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48 Chromosomes? We See What We Want to See...

iWe
@iWe
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My father-in-law has told me of his early medical education, "back when there were 48 chromosomes." As he explains it, "People see what they want to see, so for years, everyone who counted 46 assumed they had got it wrong. Until someone, at some point, counted and recounted. And then, quickly and quietly, all the medical texts were updated. It turns out there were 46 all along." Huzzah! *

But I was also reminded when I saw just how many near-misses there have been at Reagan National:

...data recently analyzed by the board revealed that National Airport was the site of at least one near collision between an airplane and a helicopter each month from 2011 to 2024.

One per month. Holy cow. Everyone involved in the safety loop had to see it. But nobody called it out. Because an accident that has not yet occurred can be as unthinkable as suggesting that the great scientists who first counted the chromosomes had gotten it wrong.

Our world is full of these kinds of things. Biden's mental acuity could not be in doubt, because everyone knew that such talk was right-wing and thus tantamount to pseudoscience.

We see what we expect to see. Which is great for moving through life without making ripples - but terrible if we want to actually understand what is truly there.

*I was reminded of this when I read Heinlein's 1942 book on Eugenics, "Beyond This Horizon," because Heinlein expounds on humanity's 48 chromosomes. My father-in-law talks of the agony that everyone endured when 2 chromosomes were ripped from every cell of every person living. The agony was so all-encompassing that it is unspeakable, even today.

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Discussion (12)

  • Percival@Percival

    Richard Feynman, in his 1974 commencement address at the California Institute of Technology that became known as the "Cargo Cult Science" Address, said the following of Robert Millikan's landmark oil drp experiment for measuring the elemental charge of an electron:

    We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of an electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bit bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.
    Why didn't they discover the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of—this history—because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong—and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number close to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that...

    Confirmation bias. Those who repeated the experiment already "knew" what the "right answer" was, and kept working their data until it popped out.

  • Subcomandante America@TheReticulator
    ReplyingtoPercival

    Percival (View Comment):

    [quoting]
    It’s a thing that scientists are ashamed of—this history—because it’s apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan’s, they thought something must be wrong—and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number close to Millikan’s value they didn’t look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that…

    I would like to see the evidence that this makes scientists ashamed. I would expect them to be amused more than ashamed, except in the rare cases where someone's reputation was at stake.

  • Bill Berg@BillBerg
    ReplyingtoSubcomandante America

    Percival (View Comment): [quoting]
    It’s a thing that scientists are ashamed of—this history—because it’s apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan’s, they thought something must be wrong—and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number close to Millikan’s value they didn’t look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that…

    Subcomandante America (View Comment):

    I would like to see the evidence that this makes scientists ashamed. I would expect them to be amused more than ashamed, except in the rare cases where someone’s reputation was at stake.

    Evidence of emotional states is subjective at best.

    "Rate your pain level on a scale of 1-10"?

    Rambo - zero, Justin Trudeau - 100, best available fMRO. ECG, EEG .. "somewhere between 2 and 8"

  • Skyler@Skyler
    48? I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never heard that before. How did they count to 48? Is 48 correct, or is 46 correct? I don’t know if I am inclined to believe scientists any more.
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