Debate is valuable. Debate and disagreement are necessary in science. Debate is dangerous.

Three statements and it may surprise you, or else it may not, that these statements are not incontrovertible; indeed, they provoke as much controversy as these:

Dogmatism is valuable. Dogmatism is necessary. Dogmatism is dangerous.

Why should this, that debate is dangerous, be?

Often it may arise because reputations or careers are at stake. If the foundation of your life is that science which says A is true and another comes along and asks the question: How do you know A is true? Have you considered this set of data? Does it not suggest that A may not be true in all circumstances? then from your perspective the very asking of the question is a personal challenge not a scientific one.

So in a very simple case, you may notice that if you pump 1 kilocalorie of energy into 1 kilogram of water its temperature rises by 1°C (A is true). If therefore you conclude that when you pump 110 kilocalories in its temperature will rise by 110°C, you may be disappointed unless you also increased the pressure under which you heated the water to at least one and half atmospheres. Change of state effects would disrupt the thermal elevation – you may even lose enough water in trying to do so for the espresso that you would have had in order to recover from the falsification of your paradigm had you not the change of state occurred. A is not always true, or if it is true it is true only in specific well-defined circumstances, and so your understanding must be improved. You may want to hold onto your idea that A is true, but the data is against you, or is it? Look again. You may think that you must now say A is not true, but the actual position may be that A is not true only under certain, perhaps clearly defined but perhaps not, conditions.

We should note here, though it is not our main point that it is folly to base our paradigm of life upon our own transient scientific understanding of the way the world works. We are here speaking of derived paradigms, not underlying paradigms which we shall address shortly.

Scientific methods and historical analysis

Now our understanding of the relationships between heat, temperature, pressure and water is quite well understood. We are dealing with a simple (but it is a three body problem) molecule with well (is that really so?) understood properties. Experiments may be easily defined and conducted in well controlled ways, and repeated indefinitely by unrelated individuals who will, within the limits of observable experimental measurement, always obtain the same results, but our understandings elsewhere are not quite so clear. Experiments may not be possible or, if they are, controls may be difficult to impose. We may not know or even understand all of the factors which may influence the outcome. When Rutherford fired his artillery at a sheet of little more than tissue paper he expected nothing other than to punch holes in it. The data obtained however required a rethink. Some of the artillery shells, alpha particles, bounced back off the thin film of gold leaf.  Whilst Rutherford was able to describe what was happening, a proper theoretical understanding of what was taking place would not be available until several years later.

We not only require then data, which Rutherford had, but we need a robust framework within which that data may be interpreted. The old ideas of phlogiston and æther were abandoned when it was found that they could no longer explain the data that became available. Now however in the presence of the hypotheses concerning the warping of space one may wonder: how can something which is the lack of existence of anything, ie emptiness, be warped. Does not this suggest the presence of a substance, an æther, which is presently yet undetected, in that emptiness which is the thing that is being warped? That however is not a discussion for this article.

When we being to look at things rather more complex than water, though they are structures in which water is a major component, and indeed the symptom if not the cause of the problem, such as a biological machine, driven itself by smaller complex biological components, with its own messaging, delivery and disposal systems some of whose functions overlap and which are mutually dependent upon each other as well as upon the other components of the machine whose efficient function is also required for the maintenance of the systems of communication, we may have to acknowledge that our understanding of the behaviours of this system is somewhat less than our understanding of the behaviour of water. We are also faced with the fact that we cannot design experiments to perform on these machines, for that would be unethical, which would allow only one part to function whilst holding the others in stasis. We are therefore left with only the possibility of RCT (randomised controll(ed) trials) and clinical observation. These may result in significant quantities of data, from which tentative conclusions may be drawn until we have a robust theoretical framework from which explanations may be drawn and predictions may be made.

In some circumstances we have to resort to forensic analysis of the data which has many useful, indeed valuable, techniques associated with it, where there is no possibility of repetition of a single one time event, in order to understand it. Now I need say no more here than that forensic examination is simply another word for guess work in which the actual solution after all the possible explanations have been considered and shown to be wanting is the ‘impossible’ explanation. Darwin left this teasingly in his hypothesis concerning origins laying down clearly the grounds on which his hypothesis must be tested and leaving later generations to show the wantonness of his hypothesis.  Mendel began this work and it has continued in many guises to the present day with perhaps greater and greater skill being shown than of which Darwin ever dreamed in the elaboration of the hypothesis in the vain hope that somehow it may be possible to avoid the consequences of a failure at the quite simple test that he proposed. The resultant edifice is not even built on sand, it is built upon the impossibility of two mutually exclusive requirements existing at the same time, not to mention the uncountable (though not in the mathematical sense of the word) number of violations of the principle that change must only take place in simple single steps.

The possibility then must be left open that whatever conclusions we draw may be falsified by another set of data drawn from a different RCT or set of observations in other circumstances.

Contemporary events

In recent days we have heard many say that you must follow the science, but the science has been inconclusive and contradictory. At times the message drawn from this has been inappropriate and non sequitur. For example to say that acquiring immunity from a particular disease will protect others is patently untrue . If I have immunity from say TB then I am more likely to carry the disease unknowingly and therefore become a greater danger to those whom I meet who have no immunity. We only need to think of the case of Mary Mallon to understand this. I am being more socially responsible by not acquiring immunity, for then I would know when I were ill and could take appropriate steps to protect others. There are many other things that could be said both about the messages drawn in respect of the recent global infection and the quality of the data on which they are based, again however this article is not the place for that discussion.

Underlying paradigm

A second reason perhaps for debate being seen as dangerous is that it not only challenges the conclusions drawn from the data but undermines the paradigm which lies behind the specific interpretations of the data. The paradigm is held dearly by those who hold it, for they have an abhorrence, which some are not afraid to display, towards alternative paradigms within which alternative understandings of the data may be held, and which each can yield contrastingly different conclusions than the opinions generally held.

The hostility to any alternative view, even if it can be supported by rigorous mathematical calculations using the same data and mathematics that the majority view use, leads to a stifling of debate and ultimately to a stagnation of science. The silencing of those whom you see as your opponents in science is detrimental to progress.

It is exceedingly important in science that you recognise those who disagree with you as being honest scientists. None of us are infallible, and none of us have a perfect understanding. Archimedes was wrong. Pythagoras was wrong. Galileo and Copernicus were wrong. Einstein and Bohr were wrong. Only two of us were right, and I cannot remember who the other one is.  Of course I jest, but you, dear reader, know what I mean.

It is not, at least from a scientific perspective, wrong to hold different underlying paradigms for to hold a paradigm is necessary in order to offer interpretations of data, but we cross the line when we say that our interpretation is the only valid one.

The correct position – to encourage debate

Every true scientist lays down a challenge for every other scientist: This is my hypothesis A is true, disprove it if you will, please. His delight is, and if not is, it should be, that you take up that challenge. If every other scientist does not rise to the challenge then no progress will be made and we shall do nothing more than promulgate the same false ideas with which Galileo agonised. It is not until we have demonstrated that A cannot be false that we have any real certainty that A might be true. The scientist must live dangerously, expecting that every one else will wish to prove him wrong and in failing to do so demonstrate that he might be right.

Conclusion

Debate is valuable for it is the life blood of progress. Debate and disagreement are necessary in science for we do not have a complete and perfect understanding. Debate is dangerous for it challenges our well beloved but imperfect understandings of how things are and may require us to change.

The corollary ‘Dogmatism is valuable. Dogmatism is necessary. Dogmatism is dangerous.’  has also been demonstrated in this short article. It is left as an exercise to the reader to deconstruct and reconstruct the article appropriately.