All aboard the science roller coaster!

Henry thought he'd try the religious haunted house ride next.

Welcome to the science roller coaster. More loops and inversions than any other philosophical theme-park attraction and guaranteed to make you dizzy.

I won’t review the hype. If you’ve been living on Earth for the past week, you’ll already know how the world’s date with NASA started in a low-cut dress and mini skirt, but ended with a stoic hand shake and a pained smile. Speculation of life on Titan shifted to misrepresentations of evidence supporting a shadow biosphere on Earth, to be quickly replaced by a challenge to the defining elements of biochemistry, only to end with a shrug as the previously exciting results sustain cracks under closer scrutiny.

There’s no shortage of discussion on the topic on various science blogs, bulletin boards and the Twitter stream, with emotions running wild as lovers of science are left with the academic equivalent of blue balls.

What happened? Nothing, really. Or a lot. Depending on your angle.

On one front, it is science as usual. NASA funded the study of a species of an extremophile bacteria which might reveal something about how life can be sustained in environment we would normally consider hostile, thereby possibly broadening the range of extraterrestrial habitats worth investigating. The research came back promising, although the method was found to be too messy for such a revolutionary conclusion to be taken for granted. In time somebody will try again, modifying the method to close the gaps, and either give the thumbs up or will admit they failed to replicate the previous results.

This sort of thing happens every single day in science. It just doesn’t make ripples outside of select tribes of researchers.

NASA’s media division would have to have been pretty daft to have not predicted the impact an embargoed whisper featuring astrobiology would have had on the the public. Of course, this is how people imagine science works – a punctuated equilibrium of discovery, where an odd electromagnetic signal or a peculiar chemical reaction constitutes a revolutionary ‘Eureka!’ moment. On the back of this fantastic view of science, all it takes is a subtle suggestion for the excitement to spread.

Will the community have learned a valuable lesson here on how science really works? I doubt it. Rather, I foresee cynicism and decreased confidence in scientists. It’s hard enough explaining to people that science is a plodding process where ‘wow!’ moments are best appreciated with years of hindsight, and not in the first five minutes of a curious anomaly.

People like the thrill of scientific discovery and innovation. They have done ever since the industrial revolution gave them cheaper socks and fatter pigs. And in a competition for attention, there’s no use in sitting back and asking for the patience it deserves.

The terminal ‘why?’

Yesterday was Carl Sagan’s birthday. Let me introduce you to another role model of mine. Like Sagan, I’ve never met this gentleman, who passed away when I was just 11 years of age. While Richard Feynman is best known for his contributions to physics, it was his understanding of a key aspect of learning that continues to influence my work as a science communicator. He knew that people engaged with stories based on the experiences they’d already had in life. You couldn’t teach a person using concepts they’d never encountered.

In this interview, Feynman answers the question of why magnets repel, ironically by explaining why he can’t explain it.

Feynman is a superb communicator who knows the value in telling a good story that an audience can relate to. More importantly, not only does he know the importance and limits of metaphor, he knows there is a ‘terminal ‘why?”, a point when you have to say to your audience, ‘For now, just accept the answer, ‘because it does”.

When I was twelve, I remember learning about the atom. On the black board there were concentric circles, dots, pluses and minuses. Electrons were the dots with minuses next to them, and they sat on large circles called orbits. Protons were small circles in the centre, and contained plus signs. With them were neutrons which held no symbols. And that was the atom.

A model of the atom...or solar system...always get them confused...

Of course, electrons aren’t dots, but rather exist in clouds of probability as something that has both the properties of a small discrete object and a wave rippling through a medium. The nature of their wave functions is what creates zones and keeps the electrons from meeting with their oppositely charged nuclei.

Do I understand what I just wrote? If I’m being honest, I’d say I grasp about 30%* of it.  That 30% comes from what little experience I have in the history of particle physics, which doesn’t provide me with a deep appreciation of the mathematics or the theoretical framework. A person who studies particle physics for a living might be able to profess an understanding of about 80%, resorting to vague shrugs only if you challenge them with bothersome questions like  ‘what fundamental processes produce a particle’s wave-like properties?’

If electrons aren’t dots that whiz around a nucleus like planets around the Sun, why did my teacher lie and say they were? There are two possibilities. One is that they didn’t know any different. The other is that telling me that electrons exist in clouds of probability as waves is not something I would have made sense of at twelve. There were no experiences which could serve as an appropriate metaphor that would not have carried superfluous baggage, or models I was familiar with which could provide a framework. So the solar-system analogy – as wrong as it was – served well until somebody explained it differently.

What was therefore necessary wasn’t an accurate explanation of particle physics, but a metaphor that could serve its place until I had ample experiences with which to refine the model into a better one. As a science writer with an audience of children, this is a skill that I’ve found remarkably difficult to pick up, even with years of teaching experience behind me.

You can’t avoid the risk of myths and misinformation accompanying your analogies – you are simply forced to pick the analogies that are most resistant to carrying unwanted baggage. Picking which ones will do the job comes down to knowing your audience and knowing how they think not only now, but in years to come. It also means knowing when you have to resist using metaphors or models that convey the wrong details – such as Feynman’s example of the rubber-band in the interview above. It’s tricky. Very tricky. And I’m the first to admit I struggle in getting it right.

When I hear it suggested that scientists should communicate more with the public about their work, this is the thought that comes immediately to mind. There are indeed those like Feynman and Sagan, who comprehend the significance and risks involved with selecting the right communication tools. Yet few, if any, research and applied science organisations select their scientists on criteria of pedagogy or public education. And nor should they. Which means there is a gap that needs filling with people who take the time not just to grasp the science, but to pick out the pieces that are necessary for their audience, finding those metaphors that are less wrong than others and are able to form a sound foundation for future learning. It also relies on science education concerning itself with teaching critical thinking as a means of continual adjustments in the broken models collected along the way.

In communicating science to the public, accuracy is essential. But sacrificing comprehension for that accuracy makes for a pointless exercise. Finding that balance is as vital as it is difficult, and finding people skilled at doing it requires more than simply finding people who are well versed in their discipline.

*Percentages in this article are completely arbitrary and aren’t linked to any particular formula for deducing confidence levels in physics.

The moral objective

Laws against murder are so common across diverse cultures, it’s hard to not think of it as a rule embedded within our genes. Even in times of war, we’re more attuned to bluff and posture than to murder humans labelled as our enemies. In the Vietnam War, it was calculated that there was only one hit for every 52 000 bullets fired. Yet is this aversion to killing the same as a scientific law? And if so, can morality be justified by such rules of nature?

There has become a trend in recent years to view morality less as a product of our cultural heritage and more of a behaviour that benefits our survival as a species. Some moralistic concepts are easy to tie in with evolution – a species that is comfortable with wanton, indiscriminate killing of its own individuals might not be as fit as one that isn’t. Incest creates a ‘yuck’ factor in so many societies that could imply a fundamental aversion to the problems associated with inbreeding. Yet one need only look at cultural relativity and the deviations in morality to see there is far more to the question than genetics is capable of explaining.

At first glance it seems to be the old nature vs. nurture dilemma. However moving past the dichotomy, one is left pondering the extent to which variations in genetics might determine a community’s moral values, and explaining how morality can vary so significantly over just a few generations.

Numerous philosophers have proposed universal systems of morality throughout history. Plato maintained that it was possible to consider something as virtuous based on its metaphysical form, or ideal concept. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant objectified morality by describing a concept called the ‘categorical imperative’, where similar to the golden rule, a person should act in the same manner they would expect of anybody in the same situation. Other systems are inseparable from religious opinions, deferring to a supernatural entity for a system of moral laws.

Using science to explain not just the role of moral behaviour, but to quantify and evaluate it, barely dates back a century or two. Charles Darwin considered altruism in animals as an evolved social trait, but struggled to describe how it might benefit individuals within a group. Yet fellow biologist Thomas Huxley expressed doubt on the issue in his 1893 book, ‘Evolution and Ethics’, claiming that the prevalence of both moral and immoral behaviour makes it difficult to objectively ascribe one with greater benefits via reason alone. He writes, “But as the immoral sentiments have no less been evolved, there is so far as much natural sanction for the one as the other. The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist.” Similarly, the Scottish philosopher David Hume warned against confusing what ‘is’ – as we observe it – with what ‘ought’ to be as judged by reason.

There are those who believe it is possible to scientifically derive how we ‘ought’ to behave. The writer Sam Harris proposes that the intrinsic goal of morality is to promote the ‘flourishing of those of conscious minds’. In other words, ideally our morals should lead to the sustaining of our sense of personal and communal wellbeing, thus allowing our community to persist and possibly grow. He argues that science can indeed be applied to analysing morality.

At its core, morality is about values, which in themselves are a hierarchy of desires as perceived by an individual within particular contexts. For example, I can value money over food, unless I’m starving. I might value the idea of a family as a core unit of society, but only if it’s defined on the basis of a heterosexual couple. On the other hand,  science deals with the absolutes of facts, which don’t vary with subjective contexts and are required to be worded to reflect this.

Harris argues that values can also be worded in a factual manner, in that it can be factually demonstrated that some people desire happiness or good health. This, in turn, provides a means of quantifying the moral behaviour.

I’d venture that few people would argue that this was wrong, at least within some contexts. I might believe in treating other people well because I can then expect them to treat me well in return. The so-called golden rule can improve interpersonal relations. Any person’s behaviour can be evaluated against the probability of attaining their fact-based desire. If science can be used to determine a probable contradiction, it’s possible that the moral behaviour can be viewed as flawed.

But not all moral behaviours have such explicit links. If I argue it’s wrong to abort a foetus, do I do it solely because I think the foetus might feel pain? Is it because I fear for a slippery slope? Is it because I have a blanket rule about living systems? Do I derive it from a fear of God’s punishment? Most important of all, do I engage in this moral behaviour out of a deliberate attempt to achieve a clear goal, or is it simply something I’ve inherited from my community? We might invent an outcome, but there’s no guarantee that the moral behaviour has any clear intention.

Neurologically speaking, the evolution of our behaviour as social animals could definitely explain a tendency to develop a culture of morals, arising from the same tribal tendencies as many of our thinking behaviours in order to create a cohesive social structure. In one sense, murder within one’s tribe can be considered antagonistic to a biological law of nature, drawing a line between a scientifically determined rule and a moral code on how we ‘ought’ to behave.

By the same token we can state we have a moral obligation to have sex, not pollute our environment and encourage diversity within our gene pool, so long as we observe the context of community wellbeing. We can categorically describe certain behaviours as universally ‘good’ and others as fundamentally ‘bad’ in an absolute context of the health and wellbeing of the collective.

But what of communities which demonstrably contravene such laws? What of tribes that engage in ritualistic sacrifice, kill enemies or commit infanticide? Within such contexts, it seems that our psychology not only allows it, the action doesn’t appear to be necessarily detrimental to the continued existence of the group. Rape, genital mutilation, oppression of certain classes or castes…all could be argued on the back of an evolutionary appeal to be morally sound given such communities persist and certain groups within the community personally consider their overall wellbeing to have been improved by it. The Mayans, known for killing their own in dedication to their deities, did not die off as a direct result of this particular cultural practice and viewed their lives as improved as a result. There is little evidence of infanticide committed in cultures such as ancient Greece and Rome having a negative impact on the wellbeing of the community; if anything, the practice in many communities, especially those of prehistory, might be considered to be beneficial in negotiating times of hardship.

Harris tends to gloss over the subjectivity of well-being as it varies between individualist and collectivist communities, arguing that there is a spectrum of ‘brain states’ which all people could agree constituted good and bad. Without the means to test this, we can only disagree. Yet it wouldn’t be difficult to find anomalies for concepts we would readily assume fell into this ‘spectrum’. Of course, it might be said that such anomalies were necessarily mad, deranged or fools…yet this begs some circular reasoning. Not to mention an ignorance of cultural contexts that can put subtle variations on how we each interpret something as ultimately a good sensation or a bad sensation (hair shirt, anyone?).

In addition, he presumes that through careful consideration, morals can be viewed as absolutely right or wrong in a context of whether it is conducive to the flourishing of a conscious mind. He feels with time, science will overtake religion as a means of determining which behaviours are moralistic. Paradoxically, what of evidence suggesting that a community of religious faith carries personal and communal benefits? Arguing that a belief in a god is not scientifically moralistic could be detrimental if we rely on Harris’s argument, even if the intended action behind the behaviour is unsupported.

Academically, attuning the concept of morality to concern behaviours benefiting evolutionary success or even the wellbeing of an individual or a community is feasible, even if it in itself is a moral value by definition. Practically, however, if we’re to take a position of evolved morality, it has never had academic foresight, operating under selective conditions that see corrupting morals die off as the community crumbles. For some people, forcing these progressive mechanics of human morality to subscribe to an audit of reason could be like using your moped to pull a semi-trailer. The engine simply isn’t compatible with this task. Morals evolve under social forces, not isolated personal reflection.

Historically, nature has blindly maximised the odds. Greater diversity makes for more rolls of the dice and a greater chance of another generation of life persisting. Estimating which behaviours are most compatible with evolution by using science is more akin to the frequency matching preferred by our brain’s left hemisphere. Given enough information, it might be possible to bias the odds and determine which morals are truly ‘good’ and which are ‘bad’ for the survival of the community or the happiness of a single person. But is this truly the same as morals that are objectively right or wrong?

Even if we can evaluate our morals accordingly, and presuming this value in its own right is indeed desired, we’re still left with brains that resist the urge to abandon old moral codes under the whim of reason. What might be an academically negotiation isn’t necessarily a pragmatic one.

Science can supply information that could influence our choice of moral behaviours, of course. A person might support the death penalty, but only if they’re confident in the guilt of the offender. They could be persuaded to circumcise their child if they could be convinced that the benefits outweighed the risks. Drug use might be tolerated, but only if it’s concluded that the chance of physiological harm is minimal.

Should we allow people to choose the moment at which they will die? Is it right to allow a woman to abort their own foetus? Do the rights of the many truly outweigh the rights of the few? Each can be associated with wellbeing in some context, but only if morality is shoe-horned into a tight definition.

Of course, far from being distinct tribes defined by an exclusive set of values, there is significant diversity of values within any community. A scientist can be religious, holding rational values that inform some decisions and spiritual values that inform others. Conversely, a priest can be against abortion as it contravenes what they believe to be a religious law, while use science to support their belief in recycling waste. Drawing a neat line around any one group of individuals and defining them by exclusive sets of values is nigh impossible, given we all belong to multiple tribes.

As such, we commonly confuse how we ‘should’ behave with how we do, conflating morals and an appreciation of science in an effort to justify our beliefs. When that happens, we can be quick to mislabel a belief as scientific in an effort to satisfy any conflict between our spectrum of personal and communal values.

My arguments aren’t exactly novel. Sean Carroll does a better job of outlining them here, and Harris offers a strong (but, in my opinion, still insufficient) rebuttal here. And the discussion is one well worth having. Yet at a time when atheists are eagre to challenge how society views religion, risking the promotion of poorly reasoned conclusions in an effort to convince the public how the faithful don’t have a monopoly on morality isn’t an advisable strategy.

The paralytic fear of mythmaking

A driving force behind many science education programs in Australia is to boost  the confidence of teachers in their covering of the subject. Primary teachers are expected to be polymaths, covering the fundamentals of literacy, numeracy, scientific thinking and fitting in the development of artistic creativity, social awareness and personal health and hygiene. As an ex-secondary school teacher who has had minimal experience with pre-adolescent students, I have nothing but respect for the talents required for such a varied curriculum.

In developing curriculum resources in science and sustainability and delivering teacher workshops, I’ve found myself sitting before more than one primary teacher who has leaned in close and confessed their trepidation in covering more science in their classroom.

This is hardly surprising. Most primary teachers don’t see themselves as science literate[1] and as such, often believe they are incapable of teaching it[2]. There’s no question that on average, primary school teachers have low confidence in their abilities to provide their students with a firm foundation in science knowledge and skills.

There are numerous programs available endeavouring to address this through various means, be it linking career scientists with schools or providing classroom materials, and there is evidence that such programs are successful at addressing the problem.

Yet while the reasons behind this are multidimensional[3], I can’t help but wonder what distinguishes science from other disciplines. Most schools cover a broad range of topics in their curriculum, from Australian history to foreign languages to art to technology; any one of which teachers would be expected to learn and communicate to their class.

In discussing the materials I’d constructed for a national sustainability program, most teachers felt comfortable when it came to integrating activities that weren’t science-dependent, even if it wasn’t a topic in their field of expertise. Even politics was spared the same apprehension as climatology. In other words, it’s not just the fact that science is full of things they don’t know or understand. Familiarity appears to be only part of the problem.

A variation of a single question kept popping up during my workshops; ‘What if I give the students the wrong answer?’. In fact, it was so common I’ve come to see it as a defining feature of the anxiety behind the teaching of science. This question could equally apply to any other discipline, but it wasn’t as significant as it was with science.

We live in a world where science has become a product-based issue, where facts are ‘discovered’ as inarguable truths and science fails us when people can’t agree on statistics and models. There is visible relief in the faces of teachers when we discuss science as an epistemology rather than a textbook of facts, where open investigation is given priority over content.

That isn’t to say content isn’t important, of course. Yet more shocking than the student who doesn’t know the name of the element with an atomic number of 8 is the student who is incapable of varying their confidence in a belief beyond true or false as they encounter conflicting views. Without encouragement to view science as a process of exploration as opposed to an authority on knowledge, teachers back away from science, feeling they could never do it justice, leaving us with a complete deficit of both skills and knowledge.

Fortunately, the tide seems to be turning. Confidence is gradually increasing as education programs employ open investigation approaches and facilitate a more social aspect to engaging teachers with science, one that involves a greater focus on critical thinking and an evaluative epistemology. In the meantime, many teachers continue to find themselves paralysed in the face of science for fear of not just seeming stupid, but of accidentally teaching a student a bad belief.

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[1] Mulholland, J., & Wallace, J. (2002). Navigating border crossings: How primary teachers learn to teach science. Australian Science Teachers’ Journal, 48(2), 12–19.

[2] Watters, J. J., & Ginns, I. S. (2000). Developing motivation to teach elementary science: Effect of collaborative and authentic learning practices in preservice education. Journal of Science Education, 11(4), 301–321.

[3] Howitt, C. (2007), Pre-Service Elementary Teachers’ Perceptions of Factors in an Holistic Methods Course Influencing their Confidence in Teaching Science, Research in Science Education Volume 37:1 pp  41-58

Processes and products – the gears behind the facade of science

Let me introduce you to an old colleague of mine. For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll say he was a middle-aged bloke, and we’ll call him Joe. We both taught junior science in the same school, although Joe also covered subjects in IT and physical education.

Joe and I got on rather well, especially when he discovered I was an atheist. On one level I could sympathise with his eye rolling and venting about creationist beliefs in the community or the call for prayers for somebody-or-other’s hospitalised relative, although I never felt passionate enough about it to feel a need to match his vehemence.

When it came to evolution, Joe seemed to know his stuff. He could recite passages from Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’, knew all of the significant details of the Dover intelligent design trial and always had interesting discussions with his classes on some strange new discovery in biology that exemplified speciation. By most accounts he was a superb teacher, loved by his students and enthusiastic about their education. Hence it came as a surprise when he expressed doubts about the validity of climate change.

I was curious. His reasons weren’t particularly novel; part conspiracy theory and part ignorance on atmospheric chemistry, from what I could gather at first. The justifications behind his doubt were so mundane I wouldn’t have even blinked, had it been anybody other than Joe. So over a beer we discussed the details of our opinions on the matter, which meandered through other topics such as psychology, sociology, anthropology and somehow back into his pet field of evolution. We agreed on most things, however when I began to press him on his philosophical underpinnings on the principles of science I was in for a shock.

By the end of the evening it seemed to me as if Joe believed in evolution because he had a particular dislike of religion. Psychology was a soft science, therefore useless as it didn’t give us the dichotomy of ‘certainty’ that physics did. And climate change was probably an invention of climatologists because they weren’t being paid a great deal. It became clear that while we agreed on what constituted a valid scientific theory, we disagreed on what made them valid.

Joe taught me a lot about epistemology – one needn’t know a lot about how science operates as a methodology to embrace ‘scientific’ beliefs. It might seem obvious in hindsight, but it was something of an epiphany to me. From that day I started to notice broken logic slipping into Joe’s arguments. Not to say I disagreed with his conclusions, but primed with an insight into his epistemology when it came to science, I found myself spotting strange non-sequitors, colourful strawmen and the occasional twisted fallacy.

Two months ago I received an email from a reader of the publication I write. Let’s say it was a young mother and we’ll call her Mary. She was concerned that an article I’d written had been phrased as to presume that evolution was factual, and felt obliged to question me on it.

I always have the option of responding to critical emails I receive with a standard ‘thank you for your feedback, here is an explanation of our policy on evolution/climate change/paranormal events etc.’ paragraph, if I feel anything more in depth would only be a waste of time. Mary’s email was quite polite and worded in a way that made me give her the benefit of the doubt. So I took the time to respond.

Several emails bounced back and forth, and none of them changed her mind into accepting that evolution was a rigid theory. However, she did demonstrate that she had read the information I had sent her and that she understood how her previous beliefs weren’t at all internally consistent. She promised to buy a book I suggested on the topic and continue to think on it.

Where Joe and I shared similar conclusions but differed in our means of arriving at them, Mary’s language gave me confidence that her way of thinking would see her through eventually. The fact she didn’t take my word on it was also somewhat gratifying; she subscribed to my publication because she liked science and wanted a practical resource to give her ideas to use with her children. But given what she’d been told about evolution, she was concerned I might be wrong.

Joe and Mary are the two people who immediately to my mind when I think about education. Joe reflects the product-based communicator, who eagerly distributes knowledge with a passion that describes it as absolute truth or absolute nonsense. Unfortunately, it is accompanied by an epistemology that says ‘if it sounds ridiculous, it probably is’ and ‘if you can’t prove it, it’s not scientific’.

On the other hand, Mary makes me think of the right epistemology, even if I disagree with her conclusions. Somewhere along the way she’d heard from a trusted friend that the human eye is irreducibly complex, and therefore evolution was flawed as an idea explaining biodiversity. She had never studied science in her senior years of high school and openly admitted she was heavily influenced by a friend she considered to be well educated. On further discussion, she admitted that her lack of education in science made her feel easily intimidated by those who claimed to know better and she sought a better way of understanding the concept in the face of what she saw as a conflict of views.

Obviously in the end, it’s the products of science that have a pragmatic impact on our lives. Good epistemology means nothing if you still believe that fairies will save you from cancer, or that Reptilians are running a New World Order global government. We can debate the validity of climate models until the cows come home, but the methodology is useless unless it is used to make a decision. Good information is a necessity in education – science cannot be taught without facts and theories. Yet prioritising the communication of the products of thinking over the process is just like painting a wall without a primer coat; you need more paint and risk having it peel off once the bad weather hits.

The world has a glut of science communicators and rationalists who are eagre to promote scientific facts, theories and hypotheses in the face of misinformation, as if by shouting it with enough passion they will somehow drown out the cacophony of nonsense. In some cases, that passion does rub off and inadvertently change epistemologies. People who would sooner stay silent are encouraged to demonstrate their epistemological values, influencing their children, nieces, nephews, students, fans, football team or band members that tiny bit, just enough so they, too, start to think more scientifically.

But it is an accidental success, one that is unqualified and incidental. In rare cases, there are those who understand the importance of encouraging young people in adopting a scientific epistemology and focus their efforts not on driving home the facts, but encouraging open investigation, discussion, critical thinking and experimentation.

Much of the time it’s hard to distinguish the Joes from the Marys, readily associating compatible beliefs with compatible philosophies. Joe’s students might side with Darwin, but only for as long as it makes sense or for as long as they like him as a teacher. Mary’s children might echo her disbelief in the effects of natural selection, but so long as she demonstrates flexibility in her beliefs and a willingness to ask questions, I have little fear that they’d defend their disbelief irrationally in the face of logical, internally consistent evidence. Hence I’m far more concerned about Joe’s impact on his students than I am about Mary’s influence on her children.