"Alternative Science" Column
For five years Richard Milton wrote an outspoken column in
Mensa Magazine. Here are some of the most entertaining and
offbeat subjects
he covered.
Why Alternative Science?
How can science be described as alternative? Surely science is
science. Anything else is just pseudo-science isn't it? Let me start this new
column with one recent example of alternative science and just how it is
'alternative'.
Over the past decade, pressure has mounted in Holland for the Dutch National
Health Service to offer complementary or holistic medical therapies, and a vocal
lobby has campaigned for the introduction of homeopathic remedies on the
country's NHS. Dutch skeptics were equally vocal in opposing the spending of
public money on treatment they regard as quackery.
To settle the question, the Dutch government commissioned a study of clinical
trials of homeopathy by medical scientists at the department of epidemiology and
health care at Limburg University, led by Paul Knipschild, professor of
epidemiology. Their task was to analyse studies that had been done on homeopathy
and say whether the investment of public money was justified by the evidence.
The team analysed 105 published studies. They found that 81 trials revealed
positive results while 24 showed no positive effects, and concluded that 'there
is a legitimate case for further evaluation of homeopathy, but only by means of
well-performed trials.' (British Medical Journal 1991, 302:316-323).
The story so far is encouraging to those who believe that complementary or
alternative medicine may have something to offer. But it was what happened next
that is the real eye-opener. The team leader, professor Knipschild, carried out
a study of how new evidence on alternative medicine affected the beliefs of the medical profession.
First he carried out a study of the effectiveness of a 'fringe' method of
diagnosis that is widely held to be pure quackery by conventional medical
science; the technique known as Iridology, where the state of a patient's health
is diagnosed from inspecting the iris of the eye. Knipschild's study found
positive evidence for the effectiveness of the technique, as with homeopathy.
This time, however, instead of simply publishing his findings, he first
surveyed a cross section of his Dutch medical colleagues with a questionnaire.
Did they believe Iridology was effective?
Not surprisingly, he found that a few were believers, many were undecided and
said they wanted further evidence, while a substantial number said that the
whole idea was plainly absurd and merely a means by which charlatans extract
money from gullible victims.
Knipschild then circulated his findings on Iridology to his colleagues
pointing out the positive results he had obtained. Once they had digested this
new information he surveyed them again on their attitudes: did they believe in
Iridology? It was the findings of this second survey that are so interesting.
For he found that the true believers welcomed the findings uncritically; the
undecided were interested to see positive results and suggested more work be
done, but those who previously said the whole thing was nonsense continued to
insist that it was nonsense despite the findings of his study. The discovery of
new empirical evidence had no effect at all on their beliefs because it
conflicted with those beliefs.
(Soc. Sci. Med. 1990 31:625-6).
Remember, we are talking here about some of Holland's most intelligent and
experienced medical scientists, responsible for the health of thousands of their
fellow citizens and for the annual expenditure of millions of pounds of public
money. These men and women are not fools or charlatans. But their medical opinions are partly founded not in evidence and experiment but in
something else: something in which they have even more faith than the research
findings of Holland's primary centre for epidemiology.
It seems to me that this 'something else' is a generalised, unconsciously
felt, almost mystical belief in scientific rationalism. This belief makes some
scientists (and quite a few non-scientists) believe that they are able to
predict what is true and what is untrue about the natural world, without the
need to perform any experiments or analysis, merely by reference to a 'common
sense' rationalist model they share. One might say (after Sir
Karl Popper) it is a 'closed' form of science.
So subjects such as homeopathy, cold fusion and ley lines (to pick three at
random) are often dismissed out of hand as unscientific nonsense, not because
they have been studied but because they threaten to violate the accepted canons
of scientific rationalism.
But if the evidence shows that many scientists are unwilling to be persuaded
by experimental evidence, then how are new discoveries ever accepted by science?
One answer is that of Nobel prize winner and physicist Max Planck, who said, 'A
new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making
them see the light but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new
generation grows up that is familiar with it.'
The 'alternative' of my title refers not to some new kind of science,
hitherto undiscovered: it refers to a scientific attitude that is the opposite
of closed: an approach that is willing to confront anomalous and disturbing
data, even when that evidence is deeply traumatic to our settled world view.
Alternative science, open science, is the science of Newton,
Einstein and Dirac -- it just hasn't had time to become respectable yet.
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