to the currently-prevailing pieties.
Watson’s ‘brash’ personal style has also been his scientific strength
But ‘nuance’ has never been Watson’s style. Watson has always struck many people as disturbingly bold, direct, and brash [3], [4] and [5]. Not to put too fine a point on it, Watson has apparently often been rude and harsh in his personal relationships, and terse to the point of being elliptical or ambiguous in his pronouncements – seeming especially so to the vast majority of people whose intellectual powers are nowhere near a match for Watson’s, or who do not pick-up on his unusual sense of humor.
However, in the conduct of science, there are many things which are much more important than good manners, and many of the greatest scientists have been difficult characters [6]. But James Watson displays – in extreme and stark form – the cardinal scientific virtue: he speaks what he understands to be the truth, and does so without regard for the opinion of others [3] and [7].
And of course this blunt, truth-telling quality was absolutely intrinsic to his role in one of the greatest scientific discoveries – establishing the structure of DNA in 1953 [3] and [4]. And Watson’s directness/brashness was essential to other great career achievements including his role in establishing the science of molecular biology from a base in Harvard, in fund-raising and building-up the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and in launching the human genome project [5].
Indeed the world has abundant cause to be grateful for James Watson’s brash personal style since this was inherent in his achievement, and few individuals have contributed more to human well-being.
Nature’s editorialists betray science
While it is perfectly understandable that non-scientific zealots of political correctness (as well as those who have been hurt or offended by Watson’s brashness in the past) would be delighted at the opportunity to destroy James Watson’s career and reputation – the most chilling aspect of the Watson Affair was the way in which so many powerful and influential members of the scientific research community joined the howling mob of media condemnation directed against Watson [1].
Perhaps the most egregious example was the article by editorialists of the premier UK scientific journal Nature – that same journal where Crick and Watson published the original paper describing structure of DNA [8].
Instead of publishing a clear and uncompromising defence of the freedom of untrammelled discourse in pursuit of the scientific truth; in an editorial entitled ‘Watson’s folly’ Nature instead chose to support political correctness as being more important than science.
In the context of just 500 words, the anonymous Nature authors spent most of the space attacking Watson’s interpersonal style, with a veritable diatribe of outrage. The editorial included such comments as: ‘his notorious propensity for making outrageous statements’, ‘a track record of making distasteful remarks’, ‘on many previous occasions voiced unpalatable views tinged with racism and sexism’, ‘his views have finally been deemed beyond the pale’, ‘demonstrates a sheer unacceptable offensiveness’, ‘unpleasant […] utterances’, and ‘crass comments’.
In a brief respite from attacking Watson’s personality, the Nature editorialists make two factually incorrect statements. Firstly they wrongly state that ‘Watson has apologized and retracted’ his ‘outburst’. Secondly they state that Watson ‘acknowledged that there is no evidence for what he claimed about racial differences in intelligence’. This is doubly false in that Watson never made such retractions or acknowledgments [9], and for the very good reason that any such retraction or acknowledgement would be untrue.
Indeed, the opposite is more nearly true, as Jason Malloy describes in the current issue of Medical Hypotheses [1]. There is no evidence that all human races have identical intelligence despite many generations of genetic separation and with widely different selection pressures, and on good theoretical grounds it is extremely unlikely. On the contrary, there is a very large and robust literature documenting significant racial and ethnic differences in average IQ [1]. But the Nature editorialists did not even attempt to argue the falsity of this large evidential database – instead, they simply denied its existence.
‘Sensitivity’ versus truth-telling
What the Nature editorialists advocate is described in the subtitle: ‘Debate about scientific issues needs to be forthright but not crass’. It is Watson’s ‘crassness’ that Nature seems to hate more than anything else.
This is later amplified in remarks about the investigation of racial differences which is described as a ‘sensitive task’; “‘race” is an emotive and unscientific word’ – according to Nature; and so is the investigation of the ‘equally sensitive genetics of ‘desirable’ traits’.
It is clear that Nature sees the crucial issue of the Watson Affair as one of crassness versus sensitivity. It is the ‘sensitive’ people (such as the Nature editorialists – i.e., the people who have ‘deemed’ Watson’s views ‘beyond the pale’) who stand as a bulwark against a ‘crass’ individual whose ‘outbursts’ are ‘lending succour and comfort to racists around the globe’, and whose behaviour will ‘undermine our very ability to debate such issues’.
In other words, Nature states that genetic differences can only be studied and discussed within a framework of political correctness as defined by the cultural mandarins of the US and UK, or else such matters had better not be studied or discussed at all.
If scientists are now being asked to choose between being sensitive or crass – between picking sides with either the anonymous editors of Nature or the ‘crass’ genius of James D. Watson – then it should be no contest: serious scientists must take the side of Watson.
But if Nature’s editorial comments are an index of elite intellectual opinion in the Anglosphere – which sadly seems to be the case – then this is evidence of an anti-scientific ‘fifth column’ of coercive, dishonest and vindictive political correctness which has infiltrated into the very heart of high-level scientific discourse.
The real ‘Science Wars’ of our time
When asking who it really is that is most likely to ‘undermine the ability to debate race and sex differences’, it seems clear that the US and UK zealots of coercive political correctness are the ones causing the problems, not people like Watson who are trying to move the science of human genetics forward as fast as possible.
When a premier league researcher such as Watson is hounded by elite commentators in such a vicious, arbitrary and untruthful fashion, then any and all scientists are potentially vulnerable to similar treatment at the whim of the mass media if – for whatever reason – they happen to step over a line defining the boundary of sufficiently ‘sensitive’ discourse. And any single such step over the sensitivity-line into ‘crassness’ is enough to undo a lifetime of stratospheric attainment.
This, then, is the real ‘science war’ of our era: a war of the ‘sensitive’ versus the ‘crass’ – in other words, the escalating conflict by which coercive political correctness in the UK and USA increasingly-successfully intimidates and controls scientific communication.
Biology is poised on the brink of extraordinary insights into the genetic determinants of human differences [10]; including sexual, class and racial differences. In order to make progress on all fronts (whether scientific, medical or social), we need to know the facts about humanity and genetics. But political correctness is making this truth harder to discover and discuss: almost impossibly hard in the US and the UK where scientists are at constant risk of being ‘denounced’ and demonized at the caprice of the mass media in collaboration with the cultural elite. This needs to change.
If UK and US mandarins are too squeamish even to mention or discuss research into the most exciting areas of human genetics in a clear and honest fashion, perhaps they should stand aside and allow other nations – for example from East Asia – to get-on with this vital work without harassment. If the anonymous Nature editorialists are too ‘sensitive’ to hear the truth about genetics from ‘crass’ individuals such as James D. Watson, then they should perhaps make way for those who are more emotionally-robust.
The scientific necessity for a major journal such as Nature is not merely to allow discussion of human genetic differences under sufferance and hedged-about with complex linguistic constraints; but actually to encourage straightforward and forceful scientific communication on human genetic differences without the slightest regard to notions of political correctness. Nature should be fighting political correctness on behalf of science, not joining a vigilante gang of self-appointed moral guardians who are crushing forthright scientific discourse under the banner of ‘sensitivity’.
From hero to martyr
James Watson has – for more than 60 years – been an exemplar of the essential morality of science; advocating by his words and displaying in his deeds the necessary freedom that scientific communication must be allowed to be clear, direct – even crass – in the pursuit of truth.
I believe that science is the most powerful cognitive system yet discovered by humanity [6] and [7], so that eventually truth will prevail and James Watson will be not just exonerated but vindicated. My hope is that soon there will be general recognition among scientists that James Watson was not just a hero of science for the achievements of his career, but also a martyr for science at the end of his career.
References
[1] J. Malloy, James Watson tells the inconvenient truth: faces the consequences, Med Hypotheses 70 (2008), pp. 1081–1091.
[2] Milmo C. Fury at DNA pioneer’s theory: africans are less intelligent than Westerners. The Independent,
[3] Watson JD. In: Gunther S. Stent, editor (critical edition). The double helix; a personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. London, UK: Weidenfeld and Nicolson; 1981.
[4] H.F. Judson, The eighth day of creation: makers of the revolution in biology, Jonathan Cape, London (1979).
[5] V. McElheny, Watson and DNA: making a scientific revolution, John Wiley and Sons, London, UK (2003).
[6] D.L. Hull, Science as a process, Chicago University Press, Chicago (1988).
[7] J. Bronowski, The ascent of man, BBC, London (1973).
[8] Editorial. Watson’s folly. Nature 2007;449:948.
[9] J. Watson. To question genetic intelligence is not racism. The Independent,
[10] E. Pennisi, Breakthrough of the year: human genetic variation, Science 318 (2007), pp. 1842–1843.
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