Reflections from Nice

There are large collections of flowers, flags, balloons, football shirts and various other marks of remembrance both on the Promenade des Anglais and round the bandstand next to the Monument de Centenaire here in Nice.  Fully armed soldiers patrol in groups of four along the Promenade and up and down the main streets. Nice in July 2016 superficially feels a bit like Belfast 1986. But that was during a concerted campaign with a political agenda. Nice, an attack by a Tunisian resident in France, has been followed by a spate  of attacks in Germany by an Afghan asylum seeker, a bullied and anxious teenager and a failed Syrian asylum seeker who was facing deportation. All of these events were magnified by the quickly present mainstream media, amplifying the now ubiquitous social media.

Certainly if the objective in Nice was to terrorise the population, the enraged driver of that now infamous white lorry failed spectacularly. What passes in Nice for a beach is packed with quietly toasting bodies. Bikes (with both one and two wheels) still have to be negotiated by pedestrians trying to get to the beach. The cafes, restaurants and market stalls continue to do a brisk trade. Indeed, large as they are, you need to look to see the memorials to the recent attack, and can easily miss the extra security patrols. Life goes on. Reporting from the scene of one of the attacks in Germany, a BBC reporter commented that what struck him was the normality of life just a few hours after an attack. Life goes on; it has to.

Perhaps this is aided by the lack of a coherent campaign and accompanying narrative. The thing about the IRA campaign that began in the late 1960's was it had a clear cause, a strategy and a desired end-point. It provided a historical narrative as well as a contemporaneous one. The response was a "new normal", one that included both obvious and not so obvious security measures. People adjusted to a particular way of doing things that factored in an ongoing terrorist threat. It seemed to me at the time to be a bit like the way a society deals with other structural challenges like chronically high inflation or electricity only being available for a couple of hours a day. You adjust. You have to. Life goes on.

But currently, the randomness of the attacks on mainland Europe preclude this kind of adjustment. Neither the causes of them, nor the causers, have a high proportion of coherence or commonality. So the responses to them may well also be piecemeal and heterogeneous. There will be responses of course. Life goes on.

What you may ask, has any of this to do with my usual concerns of science and faith and God? Well, in the face of these recent events many of the issues I've been commenting on seem rather narrow. Not unimportant you understand, but narrow. None of them in themselves are life or death issues. No one is going to be heaping up flowers to remember them.  Of course we only have time and space to pontificate on narrow matters because of the usual absence of the kind of meaningless violence that has marked these last few weeks in continental Europe. Most of the time, in most places there is no need to look out for a deranged van driver, bomber or axe weilder. Our peace and security, a bit like good health, are perhaps things we only appreciate when they are threatened. They are worth appreciating, and maintaining. Easier said than done.

The kind of calm and space that I've enjoyed in my lifetime did not come at no cost. It may not last. The political and social stability that I've enjoyed may or may not be enjoyed by my children. But while it remains the predominant feature of my surroundings, sitting in Nice I'm reminded to make the most of it. In the words of the Apostle Paul "..making the best use of time.." (Eph 5:16). Perhaps then I'd better get back to narrower, less troubling, matters.

What is a scientist and why does it matter?

Questions are often easier to ask than to answer. So, before trying to answer this particular question, why is it worth trying to answer? Well, science is still generally seen as a good thing, and a useful way of finding things out. And scientists tend to be regarded as speaking with some authority. But this brings with it a couple of dangers.

The first is the propensity of scientists to speak outwith their area of expertise. I can speak with some authority on a number of fairly obscure topics. With all modesty, I know a thing or two about what modifies saccade latency (told you they were obscure). However, I have been known to express opinions on a range of other issues. How seriously should you take these? While I am entitled to a polite hearing and a civil response, my views should carry no more weight than yours outwith my areas of expertise and experience. If I were an economist, and we were discussing the economic implications of Brexit, then you might pay more attention (although apparently not). But if I’m an expert in eye movement control?

Science seems to have a lingering and subtle authority that has a certain cultural influence. Advertisers know this and often present their claims in a pseudoscientific way. So they will be made by a bespectacled, white-coated, grey-haired boffin. Or reference will be made to something that sounds like a scientific experiment that has been run, the results of which can inform your purchasing decision. Subtle biases are being evoked. It is probably true that these effects might be waning. And there does seem to be an anti-expert, pro-ignorance spirit abroad. This spectre was raised by President Obama in his Rutgers commencement speech recently, a speech that also specifically mentioned the merits of science. Never-the-less, if there is even a lingering authority, then those who speak as scientists will benefit from this. Time to try and answer that question.

You might think that a scientist is simply someone who has a degree with science in the title (in the UK someone with “BSc” after their name). And yet, with the advent of mass higher education, there are many thousands of science graduates who have no real practical experience of science. They’ve read about it, they’ve been exposed to some practical scientific skills, they’ve maybe learned how to review other peoples’ science. But this is some way short of actually doing science and being a scientist. And one of the real weaknesses of science education, at least in the western world, is that it is quite possible to do a science degree and at no point step back and consider what science actually is. What is “the scientific method”? Is there such a thing? Is there only one? How does one do a real experiment, as opposed to a prepared laboratory practical? A science degree should provide a basic level of scientific literacy. An understanding that might see through bogus science-type claims in the media and elsewhere. And this is useful. But can the holder really speak for science with any authority?

What about one level up, the “masters” level? Here there are various degree-types. Many of them are highly vocational in nature, preparing the student for specific tasks or careers. No harm in that. But does this qualify the holder as an expert in “science”? Interestingly, again in many of these programmes, there is no attempt to look more generally at science and how it works. Just as interesting, those that only examine the history and practice of science, are by definition not science at all. The next level up is the PhD, still the basic professional qualification in, at least, academic science. This involves doing science, and (ideally) becoming the initiator as well as the practitioner of the science concerned. So, it should involve all those elements of hypothesis generation, testing, falsification, discovery and confirmation. But this apparent breadth of experience comes at the cost of specialization. So most of the activity will probably all be concentrated on a tiny sliver of the broad endeavour that is science more generally. Specialization is a problem when making claims about science in general, as opposed to one little bit of it. I can talk for days about eye movement, but you can easily trip me up by getting me to hold forth on whether those Italian neutrinos really did go faster than the speed of light (I don't think they did)!

I suppose what I’m arguing is that we should all be very wary when we hear anyone claiming general authority to speak on behalf of “science”. In the apologetic arena, this applies equally to those speaking for or against propositions concerning the existence of God, the reliability of the Gospels and the rest. There’s no replacement for careful listening and critical thought. Factor in the specific expertise where it is relevant. So, of the discussion is about the age of rocks, you might want to give weight to a geologist. Be careful of course if they stray into the issue of when the book of Daniel was written.

There is also one place where many of these issues come together to annoy. This is in the final chapter of many popular science books written by senior scientists. The temptation is to bamboozle the reader with lots of brilliant science, both that of the author, and that of the author’s scientific heroes. Fine so far. Indeed, it’s often important and inspiring stuff. But having built up a degree of credibility and authority in the reader’s mind, often a final chapter will be slipped in that grinds various metaphysical axes well outwith the expertise of the writer. The author is, of course, entitled to hold and express such views. But what is really being perpetrated is a bit of con, whether conscious or unconscious. The hope is that the authority built up in the first part of the book, will spill over into the other stuff.

Of course, most of what I’ve been discussing has nothing to do with my area of expertise. So, you’ll have to judge for yourself whether I’m making sense.

It’s (not just) about the facts, stupid

James Carville, the architect of Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential run, gets the credit (blame?) for coming up with the phrase “It’s the economy stupid”. This was designed to keep the campaign on track by keeping everyone’s attention focussed on what really mattered. Now you might think that an appropriate version of this in science might be “It’s about the facts”. After all science is all about facts – discovering and communicating them. It’s not about stuff like feelings. This is not to argue that facts are easy things to work with. It can be really hard to prise them out of the universe. Just think of the time and expense, trouble and complexity, involved in finding the Higgs Boson, of establishing as a fact that it exists. However, it turns out that even in science it’s not that simple. And beyond science, in the rest of life, if the last week in the UK has demonstrated anything, it’s that a lot of things besides facts are critical.

Definitions of the word “fact” abound. Let’s assume we mean statements about things, situations, objects, processes or people that are true. Just being able to state something (eg “Trump is a chump”) doesn’t make it a fact. Although, as an aside, it’s interesting that in the social media age, it seems that the secret to establishing something as a fact is simply to say it often enough, or to have it said by enough people. But to establish a statement as a statement of fact, there has to be some interaction with evidence, with how things actually are. This moves a statement from being an opinion to being a fact. So if a Trump did or said lots of chump-like things, then we might feel happier concluding that the statement was a statement of fact, not of opinion. Of course we have the practical problem of identifying, gathering and analysing the evidence. And this all turns out to be quite tricky.

What is going to count as relevant evidence, and who is going to decide? We tend to depend on various types of institution to decide what is and what is not relevant. So we have courts and judges and lawyers with rules to decide what’s relevant in the criminal sphere. In science, different disciplines tend to act in a similar institutional way deciding what’s relevant to a given issue. So it was particle physicists who decided the rules in determining what sort of, and what degree of evidence would be required to show that the Higgs existed and had been found. They would claim that they were guided by theories that laid out mathematical criteria for deciding what was what. But it was still a community effort. And even in physics, there’s still scope for a degree of interpretation.

But when it gets really interesting is when you realise that even once you’ve got a stone cold fact, that’s when the fun really begins. Because facts don’t exist in isolation. Every fact comes embedded in a whole bunch of contextual stuff. And it’s when both are taken together (the fact/facts and the context) that we determine whether we’re going to take a fact seriously (believe it, rely on it, act on it). Take the simple fact that “it’s raining”. If you run in to my windowless office (it’s not actually windowless, but bear with me) shouting that it’s raining, just before I leave for home, then you might expect me to pick up a brolly or put on a coat. But if I know you are a regular prankster, and you are known for never quite telling things as they are and for always having your own agenda (and if your name is Boris), even if it really is raining I might actually leave my office unprotected.

There’s also the issue of deciding between facts. It turns out that how we might interpret the same fact differs depending on context. Even in science, deciding which facts to go after, is rarely a matter of the facts themselves. Experiments guided by provisional theories (hypotheses) will prioritise some facts over others. So some are discovered, others remain hidden. And prior views (beliefs and theories) can be so powerful, even in science, that we have to guard constantly against things like confirmation bias – prioritising the facts that suit our views. Our prior commitments to theories, it turns out, can lead us to interpret the same facts in different ways. It can be so bad, that we become incapable of even communicating sensibly with adherents of other views. This has happened in science in the past, even (or perhaps particularly) in physics, the hardest of hard sciences.

This sort of thing is going on now in UK politics. We have just had a referendum that was in part about facts. Facts about the economic impact of Brexit. Facts about the numbers coming into the UK from both the EU and further afield. But how those facts were interpreted, or even whether they were accepted as facts, depended very much on the prior commitments of people. And during the campaign there developed a kind of mutual incomprehension between Remainers and Brexiteers. For many on both sides, the facts were so obvious and powerful, that communication became almost impossible. But it turned out it wasn’t just about facts at all. It was about a lot of other stuff too.

So when we come to other important facts, facts like an empty tomb for example, there’s no warrant for instant dismissal on one side, or a feeling that its implications should just be obvious on the other. There’s investigating to be done, evidence to be engaged with and carefully weighed. And an awareness of background biases and prior commitments. And if you’re tempted to feel that the facts are just so obvious that you cannot conceive of how someone can come to view that differs from yours given those facts, then go sit in a dark cool room and think again.