The quest for truth

Received wisdom can be a limiting factor – even in science, but beware - warns Russ Swan - the truth does not respect dogma or personal reputation…

Oh, ye humble seeker after truth. All of us involved in science probably like to think that we make some sort of contribution to the quest for truth, even if some of our efforts are a bit tangential or miniscule. I recall hearing one friend describe the submission of his completed PhD as the act of adding a single atom to the mountain of human knowledge.

But this is the purpose of our existence, isn’t it? Stretching the dirt-pile metaphor a little, some contribute a meagre grain or two while others are able to throw it on by the shovelful. Those that really make their mark come along to first scoop a few bucketsful out, before replacing them with new material.

Those ground-breakers are blessed with the insight, wisdom, or maybe just good luck to see that the conventional thinking of the day is incorrect. They tell us that what we thought we knew was wrong, and that an alternative explanation is a better fit to the facts as we now see them.

Until, of course, the next seer comes along.

Science, then, proceeds in a sort of iterative fashion – always closing in on the elusive truth but never quite catching it. And it does this by asking questions, especially awkward ones. Copernicus asked a few awkward questions before postulating the heliocentric model of the universe, for example.

Copernicus was working at the fringes of contemporary knowledge and understanding, and was quite aware that his findings would be controversial. Such was his concern about the response to his work that he nearly stifled his results altogether and only saw them published hours before his death.

In our enlightened times, fears about the reaction of the establishment to new research would never make any scientist think about suppressing results. Would they?

With the notable exception of unpublished trials from pharmaceutical companies, which remain secret mainly to prevent competitors gaining a commercial edge, I doubt whether many new scientific findings are stifled these days.

But before we get complacent, this is not because of any new fearlessness in science. Rather than quietly overlooking knowledge that is inconvenient, these days the research simply wouldn’t have been conducted in the first place.

It is an unexpected and unwelcome manifestation of the industrialisation of science that there are now a number of no-go areas for serious research. I’m not talking about the weird and wacky world of pseudoscience – the flat Earth theories and the Bermuda Triangles. I’m talking about the areas that have been tainted by past associations and which are now shunned by any scientist aware of their own reputation.

Can you imagine a researcher submitting a grant application to re-open the files marked ‘cold fusion’, for instance? That purported phenomenon has been thoroughly investigated and found absent, but its legacy is that any proposed research that sounds even vaguely similar would be sidestepped by all concerned.

I call this the Loch Ness Syndrome. While cryptozoologists and crop circle cerealogists might be convinced of the existence of an unknown creature, mainstream science has no evidence to support this. Paradoxically, because of the stigma attached to the place, no serious biological survey can be conducted there lest the researchers be branded ‘monster hunters’. The result is that Loch Ness is one of the least examined ecosystems in the world.

I wonder if Loch Ness Syndrome explains the absence of any biological experiments on the latest Mars rover. NASA is looking for fossil evidence of conditions compatible with life, but specifically not looking for life. Seems a missed opportunity.

Now, there are no-go areas and there are no-go areas. The USA squandered early chances to investigate the potential of stem cells after bowing to religious objections, while other subjects have been shunned for ethical reasons – some supportable, others questionable. These areas on the fringes of the festival of science are where the awkward questions are being asked, and I’m afraid that too often those questions are not merely unanswered but simply ignored.

An example of the hubris that seems to be infecting the scientific establishment came with the perplexing story of the superfast neutrinos from Gran Sasso last year. The researchers quite properly reported their unexpected findings and invited their peers to offer an explanation. While many greeted the reports with healthy scientific scepticism, others rejected the notion out of hand. TV science pundit and physics professor Jim Al-Khalili even promised to eat his boxer shorts if the observations were upheld.

As sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov put it, the most exciting phrase in science is not “Eureka”, but “That’s funny”. In the quest for truth, we need rather more curiosity about those funny things that don’t quite fit our preconceived models, and rather fewer dogmatic proclamations about ingestion of undergarments.