Are you a creationist? Or an
advocate of Intelligent Design? If so, you know perfectly well how your views
are received by scientists, and surely you’re tired of it. If you would like your
positions to be taken seriously by those with whom you disagree, please
consider the following:
How to argue against a
scientific theory:
Method One: If you want to present a rational
argument against a theory — instead of something that will be dismissed as a
meaningless rant — probably the best method is to point out a verifiable fact
that clearly contradicts the theory. But … to do this, you
must understand the theory, so that you understand what might contradict it.
You will accomplish nothing if you
argue against an incorrect comic-book version of the theory, one which no
scientist accepts or teaches. Building up and tearing down straw-men is a
useless exercise. To put it bluntly, you need to know what you’re talking
about.
The evidence you present can be
something newly discovered, or the discrediting of something discovered
earlier, which turns out to have been wrongly understood — or even bogus. However,
even if you’ve really got something, you must be careful, because this is the
stage where kooks and cranks and Einstein wannabes so often go astray.
For your discovery to completely
overturn a theory, the new evidence (or newly-discredited old evidence) must be
essential to the theory, so that without it, the theory collapses.
Merely pointing out that some unneeded datapoint is wrong — even a famous one
like Piltdown Man — doesn’t bring a well-established theory crashing down in
ruins — especially if (as with Piltdown Man) the theory never depended on such
evidence in the first place. At most, such discredited evidence might require a
footnote, or perhaps a minor correction in the next edition of a textbook.
Corrections occur all the time as our observations improve. Such matters are
rarely of any genuine importance; but people outside the profession often lack
the perspective that comes from knowing the full range of evidence that
supports a theory, and therefore assign a disproportionate significance to
relatively trivial matters.
Method Two: Another method of arguing against a
theory is to present a testable theory of your own, one which explains
all of the available evidence better than the existing theory. It’s a
difficult task, but not impossible. Contrary to the frequent complaint of
cranks, scientists are not closed-minded to new theories. In the last century,
general relativity, quantum mechanics, the big bang, and plate tectonics
prevailed over initial skepticism. But to devise a new theory, you need to know
two things.
First, you must know what a
scientific theory is, and what it isn’t[1]. Asserting as a competing “theory” something
that isn’t testable is a waste of everyone’s time in a scientific discussion.
Second, you must be aware, at
least generally, of the evidence which supports the existing theory. That
is what your competing theory must explain. The more evidence an existing
theory explains, the more difficult it becomes to devise a credible
alternative. Your new theory has to thread a lot of needles.
A competing theory which offers
an explanation of only one thing (an ad hoc explanation)
isn’t of much use. Science is not a collection of numerous mini-explanations,
each of which operates by its own unique rules, in grand isolation from all the
others. One thing, considered as if it were unrelated to anything else, may
have many possible explanations, and your explanation may seem as plausible as
any other. But but does your theory explain all the evidence that the existing
theory explains? Can it survive the same tests that the existing theory has
survived? Is it consistent with other branches of science? If the answer to any
of these questions is “no,” then you’re unlikely to be successful.
How not to argue
against a theory:
1. Neither ignorance of,
astonishment at, dislike of, nor refusal to accept an existing theory will
serve as scientific objections. All such arguments are really about you,
not the theory.
2. No scientist claims that he
knows everything, or that he has solved all problems; and no theory has been
subjected to all possible tests. Therefore, pointing out that that there are
things not yet known, tests not yet made, or problems not yet solved, isn’t
much of an argument. Such items routinely become the research projects of
scientists and PhD candidates; the scientific journals are filled with the
results of their research. That’s how science progresses. Unsolved problems are
the daily work of science, and no unresolved question, by its mere existence,
is a magic bullet that will bring a theory crashing down. A newly-discovered
fact may indeed upset an existing theory; but a list of unknowns is inevitable.
The unknown does not refute a theory. Theories explain that which is
known.
3. It should be obvious that
denial of verifiable facts doesn’t score any points; it just costs you
credibility. And blindly copying material found at frequently discredited
websites — especially their often bogus quotes from alleged experts — is
intellectually vacuous and makes you appear ridiculous.
4. A theory is not disproven by pointing
out occasional acts of academic misconduct, or even outright fraud. There are
tens of thousands of scientists, and a few have disgraced themselves.
(Similarly, a religion is not discredited because of the personal flaws of a
few clergymen.) A demonstration of fraud could be a successful attack
on a theory, but only if the theory can’t survive without the
fraudulent material. This would amount to a contradiction of the theory, which
is Method One described above. But be careful here; well-supported theories
usually don’t collapse because of one faulty data point.
5. Other worthless arguments are
attempts to discredit the character of individual scientists, or to quote them
on unrelated topics, because such matters are irrelevant to the scientific merits
of a theory. Isaac Newton was said to be an unpleasant man, and Einstein was a
socialist; but the value of their scientific work is not affected by such
irrelevancies.
6. Likewise, quoting opinions
of people who aren’t practicing in the field is of little value, because a
scientific theory isn’t about opinion — it’s about testable explanations of
verifiable data.
7. Claiming that the theory
somehow causes undesirable consequences — even if such claims were true — is
irrelevant to the validity of the theory. Atomic theory, for example, is not
discredited because of the bomb, nor is gravity discredited because someone
gets tossed out of a window.
8. Claims that a scientist (like
9. Claiming that your opponent’s
religious views aren’t the same as yours is irrelevant in a debate about a
scientific theory. Also irrelevant is claiming that you can’t harmonize your
religious views with the theory. The subject under discussion is the theory,
not your religion, and not your opponent’s religion. Science isn’t opposed to
religion; it’s just not about religion.
A version of this article
appeared in The Curmudgeon. All rights remain with the author.
[1] A lot of things make up a scientific
theory but a good working definition (from wikipedia) is: “A testable model of
the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting
future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being
tested through experiment or otherwise verified through empirical observation.”