Stumbling Toward Truth
Fictions of Science
In November, 1997, a curious report emerged from physicists at the California
Institute of Technology, who claimed that certain subatomic particles could move
from one place to another without physically traversing the intervening space.
"It sounded to most people like the transporters in Star Trek--you know,
'Beam me up, Scotty!'" says Brendan Dooley, associate professor of history
and social studies. Newspapers almost immediately began extrapolating futuristic
modes of transportation from these findings.
Closer scrutiny, however, revealed that the research actually concerned a
transformation in the properties of matter that occurs at short distances.
"Even to use the word 'transported' is an exaggeration," says Dooley,
who asks, "Why did they present the findings in this way? Partly it's the
demand of the marketplace for new information, which can motivate the
imaginations of researchers. You could call this a scientific
'invention'--something that is really more or less false."
Dooley, a cultural historian specializing in the Baroque period, nonetheless
believes that such scientific obfuscations, fictions, falsehoods, and hoaxes
produce benefits as well as dangers. In his forthcoming book, Science and the
Marketplace, he explores their causes and effects. On the downside, consider the
number of false and misleading articles published in medical journals. Dooley
describes one study of 235 biomedical journal articles for which retractions were
later published and indexed on Medline, an on-line bibliography. Despite these
retractions, 2,034 subsequent articles cited the erroneous reports--and a study
of 293 of those citations showed that fewer than 5 percent
mentioned the retractions. "Hoaxes and falsehoods get through, and affect
other research," says Dooley. "They continue to be cited and to form
scientific debate, often for a considerable length of time."
Yet this is actually business-as-usual in science, a normal part of the
overall enterprise that even contributes to its progress. "The very act of
disproving falsehoods may refine techniques of research and the critical use of
research materials, as well as methods of scientific practice," says Dooley.
"This process can improve scientific methods of detecting untruth."
Falsehoods occur for many reasons. Intellectual entrepreneurship--which Dooley
calls "selling your results or making your ideas attractive to a
market"--has long been an important motive for scholars. In other cases, he
says, "We may get an exaggerated result that flatters the self-love of a
patron--or the political priorities of a funding agency--or that corresponds to
dominant preconceptions people have about their society or culture."
Consider Dutch microscopy pioneer Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723), who
published many articles about the care needed in making observations with a
microscope--defects in the lens, or dirt in one's eye or on a slide, for example,
could all yield false results. Yet at one point in his career, when he looked at
spermatozoa under a microscope, Leeuwenhoek thought he saw homunculi
("little men")--tiny human beings with little arms and legs--wiggling
around. "He concluded that the male is the fundamental agent of
reproduction, that the baby is fully formed in the sperm," says Dooley.
"There was tremendous pressure from the marketplace to justify the dominant
position of males in society. No one is immune to their culture."
Dooley's intellectual quest involves "trying to see the other side of the
history of the disciplines--not just the triumphant story that portrays a uniform
progress of ideas, resulting in the disciplines we have today." Still, he
distances himself from the revisionist "science studies" movement,
which, he says, argues that "since all science is formed by society, we must
make sure it doesn't perpetuate politically undesirable myths." Some of
these scholars go even further, and propose that science should consciously
promote politically "progressive" ideas. In this context Dooley
mentions Lysenkoism, a fallacious theory of biological change (postulating that
acquired characteristics can be inherited) that was consistent with dialectical
materialism and so became orthodoxy in the Soviet Union. "The
science-studies people think we should create more Lysenkos," he says.
"Instead, we need to be both more critical of, and more respectful
of, science."
The core issue involves the way we characterize science. "Is science a
body of discovered truths--or a method for finding out how nature works?"
Dooley asks, linking this question to current debates over evolution and
creationism. "There are points in the history of science, and instances in
the behavior of scientists, where beliefs enter in," he says. "People
get married to their theories, which become certainties, facts. When presented as
beliefs--a set of cut-and-dried propositions that are true and
unanswerable--science plays right into the hands of the creationists. Belief is
the Achilles heel of science. But if science is taught as a method of discovery,
you're less likely to forget how ideas emerge in the real world--that they are
always in flux, always changing. Fiction is a part of science, and we should be
aware of that."
~Craig Lambert
