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2011 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

8. Hooptedoodle 1 – The Proof of the Science is in the Pudding

Author : Derek Partridge

Published in: The Seductive Computer

Publisher: Springer London

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Abstract

In this diversionary chapter we explore and expose the common misconception that scientists prove things to be true. We look at some historical examples of rejected ‘truths’ as well as more modern scientific confrontations such as the cold fusion sage. We expose the mismatch between commonsense and logical thinking, and briefly touch on the latest focus of concern – global warming.

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Footnotes
1
This quotation is from the then Minister for Education and Science who wrote an article for The Spectator arguing for the merits of religious teaching. This fundamental misinterpretation of the nature of science was not much more than a (misguided) passing reference, but it was from our political leader in this field, and it did get widely publicized.
 
2
See the Global Warming ‘sceptics’ website for a wealth of ‘proof’ claims – http://​scienceandpublic​policy.​org
For example: December 8, 2009.
“Richard Lindzen of MIT has produced conclusive empirical proof that manmade global warming is a farce. See here, for example:
Yes, the earth was getting warmer. It’s always warming or cooling. Surely these idiots realize this. And you would think that they had the common sense that God gave a boiled turnip and realize the earth’s climate is driven largely by the sun, and to a lesser extent by such factors as volcanism.”
“To disprove the AGW [i.e., manmade global warming] science
You need to look no further than the missing greenhouse hotspot. Many studies have tried to locate it, but it is nowhere to be found. Every single computer climate model predicts its existence.
It’s interesting that every single global climate model uses the CRU data as it initial values, which is now known to be faked. Therefore the models produce fake results.
It is not up to the detractors to prove a negative, it is up to the proposers to prove their hypothesis is correct using the scientific method. Which includes releasing all data, methods and results so other scientists can duplicate the hypothesis. Otherwise it’s just some rigged, fudged, faked up computer program.”
All this would be more amusing if it were not potentially so serious.
 
3
It was Sir Karl Popper’s seminal book The Logic of Scientific Discovery (published in German, 1930s, translated into English, 1960s) which laid out the objective foundations of scientific progress. It was left to later writers, such as T. Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962 – see note below for details), to then explain why this logical process of conjecture, test and refutation was so often flouted by the scientists.
 
4
Kuhn quotes both Charles Darwin and Max Planck on the point that new theories are not accepted on merit, the latter writing in his autobiography: “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die” (p. 151, 2nd edn). Thomas S. Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1962 with an enlarged 2nd edition in 1970.
 
5
A number of books exploring this most bizarre episode in modern science (which is still ­continuing) are available:
Too Hot to Handle by Frank Close (Penguin, 1990)
A British professor of physics tells the tale of what Time Magazine hailed as “the greatest discovery since fire.”
Cold fusion: The scientific fiasco of the century by John R. Huizenga (OUP, 1992).
An American chemistry and physics professor was co-Chairman of the U.S. Department of Energy Cold Fusion Panel which investigated the phenomenon.
Both academics tell much the same story and are at pains to explain the details of the supposed phenomenon – probably tough going for the chemically unenlightened. The stories are, however, quite readable and fascinating even if the much of the technical details are ignored. Neither author is in any doubt that the phenomenon called ‘cold fusion’ (i.e., nuclear fusion at room temperature rather than at millions of degrees Centigrade) has not been demonstrated and almost certainly never happened.
In the current millennium, claims for a new version of cold fusion have been made and similarly challenged by other scientists who failed to replicate the phenomenon reported. The new claims are that nuclear fusion has been observed in the collapse of bubbles in liquids; hence the name “bubble fusion.”
On March 8, 2006, Nature magazine published an online article under the title, Bubble bursts for table-top fusion; Data analysis calls bubble fusion into question , by UCLA researchers, namely Brian Naranjo, under the supervision of Seth Putterman (doi: 10.1038/news060306-3 ). This article was attacked as “misinformed, unpublished, web- posted, non-peer reviewed … relied on sources with undisclosed conflicts of interest with competitors, [and it] set into motion a federally mandated two-year investigation. … The Nature March 8, 2006 article alleged actions that constitute fraud, bubble fusion data fabrication, and quoted UCLA’s B. Naranjo as stating: “The probability of getting such a poor match for neutrons produced by fusion is one in more than 100 million –virtually impossible.” This webpost verdict from a UCLA graduate student was portrayed by the Nature reporter as true without accurately investigating the facts.” (from http://​pesn.​com/​2008/​08/​27/​9501491_​BubbleFusion_​vindicated/​ accessed 25/03/09) … and so this new debate rumbles on.
The thoroughly up to date example is the disagreements over Global Warmingis it happening? If so, are mankind’s actions a significant causal factor? Sceptics claim that the case for manmade global warming “has not been proved”of course it hasn’t, because this sort of hypothesis can never be proved. It has to be a question of weight of evidence for and against these hypotheses. However, with the complexity of the ‘Earth’s-climate’ system far exceeding that of the unmanageable IT systems, the truth of these hypotheses will always be a matter of argumenteven though it’s primarily a ‘predictable’ analogue system.
The hypothesis that our climate is warming and that human activity is a significant contributive factor is an important scientific hypothesis, but one for which either clear proof or even indisputable refutation seem equally unlikely.
 
6
This sort of disagreement also highlights the difficulties surrounding another touchstone of science: repeatability. But if an experiment is not repeatable (i.e., the attempted repetition fails to deliver the original outcomes), what does this mean? The attempted repetition was carried out incompetently? The original descriptions were incomplete, or wrong, with respect to the experimental procedure and/or the measurements recorded? There are endless ways that either of these questions can be answered in the positive, and no easy way to conclude that either is not the reason behind failure to repeat.
 
7
Arthur Koestler in The Sleepwalkers (Penguin, 1964) recounts this tale in great detail. This book documents the way science has stumbled along in the dark for centuries not knowing where it was going or even recognizing when it got there. Despite Koestler’s arguably anti-scientific stance, his book is revealing reading for those with a stubbornly persistent belief in the clarity and rationality of the scientific enterprise. The author concentrates on Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler and Galileo.
 
8
Lewis Wolpert’s book, The Unnatural Nature of Science (Faber and Faber, 1992), is an ­eminently readable, non-technical explanation of how and why scientific thinking is not just formalised commonsense thinking, but an entirely different (and somewhat alien) mode of thinking.
 
9
Still implicit is the fact:
2 multiplied by 2 is the same as 4
as well as many others, such as the definition of an even number being that it divides exactly by two, and the necessary relationship between multiplication and division. Which facts and rules are explicitly included in a proof and which are left implicit is largely a matter of taste and judgement with respect to minimizing proof size and including all ‘non-obvious’ assumptions. But ‘obviousness’, of course, is highly person specific, so the notion of a complete proof is no more clear-cut than that of a complete specification for an IT system (see Chapter 6 ).
 
10
Kuhn on page 155 in his 2nd edition (see book details above) states: “Einstein, for example, seems not to have anticipated that general relativity would account with precision for the well-known anomaly in the motion of Mercury’s perihelion, and he experienced a corresponding triumph when it did so.”
Kuhn gives further references to the book and letters that support this claim.
 
Metadata
Title
Hooptedoodle 1 – The Proof of the Science is in the Pudding
Author
Derek Partridge
Copyright Year
2011
Publisher
Springer London
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-498-2_8

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