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Experts Agree! Or, What I Hope Becomes #ExpertsAgree! — Rob Long
Because I love the idea of “settled science,” I try to keep track of what experts agree on, or agreed on, that was found to be wanting.
For instance, fleas caused the Black Death, right? (That’s what I learned in 9th Grade history.) Not so fast. From The Guardian:
The 25 skeletons unearthed in the Clerkenwell area of London a year ago may hold the key to the truth about the nature of the Black Death that ravaged Britain and Europe in the mid-14th century.
A Channel 4 documentary on Sunday will claim that analysis of the bodies and of wills registered in London at the time has cast doubt on “facts” that every schoolchild has learned for decades: that the epidemic was caused by a highly contagious strain spread by the fleas on rats.
Settled science? Nope:
According to scientists working at Public Health England in Porton Down, for any plague to spread at such a pace it must have got into the lungs of victims who were malnourished and then been spread by coughs and sneezes. It was therefore a pneumonic plague rather than a bubonic plague. Infection was spread human to human, rather than by rat fleas that bit a sick person and then bit another victim.
In other words: we don’t know what caused the Black Death of the 14th Century. Here’s how you know you’re a conservative: because your reaction to this is, Yes, of course. There are lots of things we don’t know.
Another way to tell is if the following causes you to chuckle meanspiritedly. It’s from a Marketwatch column from 2007, entitled: “Apple Should Pull the Plug on the iPhone”:
The hype over the unreleased iPhone has actually increased over the past month despite the fact that nobody has seen or used the device. This, if nothing else, proves the power of branding and especially the power of brand loyalty.
It’s the loyalists who keep promoting this device as if it is going to be anything other than another phone in a crowded market. And it’s exactly the crowded-market aspect of this that analysts seem to be ignoring.
Experts agree! And there’s more:
There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive. Even in the business where it is a clear pioneer, the personal computer, it had to compete with Microsoft and can only sustain a 5% market share.
And its survival in the computer business relies on good margins. Those margins cannot exist in the mobile handset business for more than 15 minutes.
And note that the Microsoft Corp. versus Apple battles are laughable compared to the frenzied marketing mania in the handset business. Even Microsoft itself has troubles with its attempts to get into a small sub segment of the handset business with its operating system.
What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a “reference design” and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures.
It should do that immediately before it’s too late. Samsung Electronics Ltd. might be a candidate. Otherwise I’d advise you to cover your eyes. You’re not going to like what you’ll see.
I know: this is anecdotal reasoning. It’s not transferrable, say, to the current hysterical reaction to climate variations, or the efforts by global warming enthusiasts to silence their critics. Still, it’s fun to think about, yes?
Published in General
AGW folks remind me a lot of those trumpeting Lysekoism back during the 20th century, complete with governmental suppression of those objecting to it. (For that matter, Trofim Lysenko looks as if he could have been Al Gore’s grandfather.)
What is more relevant is the scientific consensus about scurvy back in the 18th century. Ways to prevent scurvy had been discovered in the 17th century and were in use by the end of that century. However, it did not fit with medical theory of that era, and the use of antiscourbics such as spruce beer and citrus were rejected as “old wives tales” for nearly a century in favor of ineffective “cures” more in line with the accepted wisdom.
It was not until James Lind put aside his preconceptions and proved through trials that citrus fruit prevented scurvy that the Royal Navy finally reverted to using lime and lemon juice to prevent scurvy.
But 3 out of 4 doctors agree!
Paging Dr. Moe, Dr. Larry, Dr. Curly . . .
Does this add new depth to the tradition of saying “Bless you!” after someone sneezes?
I argue that the current wave of Groupthink and Settled Science (but I repeat myself) are based on the Coherence Theory of truth. This theory states that people deem a statement to be true if it “coheres” with the body of other statements that we already deem true.
The other big-time theory of truth is the “correspondence” theory (we’ll leave pragmatism aside for now). The correspondence theory says that your statement is true if it “corresponds” to reality. The problem with Correspondence is that it’s damned near impossible to prove. It begins (critics say) with some metaphysical assumptions about Reality, and that language is supposed to mirror that Reality. Harrumph to that!
While it may be difficult to prove correspondence to metaphysical reality, coherence only has to agree with other statements. Coherence is the “workable” measure of truth. In other words, we believe something is true if it fits with our other beliefs.
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(NOTE: Because Ricochet temporarily allows 200+ words, I am voluntarily breaking up my post into parts. I encourage others to do the same self-discipline.)
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Ah, but here’s the innovation that’s behind all our troubles … it’s the Wikipedia problem.
You and I, as individuals, have a set of beliefs. But increasingly, we don’t compile those beliefs ourselves. We download them from public information sources.
We rely on the internet. We rely on Wikipedia. There are so many topics within easy reach of an iPhone that we fantasize that we have an authoritative wealth of “proven” knowledge at our fingertips.
Surely Wikipedia wouldn’t lie. Surely the compiled and collective public opinion carries the weight of authority, doesn’t it?
The technology of the internet has bestowed a false sense of authority. Lazy human beings are notorious for letting someone else do their intellectual work for them … and now the internet has accelerated that laziness. The set of beliefs that we take as true is determined by the all-pervasive internet, and the internet is willing to “authoritatively” define everything.
I thought about looking this up on Wikipedia, but I’m just too lazy. I’ll take your word for it instead.
Paging Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I remembered watching it as a 7 year old.
The author of the Apple article predicted in another piece that Apple will start selling a TV in 2013. This guy has the touch. See here http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-hdtv-is-coming-in-2013-2012-11-16
Settled science.
It’s interesting that large shifts in science often take a full generation, because the old generation never accepts the new idea, but has to die off for the new paradigm to become widely agreed upon.
Had they not heard of chemosynthesis?
It’s more amazing to me how quickly absolute loyalty to one paradigm can be replaced by absolute loyalty to another. When my dad studied geology in college, the theory of plate tectonics was still laughed away as nonsense. Yet I was taught tectonics in Physical Science 101 in middle school, and any scientist then would be laughed away for denying it.
It’s human nature to desire certainty and agreement, I guess.
Didn’t “experts agree” for several centuries that everything in the universe revolves around the [correction] earth?
And what about the four humors: blood, black bile, phlegm, and yellow bile? Pretty much settled science for at least a millennium, right? [I once thought an overabundance of black bile accounts for my melancholia; now I know it’s an overabundance of the Obama administration].
Actually, it started out as everything revolving around the Earth, then it was everything revolves around the sun, then it became all relative, but there are still heliocentrists out there making fun of the terrocentrists.
The Earth, not the Sun.
By the way we got to the Moon by placing the Earth at the center of the universe. That was because NASA used the M50 coordinate system in the navigation system of Apollo (and really every space system until the late 1980s). The origin of the M50 coordinate system? The center of the Earth.
First stage guidance for Apollo used a flat-plate assumption. Yup. It treated the Earth as flat.
So we got to the Moon by using the a flat Earth that was at the center of the Universe. Like one of Jim Dunnigan’s rules of war states “If it’s stupid and it works, it’s not stupid.”
Rob – Someday as a podcast guest you might want to talk to Samuel Arbesman – he’s a policy fellow at Harvard Medical and the Ewing Kauffman Foundation for Entrepreneurship. He wrote a book called The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date.
EJ, someone was looking for you in another thread. I think it was the War on Married Women. But since I’m taking my afternoon nap right now, there is a possibility I could misremember.
I’ve long considered that an example of a good theory based on limited knowledge. It’s easy to laugh at it now. But the theory wasn’t completely off base. There are indeed separate but codependent systems within the body which require a balance of chemicals. The liver is indeed a pivotal organ, as is the immune system (phlegm).
I don’t know what they teach in science colleges. But the impression I get from popular media is that modern scientists often don’t appreciate rudimentary scientists and pretend science is a modern invention. Knowledge and discovery are exponential. Science has picked up in recent centuries, but it justifiably took a long time to get here. Aristotle was no superstitious witchdoctor.
Max Planck stated this succinctly — perhaps in paraphrase — as: “Science advances one funeral at a time.”
Some of these posts should go to the discussion on vaccines. Some people find hard to believe that anyone would have reasons to be skeptical of vaccines… Settled science, they say.
In 2001 I was diagnosed with gastric ulcer, after a particularly stressful semester in graduate school. The doctor explained that we used to believe that the cause was stress and the treatment had to include dietary changes, but he gave me antibiotics and acid blockers. I called my trusted family doctor in Mexico (a homeopath, an admission that will earn me scorn around here). He said, “of course you have H. pylori, but why you have it is the question.” He told me not to take the antibiotics or acid blockers and instead gave me a strict diet, a homeopathic remedy, and told me to take it easy. The first doctor couldn’t be happier at the follow up visit. I was cured and he is to this day convinced that antibiotics and acid blockers did it. Settled science, indeed.
That is certainly a fair argument however one must keep in mind that the current anti-vaccine movement has its origins in Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s fraudulent research foisted on the British Medical Journal. Any who wish to persuade others on the issue of vaccine efficacy have a long road ahead them and for good reason.
Most of the assumptions about the black death came from India by way of Britain right around 1900.
Experts! Gotta love ’em. I admit that every time I read that “experts agree” upon anything, I automatically raise an eyebrow or two.
This is a funny collection of failed “expert” predictions: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/12/worst-predictions-2013-crystal-balderdash-101360.html#.U0fvQMfm1hA
Here’s something fun to think about:
In the 14th century, Sir Albert, a member of the political elite, leaves the sovereign’s court, puts on a few stones, grows a beard, and travels the countryside warning of the dangers of rats and their fleas. He also happens to make a good living selling rat poison.
Ah yes, things we learned as children that no one bothered to chase us down and correct for us.
I was taught that you shouldn’t do drugs because your brain doesn’t create new brain cells, unlike the rest of the cells in your body, you are born with the total number of brain cells you will ever have. Turns out brain cells divide like normal cells. [source 1] [source 2]
Brontosaurus (as featured in the children’s cartoon The Land Before Time) was a fake: [source 1] [source 2]
There are probably more such instances that I can’t recall, or am still ignorant about.
Found a couple more “conventional wisdom” things that turned out to be wrong.
Ulcers are caused by stress. WRONG. bacteria.
Cirrhosis of the liver is causes by malnourishment. WRONG. Alcohol directly causes it.