Introduction

There is no question regarding the huge impact that science has had on Western thinking, medicine, and technology. Heliocentric world view, laws of physics, recognition of the age of the universe and solar system, dinosaurs, bacteria, viruses, atoms and molecules, DNA and genetic code, automatic computation, ecology, entropy, evolution, the intelligence coefficient, relativity, Schrödinger’s cat, GPS, and The Bomb are all instances of the deep influences that scientific knowledge has on our culture. It is common knowledge that much of the rapid technological progress of the twentieth century was fueled by scientific discoveries. Be it antibiotics, transistors, lasers, or nuclear power, the hand of the scientist was instrumental in their creation. It might therefore come as a surprise that things have not always been so. In the nineteenth century, major technological achievements such as the steam engine were at best catalysts for science and in previous centuries across several civilizations, technological progress has been largely independent of science (Ball, 2004).

Of course, when we talk about science we are talking about much more than technology. While most readers may still be able to imagine their lives without effective medicine, electricity, or computers (which is the life lived by many people today), I find it impossible to fathom what my world view would be without access to scientific concepts such as evolution. The whole notion of data-driven rational argument would be moot without the success of science. Science and its methods have completely taken over some aspects of our thinking.

In 2010 about 22% of Americans expressed interest in international issues in news media. Simultaneously, about 40% were interested in “new scientific discoveries” and 60% in “new medical discoveries” (Anon, 2012). Interestingly, 55% of Americans did not think that “the universe began with a huge explosion” and half did not believe in evolution. At the same time, most educated people (65% of Americans in 2009) do think that they can perceive when somebody stares at their back, apparently making use of a theory of perception, already held by Plato, according to which eyes emit physical “rays” that would bounce off from the backs of their heads. The theory that people are able to feel the stare was actually tested, refuted, and published in Science, in 1898 (Chabris and Simons, 2011). People also overwhelmingly believe that they have an above-average sense of humor, grammatical, ability, and logical capability (in one study 97% of university lecturers stated that they are above-average in their job); people believe that they can predict tomorrow’s weather by the severity of their arthritis; and that bad deeds will eventually be punished. So, clearly we are not living in a completely rational world (no great news here!) and in our culture the border between what is scientific and what is not is constantly shifting. While gravitational fields, dark matter, and cancer metabolomes are moving into the light of reason, psychoanalysis, eugenics, and the one gene–one protein hypothesis have gone in the opposite direction.

Great scientific theories can move into the shadows not only because they are proven wrong, but also because they gradually lose their relevance. The lactose operon was once a paradigm for the control of gene expression, thereby earning a Nobel Prize for both Françoise Jacob and Jacques Monod (1965) and encouraging countless new studies on gene expression. Today it is perhaps the best-understood system of gene expression. However, is also not terribly relevant to what goes on in the frontiers of molecular biology. The same can be said about the bacteriophage T4 or the bacterium Escherichia coli, which were once the preeminent model organisms in molecular biology.

The currents of science flow differently for different people and are by no means irreversible (think of the shifting fortunes of atomism from metaphysics to physics and chemistry, or of multiregionalism in human evolution). As a consequence, we have to resign ourselves to the fact that the question “Is it scientific?” can, on occasion, receive divergent answers from educated people.

Science Made Easy

It is usual to teach the scientific method to science students as a “thing” that we have captured, culled, dissected, fully analyzed, and therefore know the workings of. For instance, the US National Science Foundation (NSF), conducts a longitudinal Survey of Public Attitudes Toward and Understanding of Science and Technology where, among other things, it quantifies “public understanding of the scientific process” (Anon, 2012). Obviously, to be able to conduct this they must first believe that they know what the scientific process is. NSFs views on science should give us a good starting point in distinguishing the most salient points of the scientific method.

First question: Two scientists want to know if a certain drug is effective against high blood pressure. The first scientist wants to give the drug to 1,000 people with high blood pressure and see how many of them experience lower blood pressure levels. The second scientist wants to give the drug to 500 people with high blood pressure and not give the drug to another 500 people with high blood pressure, and see how many in both groups experience lower blood pressure levels. Which is the better way to test this drug? and Why is it better to test the drug this way? (Correct answer: The second way, because a control group is used for comparison.) About half of respondents correctly answer this question.1

The second question: In your own words, could you tell me what it means to study something scientifically? (Correct answers: formulation of theories/test hypothesis, experiments/control group, or rigorous/systematic comparison.) About one in five respondents gave a “correct” answer to this request.

Simple explanations of scientific method seem invariably to suggest that doing science involves testing hypotheses by experiments. Richard Feynman was perhaps the most famous scientist of the 1960s and is widely considered to be one of the best physical scientists ever, in addition to being a great writer, popularizer of science, and an avid surfer. So we might as well take our cue from his famous introductory physics course, taught in Caltech in 1961:

This process is termed “deductive” to account for the use of formal truth-preserving logic. In this, science is supposed to be rather similar to mathematics (and in Feynman’s case, identical to physics), where deductive proof is the standard.2 The gold standard of true science is widely thought to be replication of experimental results by independent researchers, for which free dissemination and criticism of results and hypotheses are necessary.

Of the status of experiments Feynman has this to say: “Now, how can an experiment be ‘wrong?’ First, in a trivial way: if something is wrong with the apparatus that you did not notice. But these things are easily fixed, and checked back and forth. So without snatching at such minor things, how can the results of an experiment be wrong? Only by being inaccurate.”

So, as long as your machines are well oiled and will calculate standard deviations, your experiment really cannot go “wrong.” Accordingly, science is often described as objective and impersonal, meaning that as long as you are using the scientific method properly, it does not matter who you are because the results of many individual researchers will eventually converge on the truth.

One mechanical engineer, Valery Fabrikant, forcefully tested this principle while imprisoned for the 1992 killings of four of his colleagues at Concordia University, by regularly publishing his research. Relatives of his victims tried, for understandable reasons, to convince journal editors not to publish his work (Spurgeon, 1996). The editors refused, claiming that for science to work properly, even murderers must be on equal footing when subjecting their results for peer scrutiny. Between 1995 and 2013 Dr. Fabrikant published at least 37 single authored papers from prison, which have been cited 97 times. He will be eligible for parole in 2017.

What is the product of science? One could argue with Feynman that as doctors produce cures, engineers design new gadgets, patent lawyers write patents, and lab technicians mix...