Evidence of journalistic creep in 'surprising' Benin bronzes claim
Keith S. Taber
How certain can we be about the origin of metals used in historic artefacts? (Image by Monika from Pixabay)
Science offers reliable knowledge of the natural world – but not absolutely certain knowledge. Conclusions from scientific studies follow from the results, but no research can offer absolutely certain conclusions as there are always provisos.
Scientists tend to know this, something emphasised for example by Albert Einstein (1940), who described scientific theories (used to interpret research results) as "hypothetical, never completely final, always subject to question and doubt".
When scientists talk to one another within some research programme they may used a shared linguistic code where they can omit the various conditionals ('likely', 'it seems', 'according to our best estimates', 'assuming the underlying theory', 'within experimental error', and the rest) as these are understood, and so may be left unspoken, thus increasing economy of language.
When scientists explain their work to a wider public such conditionals may also be left out to keep the account simple, but really should be mentioned. A particular trope that annoyed me when I was younger was the high frequency of links in science documentaries that told me "this could only mean…" (Taber, 2007) when honest science is always framed more along the lines "this would seem to mean…", "this could possibly mean…", "this suggested the possibility"…
By journalistic creep I mean the tendency for some journalists who act as intermediates between research scientists and the public to keep the story simple by omitting important provisos. Science teachers will appreciate this, as they often have to decide which details can be included in a presentation without loosing or confusing the audience. A useful mantra may be:
Simplification may be necessary – but oversimplification can be misleading
A slightly different type of journalist creep occurs within stories themselves, Sometimes the banner headline and the introduction to a piece report definitive, certain scientific results – but reading on (for those that do!) reveals nuances not acknowledged at the start. Teachers will again appreciate this tactic: offer the overview with the main point, before going back to fill in the more subtle aspects. But then, teachers have (somewhat) more control over whether the audience engages with the full account.
I am not intending to criticise journalists in general here, as scientists themselves have a tendency to do something similar when it comes to finding titles for papers that will attract attention by perhaps suggesting something more certain (or, sometimes, poetic or even controversial) than can be supported by the full report.
An example of a Benin Bronze (a brass artefact from what is now Nigeria) in the British [sic] Museum
The title of a recent article in the RSC's magazine for teachers, Education in Chemistry, proclaimed a "Surprise origin for Benin bronzes".1 The article started with the claim:
"Geochemists have confirmed that most of the Benin bronzes – sculptured heads, plaques and figurines made by the Edo people in West Africa between the 16th and 19th centuries – are made from brass that originated thousands of miles away in the German Rhineland."
So, this was something that scientists had apparently confirmed as being the case.
Reading on, one finds that
it has been "long suspectedthat metal used for the artworks was melted-down manillas that the Portuguese brought to West Africa"
scientists "analysed 67 manillas known to have been used in early Portuguese trade. The manillas were recovered from five shipwrecks in the Atlantic and three land sites in Europe and Africa"
they "found strong similarities between the manillas studied and the metal used in more than 700 Benin bronzes with previously published chemical compositions"
and "the chemical composition of the copper in the manillas matched copper ores mined in northern Europe"
and "suggests that modern-day Germany, specifically the German Rhineland, was the main source of the metal".
So, there is a chain of argument here which seems quite persuasive, but to move from this to it being "confirmed that most of the Benin bronzes…are made from brass that originated …in the German Rhineland" seems an example of journalistic creep.
The reference to "the chemical composition of the copper [sic] in the manillas"is unclear, as according to the original research paper the sample of manilla analysed were:
"chemically different from each other. Although most manillas analysed here …are brasses or leaded brasses, sometimes with small amounts of tin, a few specimens are leaded copper with little or no zinc."
Skowronek, et al., 2023
The key data presented in the paper concerned the ratios of different lead isotopes (205Pb:204Pb; 206Pb:204Pb; 207Pb:204Pb; 208Pb:204Pb {see the reproduced figure below}) in
ore from different European locations (according to published sources)
sampled Benin bronze (as reported from earlier research), and
sampled recovered manillas
and the ratios of different elements (Ni:AS; Sb:As; Bi:As) in previously sampled Benin bronzes and sampled manillas.
The tendency to consider a chain of argument where each link seems reasonably persuasive as supporting fairly certain conclusions is logically flawed (it is like concluding from knowledge that one's chance of dying on any particular day is very low, that one must be immortal) but seems reflected in something I have noticed with some research students: that often their overall confidence in the conclusions of a research paper they have scrutinised is higher than their confidence in some of the distinct component parts of that study.
This is like being told by a mechanic that your cycle brakes have a 20% of failing in the next year; the tyres 30%; the chain 20%; and the frame 10%; and concluding from this that there is only about a 20% chance of having any kind of failure in that time!
A definite identification?
The peer reviewed research paper which reports the study discussed in the Education in Chemistry article informs readers that
"In the current study, documentary sources and geochemical analyses are used to demonstrate that the source of the early Portuguese "tacoais" manillas and, ultimately, the Benin Bronzes was the German Rhineland."
"…this study definitively identifies the Rhineland as the principal source of manillas at the opening of the Portuguese trade…"
Skowronek, et al.,2023
which sounds pretty definitive, but interestingly the study did not rely on chemical analysis alone, but also 'documentary' evidence. In effect, historical evidence provided another link in the argument, by suggesting the range of possible sources of the alloy that should be considered in any chemical comparisons. This assumes there were no mining and smelting operations providing metal for the trade with Africa which have not been well-documented by historians. That seems a reasonable assumption, but adds another proviso to the conclusions.
The researchers reported that
Pre-18th century manillas share strong isotopic similarities with Benin's famous artworks. Trace elements such as antimony, arsenic, nickel and bismuth are not as similar as the lead isotope data…. The greater data derivation suggests that manillas were added to older brass or bronze scrap pieces to produce the Benin works, an idea proposed earlier.
and acknowledges that
Millions of these artifacts were sent to West Africa where they likelyprovided the major, virtually the only, source of brass for West African casters between the 15th and the 18th centuries, including serving as the principal metal source of the Benin Bronzes. However, the difference in trace elemental patterns between manillas and Benin Bronzes does not allow postulating that they have been the only source.
The figure below is taken from the research report.
The chart shows results from sampled examples of Benin bronzes (blue circles); compared with the values of the same isotope ratios from different copper ore site (squares) and manillas sampled from different archaeological sties (triangles).
The researchers feel that the pattern of clustering of results (in this, and other similar comparisons between lead isotope ratios) from the Benin bronzes, compared with those from the sampled manillas, and the ore sites, allows them to identify the source of metal re-purposed by the Edo craftspeople to make the bronzes.
It is certainly the case that the blue circles (which refer to the artworks) and the green squares (which refer to copper ore samples from Rhineland) do seem to generally cluster in a similar region of the graph – and that some of the samples taken from the manillas also seem to fit this pattern.
I can see why this might strongly suggest the Rhineland (certainly more so than Wales) as the source of the copper believed to be used in manillas which were traded in Africa and are thought to have been later melted down as part of the composition of alloy used to make the Benin bronzes.
Whether that makes for either
definitive identification of the Rhineland as the principal source of manillas (Skowronek paper), or
confirmation that most of the Benin bronze are made from brass that originated thousands of miles away in the German Rhineland (EiC)
seems somewhat less certain. Just as scientific claims should be.
A conclusion for science education
It is both human nature, and often good journalistic or pedagogic practice to begin with a clear, uncomplicated statement of what is to be communicated. But we also know that what is heard or read first may be better retained in memory than what follows. It also seems that people in general tend to apply the wrong kind of calculus when there are multiple source of doubt – being more likely to estimate overall doubt as being the mean or modal level of the several discrete sources of doubt, rather than something that accumulates step-on-step.
It seems there is a major issue here for science education in training young people in critically questioning claims, looking for the relevant provisos, and understanding how to integrate levels of doubt (or, similarly, risk) that are distributed over a sequence of phases in a process.
All research conclusions (in any empirical study in any discipline) rely on a network of assumptions and interpretations, any one of which could be a weak link in the chain of logic. This is my take on some of the most critical links and assumptions in the Benin bronzes study. One could easily further complicate this scheme (for example, I have ignored the assumptions about the validity of the techniques and calibration of the instrumentation used to find the isotopic composition of metal samples).
Work cited:
Einstein, Albert (1940/1994) The fundamentals of theoretical physics. In Ideas and Opinions, New York: The Modern Library.
1 It is not clear to me what the surprise was – but perhaps this is meant to suggest the claim may be surprising to readers of the article. The study discussed was premised on the assumption that the Benin Bronzes were made from metal largely re-purposed from manillas traded from Europe, which had originally been cast in one of the known areas in Europe with metal working traditions. The researchers included the Rhineland as one of the potential regional sites they were considering. So, it was surely a surprise only in a similar sense to rolling a die and it landing on 4, rather than say 2 or 5, would be a surprise.
But then, would you be just as likely to read an article entitled "Benin bronzes found to have anticipated origin"?
Fact is said to be stranger than (science) fiction
Regular viewers of Star Trek may be under the impression that it is dangerous to enter the neutral zone between the territories claimed by the United Federation of Planets and that of the Romulan Empire in case any incursion results in an attack by a Romulan Bird of Prey.
However, back here on earth, it may be that entering the neutral zone is actually a way of avoiding an attack by a bird of prey
A bird of prey (with its prey). Run rabbit, run rabbit…into the neutral zone (Image by Ralph from Pixabay)
At least, according to the biologist Jakob von Uexküll
"All the more remarkable is the observation that a neutral zone insinuates itself between the nest and the hunting ground of many raptors, a zone in which they seize no prey at all. Ornithologists must be correct in their assumption that this organisation of the environment was made by Nature in order to keep the raptors from seizing their own young. If, as they say, the nestling becomes a branchling and spends its days hopping from branch to branch near the parental nest, it would easily be in danger of being seized by mistake by its own parents. In this way, it can spend its days free of danger in the neutral zone of the protected area. The protected area is sought out by many songbirds as a nesting and incubation site where they can raise their young free of danger under the protection of the big predator."
Uexküll, 1934/2010
This is a very vivid presentation, but is phrased in a manner I thought deserved a little interrogation. It should, however, be pointed out that this extract is from the English edition of a book translated from the original German text (which itself was originally published almost a century ago).
A text with two authors?
Translation is a process of converting a text from one natural language to another, but every language is somewhat unique regarding its range of words and word meanings. That is, words that are often considered equivalent in different language may have somewhat different ranges of application in those languages, and different nuances. Sometimes there is no precise translation for a word, and a single word in one language may have several near-equivalents in another (Taber, 2018). Translation therefore involves interpretation and creative choices.
So, translation is a skilled art form, and not simply something that can be done well by algorithmically applying suggestions in a bilingual dictionary. A good translation of an academic text not only requires someone fluent in both languages, but also someone having a sufficient understanding of the topic to translate in the best way to convey the intended meaning rather than simply using the most directly equivalent words. A sequence of the most equivalent individual words may not give the best translation of a sentence, and indeed when translating idioms may lead to a translation with no obvious meaning in the target language. It is worth bearing in mind that any translated text has (in effect) two authors, and reflects choices made by the translator as well as the original author.
I am certainly not suggesting there is anything wrong with the translation of Uexküll's text, but it should be born in mind I am commenting on the English language versionof the text.
A neutral zone insinuates itself
No it does not.
The language here is surely metaphorical, as it implies a deliberate action by the neutral zone. This seems to anthropomorphise the zone as if it is a human-like actor.
The zone is a space. Moreover, it is not a space that is in any way discontinuous with the other space surrounding it – it is a human conception of a region of space with imagined boundaries. The zone is not a sentient agent, so it can not insinuate itself.
Ornithologists must be correct
Science develops theoretical knowledge which is tested against empirical evidence, but is always (strictly) provisional in that it should be open to revisiting in the light of further evidence. Claims made in scientific discourse should therefore be suitable tentative. Perhaps
ornithologists seem to be correct in suggesting…, or
it seems likely that ornithologists were correct when they suggested…or even
at present our best understanding reflects the suggestions made by ornithologists that...
Yet a statement that ornithologists must be correct implies a level of certainty and absoluteness that seems inconsistent with a scientific claim.
This phrasing seems to personify Nature as if 'she' is a person. Moreover, this (…in order to…) suggests a purpose in nature. This kind of teleological claim is often considered inappropriate in science as it suggests natural events occur according to some pre-existing plan rather than unfolding according to natural laws. 1 If we consider something happens to achieve a purpose we seem to not need to look for a mechanism in terms of (for example) forces (or entropy or natural selection or…).
We can understand that it would decrease the biological fitness of a raptor to indiscriminately treat its own offspring as potential food. There are situations when animals do eat their young, but clearly any species that's members committed considerable resources to raising a small number of young (e.g., nest building, egg incubation) but were also regular consumers of those young would be at a disadvantage when it came to its long-term survival.
So, in terms of what increases a species' fitness, avoiding eating your own children would help. If seeking a good 'strategy' to have descendants, then, eating offspring would be a 'mistake'. But the scientific account is not that species, or individual members of a species, seek to deliberately adopt a strategy to have generations of descendants: rather behaviour that tends to lead to descendants is self-selecting.
Just because humans can reflect upon 'our children's children's, children', we cannot assume that other species even have the vaguest notions of descendants. (And the state of the world – pollution, deforestation, habitat destruction, nuclear arsenals, soil degradation, unsustainable use of resources, etcetera – stronglysuggests that even humans who can conceptualise and potentially care about their descendants have real trouble making that the basis for rational action.)
Even members of the very rare species capable of conceptualising a future for their offspring struggle to develop strategies taking the well-being of future generations into account. (Image: cover art for 'To our children's children's children' {The Moody Blues}).
Natural selection is sometimes seen as merely a tautology as it seems to be a theory that explains the flourishing of some species (and not others) in terms that they have the qualities to flourish! But this is to examine the wrong level of explanation. Natural selection explains in general terms why it is that in a particular environment competing species will tend to survive and leave offspring to different extents. (Then within that general framework, specific arguments have to be made about why particular features or behaviours contribute to differential fitness in that ecological context.)
Particular evolved behaviours may be labelled as 'strategies' by analogy with human strategies, but this is purely a metaphor: the animal is following instincts, or sometimes learned behaviours, but is not generally following a consciously considered plan intended to lead to some desired outcome in the longer term.
But a reader is likely to read about a nestling being "in danger of being seized by mistake by its own parents" as the birds themselves making a mistake – which implies they have a deliberate plan to catch food, while excluding their own offspring from the food category, and so intended to avoid treating their offspring as prey. That is, it is implied that birds of prey are looking to avoid eating their own, but get it wrong.
Yet, surely, birds are behaving instinctively, and not conceptualising their hunting as a means of acquiring nutrition, where they should discriminate between admissible prey and young relatives. Again this seems to be anthropomorphism as it treats non-human animals as if their have mental experiences and thought processes akin to humans: "I did not mean to eat my child, I just failed to recognise her, and so made a mistake".
The protected area is sought out
Similarly, the songbirds also behave instinctively. They surely do not 'seek out' the 'protected' area around the nest of a bird of prey. There must be a sense in which they 'learn' (over many generations, perhaps) that they need not fear the raptors when they are near their own nests but it seems unlikely a songbird conceptualises any of this in a way that allows them to deliberately (that is, with deliberation) seek out the neutral zone.
In terms of natural selection, a songbird that has no fear of raptors and so does not seek to avoid or hide or flee from them would likely be at a disadvantage, and so tend to leave less offspring. Similarly, a songbird that usually avoided birds of prey, but nested in the neutral zone, would have a fitness advantage if other predators (small cats say) kept clear of the area. The bird would not have to think "hey, I know raptors are generally a hazard, but I'll be okay here as I'm close enough to be in the zone where they do not hunt", as long as the behaviour was heritable (and there was initially variation in the extent to which individuals behaved that way) – as natural selection would automatically lead to it becoming common behaviour.
(In principle, the bird could be responding to some cue in the environment that was a reliable but indirect indicator they were near a raptor nesting site. For example, perhaps building a nest very close to a location where there is a regular depositing of small bones on the ground gives an advantage, so this behaviour increases fitness and so is 'selected'.)
Under the protection of the big predator
Why are the songbirds under the protection of the raptors? Perhaps because other potential predators do not come into the neutral zone as they are vulnerable when approaching this area, even if they would be safe once inside. Again, if this is so, it surely does not reflect a conscious conceptualisation of the neutral zone.
For example, a cat that preys on small birds would experience a different 'unwelt' from the bird. A small songbird with a nest where it has young experiences the surrounding space differently to a cat (already a larger animal so experiencing the world at a different scale) that ranges over a substantial territory. Perhaps the songbird perceives the neutral zone as a distinct space, whereas to the cat it is simply an undistinguished part of a wider area where the raptors are regularly seen.
Or, perhaps, for the smaller predator, the area around the neutral zone offers too little cover to risk venturing into the zone. (Again, this does not mean a conscious thinking process along the lines "I'd be safe once I was over there, but I'm not sure I'd make it there as I could easily be seen moving between here and there", but could just be an inherited tendency to keep under cover.)
The birds of prey themselves will not take the songbirds, so the smaller birds are protected from them in the zone, but if this is simply an evolved mechanism that prevents accidental 'infanticide' this can hardly be considered as other birds being under the protection ofthe birds of prey. Perhaps the birds of prey do scare away other predators – but, if so, this is in no sense a desired outcome of a deliberate policy adopted by the birds of prey because they want to protect their more vulnerable neighbours.
One could understand how the birds of prey might hypothetically have evolved behaviour of not preying on smaller birds (which might include their own offspring) near their nest, but would still attack smaller predators that might threaten their own chicks. In that scenario 2, the birds of prey might have indeed protected nearby songbirds from potential predators (even if only incidentally), but this does not apply if, as Uexküll suggests, "they seize no prey at all" in the neutral zone.
Again the, 'under the protection of the big predator' seems to anthropomorphise the situation and treat the birds of prey as if they are acting deliberately to protect songbirds, and so this phrasing needs to be understood metaphorically.
Does language matter?
Uexküll's phrasing offers an engaging narrative which aids in the communication of the idea of the neutral zone to his readers. (He is skilled in making the unfamiliar familiar.) It is easier to understand an abstract idea if it seems to reflect a clear purpose or it can be understood in terms of human ways of thinking and acting, for example:
it is important to keep your children safe
it is good to look out for your neighbours
But we know that science learners readily tend to accept explanations that are teleological and/or anthropomorphic, and that sometimes (at least) this acts as an impediment to learning the scientific accounts based on natural principles and mechanisms.
Therefore it is useful for science teachers in particular to be alert to such language so they can at least check that learners are seeing beyond the metaphor and not mistaking a good story for a scientific account.
Uexküll, J. v. (1934/2010). A Foray into the Worlds of Animals (J. D. O'Neil, Trans.). In A Foray into the Worlds of Animals; with, A Theory of Meaning (pp. 39-135). University of Minnesota Press.
Notes:
1 Many people, including some scientists, do believe the world is unfolding according to a pre-ordained plan or scheme. This would normally be considered a matter of religious faith or at least a metaphysical commitment.
The usual stance taken in science ('methodological naturalism'), however, is that scientific explanations must be based on scientific principles, concepts, laws, theories, etcetera, and must not call upon any supernatural causes or explanations. This need not exclude a religious faith in some creator with a plan for the world, as long as the creator is seen to have set up the world to unfold through natural laws and mechanisms. That is, faith-based and scientific accounts and explanations may be considered to work at different levels and to be complementary.
2 That this does not seem to be the case might reflect how a flying bird perceives prey – if it has simply evolved to swoop upon and take any object in a certain size range {that we might explain as small enough to be taken, but not so small as not to repay the effort} that matches a certain class of movement pattern {that we might interpret as moving under its own direction and so being animate} then the option of avoiding smaller birds but taking other prey would not be available.
After all, studies show parent birds will try and feed the most simple representations of a hatchling's open beak – suggesting they do not perceive the difference between their own children and crude models of an open bird mouth.
The general form of a chick's open mouth (as shown by these hatchlings) is enough to trigger feeding behaviour in adult birds. (Image by Tania Van den Berghen from Pixabay )
Uexküll himself reported that,
"…a very young wild duck was brought to me; it followed me every step. I had the impression that it was my boots that attracted it so, since it also ran occasionally after a black dachshund. I concluded from this that a black moving object was sufficient to replace the image of its mother…"
Uexküll, 1934/2010
(A year later, Lorentz would publish his classic work on imprinting which reported detailed studies of the same phenomenon.)
My library is in desperate need of some sorting and tidying, but I have a tendency, when entering in there and picking up a book I've not looked at for while, to dip into it rather than get organising.
So it was that I found myself re-reading the Introduction to Richard Muller's (1988) book 'Nemesis: The Death Star'. I presumably do not need to describe the book as it is so widely read (😉 see below)1, but the Introduction was by Muller's colleague and former research supervisor Luis Alverez – a Nobel Prize winning physicist. He died the same year that Nemesis was published, so this was probably one of his last pieces of writing about science.
A claim that cannot be taken at face vlaue
In the introduction, Alverez suggests that,
"I am convinced that every student of physics will read and reread Nemesis several times, learning important lessons on each occasion, as well as having a wonderful time."
Alverez, 1988, p.xi
Now I struggle with this kind of claim.
Richard Muller's book 'Nemesis The Death Star' – has this been read and reread by every student of physics since 1988?
I have admitted here before to being rather pedantic, and although it's never been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, I recognise I do share some of the common traits – including a tendency to focus on literal meanings. (Perhaps that explains my regular exploration of scientific metaphors and the like on this site).
Clearly, Alverez thinks very highly of Muller, and the work reported is related to some of his own research, so there might be some quite understandable personal bias here. I am also prepared to be charitable, and read 'every student of physics' to only refer to those majoring in physics at university level rather than anyone taking a physics course.
Even so, I find this an extraordinary thing to write.
Now, I was recently asked to write something about a book I had been sent in manuscript and was quite happy to suggest that the book (on a critical but generally under-examined theme) should be required reading for all future science educators. But that is surely different: the kind of difference to be drawn between the claims:
all good citizens should pay their due taxes
all citizens do pay their due taxes
Alverez was not only suggesting that he thought all physics students would benefit from the book, but was apparently making a prediction, moreover a 'confident' prediction, that all future physics students would read the book (at least twice!) and enjoy it. The likelihood of that must have surely seemed infinitesimally small!
Had this been part of the cover blurb, I might have suspected the publisher had taken liberties with the text (which should not surprise me as publishers now seem to regularly issue contracts asking authors for the right to change their scholarly text in any way that suits them). I had wondered if that had happened, for example, when I read on the cover of a book on evolution the author's claim that today everyone accepts Darwin's theory.2 But Alverez was not writing an endorsement, but a part of the book itself. (This was not even a Foreword – but the actual Introduction to the book.)
I can only understand Alverez's claim if I understand it as a piece of rhetoric, indeed hyperbole – surely the author could not possibly really think that henceforth every physics student was going to read and reread this book about one specialised programme of research (and which was very unlikely to be directly relevant to the assignments and examinations that would given them course credit) no mater how interesting it might be? Surely, rather, he was just communicating via rhetoric that the book was so worthy of attention that in his view it would justify such a broad readership.
What's wrong with rhetoric?
I see this as an issue worth raising because (a) the statement is a knowledge claim and (b) the claim was made by a scientist in the context of part of a book reporting scientific work.
Yet it is in the nature of scientific knowledge that it is theoretical, and, strictly, provisional (always open to be revisited in the light of new evidence or ways of interpreting evidence) – and therefore scientific knowledge claims should reflect this, and not be absolute.
This is one way that some accounts of science that appear in the news and other media distort the nature of science (and usually the original reports of that science as presented in research journals) by suggesting scientists have made discoveries that definitively prove some idea or other and reflect certain, absolute, knowledge
Alverez's claim is absolute: all physics students WILL read and re-read this book.
I am not suggesting that there is no place for rhetoric in science. Scientific claims are presented in formal research reports which are organised to make an argument for the claims being presented. They are rhetorical.
But, even if scientific claims are structured rhetorically in order to make a case, they still need to be measured, and honest, and – if they are to be considered scientific – suitably provisional.
This was perhaps [sic] exemplified when Crick and Watson, reporting what was arguably [sic] one of the most important scientific discoveries of the twentieth, if not all, centuries, pointed out that
"It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."
Watson & Crick, 1953
They did not suggest that
"our model of D.N.A. structure definitely provides the mechanism by which genetic material IS copied and is without doubt the basis of heredity".
Counterfactual: what Crick and Watson did not publish in Nature
So, rhetoric is important in science – scientists need the ability to present a best case for the argument being made so that other scientists can readily appreciate the logic of, and strength of, some new claim. However, hyperbole involves making such extreme exaggerations that they are not expected to be taken literally, and surely has no place in scientific writing. When a scientist make an absolutist claim (e.g., "every student of physics will read and reread Nemesis several times [and have a] wonderful time") other scientists know this cannot be seen as an authentic scientific claim, and so are likely to simply disregard it as something which cannot be interpreted sensibly within the context of scientific discourse.
Sources cited
Alvarez, L. W. (1988). Introduction. In Nemesis: The Death Star. The story of a scientific revolution (pp. xi-xiii). Guild Publishing.
Watson, J. D., & Crick, F. H. C. (1953). Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid. Nature, 171(4356), 737-738.
Muller, R. (1988). Nemesis: The Death Star. The story of a scientific revolution. Guild Publishing.
Eldredge, N. (1995). Reinventing Darwin: The great evolutionary debate. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Note:
1 Just in case anyone has not read the book, it describes a theory that the earth is subject to regular mass extinction events due to the effect of a planet (Nemesis) with such a large and eccentric orbit that it only comes near the sun once every 26 million years. The publisher tells readers that
"…the Nemesis hypothesis has established itself as the only viable scientific theory to explain a bewildering variety of phenomena in fields ranging from geology to astronomy to palaeontology…"
but then the editor responsible for this claim has presumably NOT won a physics Nobel prize.
(Image by Bela Geletneky from Pixabay)
2 The back cover of 'Reinventing Darwin' (Eldredge, 1995) tells potential readers that,
"No one doubts that Darwin's theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is correct."
No matter how much one recognises natural selection and Neodarwinism as the consensus view, the present paradigm, in the scientific community, it is difficult to believe that any person on earth who has taken any interest in the matter is not aware that there are large numbers of people (albeit, only a small proportion of practising scientists) who not only 'doubt' Darwin was correct but, in many cases, are strongly committed to the idea that he was completely wrong!
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is now operational, and offering new images of 'deep space'. This has led to claims of finding images of objects from further away in the Universe, and so from further back in time, than previously seen. This should support a lot of new scientific work and will surely lead to some very interesting findings. Indeed, it seems to have had an almost immediate impact.
Maisie's galaxy
One of these new images is of an object known as:
CEERSJ141946.35-525632.8
or less officially (but more memorably) as
Masie's galaxy.
A red smudge on one of the new images has been provisionally identified as evidence of a galaxy as it was less than 300Â 000Â 000 years after the conjectured 'big bang' event understood as the origin of the universe. The galaxy is so far away that its light has taken since then to reach us.
Three hundred million years seems a very long time in everyday terms, but it a small fraction of the current age of the universe, believed to be around fourteen billion years. 1
300 000 000 years
≪ 14 000 000 000 years
The age estimate is based on the colour of the object, reflecting its 'redshift':
"Scientists with the CEERS Collaboration have identified an object–dubbed Maisie's galaxy in honor of project head Steven Finkelstein's daughter–that may be one of the earliest galaxies ever observed. If its estimated redshift of 14 is confirmed with future observations, that would mean we're seeing it as it was just 290 million years after the Big Bang."
This finding is important in understanding the evolution of the universe – for example, observing the earliest galaxies puts a limit on how long the universe existed before star formation started. (Although the episode was called 'The first galaxies at the universe's dawn' Masie's galaxy is thought to contain heavier elements that were produced in even earlier stars.)
Uncertainty in science (and certainty in reporting science)
So, the claim is provisional. It is an estimate awaiting confirmation.
Strictly, science is concerned with provisional knowledge claims. This is not simply because scientists can make mistakes. All measurements are subject to limits in precision (measurement 'errors'). More fundamentally, all measurements depend on a theory of the instrumentation used, and theoretical knowledge is always open to being revisited on the basis of new ways of understanding.
We may not expect the theory behind the metre rule to change any time soon (although even there, our understanding shifted somewhat with Einstein's theories) but many scientific observations depend on highly complex apparatus, both for data collection and analysis. Despite this, science is often represented in the media, both by commentators and sometimes scientists themselves, as if it produced absolute certainty.
"We can look deep into out past by taking these deep images, and we can find the sort of faintest red smudges and that tells us that they are extremely far away, and from exactly how red they are we can estimate that distance."
So, the figure of 290 000 000 years after the big bang is an estimate. Fair enough, but what 'caught my ear', so to speak, was the contrast between the acknowledged uncertainty of the current estimate, and the claimed possibility of moving from this to absolute knowledge,
"If this distance we have measured for Masie's galaxy, of a red shift of 14, holds true, and I can't stress enough that we need spectroscopic confirmation to precisely measure that distance. [*] Where you take a telescope, could be James Webb, could be a different telescope, you observe it [the galaxy] and you split the light into its component colours, and you can actually precisely measure – measure the red shift, measure the distance – a hundred percent conclusively."
Associate Professor Steve Finke [* To my ear, there might well be an edit at this point – the quote is based on what was broadcast which might omit or re-sequence parts of the interview.]
Spectroscopic analysis allows us to compare the pattern of redshifted spectral lines due to the presence of elements absorbing or emitting radiation, with the position of those lines as they are found without any shift. Each element has its own pattern of lines – providing a metaphorical fingerprint. A redshift (or blueshift) moves these lines to different parts of the spectrum, but does not change their collective profile as all the lines are moved to the same extent.
Spectral lines can be used like fingerprints to identify substances. (Image by No-longer-here from Pixabay)
Some of these lines are fine, allowing precise measurements of wavenumber/frequency, and there are enough of them to be able to make very confident assignments of the 'fingerprints', and use this to estimate the shift. We might extend our analogy to a fingerprint on a rubber balloon which had been stretched since a fingerprint was made. In absolute terms, the print would no longer (or 'no wider' for that matter) fit the finger that made it, but the distortion is systematic allowing a match to be made – and the degree of stretching to be calculated.
If a pattern is distorted in a systematic way, we may still be able to match it to an undistorted version (Original images by Clker-Free-Vector-Images (balloon), OpenClipart-Vectors (print) and Alexander (notepad) from Pixabay)
Yet, even though this is a method that is considered well-understood, reliable, and potentially very accurate and precise 2, I am not sure you can "precisely measure, measure the redshift, measure the distance. A hundred percent conclusively". Science, at least as I understand it, always has to maintain some small level of humility.
Scientists may be able to confirm and hone the estimate of 290Â 000Â 000 years after the big bang for the age of Maisie's galaxy. Over time, further observations, new measurements, refinement in technique, or even theory, may lead to successive improvements in that age measurement and both greater accuracy and greater precision.2 But any claim of a conclusive measurement to a precision of 100% has a finality that sounds like something other than science to me.
Notes
1 Oddly, most webages I've seen that cite values for the age of the universe do not make it explicit whether these are American (109) or English (1012) billions! It seems to be assumed that, as with sulfur [i.e., sulphur], and perhaps soon aluminum and fosforus, we are all using American conventions.
2 Precision and accuracy are different. Consider an ammeter.
An ammeter (Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)
Due to the method of reading a needle position against a scale there is a limit to precision (perhaps assumed to the nearest calibration, so to ±0.5 calibrations). This measurement error of ±0.5 units is, in effect, a limit in detail or resolution, but not an 'error' in the everyday sense of getting something wrong. However, if the meter had been miscalibrated, or over time has shifted from calibration, so the needle is misaligned (so perhaps the meter reads +0.15 A when it is not connected into a circuit) then that is inaccuracy. There is always some level of imprecision (some limit on how precise we can be), even when we have an accurate reading.
In science, a measurement normally offers a best estimate of a true value, with an error range acknowledging how far the real value might be from that best estimate. See the example below: Measurement B claims the most precision, but is actually inaccurate. Measurement A is the most accurate (but least precise).
If we imagine that a galaxy was being seen as it was
275 000 000 years after the big bang
and three measurements of its age were given as:
A: 280 000 000 ± 30 000 000 years after the big bang
(i.e., 250 000 000 – 310 000 000)
B: 290 000 000 ± 10 000 000 years after the big bang
(i.e., 280 000 000 – 300 000 000)
C: 260 000 000 ± 20 000 000 years after the big bang
(i.e., 240 000 000 – 280 000 000)
then measurement B is more precise (it narrows down the possible range the most) but is inaccurate (as the actual age falls outside the range of this measurement). Of course, unlike in such a hypothetical example, in a real case we would not know the actual age to allow us to decide which of the measurements is more accurate.
Faster-than-light electrons race from a sitting start and are baked to give off light brighter than millions of suns that can be used to image tiny massage balls: A case of science communication
Keith S. Taber
(The pedantic science teacher)
Ockham's razor
Ockham's razor (also known as Occam's razor) is a principle that is sometimes applied as a heuristic in science, suggesting that explanations should not be unnecessarily complicated. Faced with a straightforward explanation, and an alternative convoluted explanation, then all other things being equal we should prefer the former – not simply accept it, but to treat is as the preferred hypothesis to test out first.
Ockham's Razor is also an ABC radio show offering "a soap box for all things scientific, with short talks about research, industry and policy from people with something thoughtful to say about science". The show used to offer recorded essays (akin to the format of BBC's A Point of View), but now tends to record short live talks.
I've just listened to an episode called The 'science donut' – in fact I listened several time as I thought it was fascinating – as in a few minutes there was much to attend to.
I approached the episode as someone with an interest in science, of course, but also as an educator with an ear to the ways in which we communicate science in teaching. Teachers do not simply present sequences of information about science, but engage pedagogy (i.e., strategies and techniques to support learning). Other science communicators (whether journalists, or scientists themselves directly addressing the public) use many of the same techniques. Teaching conceptual material (such as science principles, theories, models…) can be seen as making the unfamiliar familiar, and the constructivist perspective on how learning occurs suggests this is supported by showing the learner how that which is currently still unfamiliar, is in some way like something familiar, something they already have some knowledge/experience of.
Science communicators may not be trained as teachers, so may sometimes be using these techniques in a less considered or even less deliberate manner. That is, people use analogy, metaphor, simile, and so forth, as a normal part of everyday talk to such an extent that these tropes may be generated automatically, in effect, implicitly. When we are regularly talking about an area of expertise we almost do not have to think through what we are going to say. 1
Science communicators also often have much less information about their audience than teachers: a radio programme/podcast, for example, can be accessed by people of a wide range of background knowledge and levels of formal qualifications.
One thing teachers often learn to do very early in their careers is to slow down the rate of introducing new information, and focus instead on a limited number of key points they most want to get across. Sometimes science in the media is very dense in the frequency of information presented or the background knowledge being drawn upon. (See, for example, 'Genes on steroids? The high density of science communication'.)
A beamline scientist
Dr Emily Finch, who gave this particular radio talk, is a beamline scientist at the Australian Synchrotron. Her talk began by recalling how her family visited the Synchrotron facility on an open day, and how she later went on to work there.
She then gave an outline of the functioning of the synchrotron and some examples of its applications. Along the way there were analogies, metaphors, anthropomorphism, and dubiously fast electrons.
The creation of the god particle
To introduce the work of the particle accelerator, Dr Finch reminded her audience of the research to detect the Higgs boson.
"Do you remember about 10 years ago scientists were trying to make the Higgs boson particle? I see some nods. They sometimes call it the God particle and they had a theory it existed, but they had not been able to prove it yet. So, they decided to smash together two beams of protons to try to make it using the CERN large hadron collider in Switzerland…You might remember that they did make a Higgs boson particle".
This is a very brief summary of a major research project that involved hundreds of scientists and engineers from a great many countries working over years. But this abbreviation is understandable as this was not Dr Finch's focus, but rather an attempt to link her actual focus, the Australian Synchrotron, to something most people will already know something about.
However, aspects of this summary account may have potential to encourage the development of, or reinforce an existing, common alternative conception shared by many learners. This is regarding the status of theories.
In science, theories are 'consistent, comprehensive, coherent and extensively evidenced explanations of aspects of the natural world', yet students often understand theories to be nothing more than just ideas, hunches, guesses – conjectures at best (Taber, Billingsley, Riga & Newdick, 2015). In a very naive take on the nature of science, a scientist comes up with an idea ('theory') which is tested, and is either 'proved' or rejected.
This simplistic take is wrong in two regards – something does not become an established scientific theory until it is supported by a good deal of evidence; and scientific ideas are not simply proved or disproved by testing, but rather become better supported or less credible in the light of the interpretation of data. Strictly scientific ideas are never finally proved to become certain knowledge, but rather remain as theories. 2
In everyday discourse, people will say 'I have a theory' to mean no more that 'I have a suggestion'.
A pedantic scientist or science teacher might be temped to respond:
"no you don't, not yet,"
This is sometimes not the impression given by media accounts – presumably because headlines such as 'research leads to scientist becoming slightly more confident in theory' do not have the same impact as 'cure found', 'discovery made, or 'theory proved'.
The message that could be taken away here is that scientists had the idea that Higgs boson existed, but they had not been able to prove it till they were able to make one. But the CERN scientists did not have a Higgs boson to show the press, only the data from highly engineered detectors, analysed through highly complex modelling. Yet that analysis suggested they had recorded signals that closely matched what they expected to see when a short lived Higgs decayed allowing them to conclude that it was very likely one had been formed in the experiment. The theory motivating their experiment was strongly supported – but not 'proved' in an absolute sense.
The doughnut
Dr Finch explained that
"we do have one of these particle accelerators here in Australia, and it's called the Australian Synchrotron, or as it is affectionately known the science donut
…our synchrotron is a little different from the large hadron collider in a couple of main ways. So, first, we just have the one beam instead of two. And second, our beam is made of electrons instead of protons. You remember electrons, right, they are those tiny little negatively charged particles and they sit in the shells around the atom, the centre of the atom."
Dr Emily Finch talking on Ockham's Razor
One expects that members of the audience would be able to respond to this description and (due to previous exposure to such representations) picture images of atoms with electrons in shells. 'Shells' is of course a kind of metaphor here, even if one which with continual use has become a so-called 'dead metaphor'. Metaphor is a common technique used by teachers and other communicators to help make the unfamiliar familiar. In some simplistic models of atomic structure, electrons are considered to be arranged in shells (the K shell, the L shell, etc.), and a simple notation for electronic configuration based on these shells is still often used (e.g., Na as 2.8.1).
However, this common way of talking about shells has the potential to mislead learners. Students can, and sometimes do, develop the alternative conception that atoms have actual physical shells of some kind, into which the electrons are located. The shells scientists refer to are abstractions, but may be misinterpreted as material entities, as actual shells. The use of anthropomorphic language, that is that the electrons "sit in the shells", whilst helping to make the abstract ideas familiar and so perhaps comfortable, can reinforce this. After all, it is difficult to sit in empty space without support.
The subatomic grand prix?
Dr Finch offers her audience an analogy for the synchrotron: the electrons "are zipping around. I like to think of it kind of like a racetrack." Analogy is another common technique used by teachers and other communicators to help make the unfamiliar familiar.
Dr Finch refers to the popularity of the Australian Formula 1 (F1) Grand Prix that takes place in Melbourne, and points out
"Now what these race enthusiasts don't know is that just a bit further out of the city we have a race track that is operating six days a week that is arguably far more impressive.
That's right, it is the science donut. The difference is that instead of having F1s doing about 300 km an hour, we have electrons zipping around at the speed of light. That's about 300 thousand km per second.
Dr Emily Finch talking on Ockham's Razor
There is an interesting slippage – perhaps a deliberate rhetoric flourish – from the synchrotron being "kind of like a racetrack" (a simile) to being "a race track" (a metaphor). Although racing electrons lacks a key attraction of an F1 race (different drivers of various nationalities driving different cars built by competing teams presented in different livery – whereas who cares which of myriad indistinguishable electrons would win a race?) that does not undermine the impact of the mental imagery encouraged by this analogy.
This can be understood as an analogy rather than just a simile or metaphor as Dr Finch maps out the comparison:
target concept
analogue
a synchotron
a racetrack
operates six days a week
[Many in the audience would have known that the Melbourne Grand Prix takes place on a 'street circuit' that is only set up for racing one weekend each year.]
racing electrons
racing 'F1s' (i.e., Grand Prix cars)
at the speed of light
at about 300 km an hour
An analogy between the Australian Synchrotron and the Melbourne Grand Prix circuit
So, here is an attempt to show how science has something just like the popular race track, but perhaps even more impressive – generating speeds orders of magnitude greater than even Lewis Hamilton could drive.
They seem to like their F1 comparisons at the Australian Synchrotron. I found another ABC programme ('The Science Show') where Nobel Laureate "Brian Schmidt explains, the synchrotron is not being used to its best capability",
"the analogy here is that we invested in a $200 million Ferrari and decided that we wouldn't take it out of first gear and do anything other than drive it around the block. So it seems a little bit of a waste"
Brian Schmidt (Professor of Astronomy, and Vice Chancellor, at Australian National University)
A Ferrari being taken for a spin around the block in Melbourne (Image by Lee Chandler from Pixabay )
How fast?
But did Dr Finch suggest there that the electrons were travelling at the speed of light? Surely not? Was that a slip of the tongue?
"So, we bake our electrons fresh in-house using an electron gun. So, this works like an old cathode ray tube that we used to have in old TVs. So, we have this bit of tungsten metal and we heat it up and when it gets red hot it shoots out electrons into a vacuum. We then speed up the electrons, and once they leave the electron gun they are already travelling at about half the speed of light. We then speed them up even more, and after twelve metres, they are already going at the speed of light….
And it is at this speed that we shoot them off into a big ring called the booster ring, where we boost their energy. Once their energy is high enough we shoot them out again into another outer ring called the storage ring."
Dr Emily Finch talking on Ockham's Razor
So, no, the claim is that the electrons are accelerated to the speed of light within twelve metres, and then have their energy boosted even more.
But this is contrary to current physics. According to the currently accepted theories, and specifically the special theory of relativity, only entities which have zero rest mass, such as photons, can move at the speed of light.
Electrons have a tiny mass by everyday standards (about 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 001 g), but they are still 'massive' particles (i.e., particles with mass) and it would take infinite energy to accelerate a single tiny electron to the speed of light. So, given our current best understanding, this claim cannot be right.
I looked to see what was reported on the website of the synchrotron itself.
The electron beam travels just under the speed of light – about 299,792 kilometres a second.
Strictly the electrons do not travel at the speed of light but very nearly the speed of light.
The speed of light in a vacuum is believed to be 299 792 458 ms-1 (to the nearest metre per second), but often in science we are working to limited precision, so this may be rounded to 2.998 ms-1 for many purposes. Indeed, sometimes 3 x 108 ms-1 is good enough for so-called 'back of the envelope' calculations. So, in a sense, Dr Finch was making a similar approximation.
But this is one approximation that a science teacher might want to avoid, as electrons travelling at the speed of light may be approximately correct, but is also thought to be physically impossible. That is, although the difference in magnitude between
(i) the maximum electron speeds achieved in the synchrotron, and
(ii) the speed of light,
might be a tiny proportional difference – conceptually the distinction is massive in terms of modern physics. (I imagine Dr Finch is aware of all this, but perhaps her background in geology does not make this seem as important as it might appear to a physics teacher.)
Dr Finch does not explicitly say that the electrons ever go faster than the speed of light (unlike the defence lawyer in a murder trial who claimed nervous impulses travel faster than the speed of light) but I wonder how typical school age learners would interpret "they are already going at the speed of light….And it is at this speed that we shoot them off into a big ring called the booster ring, where we boost their energy". I assume that refers to maintaining their high speeds to compensate for energy transfers from the beam: but only because I think Dr Finch cannot mean accelerating them beyond the speed of light. 3
The big doughnut
After the reference to how "we bake our electrons fresh in-house", Dr Finch explains
And so it is these two rings, these inner and outer rings, that give the synchrotron its nick name, the science donut. Just like two rings of delicious baked electron goodness…
So, just to give you an idea of scale here, this outer ring, the storage ring, is about forty one metres across, so it's a big donut."
So, there is something of an extended metaphor here. The doughnut is so-called because of its shape, but this doughnut (a bakery product) is used to 'bake' electrons.
If audience members were to actively reflect on and seek to analyse this metaphor then they might notice an incongruity, perhaps a mixed metaphor, as the synchrotron seems to shift from being that which is baked (a doughnut) to that doing the baking (baking the electrons). Perhaps the electrons are the dough, but, if so, they need to go into the oven.
But, of course, humans implicitly process language in real time, and poetic language tends to be understood intuitively without needing reflection. So, a trope such as this may 'work' to get across the flavour (sorry) of an idea, even if under close analysis (by our pedantic science teacher again) the metaphor appears only half-baked.
Perverting the electrons
Dr Finch continued
"Now the electrons like to travel in straight lines, so to get them to go round the rings we have to bend them using magnets. So, we defect the electrons around the corners [sic] using electromagnetic fields from the magnets, and once we do this the electrons give off a light, called synchrotron light…
Dr Emily Finch talking on Ockham's Razor
Now electrons are not sentient and do not have preferences in the way that someone might prefer to go on a family trip to the local synchrotron rather than a Formula 1 race. Electrons do not like to go in straight lines. They fit with Newton's first law – the law of inertia. An electron that is moving ('travelling') will move ('travel') in a straight line unless there is net force to pervert it. 4
If we describe this as electrons 'liking' to travel in straight lines it would be just as true to say electrons 'like' to travel at a constant speed. Language that assigns human feelings and motives and thoughts to inanimate objects is described as anthropomorphic. Anthropomorphism is a common way of making the unfamiliar familiar, and it is often used in relation to molecules, electrons, atoms and so forth. Sadly, when learners pick up this kind of language, they do not always appreciate that it is just meant metaphorically!
"This synchrotron light is brighter than a million suns, and we capture it using special equipment that comes off that storage ring.
And this equipment will focus and tune and shape that beam of synchrotron light so we can shoot it at samples like a LASER."
Dr Emily Finch talking on Ockham's Razor
Whether the radiation is 'captured' is a moot point, as it no longer exists once it has been detected. But what caught my attention here was the claim that the synchrotron radiation was brighter than a million suns. Not because I necessarily thought this bold claim was 'wrong', but rather I did not understand what it meant.
The statement seems sensible at first hearing, and clearly it means qualitatively that the radiation is very intense. But what did the quantitative comparison actually mean? I turned again to the synchrotron webpage. I did not find an answer there, but on the site of a UK accelerator I found
"These fast-moving electrons produce very bright light, called synchrotron light. This very intense light, predominantly in the X-ray region, is millions of times brighter than light produced from conventional sources and 10 billion times brighter than the sun."
Sunlight spreads out and its intensity drops according to an inverse square law. Move twice as far away from a sun, and the radiation intensity drops to a quarter of what it was when you were closer. Move to ten times as far away from the sun than before, and the intensity is 1% of what it was up close.
The synchrotron 'light' is being shaped into a beam "like a LASER". A LASER produces a highly collimated beam – that is, the light does not (significantly) spread out. This is why football hooligans choose LASER pointers rather than conventional torches to intimidate players from a safe distance in the crowd.
Comparing light with like
This is why I do not understand how the comparison works, as the brightness of a sun depends how close you are too it – a point previously discussed here in relation to NASA's Parker solar probe (NASA puts its hand in the oven). If I look out at the night sky on a clear moonlight night then surely I am exposed to light from more "than a million suns" but most of them are so far away I cannot even make them out. Indeed there are faint 'nebulae' I can hardly perceive that are actually galaxies shining with the brightness of billions of suns. 5 If that is the comparison, then I am not especially impressed by something being "brighter than a million suns".
How bright is the sun? it depends which planet you are observing from. (Images by AD_Images and Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)
We are told not to look directly at the sun as it can damage our eyes. But a hypothetical resident of Neptune or Uranus could presumably safely stare at the sun (just as we can safely stare at much brighter stars than our sun because they are so far away). So we need to ask :"brighter than a million suns", as observed from how far away?
How bright is the sun? That depends on viewing conditions (Image by UteHeineSch from Pixabay)
Even if referring to our Sun as seen from the earth, the brightness varies according to its apparent altitude in the sky. So, "brighter than a million suns" needs to be specified further – as perhaps "more than a million times brighter than the sun as seen at midday from the equator on a cloudless day"? Of course, again, only the pedantic science teacher is thinking about this: everyone knows well enough what being brighter than a million suns implies. It is pretty intense radiation.
Applying the technology
Dr Finch went on to discuss a couple of applications of the synchrotron. One related to identifying pigments in art masterpieces. The other was quite timely in that it related to investigating the infectious agent in COVID.
"Now by now you have probably seen an image of the COVID virus – it looks like a ball with some spikes on it. Actually it kind of looks like those massage balls that your physio makes you buy when you turn thirty and need to to ease all your physical ailments that you suddenly have."
Dr Emily Finch talking on Ockham's Razor
Coronavirus particles and massage balls…or is it… (Images by Ulrike Leone and Daniel Roberts from Pixabay)
Again there is an attempt to make the unfamiliar familiar. These microscopic virus particles are a bit like something familiar from everyday life. Such comparisons are useful where the everyday object is already familiar.
By now I've seen plenty of images of the coronavirus responsible for COVID, although I do not have a physiotherapist (perhaps this is a cultural difference – Australians being so sporty?) So, I found myself using this comparison in reverse – imagining that the "massage balls that your physio makes you buy" must be like larger versions of coronavirus particles. Having looked up what these massage balls (a.k.a. hedgehog balls it seems) look like, I can appreciate the similarity. Whether the manufacturers of massage balls will appreciate their products being compared to enormous coronavirus particles is, perhaps, another matter.
Work cited:
Taber, K. S., Billingsley, B., Riga, F., & Newdick, H. (2015). English secondary students' thinking about the status of scientific theories: consistent, comprehensive, coherent and extensively evidenced explanations of aspects of the natural world – or just 'an idea someone has'. The Curriculum Journal, 1-34. doi: 10.1080/09585176.2015.1043926
Notes:
1 At least, depending how we understand 'thinking'. Clearly there are cognitive processes at work even when we continue a conversation 'on auto pilot' (to employ a metaphor) whilst consciously focusing on something else. Only a tiny amount of our cognitive processing (thinking?) occurs within conscousness where we reflect and deliberate (i.e., explicit thinking?) We might label the rest as 'implicit thinking', but this processing varies greatly in its closeness to deliberation – and some aspects (for example, word recognition when listening to speech; identifying the face of someone we see) might seem to not deserve the label 'thinking'?
2 Of course the evidence for some ideas becomes so overwhelming that in principle we treat some theories as certain knowledge, but in principle they remain provisional knowledge. And the history of science tells us that sometimes even the most well-established ideas (e.g., Newtonian physics as an absolutely precise description of dynamics; mass and energy as distinct and discrete) may need revision in time.
3 Since I began drafting this article, the webpage for the podcast has been updated with a correction: "in this talk Dr Finch says electrons in the synchrotron are accelerated to the speed of light. They actually go just under that speed – 99.99998% of it to be exact."
4 Perversion in the sense of the distortion of an original course
5 The term nebulae is today reserved for clouds of dust and gas seen in the night sky in different parts of our galaxy. Nebulae are less distinct than stars. Many of what were originally identified as nebulae are now considered to be other galaxies immense distances away from our own.
Organisations use advertising to make claims about their products and services – but how are we meant to understand such claims? (I wonder in particular how people on the autism spectrum are expected to make sense of them.)
Knowledge claims about knowledge claims
As someone who has been professionally concerned with how we understand 'knowledge' (what is it?, what counts as knowledge?) and how we identify it (can it be measured?, can we ever be sure quite what someone else knows?) I've recently been rather irritated by some rather blatantly naive claims made in adverts that I have been repeatedly exposed to when settling down for some relaxing evening viewing. These were not about a product as such, but about the apparently exceptional expertise of the company staff.
I live in a state where there is an advertising standards authority (the ASA) to which consumers can make complaints, and which can take action on misleading advertising.
Here are some selected points from the regulator's website (accessed 21st May, 2022) regarding misleading advertisements:
• The ASA will take into account the impression created by advertisements as well as specific claims. It will rule on the basis of the likely effect on consumers, not the advertiser's intentions.
• Advertisements must not materially mislead or be likely to do so.
• Advertisements must not mislead consumers by omitting material information. They must not mislead by hiding material information or presenting it in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner.
• Subjective claims must not mislead the audience; advertisements must not imply that expressions of opinion are objective claims.
• Advertisements must state significant limitations and qualifications.
• Advertisements must not mislead by exaggerating the capability or performance of a product or service.
• Advertisements must not suggest that their claims are universally accepted if a significant division of informed or scientific opinion exists.
Given these points, I feel that some rather specific and unequivocal claims made by an organisation called 'Carpetright' are extremely dubious.
However, I should also note another significant statement which potentially undermines the ASA's ability to apply such principles strictly:
"Obvious exaggerations ('puffery') and claims that the average consumer who sees the advertisement is unlikely to take literally are allowed provided they do not materially mislead."
So, this seems to suggest that claims can be made which are not actually true as long as the 'average consumer' will recognise them as not meant to be trusted and believed. Hm.
At one level, this makes sense. If an advertiser hires an actor to dress up in aluminium foil and announce "I am Thor, God of Thunder, and I will bring my wrath upon you all, except those wearing Taber raincoats who are protected from my powers" then clearly they are not expecting the audience to believe they are seeing a supernatural entity with Godly powers of destruction from which they can be protected by buying the right rainwear. They are expected to interpret this along the lines "our raincoats are pretty effective at keeping you dry when it is raining". As there is no intent to deceive, and as a reasonable person (perhaps that 'average consumer') is unlikely to perceive this as an objective knowledge claim, then this is no more a lie than when an actor plays a part in a fictional play or film.
It seems widely accepted that advertising claims operate in a register rather different from clear, honest claims with relevant caveats. But then how does the 'average consumer' know which statements are meant to be taken seriously as knowledge claims? (Thor Image by Nico Wall from Pixabay; Clothing image by Any_Banany_Style from Pixabay)
But I am worried about this 'get-out clause' as it potentially offers a defence for all kinds of claims that cannot be objectively supported.
Who knows the most?
I have been seeing the particularly irritating advertisements regularly for some time now, and had been so grated by the claims in them – in particular by the extremely implausible nature of them when considered collectively – that when I sat down to watch a programme yesterday I actually made a note of the claims in a succession of small sponsor's advertisements positioned at the start and end of each commercial break. (I usually record programmes and fast-forward through such breaks, but these 'sponsoring' adverts are directly segued to the programme content so hard to completely avoid. That said, when you do not use the fast-forward they do offer an obvious indication when to press the mute button as the programme has paused or is just about to recommence.) During the programme the set of claims were cycled through twice (and one of the claims was slightly different in nature to the others and I will leave aside).
The first commercial break was announced with the claim that
"no one knows more about floors than Jeff"
Claim made by 'Careptright'
This is presented as an unqualified and objective statement.
For anyone who has undertaken research to explore the knowledge of learners, this raises a whole array of questions.
What is meant by knowledge in this claim?
Traditionally knowledge is meant to be true justified belief. That is, Jeff has knowledge about floors to the extent that he has beliefs about floors that are are both justified and true.
Justified belief
What would be a justified belief?
Well there might be differences of opinion here. Some might suggest that Jeff's beliefs are only justified if they are based on well interpreted empirical evidence. He has been down on floors getting his hands dirty investigating them. Alternatively, others might feel the main source of knowledge is rational reflection – so Jeff needs to have undertaken some careful and valid philosophical investigation into floors to have worthwhile knowledge. These two sources are sometimes seen as opposed – empiricists versus rationalists.
For a scientist, knowledge is based on an ongoing enquiry where rational thought and reflection, and empirical investigation, are employed iteratively. (That is, science uses a bit of both, tending to shift between the two to build up understanding over time.)
Another source of knowledge might be authority. Perhaps Jeff has been to 'floor' college and been taught by acknowledged experts? Perhaps he has carefully studied the top texts on floors and regularly tops up his expertise on professional development courses.
The founders of the Royal Society of London suggested that scientists should take no one's word for things, but rather test things out for themselves. Whilst that is a fine sentiment, it is totally impractical today, as science would never progress if all novice scientists were expected to check for themselves every piece of theory they might apply in their work. They would unlikely ever get to do anything new before retirement. Rather they can accept, on authority, that hydrogen is an element, that current in a metal wire is due to a flow of electrons, that all frogs have hearts 1, and so on. They do this on authority of their teachers and the texts they read.
Of course, this raises the problem of who can be taken as an authority.
Science is a community activity which largely works by consensus but allowing enough room for dissent to hopefully ensure it does not become dogmatic. (Sometimes it fails, but this combination of authority, logical thought, and empirical investigation is surely the best way anyone has yet come up with of finding out about the natural world.)
What is a true belief?
There is of course a distinction between a truly held belief, and a true belief. Some people truly believe they have been abducted by aliens, who having come all this way, have nothing better to do than borrow people overnight and probe them a little before returning them to their beds. No matter how much these people genuinely believe this to have happened it is not a true belief unless they really have been molested by aliens that have the technology to travel galactic distances, abduct people from inside their homes without raising the alarm, and medically examine humans without leaving any traces; but sadly have not yet found a way to do this without sufficiently anaesthetising their victims to ensure they are unaware.
A truly held belief is not necessarily true (Image by Dantegráfico from Pixabay)
Perhaps this is actually the case. If this truly happens, then someone who genuinely strongly believes they have been a victim, and has sufficient grounds to be justified in that belief (whatever we might decide would count here), can be said to have true knowledge.
But only if we know this is indeed what happened. But there is a clear danger of a vicious circle in making that judgement. We can only decide someone has genuine knowledge because we have genuine knowledge and their beliefs match our knowledge. But we can only be said to have such knowledge, if we have a true, justified, belief, which surely requires someone else to check our beliefs are true. And that some has to be someone who knows the truth – i.e., can be judged to have the knowledge.
One this basis only God or someone arrogant enough to think themselves similarly incapable of error can make this call.
Do scientists have knowledge?
It would seem that if we apply the notion of true, justified, belief strictly, then we can never claim to have knowledge. Then 'human knowledge' would only exist as some kind of idea, like an ideal gas or a canonical concept (Taber, 2019), which is a useful referent to compare things against, but not something we can ever expect to have.
That would be a reasonable way to use the word – but in actual public discourse knowledge is talked about as if it is obtainable – so experts are said to have expert knowledge (not just expert beliefs or expert opinions).
It is widely accepted that scientific knowledge claims are NOT claiming knowledge in that ideal sense – not absolute, certain knowledge, but provisional knowledge: knowledge as our best current understanding, considered to be a sufficient basis for action in the world, but always open to review.
As one philosopher of science noted:
"Assume somebody points out that certainty is an essential part of knowledge in the sense that the meaning of the word 'knowledge' contains the idea of certainty. The answer is very simple: we have decided against the idea of certainty … We have thereby also decided against knowledge in the sense alluded to. If certainty is part of knowledge, then we simply do not want to know in this sense."
So, scientific knowledge is evidence-based, rationally argued, and developed within an authoritative background tradition, and so considered to be reliable and trustworthy – but is strictly something other than true, justified, belief. Indeed, arguably we should not consider scientific knowledge as beliefs: scientists commit to certain ideas as well supported and worthy of provisional assent – but not as beliefs.
In science education, the teacher's job is not to persuade students to believe in scientific ideas (whether seemingly controversial, such as natural selection, the big bang, or well-established such as combustion being usually a reaction with oxygen), but rather to understand why scientists have adopted certain ideas as provisional knowledge whilst remaining critical and open to new evidence or interpretations (Taber, 2017).
Assessing knowledge
If we accept that people do have knowledge (an ontological judgement), this does not imply we can easily investigate it (an epistemological matter). Science teachers assess students' science knowledge all the time, so in practice we assume that (i) in principle we can identify/examine someone else's knowledge, and that (ii) we can do this in a sufficiently valid and reliable way that we think it is morally acceptable for teachers and examiners to score and grade learners for their knowledge.
I am not disputing that is so in practice, BUT undertaking research into learners' science knowledge makes us very aware of the limitations to processes of eliciting and assessing other people's knowledge. We need probes (e.g., questions) that are understood as intended, participants motivated to reveal their thinking, and the ability to interpret responses. I am not suggesting this is impossible, but, as with any research to measure something, it relies on valid and well-calibrated instrumentation, appropriate background theory, and is always subject to limits on precision.
This is disguised sometimes in the kind of 'shorthand' used in many research reports which can include bland summary statements (of the kind '76% of the participants had a good understanding of acidity, but 12% held a common misconception') that tends to sound more absolute and precise than is possible, and which often clump together considerable diversity of knowledge and understanding within a single class such as 'misconception' or 'sound knowledge' (Taber, 2013).
In my doctoral research I studied students' understanding of chemical bonding in depth, and this reinforced the idea that each of us has unique and idiosyncratic knowledge. I found much commonality in student thinking and indeed something of a 'common' alternative conceptual framework , yet when one investigates thinking in depth (rather than just using a questionnaire with objective questions) it become clear that even in the same class, no two students have precisely the same knowledge of a topic. That certainly applied to 'chemical bonding' and I would expect it applies equally as well to other domains – including floors!
Can knowledge be quantified?
But given that everyone's knowledge is unique, with its own nuances, gaps, and deviations from some ideal canonical account, does it even make sense to try to quantity knowledge? When we appreciate some of the qualitative variation between individual epistemic agents (i.e., 'knowers') it starts to look rather questionable whether it makes sense to be satisfied with any quantitative score meant to reflect relative levels of knowledge (like test scores). This makes a claim like "no one knows more about floors than Jeff" seem, at best, a little simplistic.
A barely plausible coincidence
Yet, at the end of the first commercial break, the same sponsor made another claim:
"no one knows more about floors than Roger"
Claim made by 'Careptright'
As of itself, this claim seems just as dubious as the claim about Jeff.
But it is when they are taken together, that they really stretch credibility. It we treat these claims at face value:
No one knows more about floors than Roger. So, this includes Jeff. Jeff does not know more about floors than Roger.
Yet we are also told no one knows more about floors than Jeff. And this must include Roger. So, Roger does not know more about floors than Jeff.
Clearly the only way to accept both these claims is to assume that Roger and Jeff know exactly as much about floors as each other.
We have to assume here then that it makes sense to quantify domain knowledge (in the floors domain at least) and that sufficiently accurate measurements of domain knowledge can be made to confidently conclude that Roger and Jeff know precisely equal amounts.
We are not told they know everything about floors. Perhaps each only knows 10% of what it is possible to know about floors, in which case we might wonder to what extent their knowledge overlaps or is complementary. If Jeff knows 10% of all that could be known about floors, and Roger also knows 10% of all that could be known about floors, then between them they must know between 10-20% of the total domain knowledge.
Stretching credulity further
I had barely had time to ponder all this when the next commercial break arrives with a new claim:
"no one knows more about floors than Donald"
Claim made by 'Careptright'
So, an even more unlikely scenario is presented.
No one knows more about floors than Donald. So, this includes Jeff. Jeff does not know more about floors than Donald.
And this also includes Roger. Roger does not know more about floors than Donald.
Yet we are also told no one knows more about floors than Jefff. And this must include Donald. So, Donald does not know more about floors than Jeff.
And no one knows more about floors than Roger. So, this also includes Donald. Donald does not know more about floors than Roger.
Clearly the only way to accept all these claims is to assume that Donald and Roger and Jeff know exactly as much about floors as each other.
How likely is it that there are three people in the world who equally know so much about floors that no one else in the world knows more about floors than them?
I guess this deepens on just how complex a domain floor knowledge is. In many distributions that occur 'naturally' there is something of a bell-curve where a lot of people clump around the middle of the distribution, so they are fairly typical or average in that regard, and just a few people fall at the extremes.
A 'normal' distribution (Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay)
The more possible states there are in the distribution, the more likely that the highest occupied state will have relatively low occupancy. Yet if there are only a small number of states, there will be less options and higher frequencies in specific states. That is, there will be what is known as a 'ceiling' effect. A ceiling effect occurs in tests if the questions are too easy allowing many candidates to obtain the maximum score. Such a test does not discriminate well between the most capable and less capable candidates.
There are billions of people on earth, so perhaps it is not so surprising there might be three people tied for top rating in the area of floor domain knowledge – or even more than three – so it is not impossible that these three (Jeff, Roger, Donald) all work for the same company that have highly trained them within the domain.
Beyond belief?
But then at the end of the commercial break we are told
"no one knows more about floors than Shirley"
Claim made by 'Careptright'
So, I will not go through all the argument again as clearly we are being told that no one knows more about floors than Shirley, but there are other people (Jeff, Roger, Donald) who also are not exceeded in their domain knowledge, so we conclude that there are at least four people in the world who have equal domain knowledge to each other, whilst not being exceeded in domain knowledge by anyone else.
Yet there are further commercial breaks, and further bold claims:
"no one knows more about floors than Michael"
Claim made by 'Careptright'
and
"no one knows more about floors than Johnny"
Claim made by 'Careptright'
and
"no one knows more about floors than Kate"
Claim made by 'Careptright'
and
"no one knows more about floors than Tess"
Claim made by 'Careptright'
and
"no one knows more about floors than Denise"
Claim made by 'Careptright'
So, it seems that there are at least nine people working for this one organisation who are not exceeded in their domain knowledge by anybody else in the world. So, in the domain of floors
And no one knows more about floors than any of them.
This seems pretty unlikely – even fantastic, perhaps.
There are several ways to interpret this.
It is an advert meant to persuade simple people, so impressive claims are made to deceive them given that the advertisers assume their audience are too stupid to think critically and so appreciate they are being lied to.
Alternatively, perhaps as an advert, this is knowingly making nonsense claims that the audience are meant to see through, knowing that the point of the advert is to plant an idea and brand in the mind; and the audience are not expected or required to believe it. It is not deception, but what ASA call 'puffery' – something so obviously silly that no one is expected to take it seriously (or spend time critically analysing it for a blog). Who knows, perhaps there are no such people as Jeff and his colleagues, and their parts are played by actors!
But there is a third possibility.
Shoot high, aim low
There is one way that we might reasonably expect that a large number of people might be said to have such domain knowledge that it is not exceeded by any one else (and therefore have equal degrees of domain knowledge).
Consider a domain that is extremely simple and restricted.
We might imagine a knowledge domain with a very small number of possible knowledge elements. We can certainly imagine an artificial case – such as regarding one of those manufactured concepts used in some psychological research into concept formation.
For example consider the knowledge domain of recirgres
An example of a recirgre
Let us consider that a recirgre is a red circle on a green background. Perhaps there are only three things to be known about recirgres:
they are circular
they are red
the are found on green backgrounds
There are only eight basic knowledge states here, offering four quantitative levels of domain knowledge (making a ceiling effect likely):
knowing none of the three elements
knowing only one of the elements (three options)
knowing two of the three elements (three options)
knowing all three elements
The researcher in me would point out that even here there is more potential diversity in knowledge (e.g., one person may know only that recirgre are red; another may know recirgres are red and believe they are square; another may may know recirgres are red and think they may be any oval shape including circles…but here all such options count as having one element of domain knowledge; then again, perhaps someone thinks recirgres are red circles on green backgrounds and that putting one on a North facing wall in every room of a house will bring good luck; and someone else that recirgres are red circles on green backgrounds, but they used to be princesses before they were turned into recirgres by evil stepmothers – but in either case that's just the same maximum score of 3/3 in this assessment).
If we examined the knowledge of a large number of people that had studied the topic of recirgres we might find many top scorers of whom we could say "no one knows more about recrigres than…"- because of the low ceiling in this limited knowledge domain.
Some areas of expertise involve more complex and extensive knowledge domains than others (Images by Ahmad Ardity and Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay )
So perhaps the same is true of floors. Perhaps there's not actually that much that can be known about floors, so quite a few people who work in floors and are trained up in the trade know at least as much as anyone else does. It does not take long for someone who works in floors to hit the ceiling.
Perhaps. I'd rather think that than that my viewing is being interrupted by a successions of claims that I am simply meant to dismiss as fictions that are acceptable because they are "obvious exaggerations" ("puffery") and "claims that the average consumer who sees the advertisement is unlikely to take literally" because consumers know that claims made by advertisers like 'Carpetright' are not supposed to be truthful and taken seriously. So, perhaps the advertisers do not think we are stupid, but rather that we are clever enough to know their claims are not meant to have any genuine substantive content.
But if that is so, they are not trying to deceive us, but rather to manipulate us more insidiously.
1 Perhaps these examples seem like 'facts' rather than theories, but they can only be facts within a given theoretical context. So, to call hydrogen an element one needs a theoretical perspective on what an element is.
I've used the frog heart example to illustrate how scientific knowledge is not just as matter of being able to generalise from having examined some examples (induction):
"We might imagine a natural scientist, a logician, and a sceptical philosopher, visiting the local pond. The scientist might proclaim, "see that frog there, if we were to dissect the poor creature, we would find it has a heart". The logician might suggest that the scientist cannot be certain of this as she is basing her claim on an inductive process that is logically insecure. Certainly, every frog that has ever been examined sufficiently to determine its internal structure has been found to have a heart, but given that many frogs, indeed the vast majority, have never been specifically examined in this regard, it is not possible to know for certain that such a generalisation is valid. (The sceptic, is unable to arbitrate as he simply refuses to acknowledge that he knows there is a frog present, or indeed that he can be sure he is out walking with colleagues who are discussing one, rather than perhaps simply dreaming about the whole episode.)
The use of induction here, assumed by the logician to be the basis of the scientist's claim, might take the form:
1. a great many frogs have been examined, at different times and places, in sufficient detail to know if they have hearts;
2. each and everyone of these frogs,without exception, has been found to have a heart;
3. therefore, we can assume all frogs have hearts;
4. this, in front of us, is a frog,
5. therefore, it has a heart.
A key question then seems to be: under what circumstances can it be assumed that a property measured for some instance or specimen (something conceptualised as a member of some type or class) also applies to all other instances of the same type? …
The response is that we are not actually here using a process of induction that assumes if we look at sufficient examples we can make a generalisation across the class: rather we are using theoretical considerations. We assume that 'frog' is a kind or type such that as part of its essence (related to what makes it a frog) it necessarily has a heart. …
Frogs are a type of animal that is part of a larger group that share the same kind of circulatory system based on blood vessels and a heart to pump the blood around. We do not have to test every frog, because this type of anatomy and physiology is necessary (essential) to being a frog: it is part of the essence, the very nature, of frogness. So, the hypothetical scientist was arguing that the frog is a natural kind: a particular type of thing that exists in nature and that has certain necessary aspects, such that as long as we know we have a frog, we know these aspects will be found. So, the logical chain is something like:
1. frogs are recognised as making up a natural kind;
2. one of the necessary features of frogs is the presence of a heart;
3. therefore, we can assume all frogs have hearts;
4. this, in front of us, is a frog;
5. therefore, it has a heart.
This is not generalisation by traditional induction, but generalisation by deduction from theoretical considerations.
The point is NOT that there has not been a generalisation from examining other specimens of frog, but rather that this by itself is insufficient unless located in a particular theoretical perspective.
One of the supposed features of scientific knowledge is that it is always, strictly speaking, provisional. Science seeks generalisable, theoretical knowledge – and no matter how strong the case for some general claim may seem, a scientist is supposed to be open-minded, and always willing to consider that their opinion might be changed by new evidence or a new way of looking at things.
Perhaps the strongest illustration of this is Newtonian physics that seemed to work so well for so many decades that for many it seemed unquestionable. Yet we now know that it is not a precise account that always fits nature. (And by 'we know' I mean we know in the sense of having scientific knowledge – we think this, and have very strong grounds to think this, but reserve the right to change our minds in the light of new information!)
When science is presented in the media, this provisional nature of scientific knowledge – with its inbuilt caveat of uncertainty – is often ignored. News reports, and sometimes scientists when being interviewed by journalists, often imply that we now know…for certain… Science documentaries are commonly stitched together with the trope 'and this can only mean' (Taber, 2007) when any scientist worth their salt could offer (even if seemingly less feasible) alternative scenarios that fit the data.
One might understand this as people charged with communicating science to a general audience seeking to make things as simple and straightforward as possible. However it does reinforce the alternative conception that in science theories are tested allowing them to be straightforwardly dismissed or proved for all time. What is less easy to understand is why scientists seeking to publish work in academic journals to be read by other scientists would claim to know anything for certain – as that is surely likely to seem arrogant and unscientific to editors, reviewers, and those who might read their published work
Science that is indisputable
So, one of two things that immediately made me lack confidence in a published paper about the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the infectious agent considered responsible for the COVID pandemic (Sehgal, 2021), was that the first word was 'Undisputedly'. Assuming the author was not going to follow up with Descartes' famous 'Cogito' ("Undisputedly… I think, therefore I am"), this seemed to be a clear example of something I always advised my own research students to avoid in their writing – a hostage to fortune.
A bold first sentence for this article in a supposedly peer-reviewed research journal
The good scientist learns to use phrases like "this seems to suggest…" rather than "I have therefore proved beyond all possible doubt…"!
Prestigious research journals are selective in what they publish – and reject most submissions, or at least require major revisions based on reviewer evaluations. Predatory journals seek to maximise their income from charging authors for publication; and so do not have the concern for quality that traditionally characterised academic publishing. If some of the published output I have seen is a guide, some of these journals would publish virtually anything submitted regardless of quality.
Genetic relatedness of bats and viruses
Now it would be very unfair to dismiss a scientific article based purely on the first word of the abstract. Even if 'undisputedly' is a word that does not sit easily in scientific discourse, I have to acknowledge that writing a scientific paper is in part a rhetorical activity, and authors may sometimes struggle to balance the need to adopt scientific values (such as always being open to the possibility of another interpretation) with the construction of a convincing argument.
"Undisputedly, the horseshoe bats are the nearest known genetic relatives of the Sars-CoV-2 virus."
Sehgal, 2021, p.29 341
Always start a piece of writing with a strong statement
Closest genetic relatives?
Okay, I was done.
I am not a biologist, and so perhaps I am just very ignorant on the topic, but this seemed an incredible claim. Our current understanding of the earth biota is that there has (probably) been descent from a common ancestor of all living things on the planet today. So, just as I am related, even if often only very distantly, to every other cospecific specimen of Homo sapiens on the planet, I am also related by descent from common ancestors (even more distantly) to every chimpanzee, indeed every primate, every mammal, every chordate; indeed every animal; plus all the plants, fungi, protists and monera.
But clearly I share a common ancestor with all humans in the 'brotherhood of man' more recently than all other primates, and that more recently than all other mammals. And when we get to the non-animal kingdoms we are not even kissing cousins.
And viruses – with their RNA based genetics? These are often not even considered to be living entities in their own right.
There is certainly a theory that there was an 'RNA world', a time when some kind of primitive life based on RNA genes existed from which DNA and lifeforms with DNA genomes later evolved, so one can stretch the argument to say I am related to viruses – that if one went back far enough, both viruses and humans (or viruses and horseshoe bats, more to the point of the claim in this article) around today could be considered to be derived from a common ancestor, and that this is reflected in patterns that can be found in their genomes today.
The nearest genetic relative to SARS-CoV-2 virus?
The genome of a virus is not going to be especially similar to the genome of a mammal. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is a single stranded RNA virus which will be much more genetically similar to other such viruses that to organisms with double stranded DNA. It is famously a coronavirus – so surely it is most likely to be strongly related to other coronaviruses? It is called 'SARS-CoV-2' because of its similarity to the virus that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome): SARS-CoV. These seems strong clues.
And the nearest genetic relative to horseshoe bats are…
Annotated copy of Figure 7 from Amador et al., 2018
So, although I am not an expert, and I am prepared to be corrected by someone who is, I am pretty sure the nearest relative that is not a bat would be another mammal – not a bird, not a fish, certainly not a mollusc or insect. Mushrooms and ferns are right out of contention. And, no, not a virus. 1
Judge me on what I mean to say – not what I say
Perhaps I am being picky here. A little reflection suggests that surely Sehgal (in stating that "the horseshoe bats are the nearest known genetic relatives of the Sars-CoV-2 virus") did not actually mean to imply that "the horseshoe bats are the nearest known genetic relatives of the Sars-CoV-2 virus", but rather perhaps something along the lines that an RNA virus known to infect horseshoe bats was the nearest known genetic relative of the Sars-CoV-2 virus.
Perhaps I should have read "the horseshoe bats are the nearest known genetic relatives of the Sars-CoV-2 virus" as "the horseshoe bats are hosts to the nearest known genetic relatives of the Sars-CoV-2 virus"? If I had read on, I would have found reference to a "bat virus RaTG13 having a genome resembling the extent of 98.7% to that of the Sars-CoV-2 virus" (p.29 341).
Yet if a research paper, that has supposedly been subject to rigorous peer review, manages to both misrepresent the nature of science AND make an obviously factually incorrect claim in its very first sentence, then I think I can be forgiven for suspecting it may not be the most trustworthy source of information.
1 It is perfectly possible logically for organism Y (say a horseshoe bat) to be the closest genetic relative of organism X (say a coronavirus) without organism X being the closest genetic relative of organism Y. (By analogy, someone's closest living genetic relative could be a grandchild whose closest genetic relative is their own child or their parent that was not a child of that grandparent.) However, the point here is that bat is not even quite closely related to the virus.
Can we be certain about something that happened half a million years ago?
Keith S. Taber
What was going on in Java when Homo erectus lived there? (Image by Kanenori from Pixabay )
About half a million years ago a hominid, of the Homo erectus species, living in Java took a shell and deliberately engraved a mark on it. Now, I was not there when this happened, so my testimony is second hand, but I can be confident about this as I was told by a scientist that she was sure that this definitely happened.
"…we knew for sure that it must have been made by Homo erectus"
But how can we be so sure about something alleged to have occurred so long ago?
"A long time ago [if not] in a galaxy far, far away…." the skull of a specimen of Homo erectus (Image by Mohamed Noor from Pixabay ) [Was this an inspiration for the Star Wars stormtrooper helmet?]
I doubt Fifi would be convinced.1 Fifi was a Y12 student (c.16 years old) interviewed as part of the LASAR project who had reservations about palaeontology as it did not provide certain scientific knowledge,
"I like fossils though, I think they're interesting but I don't think I'd really like [working as a palaeontologist]…I don't think you could ever really know unless you were there… There'll always be an element of uncertainty because no matter how much evidence you supply there will always be, like, doubt because of the fact that you were never there…there'll always be uncertainty."
Learners can have alternative conceptions of the nature of science, just as much as they often do for forces or chemical bonding or plant nutrition. They often think that scientific knowledge has been 'proved', and so is certain (e.g., Taber, Billingsley, Riga & Newdick, 2015). An area like palaeontology where direct observation is not possible may therefore seem to fall short of offering genuine scientific knowledge.
The uncertain nature of scientific knowledge
One key feature of the nature of science is that it seeks to produce general or theoretical knowledge of the natural world. That is, science is not just concerned with providing factual reports about specific events but with developing general accounts that can explain and apply to broad categories of objects and events. Such general and theoretical knowledge is clearly more useful than a catalogue of specific facts – which can never tell us about the next occasion or what might happen in hypothetical situations.
However, a cost of seeking such applicable and useful knowledge is that it can never be certain. It relies on our ways of classifying objects and events, the evidence we have collected so far, our ability to spot the most important patterns -and the deductions this might support. So, scientific knowledge is always provisional in the sense that it is open to revision in response to new data, or new ways of thinking about existing data as evidence.
Yet often reports of science in the media give the impression that science has made absolute discoveries. Some years ago I wrote about the tendency in science documentaries for the narrative to be driven by links that claimed "...this could only mean…" when we know that in science the available data always underdetermines theory (Taber, 2007). Or, to put it another way, we could always think up other ways of explaining the data. Sometimes these alternatives might seem convoluted and unlikely, but if we can suggest a possible (even when unconvincing) alternative, then the available data can never "only mean" any one particular proposed interpretation.
"One of the most exciting episodes of palaeoanthropology was the find of the first transitional form, the Pithecanthropus erectus, by the Dutchman Eugène Dubois in Java during 1891-1892. …Besides the human remains, Dubois made a large collection of vertebrate fossils, mostly of mammals, now united in the so-called Dubois Collection."
de Vos, 2004
The Java man species, Pithecanthropus erectus (an upright ape/mokey-man), was later renamed as Homo erectus, the upright man.
On an edition of BBC Radio 4's 'In Our Time' taking 'Homo erectus' as its theme, Prof. Joordens explained how some fossil shells collected by Dubois as part of the context of the hominid fossils had remained in storage for over a century ("The shells had been, well, shelved…"!), before a graduate student set out to photograph them all for a thesis project. This led to the discovery that one of the shells appeared to have been engraved.
This could only mean one thing…
This is what Prof. Joordens told the host, Melvyn Bragg,
"One shell that had a very strange marking that we could not understand how it ended up there…
It was geometric, like a W, and this is of course something that animals don't produce. We had to conclude that it must have been made by Homo erectus. And it must have been a very deliberate marking because of, we did experimental research trying to replicate it, and then we actually found it was quite hard to do. Because, especially fresh shells, they have a kind of organic exterior, and it's hard to push some sharp objects through and make those lines, so that was when we knew for sure that it must have been made by Homo erectus."
We may consider this claim to be composed of a number of components, such as:
There is a shell with some 'very strange' markings
The shell was collected in Java in the nineteenth century
The shell had the markings when first collected
The markings were not caused by some natural phenomenon
The markings were deliberate not accidental
The markings were made by a specimen of Homo erectus
A sceptic might ask such questions as
How can we be sure this shell was part of the original collection? Could it have been substituted by mistake or deliberately?
How do we know the marks were not made more recently? perhaps by someone in the field in Java, or during transit form Java to the Netherlands, or by someone inspecting the collection?
Given that even unusual markings will occur by chance occasionally, how can we be certain these markings were deliberate? Does the mark really look like a 'W 'or might that be an over-interpretation. 2
And so forth.
It is worth bearing in mind that no one noticed these markings in the field, or when the collection was taken back to the Netherlands – indeed Prof. Joordens noted she had carried the shell around in her backpack (could that have been with an open penknife?) unaware of the markings
Of course, Prof. Joordens may have convincing responses to many of these questions – but a popular radio show is not the place to detail all the argument and evidence. Indeed, I found a report in the top journal Nature ('Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving') by Prof. Joordens and her team 3, claiming,
"One of the Pseudodon shells, specimen DUB1006-fL, displays a geometric pattern of grooves on the central part of the left valve [*]. The pattern consists, from posterior to anterior, of a zigzag line with three sharp turns producing an 'M' shape, a set of more superficial parallel lines, and a zigzag with two turns producing a mirrored 'N' shape. Our study of the morphology of the zigzags, internal morphology of the grooves, and differential roughness of the surrounding shell area demonstrates that the grooves were deliberately engraved and pre-date shell burial and weathering"
It may seem most likely that the markings were made by a Homo erectus, as no other explanation so far considered fits all the data, but theory is always under-determined – one can never be certain another scenario might be found which also fits the known facts.
Strictly, Prof. Joordens' contradicts herself. She claims the marks are "something that animals don't produce" and then claims an animal is responsible. She presumably meant that no non-hominid animal makes such marks. Even if we accept that (and, as they say, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence 4), can we be absolutely certain some other hominid might not have been present in Java at the time, marking the odd shell? As the 'In Our Time' episode discussed, Homo erectus often co-existed with other hominids.
Probably not, but … can we confidently say absolutely, definitely, not?
As Fifi might say: "I don't think you could ever really know unless you were there".
My point is not that I think Prof. Joordens is wrong (she is an expert, so I think she is likely correct), but just that her group cannot be absolutely certain. When Prof. Joordens says she knows for sure I assume (because she is a scientist, and I am a scientist) that this means something like "based on all the evidence currently available, our best, and only convincing, interpretation is…" Unfortunately lay people often do not have the background to insert such provisos themselves, and so often hear such claims literally – science has proved its case, so we know for sure. Where listeners already think scientific knowledge is certain, this misconception gets reinforced.
Meanwhile, Prof. Joordens continues her study of hominids in Java in the Studying Homo erectus Lifestyle and Location project (yes, the acronym is SHeLL).
Joordens, J., d'Errico, F., Wesselingh, F. et al. Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving. Nature 518, 228-231 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13962
Taber, K. S., Billingsley, B., Riga, F., & Newdick, H. (2015). English secondary students' thinking about the status of scientific theories: consistent, comprehensive, coherent and extensively evidenced explanations of aspects of the natural world – or just 'an idea someone has'. The Curriculum Journal, 1-34. doi: 10.1080/09585176.2015.1043926
Notes
1 As is usual practice in such research, Fifi is an assumed name. Fifi gave permission for data she contributed to the research to be used in publications on the assumption it would be associated with a pseudonym. (See: 'Using pseudonyms in reporting research'.)
2 No one is suggesting that the hominid deliberately marked the shell with a letter of the Roman alphabet, just that s/he deliberately made a mark that represented a definite and deliberate pattern. Yet human beings tend to spot patterns in random data. Could it just be some marks that seem to fit into a single pattern?
4 At one time there was no evidence of 'noble' gases reacting. At one time there was no evidence of ozone depletion. At one time there was no evidence of superconductivity. At one time there was no evidence that the blood circulates around the body. At one time there was no evidence of any other planet having moons. At one time there was no evidence of protons being composed of even more fundamental particles. At one time there was no evidence of black holes. At one time there was no evidence that smoking tobacco was harmful. At one time there was no evidence of … [fill in your choice scientific discovery!]
"I picked up that phrase 'almost certainly due to lack of vaccine', I mean that sounds like a bit of guesswork."
Presenter on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme
Yesterday, I was drafting a post about how a scientist had referred to a scientific theory being 'absolutely certain'. I suggested that this seemed at odds with the nature of science as producing conjectural knowledge always open to revisiting – yet might be considered necessary when seeking to communicate in public media.
Today, I sadly heard an excellent example to support that thesis.
BBC Radio 4's Today programme included an interview with Dr Raghib Ali
Robinson: "Now one of the first things we learned when the pandemic began, was that a greater proportion of Black and South Asian people were dying from corona virus. That remains the case many months on, but a new government report out today argues that the mortality gap now is mainly due, is not due, I'm sorry, to any genetic or social factor, it is, and I quote almost certainly down to vaccine take-up, or more accurately a lack of vaccine take-up. We're joined now by the government's independent expert advisor on COVID-19 and ethnicity, Dr. Raghib Ali, who is a consultant in acute medicine at Oxford University Hospitals. Morning to you"
Dr Ali: "Good morning Nick."
Robinson:"I picked up that phrase 'almost certainly due to lack of vaccine', I mean that sounds like a bit of guesswork. Do we actually know that?"
Nick Robinson interviewing Dr Raghib Ali on Today, 3rd December 2021, c.08.46
This seems to show a worrying level of ignorance (or else an odd provocation) from a senior and experienced journalist expecting scientific studies to be able to offer certain knowledge about causes in complex multivariate social situations.
How a scientific claim was understood on a prestigious news magazine programme
Sadly, if the news media are only interested in absolute certainty, then they should stop talking to scientists about their work as absolute certainty has no place in scientific discourse. Nor should it, I might suggest, have a place in serious journalism.
Is there a place for absolute certainty in science communication?
Keith S. Taber
I just got around to listening to the podcast of the 10th October episode of Science in Action. This was an episode entitled 'Youngest rock samples from the moon' which led with a story about rock samples collected on the moon and brought to earth by a Chinese mission (Chang'e-5). However, what caused me to, metaphorically at least, prick up my ears was a reference to "absolute certainty".
Now the tag line for Science in Action is "The BBC brings you all the week's science news". I think that phrase reveals something important about science journalism – it may be about science, but it is journalism, not science.
That is not meant as some kind of insult. But science in the media is not intended as science communication between scientists (they have journals and conferences and so forth), but science communicated to the public – which means it has to be represented in a form suitable for a general, non-specialist audience.
For, surely, "all the week's science news" cannot be covered in one half-hour broadcast/podcast. 1
My point is that "The BBC brings you all the week's science news" is not intended to be understood and treated as a scientific claim, but as something rathere different. As Wittgenstein (1953/2009) famously pointed out, language has to be understood in specific contexts, and there are different 'language games'. So, in the genre of the scientific report there are particular standards and norms that apply to the claims made. Occasionally these norms are deliberately broken – perhaps a claim is made that is supported by fabricated evidence, or for which there is no supporting evidence – but this would be judged as malpractice, academic misconduct or at least incompetence. It is not within the rules of that game
However, the BBC's claim is part of a different 'language game' – no one is going to be accused of professional misconduct because, objectively, Science in Action does not brings a listenerallthe week's science news. The statement is not intended to be understood as an objective knowledge claim, but more a kind of motto or slogan; it is not to be considered 'false' because it not objectively correct. Rather, it is to be understood in a fuzzy, vague, impressionistic way.
To ask whether "The BBC brings you all the week's science news" through Science in Action is a true or false claim would be a kind of category error. The same kind of category error that occurs if we ask whether or not a scientist believes in the ideal gas law, the periodic table or models of climate change.
Who invented gravity?
This then raises the question of how we understand what professional academic scientists say on a science news programme that is part of the broadcast media in conversation with professional journalists. Are they, as scientists, engaged in 'science speak', or are they as guests on a news show engaged in 'media speak'?
What provoked this thought with was comments by Dr Fredi Otto who appeared on the programme "to discuss the 2021 Nobel Prizes for Science". In particular, I was struck by two specific comments. The second was:
"…you can't believe in climate change or not, that would just be, you believe in gravity, or not…"
Which I took to mean that gravity is so much part of our everyday experience that it is taken-for-granted, and it would be bizarre to have a debate on whether it exists. There are phenomena we all experience all the time that we explain in terms of gravity, and although there may be scope for debate about gravity's nature or its mode of action or even its universality, there is little sense in denying gravity. 2
Newton's notion of gravity predominated for a couple of centuries, but when Einstein proposed a completely different understanding, this did not in any sense undermine the common ('life-world' 2) experience labelled as gravity – what happens when we trip over, or drop something, or the tiring experience of climbing too many steps. And, of course, the common misconception that Newton somehow 'discovered' gravity is completely ahistorical as people had been dropping things and tripping over and noticing that fruit falls from trees for a very long time before Newton posited that the moon was in freefall around the earth in a way analogous to a falling apple!
Believing in gravity
Even if, in scientific terms, believing in a Newtonian conceptualisation of gravity as a force acting at a distance would be to believe something that was no longer considered the best scientific account (in a sense the 'force' of gravity becomes a kind of epiphenomenon in a relativistic account of gravity); in everyday day terms, believing in the phenomenon of gravity (as a way of describing a common pattern in experience of being in the world) is just plain common sense.
Dr Otto seemed to be suggesting that just as gravity is a phenomenon that we all take for granted (regardless of how it is operationalised or explained scientifically), so should climate change be. That might be something of a stretch as the phenomena we associate with gravity (e.g., dense objects falling when dropped, ending up on the floor when we fall) are more uniform than those associated with climate change – which is of course why one tends to come across more climate change deniers than gravity deniers. To the best of my knowledge, not even Donald Trump has claimed there is no gravity.
But the first comment that gave me pause for thought was:
"…we now can attribute, with absolute certainty, the increase in global mean temperature to the increase in greenhouse gases because our burning of fossil fuels…"
That did not seem to me like a scientific statement – more like the kind of commitment associated with belief in a religious doctrine. Science produces conjectural, theoretical knowledge, but not absolute knowledge?
Surely, absolute certainty is limited to deductive logic, where proofs are possible (as in mathematics, where conclusions can be shown to inevitably follow from statements taken as axioms – as long as one accepts the axioms, then the conclusions must follow). Science deals with evidence, but not proof, and is always open to being revisited in the light of new evidence or new ways of thinking about things.
For example, at one time many scientists would have said that the presence of an ether 3 was beyond question (as for example waves of light travelled from the sun to earth, and waves motion requires a medium). Its scientific characterisation -e.g., the precise nature of the ether, its motion relative to the earth – were open to investigation, but its existence seemed pretty secure.
It seemed inconceivable to many that the ether might not exist. We might say it was beyond reasonable doubt. 4 But now the ether has gone the way of caloric and phlogiston and N-rays and cold fusion and the four humours… It may have once been beyond reasonable doubt to some (given the state of the evidence and the available theoretical perspectives), but it can never have been 'absolutely certain'.
Science is the most reliable and trustworthy approach to understanding the natural world, but a large part of that strength comes from it never completely closing a case for good – from never suggesting to have provided absolute certainty. Science can be self-correcting because no scientific idea is 'beyond question'. That is not to say that we abandon, say, conversation of energy at the suggestion of the first eccentric thinker with designs for a perpetual motion machine – but in principle even the principle of conservation of energy should not be considered as absolutely certain. That would be religious faith, not scientific judgement.
So, we should not believe. It should not be considered absolutely certain that "the increase in global mean temperature [is due to] the increase in greenhouse gases because [of] our burning of fossil fuels", as that suggests we should believe it as a doctrine or dogma, rather than believe that the case is strong enough to make acting accordingly sensible. That is, if science is always provisional, technically open to review, then we can never wait for absolute certainty before we act, especially when something seems beyond reasonable doubt.
You should not believe scientific ideas
The point is that certainty and belief are not really the right concepts in science, and we should avoid them in teaching science:
"In brief, the argument to be made is that science education should aim for understanding of scientific ideas, but not for belief in those ideas. To be clear, the argument is not just that science education should not intend to bring about belief in scientific ideas, but rather that good science teaching discourages belief in the scientific ideas being taught."
To be clear – to say that we do not want learners to believe in scientific ideas is NOT to say we want them to disbelieve them! Rather, belief/disbelief should be orthogonal to the focus on understanding ideas and their evidence base.
I suggested above that to ask whether "The BBC brings you all the week's science news" through Science in Action is a true or false claim would be a kind of category error. I would suggest it is a category error in the same sense as asking whether or not people should believe in the ideal gas law, the periodic table, or models of climate change.
"If science is not about belief, then having learners come out of science lessons believing in evolution, or for that matter believing that magnetic field lines are more concentrated near the poles of a magnet, or believing that energy is always conserved, or believing that acidic solutions contain solvated hydrogen ions,[5] misses the point. Science education should help students understand scientific ideas, and appreciate why these ideas are found useful, and something of their status (for example when they have a limited range of application). Once students can understand the scientific ideas then they become available as possible ways of thinking about the world, and perhaps as notions under current consideration as useful (but not final) accounts of how the world is."
But how do scientists cross the borders from science to science communication?
Of course many scientists who have studied the topic are very convinced that climate change is occurring and that anthropogenic inputs into the atmosphere are a major or the major cause. In an everyday sense, they believe this (and as they have persuaded me, so do I). But in a strictly logical sense they cannot be absolutely certain. And they can never be absolutely certain. And therefore we need to act now, and not wait for certainty.
I do not know if Dr Otto would refer to 'absolute certainty' in a scientific context such as a research paper of a conference presentation. But a radio programme for a general audience – all ages, all levels of technical background, all degrees of sophistication in appreciating the nature of science – is not a professional scientific context, so perhaps a different language game applies. Perhaps scientists have to translate their message into a different kind of discourse to get their ideas across to the wider public?
The double bind
My reaction to Dr Otto's comments derived from a concern with public understanding of the nature of science. Too often learners think scientific models and theories are meant to be realistic absolute descriptions of nature. Too often they think science readily refutes false ideas and proves the true ones. Scientists talking in public about belief and absolute certainty can reinforce these misconceptions.
On the other hand, there is probably nothing more important that science can achieve today than persuade people to act to limit climate change before we might bring about shifts that are (for humanity if not for the planet) devastating. If most people think that science is about producing absolute certain knowledge, then any suggestion that there is uncertainty over whether human activity is causing climate change is likely to offer the deniers grist, and encourage a dangerous 'well let's wait till we know for sure' posture. Even when it is too late and the damage has been done, if there are any scientists left alive, they still will not know absolutely certainly what caused the changes.
"…Lord, here comes the flood We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood If again the seas are silent In any still alive It'll be those who gave their island to survive…"
(Peter Gabriel performing on the Kate Bush TV special, 1979: BBC Birmingham)
So, perhaps climate scientists are in a double bind – they can represent the nature of science authentically, and have their scientific claims misunderstood; or they can do what they can to get across the critical significance of their science, but in doing so reinforce misconceptions of the nature of scientific knowledge.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953/2009). Philosophical Investigations (G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, & J. Schulte, Trans. P. M. S. Hacker & J. Schulte Eds. Revised fourth ed.). Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
Schutz, A., & Luckmann, T. (1973). The Structures of the Life-World (R. M. Zaner & H. T. Engelhardt, Trans.). Evanston, Illinois: Northwest University Press.
1 An alternative almost tautological interpretation might be that the BBC decides what is 'science news', and it is what is included in Science in Action, might fit some critics complaints that the BBC can be a very arrogant and self-important organisation – if only because there are stories not covered in Science in Action that do get covered in the BBC's other programmes such as BBC Inside Science.
2 This might be seen as equivalent to saying that the life-world claim that gravity (as is commonly understood and experienced) exists is taken-for-granted Schutz & Luckmann, 1973). A scientific claim would be different as gravity would need to be operationally defined in terms that were considered objective, rather that just assuming that everyone in the same language community shares a meaning for 'gravity'.
3 The 'luminiferous' aether or ether. The ether was the name given to the fifth element in the classical system where sublunary matter was composed of four elements (earth, water, air, fire) and the perfect heavens from a fifth.
(Film director Luc Besson's sci-fi/fantasy movie 'The Fifth Element' {1997, Gaumont Film Company} borrows from this idea very loosely: Milla Jovovich was cast in the title role as a perfect being who is brought to earth to be reunited with the other four elements in order to save the world.)
4 Arguably the difference between forming an opinion on which to base everyday action (everyday as in whether to wear a rain coat, or to have marmalade on breakfast toast, not as in whether to close down the global fossil fuel industry), and proposing formal research conclusions can be compared to the difference between civil legal proceedings (decided on the balance of probabilities – what seems most likely given the available evidence) and criminal proceedings – where a conviction is supposed to depend upon guilt being judged beyond reasonable doubt given the available evidence (Taber, 2013).
5 Whether acids do contain hydrated hydrogen ions may seem something that can reasonably be determined, at least beyond reasonable doubt, by empirical investigation. But actually not, as what counts as an acid has changed over time as chemists have redefined the concept according to what seemed most useful. (Taber, 2019, Chapter 6: Conceptualising acids: Reimagining a class of substances).
I never had the chance to interview Ludwig for my research, but was intrigued when I found out about his outright dismissal of the possibility of manned missions to the moon.
There are of course people who are strongly committed to ideas at odds with current scientific consensus – suggesting the earth is flat; that evolution does not occur; that COVID-19 was deliberately produced in a laboratory; that governments have physical evidence of alien visitors, but deny it and keep all relevant documentation classified; and so forth.
Moon landing deniers
Even in the United States of America, the home of the Apollo missions, surveys regularly show that a substantial minority of people doubt that people ever actually went to the moon, and think the Apollo moon landings were faked. Why would NASA have gone to such trouble with the collusion of the US Government machinery and the support of Hollywood studios?
As President Kennedy had put such weight on (American) people getting to the moon before the end of the 1960s, then – the argument goes – once it became clear this was technically impossible, it became important to convince the population that JFK's challenge had been met by a massive initiative to forge and disseminate evidence. There has been something of an industry in explaining how the photographs released by NASA can be seen to have been clearly faked if one looks carefully enough and knows a little science.
Unreasonable doubt?
I try to be someone who is always somewhat sceptical (as any scientist should be) of any claims, no matter how widely believed, as in time some canonical ideas are found to be flawed – even in science. But I tend to give little credence to such conspiracy theories.
Sometimes there are good reasons why science is doubted by sections of the public when it seems to conflict with well established world-view beliefs deriving from religious traditions or traditional ecological knowledge which has sustained a culture for a great many generations. So, even when the science is well supported, we can sometimes understand why some people find it difficult to accept. But the Apollo missions being faked in a film studio: surely that is just the kind of nonsense that only ignorant cranks like to believe – isn't it?
Ludwig on the sure belief that no one has been to the moon
Thus my interest in Ludwig, who was certainly not an ignorant person. Indeed he was highly intelligent, and something of an intellectual – a deep thinker who was very interested in the nature of knowledge and considered issues of how we could ground our beliefs, given that the evidence was never sufficient to be absolutely sure.
He thought that individual ideas were convincing when they were embedded in a 'nest' of related ideas – what we might call a conceptual framework. One example he discussed was his accepting that people always had parents: he thought this "sure belief" was based "not only on the fact that I have known the parents of certain people but on everything that I have learnt about the sexual life of human beings and their anatomy and physiology: also on what I have heard and seen of animals". Ludwig thought that although this could not be considered definite proof, it was robust grounds for someone to accept the belief.
Another example of such a sure belief was that a person could be confident that they had never been on the moon,
A principal ground for [a person] to assume that he was never on the moon is that no one ever was on the moon or could come [i.e., get] there; and this we believe on grounds of what we learn.
¶171
Physics forbids moon landings
Ludwig seemed to consider the impossibility of people getting to be on the moon was something he could be pretty sure of,
"But is there no objective truth? Isn't it true, or false, that someone has been on the moon?" If we are thinking within our system, then it is certain that no one has ever been on the moon. Not merely is nothing of the sort ever seriously reported to us by reasonable people, but our whole system of physics forbids us to believe it. For this demands answers to the questions "How did he overcome the force of gravity?" "How could he live without an atmosphere?" and a thousand others which could not be answered…
The intellectual status of unreasonable people
So someone making such a claim would not be a 'reasonable' person in Ludwig's evaluation. So how would Ludwig feel about such an unreasonable person?
We should feel ourselves intellectually very distant from someone who said this.
¶108
But of course there are people who claim this has indeed happened, that we have been to the moon,and walked there and whilst there collected rocks and indeed played golf. (Had this been more recent, we would perhaps instead have danced the tango and baked cakes.) NASA astronauts have since often acted as ambassadors for space science, and told their stories across the world, including to the young – enthusing many of them about space and science.
How might Ludwig respond to a child who had met one of those Apollo astronauts who claimed to have walked on the moon?
Suppose some adult had told a child that he had been on the moon. The child tells me the story, and I say it was only a joke, the man hadn't been on the moon, no one has ever been on the moon, the moon is a long way off and it is impossible to climb up there or fly there.
Ludwig adds, rhetorically,
If now the child insists, saying perhaps there is a way of getting there which I don't know, etc. what reply could I make to him?
¶106
Believers in moon landings are ignorant and wrong
So how could Ludwig explain that there are many people, indeed a majority today, who do believe that people have visited the moon, and returned to earth to tell others about the experience?
What we believe depends on what we learn. We all believe that it isn't possible to get to the moon; but there might be people who believe that that is possible and that it sometimes happens. We say: these people do not know a lot that we know. And, let them be never so sure of their belief-they are wrong and we know it.
If we compare our system of knowledge with theirs then theirs is evidently the poorer one by far.
¶286
So, just as I might suspect the moonshot deniers are somewhat ignorant, for Ludwig it is the reverse: it is those who think people can get to the moon who have poor knowledge systems and are simply wrong.
Now I suggested above that Ludwig was an intelligent and reflective person – indeed he worked as a school teacher, both in primary and secondary education – so his views may seem incongruent. As some readers may have suspected, I am being a little unfair to Ludwig. I pointed out at the outset that I never had the chance to interview Ludwig – indeed I never met him, although he did spend part of his life in Cambridge where I now work.
We can all be wrong
Ludwig did not live to see the moon landings, as he died in 1951 almost a decade before I was born (of parents – he was right about that), shortly after he wrote the material that I have quoted above. That is a few years before Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union and the 'space race' began. So, Ludwig was not a denier of the moon landings as such, refusing to accept the media accounts, but rather a denier of the possibility of there ever being moon landings at a time when no one was yet actively planning the feat.
Ludwig was wrong. But had he lived another 20 years I am pretty sure he would have changed his mind. That's because one of the things he was best known for was changing his mind.
Having written a highly influential book of philosophy that convinced many intellectuals he was one of the greatest thinkers of his time, if not all time (the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) he took a long sabbatical from Academia, only to later write an equally influential and profound book (that he did not live to see published – the Philosophical Investigations) that contradicted his earlier ideas. Had Ludwig seen the technological developments of the 'space race' in the 1960s, it seems certain – well, a sure belief – that he would have accepted the possibility of people going to the moon.
However, when I first read the comments I quote above I was struck by how such a highly intelligent and deep thinker could be so sure that getting people to the moon was not possible that he actually chose to use the idea of people on the moon as an exemplar of something that was impossible ("it is certain that no one has ever been on the moon"), and indeed contrary to the laws of physics.
Presumably at the time he was writing he could assume most intelligent people would fully accept his position (as "we all believe that it isn't possible to get to the moon") and see the suggestion of people going to the moon as absurd enough to stand as an example of an idea that could not be accepted by us reasonable people, only by someone "intellectually very distant" from us.
However, barely a decade later JFK was convinced enough of the possibility of getting people safely to the moon and back to commit his nation to achieving it – and a decade after that men being on the moon was already ceasing to be seen as anything out of the ordinary (until the near disaster of the Apollo 13 mission got the flights back into the popular imagination).
I do not present this example to ridicule Ludwig Wittgenstein. Far from it. But it does make me reflect on those things that we think we can treat as 'sure beliefs'. Even the most intelligent and reflective of us can be very wrong about things we may treat as certain knowledge. That's always worth keeping in mind.
Nothing is absolutely certain, except, perhaps, uncertainty itself!
All citations are from ¶ in Wittgenstein, L. (1975). On Certainty (D. Paul & G. E. M. Anscombe, Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe & G. H. v. Wright Eds. Corrected 1st ed.). Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing.
A few days ago WHO reported that the UK had had over 300 000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, but now WHO is reporting the cumulative total is many fewer. How come?
Keith S. Taber
I have been keeping an eye on the way the current pandemic has been developing around the world by looking at the World Health Organisation website (at https://covid19.who.int) which offers regularly updated statistics, globally, regionally, and in those countries with the most cases.
An example of the stats. reported by the WHO (June 23rd 2020) Note: on this day the UK Prime Minister reported: "In total, 306,210 people have now tested positive for coronavirus" which almost matches the figure shown by WHO (306 214) the next day.
Whilst the information is very interesting (and in view of what it represents, very saddening) there are some strange patterns in the graphs presented – reminding one that measurements can never just be assumed to precise, accurate and reliable. Some of the data looks unlikely to accurate, and in at least one case what is presented is downright impossible.
Questionable stats.
One type of anomaly that stands out is how some countries where the pandemic is active suddenly have a day with no new cases – before the level returning to trend.
This appeared to be the case in both Spain and Italy on 22nd March, and the two months later the same thing happened in Iran. One assumes this has more to do with reporting procedures than blessed days when no one was found to have the infection – although if that was the case should there not be some compensation in the following days (perhaps so in Spain above, but apparently not in Italy, and certainly not in Iran)?
Less easy to explain away is a peak found in the graph for Chile.
Suddenly for one day, 18th June, a much larger number of cases is reported: but then there is an immediate return to the baseline:
How is it possible that suddenly on one day there are seven times as many cases reported – as a blip superimposed on an otherwise fairly flat trend-line? Perhaps there is a rational explanation – but unfortunately the WHO site is rich in stats, but does not seem to offer interpretation or explanations *. Without a rationale, one wonder just how trustworthy the stats actually are.
Obviously false information
Even if there are explanations for some of these odd patterns due to the practicalities of reporting, and the ongoing development of systems of testing and reporting, in different jurisdictions, there is one anomaly that cannot be feasibly explained – where the data is surely, and clearly, wrong.
An example of the stats reported by the WHO (July 6th 2020)
So the graph above shows the nations with the most reported cases as of the last few days. This is a more recent update than the similar image at the top of this page. Yet, the cumulative total of confirmed cases for the United Kingdom in this figures is something like 20 000 cases LESS than the figure quoted in the EARLIER set of graphs. (Note that this has allowed the UK to have lower cumulative totals than either Chile or Peru – which would not have been the case without this reduction in cumulative total.)
The total number of confirmed cases in the UK is now (7th July) LESS that it was a week ago (see above). How come? Well, a close look the graph below explains this. The drop in cumulative numbers is due to the number of new cases that WHO gives as reported on 3rd July, when there were -29 726 new cases. Yes, that's right minus 29 thousand odd cases.
The WHO data show negative cases (-525 new cases) for the UK on May 21st as well, but on the 3rd July the magnitude of the negative number of confirmed cases is over three times as many as the highest daily number of positive new cases on any single day (April 12th, i.e., 8719 new cases).
I can imagine that if it was identified that a previous miscalculation had occurred it might be necessary to revise previous data. But surely an adjustment would be made to the earlier data: not the cumulative total corrected by interjecting a large negative number of cases on some arbitrary date in order to put the total right. [Note: the most recent data I can find on the UK government site cites 309,360 confirmed cases as of 26th June (2020-06-26 COVID-19 Press Conference Slides) so as of yet the UK data does not show the reduction in cumulative total being published by WHO.**]
Yet surely someone at WHO must have spotted that the anomaly is bizarre and brings their reports into question. The negative cases claimed for the UK on that one day are so great that the UK line has since burrowed into the graphics for completely different countries. (See below. On the day the UK graph was located above the graphic for Mexico, the UK line actually went down so far it actually crossed below the line for Mexico.)
Of course, each unit in these figures represents someone, a fellow human somewhere in the world, who has been found to be infected with a very serious, and sometimes fatal, virus. Fixating on the stats can distract from the real human drama that many of these cases represent. Yet, when the data reflect something so important, and when data are so valuable in understanding and responding to the global pandemic, such an obvious flaw in the data is disappointing and worrying.
*I could not find a link to send an email; a tweet did not get a response from @WHO; and an invitation to type my question on the website was met by the site bot with a suggestion to return to the data I was asking about.
** If I subsequently learn of the reason for the report of negative numbers of cases in these statistics, I will post an update here.
Update at 2020-07-12: duplicate testing
As of Saturday 11 July 2020 at 6:20pm The UK government reports Total number of lab-confirmed UK cases 288,953 Total number of people who have had a positive test result
So this is less than they were reporting a week earlier, despite their graph (for England, where most cases are because it is the most populous county of the UK) not showing any dip:
However, I did find this explanation:
"The data published on this website are constantly being reviewed and corrected. Cumulative counts can occasionally go down from one day to the next, and on some occasions there have been major revisions that have a significant effect on local, regional, National or UK totals. Data are provided daily from several different electronic data collection systems and these can experience technical issues which can affect daily figures, usually resulting in lower daily counts. The missing data are normally included in the data published the following day.
From 2 July 2020, Pillar 2 data [from "swab testing for the wider population" i.e., than just "for those with a clinical need, and health and care workers"] has been reported separately by all 4 Nations. Pillar 2 data for England has had duplicate tests for the same person removed by PHE [Public Helth England] from 2 July 2020. This means that the cumulative total number of UK lab-confirmed cases is now around 30,000 lower than reported on 1 July 2020."
So that explains the mystery – but duplicate reporting at that level seems extraordinary! It does not support confidence in official statistics. An error of c.10% suggests a systemic flaw in the methodology being used. It also makes one wonder about the accuracy of some of the figures being quoted for elsewhere in the world.
