Behind the surface
Socrates
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates suggests that looking merely at the surface of things as most of us do in our daily lives, will not lead us to understand the phenomena that underpin the workings of the world. While this is not welcome news, it actually explains why we are so easily misled by people with an agenda. What they do is point to single incidences or examples. They tell us, something happened to so and so, and that proves …
Nothing. Anecdotes really don’t mean much, other than to the actors involved in the event. But, people who are either ignorant of that fact or who have an ulterior motive are often untroubled by the fallacy of extrapolating from the single to the multiple.
Mary Leakey
In other words, they use inductive reasoning to construct a false hypothesis. When scientists develop a research project proposal, they do the opposite. They identify a proven axiom to start from, develop further hypotheses deductively from that proven law or axiom and then identify procedures to test those hypotheses. They also assume the null hypothesis from the start and seek to refute that null hypothesis, in order to thoroughly test their theory and avoid the temptation to only see what they want to see. They take the position that the natural tendency would be to find only those data that confirm what they hope to see in the first place. A true scientist or empirical researcher scrupulously avoids any subjectivity or bias in the construction of the experiment or observational investigation so they will actually observe what is taking place, not what they want to take place.
Once they have done that, and developed a set of methods to test their hypothesis beyond doubt, using statistical algorithms (when this is possible, by assigning numerical values even to qualitative, as well as quantitative data), they submit the research plan as a proposal and have it reviewed by peers, for study-worthiness. This is especially important because no properly trained researcher would want to waste their time conducting a set of experiments or observations only to find out that the method was wrong for the phenomena they want to study. This is called”validation”. In other words, the method is valid for analyzing or testing the phenomena one is interested in.
Albert Einstein
Once they have a valid system or procedure outlined, they carry out or unroll the research in a series of steps. Hopefully, they do it several times so they can establish the “reliability” of the research methods being used. Once the researcher(s) are satisfied that the repetition of the experiments, let’s say, yield the same results, they can begin to analyze and extrapolate, to draw conclusions from their work as to whether they have disproved the null hypothesis. That means they have to disprove that there is no significant phenomenon identified. That is how extensive the attempt of a true scientist is, to eradicate any bias whatsoever from their work.
Why do they do this? So, when you and I and the world read their findings, we can rely on them as being true, factual, real. We can use their conclusions and proven hypotheses to solve problems or understand the world. Some of the people that will be reading the final report or write-up of the research results will be other researchers all over the country and the world. The best research is published in the top scientific journals, such as the Journal Nature. Then, the Journal will hire “peers” in the scientific community to thoroughly analyze, test, and comment or review the article on the research. This is called “peer review”. The scientific community is small enough and sufficiently specialized that they know each other and know what each team is working on. If there are any flaws at any step along the way, you can be certain the reviewers will point it out dispassionately and objectively. The original investigators will typically respond and so it goes, back and forth until everyone is satisfied that the results are true and valid or that further investigation is needed, with adjustments to the plan.
Sir Isaac Newton
Moreover, even when the results confirm the hypothesis and thus support the researcher’s theory irrefutably, the true scientist will still humbly refer to that established law, proven axiom as a ‘theory’, because in science, nothing is ever finished. What is an axiom or law? Gravity for example, the earth rotating around the sun, the moon spinning on its axis, tectonic plate movement. I would also put Einstein’s “theory” of relativity here, quantum physics notwithstanding, so too with “string” theory, and the “theory” of evolution. These so-called theories are actually axioms or laws, but they are so complex that their finer points are still being honed and so, in humble and ethical deference to the great and awe-inspiring workings of this universe, the best scientist will call his work a “theory in progress”, even when it is actually for all intents and purposes a law. If the public understood this, they would be a good deal closer to understanding the way the scientific world works, and would not fall prey to the false notion that this caliber of theory is up for debate. These steps are Best Practices in science and they are vital for yielding usable results.
The reason I am talking about all of this is that we are now being bombarded with information from all kinds of questionable sources. Whereas in the past, people who had no expertise in a topic, who did not attend recognized and respected training programs at the top universities around the world, would be reluctant to advance theories that were not based on this rigorous process. There is so much integrity and ethical protocol built into the actual scientific community, that they bend over backward to avoid assumption and overstepping the reach of the data. It is completely against the ethics of the profession to distort findings or to report partial results in the service of some agenda, other than fact and truth.
Charles Darwin
But there seems to be no such reluctance on the part of the thousands of websites that are promulgating phony research and ersatz science. These are often political and business interests that misleadingly cloak themselves in the camouflage of names that make them sound like think tanks or academic bodies. They put out false data to refute scientific fact. That explains in part why so many people are now confused about things like GMOs, climate change, health and disease, oil, gas, and coal production. You can just fill in the blanks yourself.
Back to anecdotal evidence. While it is true that a carefully accumulated and controlled aggregation of information from individual incidences can point to a trend with the use of certain statistical yardsticks, such as the mean, median and mode, they are limited by definition. To take those aggregate data, or worse, one-off incidences, and apply them as if they indicate a trend or were an important indicator on any of these critical issues is not only bad science and scholarship, it is false, misleading and dangerous.
I say this because I see the sheer magnitude of non scientific research-based information, individual experiences and just trumped up data currently being “reported” as indicating for example, the falsity of the fact of global warming, the build-up of greenhouse gases and its leading to the warming of our oceans, killing species, changing weather patterns, exacerbating droughts and floods, creating super-storms and swallowing up land, which has been building to epic levels based on the ubiquity and ease of publishing on the internet.
Galileo
This is little different than the days when the tobacco industry deliberately falsified data, hired hacks to produce the kinds of results the big bosses wanted to put out to the public, and allowed millions of people to suffer and die from tobacco-related illnesses. Today, at least, people who choose to smoke tobacco, do so knowing the facts and the statistics. The facts are now available. The public is wise to the tricks that the industry was playing and is no longer being deliberately misled.
Marie Curie
You cannot extrapolate from anecdotal evidence, including and especially personal experience, no matter how compelling, and even when it is a true case. Case studies, properly done by professionals, are useful but still limited and the scientific community recognizes this. A classic issue is that of immunizations and autism. There are probably many anecdotal cases of children developing autism sequentially after having a series of immunizations. However, only properly conducted research with adequate sample groups and control of variables can determine whether these two phenomena are not just positively correlated, meaning, they both happen together in the same direction, i.e., an increase in immunizations and an increase in autism, but that the first actually causes the second. Those are not the same thing. Thus, parents’ beliefs about their child developing autism after being immunized, may or may not be justified. But we cannot tell based on anecdotes and case reports alone.
As a country, we should be outraged at the attempts to inject junk research, false reports, and calculated mis- and disinformation into every critical topic. This is done largely by those who will reap economic benefits from spreading lies, convincingly and in the guise of “truth”, “reporting” and even “research”.
This is the worst form of malpractice and no scientist should engage in it for any form of incentive.
Copernicus
And educated Americans should know better than to trust these ad hoc and heretofore non-existent sources. Just because you read something on the internet, hear it on the radio, watch it on television or are sent it by your cousin, who got it from his friend, who saw it on Facebook or the Drudge Report, does not mean that you should believe it.
Look beyond the surface to the source. If you cannot find that source easily and establish its agreed upon and broadly established integrity and credibility, tracing it back to its origins, in what should be respected research, then you are unwise to accept it, much less promote it to anyone else as anything more than opinion and hearsay.
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Beth Byrnes 
Good advice, Beth. It’s so easy to just Google things these days that a large portion of society (including myself), forgets that the first step in real research is to seek academic sources, which should be peer-reviewed and best found in a library’s database. Articles should have an accompanying bibliography.
I’ve gotten very slack on citing sources and such. Thanks for the reminder…
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Thank you Kim. I try to remember to check, myself! (Like your new avatar, by the way).
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Yes, people should know better. I remember attempting to get into a discussion on Facebook with a friend of a friend who was claiming the government was poisoning children through vaccines and we are all dupes if we allow our kids to be vaccinated, etc. etc. I asked for some references to support her claims, where was she getting all this information – and her answers were so ridiculous I could not believe it. She linked me to websites that even in the visual presentation were so clearly sensationalist garbage, much less the phony “research” they promoted as science. Honestly, it wasn’t even the slightest bit difficult to discern that there was no factual basis for any of their claims. And yet here was a grown, educated woman refusing to vaccinate her children because of some snake-oil salespeople using loads of emotional appeals to gin her up against vaccines.
Again, I can only conclude from seeing this over and over again that people are willfully allowing themselves to be misled. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me.
By the way, I am uber-liberal and do actually read many liberal blogs in my spare time, But if I were to get into a political argument with someone, would I use them as support for my argument? No, I would not. I do not see them being as whacked-out as some of the right-wing crap I come across, but I realize that it is still a biased source that is preaching to my choir. While I like to have my choir preached to on occasion, I am not going to use biased references to support an argument, much less some wackadoo website making all sorts of sweeping claims without any real evidence whatsoever. How people cannot at least be aware that when arguing a point they should use reliable resources stuns me on a regular basis.
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It really is remarkable that people are so unquestioning. Naturally, it is tempting to just go with what supports one’s own inclinations, without taking the trouble to verify the sources. But look at the destruction it is causing. All this Kenya nonsense and conspiracy theories, or people with no credentials contradicting the real experts. Just more confusion. Sickening.
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We are rapidly losing what few critical thinking skills we have. The overabundance of access to information doesn’t, unfortunately, come with enough disclaimers about the legitimacy of all this info.
I’ve seen it from the perspective of a university lecturer, as a facilitator for younger children at museums, and in customer-based not-for-profit work. No one wants to analyse and evaluate anything any more, and primary sources are viewed as irrelevant. Easy answers are where it’s at- and why we are in this current state of disharmony and discord.
I, at least, am outraged. And happy to see that others are as well.
Great post!
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Thank you, Cole. You know, I had the darndest time getting ungrads in a couple of courses I taught years ago, to understand the importance of properly constructed arguments, based on solid theories. All they wanted to do was talk about problems and people they knew, or what were really urban folktales. Pure science, forget it, but even applied science was too much work for them. Quite discouraging and now the tide of ignorance has become a tsunami (not to make a macabre allusion).
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BRILLIANT post. (Copernicus is a personal favourite.)
Thank you. I am curious-how would you integrate the concept of a geometry into this topic?
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Well, thank you, first off. I would need a whole post for geometry, largely because it combines two things: math and physics. So the latter is the domain of science, while math is a symbolic language that just so happens to be useful for overlapping with empirical phenomena. Some day I will post on geometry, which, as you probably know the Rosicrucians and Masons use as a signal about the secrets of the universe. Are you familiar with Dr. Paul Case and the Builders of the Adytum? They are a hermetic society and as you probably know, the hermetic groups use geometry as explanatory for a great deal of the structure of the physical universe. Interesting stuff.
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No, but you’ve excited me. It’s a research area of interest for me. If fortune smiles upon me (I might have to provoke her a bit), I would like to tackle this broader topic in a (distantly) planned third book.
In fact, I vaguely allude to this broader topic in my current book. Serendipitous that you should bring this to my attention. Thanks so much.
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Well, that will be interesting indeed. That whole area of the hermetic paradigm, is the ‘open secret’, thousands of years old and fortunately or unfortunately, out there for those who ‘have eyes to see’. It can do with some resurrection. More on this, I am sure….and while you are at it, look up the “Cube of Space”. That should give you plenty of thought provoking material for starters.
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Fascinating field. It hints that there was indeed an advanced degree of knowledge in remote antiquity, perhaps one in which all branches of knowledge, including theology, were unified or near unified.
If you’re familiar with the works, I use “Hamlet’s Mill” and “The Origin Map” (both by scholars/academics) in my current book project to justify interpreting Ovid’s tale of narcissus as a potential metaphor for actual insight into human nature and its disorder of the same name.
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Narcissism is on a lot of people’s minds lately. It is probably more prevalent than we realize and something to steer clear of whenever possible. Interesting book!
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Thanks Beth. I really do suspect that I may be able to unify Lasch’s “The Culture of Narcissism” with Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” by the end of the sequel.
In the event that I even slightly succeed in this rather challenging task, the result will not be without controversy.
I’ve no doubt that keen minds such as yours will help keep me on the straight and narrow.
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Hi Beth: I lost my threads on my past “posts”:.. so , I thought this –related to GEOLOGY could give us cause to really “WORRY” …www.nypost.com/2013/12/12/beneath-yellowstone-a-volcano-that-could-wipe-out-u-s-/ Australian scientists
observations. Ronnie
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I will check it out. Thank you, Ronnie.
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Alas, nor most especially of our fellowman, as is so evidently more and more visible with the current interfering objections to reasonable minds’ efforts in ending destructive sanctions thru the efforts of men of good will. Nothing can change maintaining punishing status quo… JJ
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Quick up-date —www.weaselzippers.us/?p=165742
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Hi Beth: Now here’s some alarming info from our friends at all places Pravda !!
english.pravda.ru/science/earth/31-12-2013/126523-criminal_global_warming_fraud-0/
Very much in line with your excellent article referenced here Check it out.
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