Intellectual – FAIL!
Posted: July 5, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: health care, intellectualism, politics, prejudice, psychology, science 7 Comments »Please see a rebuttal for some of the arguments made in this post.
There is a pretty entertaining blog, called Fail-blog. It features some of the odd situations where stuff, well, fails. Here is an example of a “Science Fail”:
I want to talk about a little more serious, but related issue than “Failed” science fair poster. Instead I want to talk about David Freedman and his disturbing question:
WRONG: Why experts* keep failing us–and how to know when not to trust them.
His observations are common-sense and trivial. He thinks that “expert” advice, especially the ones that become popular in the mass-media, are often wrong. In fact, many scientific breakthroughs of the past, many celebrated theories about one thing or the other are so off-the-target, it would probably deserve a place in the FAIL Blog.
Of course, this does not come as a surprise to people like me, who work in sciences. This means that science as a progress is working just fine.
Our work, as its core-definition, is try to understand the unknown by first devising hypotheses, which rely on underlying assumptions and conducting controlled experiments. Hence, as scientist can tell you that under certain assumptions and in a highly controlled setting A causes B at a certain statistical confidence. Of course, we can generalize our findings to some extent and hope that other experiments show that our generalizations hold true.
Sometimes these generalizations, such as in theory of evolution, works great and we are yet to find a single phenomenon that contradicts this theory. But most of the time, our generalizations are falsified quickly, replaced by some other generalization that encompasses the natural dynamics better.
And we go on, accumulating a record of mostly failed experiments and theories, and some, a little-tiny some, that saves lives, further our knowledge and make us more knowledgeable as a species.
The problem highlighted by David Freedman, I believe, is a serious one. The problem with his main argument, I think, is his loose definition of experts:
Scientists, finance wizards, doctors, relationship gurus, celebrity CEOs, high-powered consultants, health officials, and more.
I think most of the ‘experts’, who has a very strong voice in the media and the public sphere are the ones that are charismatic, media-savvy and, almost always, simplistic. In fact, Freedman observes that:
Bad advice tends to be simplistic. It tends to be definite, universal and certain. But, of course, that’s the advice we love to hear. The best advice tends to be less certain — those researchers who say, ‘I think maybe this is true in certain situations for some people.’ We should avoid the kind of advice that tends to resonate the most — it’s exciting, it’s a breakthrough, it’s going to solve your problems — and instead look at the advice that embraces complexity and uncertainty.
Well. It may be the case, then, who’s “wrong” is not the real experts (doctors, scientists, intellectuals, economists), whose expert opinion are never heard. Instead, they are dealing with the complexities and messiness of the real-world everyday and try to solve it one Gordion-Knot at a time. Therefore, what Freedman really refer to is the unsettling glorification of a neoliberal conformism that demands for simple “fixes” to every single aspect of our lives, from our bodies, to the economy and to the oil-spill.
Freedman is right in blowing the whistle on the ‘experts’ and urging people to put a little more effort in discriminating ‘bad’ advice from the ‘good’ one. However, Freedman ignores several situations where consensus opinions of scientists on several issues, on global warming, evolution, birth control,poverty, AIDS (the list goes on) are simply and shamelessly ignored. He also clumps a huge variety of people from scientists, to religious pundits to outright charlatans into the same category. I feel that science and scientists have become a scapegoat of sorts, responsible for all the wrong in the world. And, the inability of ‘experts’ to criticize some of the more fundamental sources of “wrong” in the world today is troubling.
E does equal MC^3, in well chosen units!
(ie s.t. c=1)
Hehehehe… That does sound good. It is then, not an intellectual fail on the side of the poster presenters, but an inability to read the context of the statement on our part.
[...] the author of “Wrong” (among several other books and articles), responded to a previous post of mine, in which I criticized his book. His frustration with the post is well-deserved and I [...]
You make some interesting observations related to my book, some of which are spot on, and others of which are so wildly inaccurate with regard to what I actually say in the book (for example that I lump together scientists and other types of experts) that it’s painfully clear you haven’t so much as skimmed it, or even glanced at the table of contents. Of course, it’s not entirely unreasonable for you to try to evaluate my claims and ideas based on the extremely brief interview with me in Time that you cite, but I would think the risks would be obvious. That’s why I myself generally try to read books before commenting on the ideas in them in an authoritative tone, rather than relying on short mass-media quotes from the author. I admit though, that’s a lot more time-consuming. I guess it depends on what we value more–sounding like we know what we’re talking about without having to put too much effort into it, or actually knowing what we’re talking about. I wonder which approach was emphasized in your PhD program? Sadly, I don’t have a PhD to boast about on my “about” page, so maybe that’s why I make the mistake of reading books rather than getting my worldview from Time. If you ever do get around to learning what I actually say in the book, I’d love to hear your reaction to it, even if it’s negative–especially if it’s negative–and I’d be happy to respond.
It may be the case, then, who’s “wrong” is not the real experts (doctors, scientists, intellectuals, economists), whose expert opinion are never heard.
Because they, except some charlatans (some of whom are very popular) among them, deal with real science. That is why historians and sociologists are very often much more popular in the mass-media, as history and sociology are hardly scientific disciplines.
OK… This is an important claim and, one that at least some grain of truth. However, some historians, sociologists, anthropologist do have valid findings and insights into different issues. Hence, I would not dismiss entire social sciences and humanities. Yet the distinction between sciences and humanities remains the great divide in the intellectual realm and the effects of it to the overall public discourse are yet to be discerned.
Hence, I would not dismiss entire social sciences and humanities.
I don’t dismiss them either. But it is wrong to give them the same or a similar weight with real sciences. Calling humanities (excluding physical/genetic anthropology and scientific archaeology) science by creating a “social sciences” category (as if sociality is a defining factor in categorizing sciences) is also wrong. They are what they are: humanities.
As science progresses, people become more and more skeptic of humanities, and this is a serious distinguishing factor between the two. Disciplines like history and sociology need significant reforms and even wholesale revolutions. A historian friend of mine once wrote that completely abandoning history in favor of a much more scientific alternative could be possible in the future. These are interesting issues, I think people should discuss these issues more.