On understanding pencils…..

Consider the humble pencil. For those poor souls born in the internet age who may not be familiar with them, the pencil is a wooden cylinder, usually about 12cm long, with a graphite core. They can be used for things like writing or drawing, making dark marks on paper (a bit like what happens on your laptop screen when you press keys on the keyboard). They don’t require an electrical supply and are pretty hardy objects, continuing to work in both hot and cold weather. They even work outdoors when it’s raining. But when all is said and done, they are fairly simple objects. Now here are some questions. What does it mean to understand a pencil? What range of disciplines are required? Is anything required beyond some fairly straightforward science? Could a pencil be any more than a sum of its parts?

Well talking of parts, I suppose a scientific approach to pencils would begin by understanding what it was actually made from. A simple pencil (let’s not complicate things too much by discussing pencils with erasers on the end or highly engineered propelling pencils) seems to consist of just two kinds of stuff. Its core is clearly different from the material surrounding it. In fact the core is probably a far from simple mixture of graphite, a substance which was originally mined but these days is manufactured. The graphite is mixed with clay or wax. The surround is of course wood. But what kind of wood? It turns out that almost all pencils are made of cedar, which doesn’t warp or crack, and can be repeatedly sharpened.  Actually the pencil I have in front of me is also painted (it’s red), and on the side there’s lettering.

The lettering spells out a brand name, but there are also some code letters. It turns out all pencils are not the same. In some the “filling” is hard and makes a thick black line, while in others it’s relatively soft making fainter, finer marks. So you don’t have to try out a pencil each time you go to buy one to find out what kind it is, the different types are coded. Apparently “medium soft” pencils (#2’s) are best for writing. But hang on. Now we’re not really thinking about the constituent parts of a pencil and their properties, the sort of thing that science can help with. A botanist could perhaps have identified the wood and speculated as to why it had been chosen. A chemist would have quickly identified that the core was a mixture of something that occurs naturally (graphite) mixed with other chemicals that it doesn’t naturally occur with. She could perhaps speculate on the processes used to combine these different substances. But now it turns out that there’s a whole other level of understanding required in order to understand pencils. They are “for something”, they have an intended purpose. And this is beyond the purview of chemistry and botany.

There are lots of uses to which pencils could be put. I assume that they burn, wood usually does. So I suppose you could put them in a fire to keep your house warm. They are relatively long and thin.  So I suppose you could poke them into holes in a bid to winkle out anything that might be hiding there. A quick experiment will show that graphite is an excellent conductor. But if you try to build circuits with pencils you’ll discover that they quickly generate so much heat that they burst into flames. So a line of pencils is never going to perform well as a mains electricity distribution system. Pencils have an intended purpose, for which they are designed, and for which they are really good. They are designed for writing and drawing, and when used in this way they perform admirably. But what kind of thing is an intended purpose? And what discipline has the correct tools for studying intended purposes? Not physics, or chemistry, or even most of biology.

It turns out pencils have a history, so it’s not just about the particular pencil sitting in front of me now. But they did not start out as the finely manufactured objects they are today. Some trace the history of the pencil back to Roman stylus. Others argue that pencils, properly understood, began with the discovery of naturally occurring graphite in Borrowdale in 1564. Leonardo frequently sketched his ideas in pencil. Without the humble pencil who knows what he might have forgotten all about,a what we would never have known he thought about. The pencil no doubt played a role in, and benefitted from, the industrial revolution of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. To understand the pencil clearly the humanities have a role to play.

Understanding pencils is turning out to be a bit tricky. To fully capture their constitution, their use and purposes, and their impact on society is getting complicated. Just imagine how complicated it would be to substantiate the claim that we understand things like table lamps, or cars or houses. Mind you, these are all artefacts. They are all things that people make and use. But what about understanding people? Is a person simpler or more complicated that a pencil? Now I think that the answer to this is fairly simply. But for the absence of doubt I think that people are more complicated than pencils. So if we need multiple methods to understand pencils, it’s fairly certain we’ll need multiple methods to understand people. To be able to claim we understand just one individual will take effort, multiple disciplines and many layers of explanation. Some higher levels of explanation will probably be closely related to lower layers, and it may be able to explain one thing at a higher level with things at a lower level. So in principle the biological processes of digestion, beginning with what goes on in the stomach, might well be reducible to chemical explanations (eg the action of hydrochloric acid on certain foodstuffs). While the detail might be a bit tricky and technical, you can see how this kind of thing might work. But there might be other levels of explanation that can’t be decomposed into lower level types of explanation. So I might well be able to explain chemically the effect of HCl on chocolate, but why do I so enjoy Cadbury’s Dairy Milk?

And this is just about explaining one individual. People tend to clump together. And in that clumping whole new concepts emerge and need different types of explanations. So what do we make of football scores? They are a thing. You know what I mean by “football score” even if in the UK it’s about some you do with a round ball, and in the US it concerns an oval ball. On one level a football score might be just two numbers on a board at one end of a football ground. But then it seems to have strange properties than can induce effects on human beings even over great distances. So there might be a vast crowd of 50 000 people in a football ground, variable distances from the board displaying the score. A score of 1-0 is somehow capable of inducing depression in one group of 25 000 and euphoria in the remaining 25 000 (and this is the simplified version). Suppose the same score is liberated from the football ground itself and transmitted by the wonders of modern communications across the world. Across the world a similar pattern of depression and eupohoria is induced in different individuals. So what kind of thing is a football score, and with what tools should it be studied?

Given all of the above consider the following famous quotation: “The Astonishing Hypothesis is that “You,” your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased it: “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.”  This comes from Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick. If you’re nothing but a pack of neurons, then all we need to understand all the complexity of humanity are the tools furnished by a particular branch of biology called neuroscience, with perhaps a dash of physics and chemistry thrown in. It smacks of a kind of reductionism often encountered in the popular writings of scientists, very often towards the end of otherwise really interesting books. reductionism doesn't work for pencils. It’s unlikely to be a plausible approach to understanding people.  

Scientism

If “new atheism” (NA) is, if not dead, perhaps terminally ill, then one of the contributory factors to its demise is the scrutiny that its supporting doctrines have come under. Whether cause or consequence, NA has always been closely linked with “scientism”. Scientism is not science, does not work in the same way as science, and does not (or should not) have the same authority as science. A bit like NA itself, it’s not new; it has probably been around in one form or another as long as science itself. But it really began to emerge in the late 19^th century with the desire of some in science to paint the only possible relationship between science and other disciplines, or between science and religious faith, as a war in which there had to be a winner and a loser. It kicked around in the background for a while, probably pooped up in many undergraduate science courses, and came to public prominence more recently as a supporting pillar of NA.

What is it? Definitions abound, but at its heart it’s an understandable (and now familiar) view. The only truth that counts is scientific truth, and therefore the scientific method is the only means of discovering truth. A series of classic statements can be found in Peter Atkins short essay “Science as truth” published in in 1995. Speaking of science, Atkins claims that “There appear to be no bounds to its competence… This claim of universal competence may seem arrogant, but it appears to be justified.” All religion (grouped with studies of the paranormal) is dismissed as an “obscurantist pursuit”. Science is the “greatest of humanity’s intellectual achievements”; in contrast he thinks it a defensible proposition that “no philosopher has helped to elucidate nature”! I commenced my own scientific journey in 1979 when I began my science degree at the University of Glasgow. There were certainly some lecturers to us first-year biology students who weren’t backward at dropping such sentiments into their lectures. I now suspect that this was because their own historical and philosophical education was sadly lacking. As student, I found such views baffling; as a scientist, more than thirty years Iater I find them embarrassing.

There have been and are lots of responses to scientism. Some have come from those of a theological disposition. I rather like John Polkinghorne’s comment on scientism (in “Theology in the Context of Science, p46), that it is “the rash and implausible claim that science tells us all that is worth knowing, or even that could ever be known. Embracing that belief is to take an arid and dreary view of reality..” . Polkinghorne writes as a theologian and former (distinguished) physicist. For a wide ranging and eloquent critique from a scientist’s standpoint, read Austin Hughes’ “The Folly of Scientism”. Hughes writes for more than just the sake of an argument. He has a real concern that scientism’s overreach will eventually cause science big problems: “Continued insistence on the universal competence of science will serve only to undermine the credibility of science as a whole.” With contemporary attacks on expertise ringing in our ears, and with science now worrying within about the reproducibility crisis, I think he’s right to be concerned.  

Part of Hughes’ case is that philosophers are far from innocent when it comes to the scientism. Some schools of philosophy provided a major impetus to it (ie the logical positivists), while others colluded in its rise. It always bemused me that 19^th century theology gave up the tussle so easily. But philosophy being philosophy, scientism didn’t have it entirely its own way. At least now there does seem to be something of a fight back going on whether it’s Roger Scruton’s approach from art history, or Peter Hacker’s more analytical analytical critique.  

To my non-philosophical mind, many of those objecting to scientism seem to be united in a common reaction to the ignorance of those who promulgate scientism. This is a version of the disdain for other approaches that has been so much a part of NA. From their different perspectives, scientism’s critics have pointed out that it often derides and dismisses ideas that are never fully defined or fairly discussed. Some have objected to its selective memory when it comes to the history of science itself. Others have pointed out that it has a habit of blundering to other areas of academic endeavour, oblivious to important concepts and developments, constructing weak arguments and reaching fallacious conclusions. Particularly in popular accounts, this leads to a series of illusory battles against straw men, which of course, are convincingly won.  

It’s always struck me that this is something that often marks NA’s attacks on religious belief. Of course if you take the very weakest form of an argument it will be easy to defeat it. Having defeated the weakest form, it’s a short step to the claim that all arguments of that type are also therefore defeated. Showing that diverse beliefs in fairies, Santa Claus and large lizards controlling earth from the moon are irrational is not likely to be that relevant to debunking beliefs in well attested and evidenced ancient events that believers claim to have transformative power today. Such debunking may be possible, but it was always likely to take much more careful work than many in NA were apparently able or inclined to do. And the sheer logical inappropriateness of the natural science to do this work, was clearly lost on them.

As with the reported death of NA, it’s unclear to me what the fate of scientism will be. As Hughes argued, its fate will likely have important effects on science itself. As a scientist, I’m committed to the scientific endeavour, and think that within its area of competence science offers the best way to answer certain types of questions. But it can’t answer every type of question. For that we need the tools of philosophy, history, anthropology and the rest. And for that most important type of question (the why rather than the how)? If I were you I’d turn to Scripture rather than scientism (or even science).  

The strange life and (alleged) death of “new” atheism

“New” atheism, the type of ascribed to Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens et al, began its short life (according to its Wikipedia entry as of the 12^th August, 2017) around 2006, when it is claimed the term was first coined. The writer/s of the Wikipedia article clearly doesn’t have a very good internet connection. Even a pretty cursory search of the web throws up abundant material demonstrating that the label has been around much longer. As for what is being labelled, even many atheists are unclear on what was really new about “new” atheism.

Let’s start with the label. Back in 1984 Robert Morey published “The New Atheism and the Erosion of Freedom” (he was not a supporter). But the term has a much older history than even that. A French Jesuit in the 1690’s wrote a book called “The New Atheism” against the philosopher Spinoza. In the 19^th century William James is reported to have used the term. Spinoza, Hegel, Nietzsche (all philosophers) probably thought they were up to something new, and would not be too troubled with the label atheist. Mind you, being philosophers, they’d probably want to embark on a long definitional discussion (of the sort that wouldn’t sell these days) and conduct extensive research. The intellectual attention span seems to have shortened considerably. Towards the end of the 19^th century, scientists like T.H. Huxley and Ernst Haeckel clearly fitted the mould of the scientifically educated and inspired atheism of Dawkins and Sam Harris. I’ve heard the term “new atheist” applied to them (and the other late 19^th century Darwinists), although I haven’t been able to track down its use in contemporary sources. However, it seems that neither the label, nor the thing labelled, is particularly new.

Some have argued that it was not so much the content of the New Atheists that was new and exciting, but it was their style (a classic example of style over substance then). It was the militancy, swagger and verbal dexterity of the likes of Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens; their lack of respect for their theist interlocutors, and lack of deference for transparently fatuous arguments. Personally, I’ve always rather liked Richard Dawkins’ ability to turn a phrase. When it comes to his passion and skill in communicating science and its achievements, there’s much to admire. It’s when he wandered out of his area of expertise, and got on to the subject of religion, trying to smuggle his undoubted authority in the first realm into the second, he became less admirable (a view also echoed here). It’s not that he’s not entitled to anti-theist or more widely anti-religious views; nor is it that he’s not entitled to write and talk about them with a passion. It’s that when he does this, he has no special authority. Clearly the new atheists were observers of (some) religious practice and had strong views on the subject. But there was a lack of expertise on the issues they often tackled. Theologians, religious scholars and scholars of religion, and philosophers (including some who were by no means theists) pointed out this lack of expertise. But coming back to the issue of newness, in terms of the militancy and verbal skill of the “new” atheists, are the crop any more militant and skilful than Bertrand Russell (or a host of others from previous generations) in full flow?

It’s only fair to point out some atheists have contended that both the concept and the content of “New Atheism” is a straw man. Perhaps somewhat disconcerted by the naivety of some new atheist writing, some “old” atheists might be tempted to claim that “new” atheism is a bit of a theist hoax. But now another twist. As well as it’s disputed birth, and it’s somewhat ill-defined life, it now looks like its demise has been pronounced.

Throughout the internet, blogosphere and across the commentariat the question has been posed – is new atheism dead? In some cases death is pronounced with enthusiasm and comes as no surprise (eg Ed West in the Catholic Herald, “New Atheism is Dead”). In other cases (like here) its demise is perhaps tinged with more regret. For some the problem lies with the causes and views some of its prominent proponents have been linked with, although in the political sphere it has been called out for both right wing and left wing bias. The charge of misogyny has been levelled occasionally. A quick search will provide examples for anyone who’s interested, but this Phil Torres article provides an interesting starting point. Now again, a conspiracy theorist could claim that this is all some kind of theist plot. But the criticism is so wide ranging in terms of sources and content that this is scarcely sustainable. While I don’t want to appear overly gleeful, it is interesting that the new atheists do seem to be a bit friendless.

Perhaps it is because of their style after all. So very often the tone they adopted was one of disdain. But this seemed to spring from an almost wilful ignorance of their opponents various positions and arguments. Arguments for and against theism in particular and religion in general (particularly the organised sort) have flowed back and forth over a very long period. This longevity alone is suggestive that the issues at stake may be genuinely complex, and for all sorts of reasons. Of course if you pick the weakest caricature of the arguments you oppose, you’ll always be tempted to treat them with disdain. A starting assumption seemed to be that those of a religious persuasion were just so obviously stupid, that they deserved no kind of respect. Now it may be that there are things that are believed, which could count as religious, which are stupid. And there may well be religious people who are stupid, and who do and say stupid things. But it seemed as if the starting point for new atheists was that all religious views, and all religious people, were obviously stupid. This has no more traction as an argument than the contention that if I find a single stupid atheist, then atheism is clearly stupid. I have more respect for atheists than that, whether old or new. And its sheer unreasonableness probably did the new atheists no favours with a wide audience.

I admit that this may be perception as much as reality. If you were a theist on the end of, or an observer of, a typically robust new atheist critique, a sneer may have been detected where none was intended. If you were a fellow traveller with the alleged sneerer, you might just hear robust and triumphant argumentative thrusts. But given the friendlessness of new atheism, it would appear that more has been going on than the offending of sensitive theists.

Even if the death of “new” atheism has been somewhat exaggerated (to misquote Twain), a more respectful dialogue, one that is more comfortable with complexity and subtlety, and the need for hard thinking rather than just good put downs, would perhaps be a fitting legacy.

The Faith in Science

The blogosphere is a big and diverse place. There's all sorts of stuff out there (and here). One could spend one's life navigating it and responding to what one finds; there are things to enrage, engage or intrigue. I recently came across a blog post in the New Humanist blog written a while ago by Mark Lorch (Chemist and science communicator at the University of Hull) entitled "Can you be a scientist and have religious faith?". For obvious reasons this piqued my interest given that this is a question that seems to keep coming around, and is one that I've examined from time to time in my own humble corner of this vast landscape.

His post has an interesting starting point: "... I could never reconcile what I saw as a contradiction between the principles of the scientific method and faith in a supernatural god." Let us leave to one side the issue of whether "the scientific method" is real thing; Nobel laureate Sir Peter Medawar had his doubts (see his essay on "Induction and intuition in scientific thought", Pluto's Republic). Also of interest is his observation that, as a professional scientist in a University, he is surrounded by other scientists who have "religious faith". And not merely a formal or perfunctory commitment to religion. He's on about honest to goodness, fundamental, bible-believing type faith of the sort that really outrages the evangelical "new atheists" that Terry Eagelton refers to collectively as "Ditchkins". So here's some data indicating that I'm not particularly atypical and my views are not really out there (always a comforting thought). I'm not claiming that I'm typical, just that Christians who are "proper" scientists are not extinct or even on the endangered list (at least not yet). You would get quite a different impression form some quarters.

There were of course comments in the blog that were at first less welcome, if only because they seemed to betray a lack of thought and research. For instance: "Ultimately faith is the knowledge that something is true even though there is not evidence to support it...". There may be faith of this sort out there, but this is not the faith that the Bible writers call for, or that Christian believers exercise. Christian faith is a response to evidence. Yes it is a response that involves, at a certain point, a degree of trust, but that's no different to life in general and science in particular.

Starting with Francis Bacon, Lorch arrives at the conclusion that "without ever realising it, I too have a deeply-seated faith in my own (scientific) belief system." Glory be! Sense at last. Notwithstanding the problems with his definition of faith above,  I welcome his honesty about his own thought processes. The problem is, it's worse than he thinks (if faith being involved in science is a bad thing). One reason for his conclusion is the conviction that in science a thing called "induction" is involved. This appears to be a sound way of moving from observations/facts/results to new knowledge. But it turns out, no one really has an explanation for why it works when it works. But it does appear to work, so he's happy to stick with it, in the absence of convincing evidence. Hence, exercising faith. To be fair, I don't think this mysterious process of induction is why science works, and neither did Medawar (hence his essay on the subject). But there are other foundations on which science rests which we understand even less than "induction" and yet we're prepared to press on regardless. Take two examples: nature's uniformity and the principle of reproducibility.

I beaver away in my lab in Liverpool, collecting and analysing data, finding out stuff about vision and eye movement. Once I've completed a series of experiments, I write them up, and submit them to a scientific journal. The journal organises other scientists to review what I've written, there's usually a bit of back and forth, and eventually the journal agrees to publish my report of my endeavours. If we've all done our jobs, science creeps incrementally and imperceptibly forward, just a bit. We assume that what I've done in Liverpool could be done anywhere else (ie replicated) and as long as I've been honest and accurate) the result will be the same. This is because of the uniformity of nature. The same material and physical forces and processes that operate in my lab in Liverpool, operate in New York, Tokyo or Mumbai. But this uniformity, on which science rests, hasn't been established by some grand experiment, it just "is". It's assumed. But it's fundamental to the whole process. We take it as an article of faith.

And this business of reproducibility is interesting too. Now it turns out that you could replicate my experiments without too much difficulty. It would cost a little bit of money (but not too much because I'm a bit of a cheapskate), some time and a bit of skill. But nothing too taxing. Nevertheless, rather than do this, people are prepared to take on trust that I've done what I've said I've done, and the result are sound. So, rather than repeat my results, they build on them and do something slightly different and new, to make another small advance. But what about an experiment like the one that established the existence of the Higgs boson? That took billions of euros, thousands of scientists, and large chunks of continental Europe. Are we waiting until another Large Hadron Collider is built before we accept the result? No, we take CERN's results on trust. We exercise (reasonable) faith. And, all of this in the presence of what some in science are talking about as the reproducibility crisis; when this type of faith has been abused by the unscrupulous or occasionally outright fraudulent.

My intention is not to undermine science in any way. It's simply to pint our that like most other areas of life, faith is key to it, not incidental. So, a double standard is applied by those who would like to bash my Christian faith, and claim that on the basis of science I must be suffering from some kind of reason deficiency. It turns out I'm neither alone, nor am I deluded. Mark Lorch appears to agree.

Back to that chasm....

The Nature Editorial that I was reflecting on recently, prompted other responses published in the correspondence section of the journal itself. Firstly, Frank Nicolas' letter simply pointed out that all scientists adopt a "methodological naturalism" when doing science, and basically welcomed the new openness that the Editorial discussed. What was perhaps more interesting were the comments on the letter. In one it was stated:

"Where it is not incomprehensible this is an empty piece of philosophical maundering which should, and doubtless will be, widely ignored". 

A second commented: "Religion is by definition not open towards science, given that it ignores evidence (or actually the absence of it)..."

I didn't find the letter incomprehensible, and the philosophy wasn't empty. It was a fair statement of an approach many of us take in the lab. Even those of us committed to the belief that underpinning each instant in time, and at each point in space, it's the power of God that keeps the universe in existence (Hebrews 1:3), don't invoke this power to explain the processes we study. And the explanations we come up with don't compete with Hebrews 1. I study (among other things) psychological processes reflected in eye movement behaviour. If I invoke a mechanism like "behavioural inhibition" to explain an experimental finding, it doesn't mean that I'm denying that neurons in the brainstem gaze generating network weren't involved. I'm just operating at a different level of explanation. And as I can't measure the "power of His Word" in the lab (and don't seek to), I would never invoke it in the paper I eventually write on what I've been investigating. It forms part of the background that gives rise to my beliefs, thoughts, behaviour and activity. I would claim we all have such background (metaphysical) beliefs. It's just that I'm explicit about it, and know when (and when not to) mention them.

So in the lab, I'm as much a methodological naturalist as the next scientist. The problem comes when folk start hinting, implying or claiming that natural explanations (those couched in terms of what we can see, taste, touch, smell, measure) are the only type of explanations that count. This, I think, lies behind the response to Frank's letter. It's a form of metaphysical naturalism which, to be fair, is the default position of many scientists. However, it, itself, is not science, it's a metaphysical position, and it brings with it a history and set of attitudes. If you claim that only natural explanations apply to everything, that's a statement of the same sort as God upholds everything by His powerful word. This doesn't mean that it's necessarily wrong (although clearly I believe that it is). But it is equally true that it's not necessarily right, even if lots of scientists say it, and even if lot's of them also think that it's the only way to approach science specifically and life more generally.

Those of us with a religious and philosophical turn of mind accept the difference between the methodological naturalism we adopt in the lab and our other beliefs. We're open to thinking about the interaction between the science we do in the lab, and the kind of intellectual procedures it involves, and our other beliefs and attitudes. I think about how science informs me about the world (the world that God made and sustains); I reflect on what it tells me about Him. I think about how Scripture applies to what I do in the lab. These are not contradictory processes, although they do occasionally result in a bit of tension. What's interesting about the second of the two comments above is the claim that "Religion is by definition not open towards science" - not by my definition mate! In fact this statement suggests to me a closed attitude toward insights that both philosophy and religion can offer to the scientist. And it suggests a blind spot about the writer's own philosophical presuppositions and commitments.  

And then there's the implication that somehow the scientist who is a believer can only be a believer by ignoring stuff. I've commented on issues around facts and faith elsewhere on this blog. Religious belief, at least in Christianity, is not irrational, it is the opposite. It's not about ignoring anything. You might not like the conclusions drawn from the evidence, but please don't claim that either evidence was not involved, that it was not weighed or that counter evidence was not considered.

It would appear that in the  minds of some then, there is indeed a chasm between science and religion. I invite the interested observer to investigate further to discover whether this is myth or reality; to be open to the evidence.

Can I be a Christian and…? The downfall of Tim Farron

We’ve had to cope with yet more tragedy in recent days. After terror attacks in Manchester and London, now the news of massive loss of life in a tower block fire. But another, seeminly more trivial event, caught my attention on Tuesday evening – the resignation of Tim Farron as the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party. At the outset of the general election campaign, he was persistently and specifically questioned about an issue not in his party’s election manifesto, and not likely to feature in upcoming legislation. The issue of whether he thought “gay sex” was a sin, became sport for the media and a distraction to his party’s campaign. It was partly on the media’s radar because he is known to be a Christian (in the confessional as opposed to the ethnic sense), and while his voting record on LGBTIx issues is fairly consistent, he abstained on a final vote on the Same Sex Marriage Bill in 2013 (having voted consistently for the legislation up to that point), a decision he later said he regretted. The reaction to both his resignation and his resignation speech is instructive.

Some have gloated and some have provided a more nuanced commentary. On one hand it’s claimed we have seen prejudice and medievalism driven from the public sphere, on the other that tolerance and liberalism are now proven to be in decline rather than in the ascendancy. Before throwing in my tuppence worth, I’ll make clear my own perspective and commitments.

I too am a Christian - a term that needs further qualification. I am a follower of Jesus Christ, as He is revealed in the Bible, which I take to be the Word of God. I am convinced the Bible is both an ordinary and an extraordinary book. It’s ordinary in that it is composed of words, and has to be read and interpreted like any other book. It’s extraordinary in that these words are the means by which the God who is real communicates to 21^st century men and women. As with all words, the ones in my English translation of the Bible have to be interpreted, and that entails a degree of work and commitment on my part. Unlike the words in any other book, behind and within the words in my Bible, is the Living God.  He is not the words, and the words are not Him, but He communicates by means of them. Words can be misinterpreted of course. When I do that with the Bible, it is because I am limited and fallible, and sometimes just plain lazy. That is my failure, not God’s. All of this leaves room for disagreement among followers of Jesus and there are some areas of “twilight” in what Scripture says and what Scripture means. But, to quote Dr Johnston, the fact that there is twilight doesn’t mean I can’t tell night from day.

All of this matters because it is words, and partly Bible words, that contributed to Tim Farron’s downfall. I’m clear that God in His word is clear on matters such as human sexual behaviour and marriage. The views that I hold, based on a rational reading of Scripture, used to be the majority view, and were the consensus view on such matters for centuries. But no longer; I am now in a minority. It’s unclear the extent to which Tim and I agree on what the Bible teaches on these issues. I don’t know him personally, and have no inclination to speculate. But, despite many of his public statements, his voting record in parliament and his work on LGBTI issues in the Liberal Democrat party, the commentariat appear to assume that he thinks certain things, and on the basis of this assumed pattern of thought, he has been stalked, outed, criticised and condemned.

David Laws, not a stranger to controversy and the odd political resignation himself, was revealing in his article on the topic: ..”you cannot be a leader of a liberal party while holding fundamentally illiberal and prejudiced views". Never mind Farron’s voting record and tireless party work. Laws continued that the LD election campaign had been “undermined by the outdated opinions and views which Tim clearly holds”. It appears from this article that Mr Laws thinks that even if I accept that the law should treat he and I equally, I am not entitled to even think (let alone argue) that he or anyone else is immoral on the basis of my “outdated” and “irrational” beliefs. Exactly which methods should be used to expose my beliefs (if I should I keep them to myself) or to what extent I should be penalised for believing stuff he finds offensive, or whether I should be coerced to think differently – all this remains unsaid and unclear. Re-education camps perhaps? Sounds a bit illiberal to me.

The open and tolerant society that allowed campaigners to overturn the consensus view on legislation relating to issues like homosexuality and abortion was rooted in and shaped by a Biblically informed world view. It appears as society moves ever further away from this, I’m not even to be allowed to think differently from the new consensus, never mind to debate or campaign for change in a different direction. Liberalism apparently has its limits.

So much about politics, political leadership and illiberalism. But occasionally, I hear the question asked: is it possible to be a Christian and a scientist? After all, to be a Christian one has to be irrational. You have to believe stuff against reason, or at least not think too carefully about it. There are irrational beliefs (ie beliefs held either without evidence or in the teeth of evidence). But I am a Christian because having weighed the evidence and found it compelling, I have responded to it. Or not so much responded to it, but to Him. Because Christianity is at root a relationship with a person, not an information processing exercise. And having become a Christian, everything (including reason) is involved in being a Christian. And being a Christian, one exciting way of understanding the world around me, is to use the methods of science. In doing that, all I am doing is further exploring what ultimately God has done and is doing. Where others assert conflict, I find that these are more apparent than real. No choice between science and scripture is necessary. In happily being a Christian and a scientist, I’m doing nothing new, and I'm not alone. I’m following in a long and distinguished line.   

Hubris and its rewards

The dust is beginning to settle but it's unclear what the outlook is. We had an unexpected outcome to the general election in 2015. Then we had the Brexit result. That was closely followed by the Trump election in the US. Now punditry has taken  another kicking in Thursday's general election. Even at the end of the campaign the received wisdom pointed to a clear Conservative victory. Things hadn't entirely gone their way, but an overall majority, probably increased from what they achieved in 2015, was still expected. Then came the exit poll. We were back in hung parliament territory with no party holding an overall majority. And that's how it panned out.

It turned out that policy discussion trumped personal attacks, the young turned up and voted, and the campaign mattered. To a certain degree earnestness, consistency and principles, almost overthrew cynicism, cash, messaging and manipulation.

To an ordinary voter (ie me), it looks as though the Tories simply thought they had it in the bag and concluded they didn't have to try too hard. They didn't provide a clear and properly costed explanation of what they wanted to do, why they wanted to do it, and how they wanted to do it. They went with soundbites and slogans (remember "strong and stable"?). At least Labour had a stab at a proper manifesto. They had a go at the numbers. They attacked the Government's record and proposed a clear alternative. But instead of engagement we got evasion. The Prime Minister's no-show at the leader's debate, while completely understandable, came to symbolise that evasion. And her performance at the leaders' question time was at times patronising. I can only assume the Tories thought that the election was done and dusted; all they had to do was keep their heads down (or hidden away), not make mistakes, and all would be well. But then came the mistakes with important policies poorly constructed and explained, and in one case quickly amended mid-campaign.

On the opposition side there were ideas to be critiqued and attacked. There was a record (although not a government record) to be scrutinised, and criticised without smears. But they just didn't engage. They were determined to play the man and not the ball, and tried to reduce the whole game not so much to a game of two halves, but a game of two centre-halves. The British parliamentary system is a team game. But the Tories reduced it to I, me, my. And the I in question proved to be less capable than a lot of us had thought. Why? How?

Hubris is that form of pride that contains the seeds of its own downfall. Not all pride leads to a downfall, but hubris does. Its the claim of the boxer to be the greatest before he's felled by an uppercut in the fifth round. It's the cynicism of the politician, who's already moving on to "more important matters" before a vote is counted. Post Brexit, post Trump, you'd think they would have learned their lesson. Apparently not.

Actually the issues facing the electorate at this election were complex and profound. They were hardly aired at all. We were badly served. The result is a weakened government with an unclear mandate. But, if the politicians learn that ideas and worked out policy, explained in grown up terms, are what the electorate is after, then it won't have been a complete waste.

It is all a reminder (again) of the wider world and bigger issues, that life throws up. The judgements to be made and the evidence to be considered in deciding whether to place my "x" against a name, and which name to place it against, were quite different to what I do in my day job. But what is equally true is that it's into exactly this kind of situation that Scripture speaks. From the messiness of human lives lived out as worked examples, some good, some bad, lessons are to be learned. And from the God who ultimately creates and sustains those lives, and who calls us to live them in a particular way, the standard is set. And He has been crystal clear on the subject of hubris: "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble".

Of peacock tears, cows and global warming

First of all, a potential fake news alert. A story concerning retiring judge Mahesh Chandra Sharma of the Rajasthan State High Court went viral this week. Some of the reported quotations attributed to said judge follow:

“The peacock is a lifelong celibate. It never has sex with the peahen. The peahen gets pregnant after swallowing the tears of the peacock.”

 “(Mother cow) is the only animal that inhales as well as exhales oxygen.”

 “Cow urine has the miraculous property of destroying any kind of germs. It provides strength to mind and heart. It stops ageing,” he said, adding that its horns “acquire cosmic energy“.

 “Houses plastered with cow dung are safe from radio waves.”

The reporting of these comments provoked a bit of an international media storm, well divorced from the initial context. The judge was hearing a case involving the care of cows in government shelters. Not a big issue you might think. But you would only think that if you were not an Indian Hindu, to whom cows, their status and treatment, matter a whole lot more than to your average Westerner. While as far as I can see the judge exists and said these things, a bit of care still has to be taken in interpreting the comments. After all, the original judgement was handed down in Hindi. That said, and taking them at face value, it’s a reminder that there are people and places that have been bypassed by a couple of centuries of scientific progress.

Ignorance is neither innocent nor harmless. It also has a close cousin – denialism. Particularly within healthcare and medicine, there are a number of denial movements which have either cost, are costing or will cost lives. HIV denialism took root in South Africa for a while, and with political support from former president Thabo Mbeki, delayed the introduction of antiretroviral treatment. According to a study by Chigwedere et al (2008)¹, that delay may have cost 300,000 lives. Currently, lives are being lost because of the activity of the anti-vaccines movement. Parents are being persuaded not to have their children vaccinated, whether against measles in the US and Europe, or polio in Africa and parts of the sub-continent, in the face of scientific evidence and consensus. This all takes on a further worrying complexion when the deniers team up with purveyors of snake oil and sugar water, and seek to provide “alternative” remedies, usually at a profit. Like alternative facts, alternative remedies rarely have any positive effects.

In the West what is interesting is that this decline in the public traction that scientific evidence seems to have, at least in some quarters, parallels the decline in the influence of Biblical Christianity, or more particularly the values that flow from it. Arguments have raged for a while about the influence of these values on the rise of science. For all that the conflict metaphor has come to dominate at least the popular conception of the relationship between science and Christianity, it was in “Christian” Europe that the modern scientific enterprise emerged, having faltered in the Muslim world after a good start. Among others Hooykaas² claimed that this was no accident. Perhaps we’re now in a position to begin observing what happens as nature becomes remythologised (seemingly a problem in Rajasthan) and a personal commitment to truth is devalued.

In addition, this week saw international ructions as result of President Trump announcing that the US would pull out of the Paris climate change agreement. This is further evidence of the success of a denial movement, partly motivated by commercial and industrial interests. Again there’s a weight of scientific evidence to be processed, not all of which is unequivocal. Few of us have either the expertise, the time or the inclination to examine the evidence for ourselves and therefore remain relatively ignorant of it. And there’s a small, but apparently influential group of dissidents, who reject both the scientific and the current political consensus. They cite alternative evidence, or provide alternative interpretations of the evidence. And of course, given our relative ignorance, we can fall prey to their efforts. Sometimes, we’re happy to cooperate in this if it supports our prejudices, or looks like it’s in our local, personal, narrow economic self-interest.

Of course, even if the science were 100% clear on one side of the argument (it’s probably more like 95%), in areas where political action is required, there are other considerations that have to come into play. History, economics, fairness and more besides go into making political decisions. That said, the evidence that humanity is warming the planet in a damaging way, while complicated, is fairly compelling.  If the consensus is wrong, then lots of money will be spent to achieve ends that while probably useful we could equally well live without. But if the consensus is right, but proper action is undermined by the deniers, then the consequences will be catastrophic in some places, grim in many others and expensive everywhere. But of course, because the consequences will unfold over a long period of time, the deniers will be long gone.

Maybe the truth of the matter is that ignorance is never bliss. But the only alternative is hard work educating the next generation and for that matter hard work informing ourselves.

1.       Chigwedere P et al (2008) Estimating the lost benefits of antiretroviral drug use in South Africa. J. Acquir Immune Defic Syndr 49(4):410-5. [Link]

2.       Hooykaas R (1972) Religion and the rise of modern science. Scottish Academic Press.

A chasm … that cannot be bridged?

These days, not being a cosmologist, materials scientist or molecular biologist, the only bits of “Nature” I read with any expectation of understanding are the editorial, news and comments sections (although this blog post points to an exception). Commenting on a planned meeting between a group of families affected by Huntington’s disease and the Pope, the following sentence from this week’s editorial caught my eye: “There is a chasm between religion and science that cannot be bridged”. And it was further stated that it is the Vatican’s traditional philosophy that “the scientific method cannot deliver the full truth about the world” (Nature Editorial, 18^th May 2017, 545:265). Hmm. Where to start?

Let’s start with the assertion of the existence of this unbridgeable chasm. Note that it is an assertion rather than the conclusion of a carefully constructed argument, or a hypothesis supported by any kind of evidence. It is not an assertion that would be have been supported by pioneers like Kepler, Newton, Boyle or Faraday or for that matter contemporary scientists such as Francis Collins, John Gurdon or Bill Newsome (do a web search on the names if they’re unfamiliar). Now of course all of these folk could be just plain wrong. The fact that they are likely to reject a proposition does not make it untrue. But with all due respect to the Nature leader writer who asserted the existence of the chasm in the first place, she (or he), while having a background in science is unlikely to have the experience and insight of those listed above. For my own part, I don’t claim any great insight either. But I am a scientist and I don’t accept that such a chasm either must exist, or does exist in any meaningful way.

What is probably rearing its head here is the conflict metaphor for the relationship between science and religion. This is the notion that science and religion compete for the same explanatory territory, but do so in fundamentally different ways, with different conclusions and therefore inevitable conflict. It’s a fight with a winner and a loser. Actually, some claim that the fight concluded some time ago, with science the clear winner, and the obscurantist forces of religion decisively routed and driven from the field. These notions, while they have been around for a while, are more recent than you might think.  Colin Russel, the historian of science, argues that the conflict metaphor was pushed as part of deliberate campaign by the likes of T.H Huxley in the second half of the 19^th Century (see Russell's excellent “Cross-currents” for a discussion). Huxley, along with a relatively small group of fellow belligerents interpreted the history of science up to that point as a fight with religion; since then others have happily promulgated the same view. But both in Huxley’s own day, and today, this was only one way to see the relationship between religion and science.

Science has actually often attracted those who are committed to God’s revelation in His book (the Bible), who also wish to study his handiwork in the created order using science as a tool. There are occasionally tensions between the two, but by and large the book of God’s words, and the book of God’s works complement each other. Indeed there is often an interplay between the two. And where the tensions look more like contradictions, these are often to do with the fallibility of our science or our theology. Interestingly, from the outside, the tensions often look a lot worse than they are. So an atheist scientist, with no great interest in Scripture, might misquote and misapply Scripture to claim a major problem where none exists. It is equally possible to conceive of scientifically uneducated and uninterested believers claiming that some scientific discovery has to be rejected because of an apparent contradiction with the Bible. In both cases, a proper understanding of both the Scripture and the Science often dissolves the “contradiction”. So where is the chasm? There isn’t one.

Occasionally those who are scientists and believers (while I mainly mean Christian believers, the same applies to others) are accused of thinking in one way in the lab and in another way at worship and of keeping these two areas of thought separate.  And I don’t deny that I’ve come across this phenomenon, although not for a while, and not usually on the part of professional scientists. But it’s neither necessary, nor is it particularly healthy; and I reckon this it’s not sustainable in the longer term. I’m the same person whether I’m trying to work out why we get multimodal distributions of fast eye movement latency (the subject of a paper that I hope will appear soon) or why Jonah so misunderstood the God who called him to go and preach in Nineveh. Rationality is required in both cases to make progress. If pushed, and you asked me which of these two puzzles is most important to me, I’d say the later. But for the following reason:  science is what I do; my faith is about who I am. As a professional scientist, one day I’ll retire and put away my eye tracker. But I won’t be retiring as a Christian. This is why my faith (by which I mean the content of belief rather than the act of believing) is more important to me than my science. And the science is for now; faith is for eternity.

This brings me to one of the important distinctions between science and (Christian) faith. John Polkinghorne (originally a particle physicist, but who then trained for the ministry and became a theologian) wrote “Many scientists are both wistful and wary in their attitude towards religion. They can see that science’s story is not sufficient by itself to give a satisfying account of the multi-layered reality of the world (Theology in the Context of Science, p84)”. Science’s success stems from carving off bits of the universe that it can get to grips with. But it is a mistake to insist that this is all there is, or that this is the only kind of stuff that matters. It’s folly to believe that scientific explanations are the only ones that a true or valid. While a pigment chemist and colour psychophysicist could legitimately tell you a lot of interesting things about the Mona Lisa, that’s not all there is to say on the subject. And not all of the pertinent information you would need to “understand” the Mona Lisa  is scientific information.

So it’s not just the Vatican that thinks that the scientific method can’t deliver the “full truth” about the world. There are many scientists, including many non-religious ones, who believe this too. Certainly, this one does.  

Anarchy, order, science and (yes) Christianity…

I learned something today I would never have guessed: there's a thing called the “Informal Federation of Anarchists”. Who would have thought? Anarchists need organisation; apparently anarchy has its limits! They might rail against society, hierarchy, order, rules and the rest, but it turns out they’ve formed their own society (of sorts), and probably even have an implicit, if not an explicit, hierarchy. They have an order, and they consider some things to be acceptable, and some things not to be. They set boundaries, and have rules that you contravene at your peril. Indeed, I learned about the Informal Federation of Anarchists in a news story reporting that they had claimed to be behind the vadalisation of a car belonging to a person they accused of being a “snitch”. This is apparently behaviour beyond the pale, warranting action. A line had been crossed that they had drawn. Thus they have at least one rule (“snitching is bad”), and had taken action to enforce it. They don’t want no order, just not the kind of order they object to. Anarchism isn’t necessarily anarchy it would seem.

None of this is really such a great surprise, because the universe in which we find ourselves is ordered. Order is woven into its fabric, and into the fabric of every human being. It’s so much a part of us that we find it difficult to conceive of a different state of affairs. Mind you, the big advantage this brings is that because of this order, and because we are attuned to it, the universe and what it contains can be understood. It is knowable. And once we know enough we can manipulate and control it (at least in part) and make things more pleasant for ourselves. This is formalised in science, but it’s actually something we depend on every day. It allows us to make predictions and plans. It allows us to ignore whole swathes of regularity, and just concentrate on tricky and important decisions and alternatives. If we have to think carefully about everything we do, then we’d probably run out of processing capacity. As it is, we’ve got brain power to spare.

We take all this so much from granted that we rarely, if ever, think about it. Why are things like this, and not like something else? And what proof do we have that it really is like it is, has always been this way, and always will be? For a long time these were all non-questions. But some began to be troubled that we took so much on, well, faith. We just trusted that the sun would rise in the morning, we didn’t look for proof. Such rules as we did come up with to explain many of the regularities (like Newton’s laws) were descriptive. The processes which were used to establish such explanations seemed also to rest of foundations that were still implicitly about trust. Like trusting that things operated the same way everywhere (the principle of the uniformity of nature). They were not themselves provable.

It dawned on cosmologists and others that things have to be really finely tuned to allow life as we know it, including this kind of ordered life in an ordered universe. And it’s worth remembering that before that point it was rather assumed that life as we know it would exist in lots of places. All you needed was a planet rather than a star. Then it was noticed that said planet would have to be a certain distance from a certain kind of star. Then it turned out it would have to have a particular cosmological history and composition. And right down to the finest details of certain physical constants, things need to be tuned just so. It turned out that all of this had occurred; everything had been tuned up in one place, our little corner of the universe. But why?

Well it could all just be an entirely accidental series of coincidences. And that this is all so highly improbable that it has only happened in one place over one period time. So even if you could find some places where some things happed (like a planet with the right kind of orbit around the right kind of star), other things would not be right for life (either any form of life, or the kind of life we’re used to). Try as we might, life is so improbable, that it has only developed in one place (this is the sort of thing the eponymous Professor Dawkins has suggested). There is an alternative. Suppose that there is a God, who is a God of order, who brings into being a universe that reflects His character (this too is not a notion original to me). He continually acts to sustain that order both in the physical realm and beyond (eg in the social and moral realms). Such a God need not necessarily be knowable in and of Himself. But His activity would leave indelible fingerprints on the Universe. It would have that character of order and knowability. But precisely because it is knowable, He would therefore be knowable in at least some ways. At least we would know about Him. But it also strikes me as reasonable to expect that He might actually want to provide additional means such that He might not just be knowable in this passive and distant sense, but to be known. He might reveal something about Himself, so He could be known in the sense of relationship.

It turns out that order may be really significant. The Informal Federation of Anarchists tells us something pretty basic about me, you and the Universe we find ourselves in.

Easter Blog

A while ago I noted the propensity of scientists to comment outwith their area of expertise. We'll, I’m sticking very deliberately to an area within my expertise. I'm going to comment, as a professional scientist, on Easter - or at least one of the seminal events that gave rise to what we refer to as Easter. This might strike many as bit odd. After all Easter is a religious commemoration of certain alleged events that are claimed to have occurred sometime in the first century in the Middle East. History, with a bit of theology thrown in for good measure. But what can it have to do with science? And then there’s the central claim of Easter; the entirely implausible claim, that a dead man came back to life. Science proves that such things are impossible right?

Wrong. Science will always struggle to deal with unique events. The methods we usually apply, repeated observation, manipulation and measurement, are not appropriate. Aha the sceptic cries, what about the big bang? Clearly unique, yet also within the purvue of science. But the big bang is a hypothesis. It's currently the best explanation for current observations (for example the expanding universe around us cosmic background radiation). There might be parallels here between the resurrection of Jesus and currently observable events, but they're not quite the same.

That said, the need in science to collect and analyse data and to weigh evidence, can be applied to Easter, with the caveat that the tools employed will be those appropriate to the type of evidence available. So, given that much of the evidence is in the form of literature, the tools will be literary. If there's relevant archaeological evidence, the tools of archaeology will be used. Not surprisingly in the case of an event of central importance to saints and sceptics this kind of thing has been done extensively. Just do a Web search.

But surely someone rising from the dead is just not believable? But why not? Not believable and impossible (particularly scientifically impossible) are different types of claims. My view is that belief (and unbelief) in the resurrection of Jesus is not primarily about evidence, and it never has been. It's about will. There’s plenty of evidence. But any amount of evidence will only take anyone a certain distance.  Easter is not really about whether a given body is dead or alive, but whether a particular person is known or not. Apologetics is fine, and a worthy exercise. I indulge (am indulging?) in it myself. But it's a starting point not a destination. For the Christian (at least for this Christian) it's an obstacle clearing exercise so that the real discussion can begin. And the real discussion isn't about facts, truth, proof, argument and the rest; it's about a person whom I know. A person with whom I have a relationship just as surely as I have a relationship with my wife and weans. A person to whom I can introduce others. And here's where my other area of expertise comes into play.

I am a scientist, that's my profession. But as a person (and all scientists are also people) I have experience of relationships.  There are some people I know about and there are others I know. I know about Einstein. I know a bit more about Sherrington. But I never met either of these distinguished scientists, both of whom died before I was born. But I make this claim: I know Jesus. Of course, if like Einstein and Sherrington Jesus only died, then I am deluded. And indeed He did die in antiquity. But my claim and the testimony of my experience is that He's not dead now. I know Him.

To be clear I came to know Him long before I weighed up the evidence supporting the fact of His resurrection. And the sceptic would be right to point out that this means that there's likely to be a big risk of bias when I examine the evidence for the resurrection. But then the sceptic would have to accept the risk of bias in the opposite diction on their part. However, this does not mean that either of us is incapable of examining the evidence, and doing so fairly. It just means that we have to work at it. In my case, having considered the evidence carefully, apart from my experience of knowing the person who some claim is dead, buried and decayed, I have found the evidence entirely convincing. However, I can conceive of a situation where overwhelming evidence that counted against the resurrection might come to light and I would have to re-evaluate my position. This would be a big problem. I would have to conclude that for a long time I have been deluded. That I have been fooling myself and fundamentally misunderstanding (and misrepresenting) pertinent facts. But I accept that this is not impossible. Is the sceptic prepared to make the same commitment from their side?

But all this talk of evidence is again kind of missing the point about this being personal. I (the person who is also the scientist) know (rather than simply know about) Jesus. The same Jesus who, as we reflected on Good Friday, died on a cross, was alive a few days later, and is alive and knowable today. And I personally know Him. I don’t think I’m deluded (although I suppose that’s what a lot of deluded people say!). I think that my experience of Him is complemented by the objective evidence (ie by evidence separate from my experience), and by the experience of others both through history and now. Indeed, my experience now counts, along with the experience and witness of many others, as further evidence. Now it still might not be persuasive enough to counter the intuition and observation that normally dead people do not come back from the dead, do not walk, talk, cook breakfasts, eat fish and so on. But none of this has any logical traction on the fact that Jesus is alive, did all of these things, and is knowable today.

I know because I know Him.

Alt-facts, fake news and agnotology for beginners

I suppose like many “experts” and not a few scientists, I’ve been troubled by the apparently recent rise of alternative facts, fake news and the like. Of course it’s only apparent (rather than real) and it’s ancient not recent (see Matt 28:11-15). I’ve already discussed why the notion that complex issues are simple and that all that is needed is a dispassionate collection and analysis of facts is problematic. However, on further reflection it turns out that it’s naïve as well. In part, my reflections were stimulated by an excellent article by Tim Harford, the FT’s  Undercover Economist (“The problem with facts”; unfortunately this is behind the FT’s paywall so you won’t be able to read it without a subscription, but see this). He discusses at length how big tobacco combatted a whole slew of facts showing that their product was killing people in their thousands if not millions. They managed to delay by decades any kind of serious reckoning that would east into their profits. Sixty years on from when the evidence that smoking kills began to mount, they are still turning a pretty profit. It turns out that it’s the tobacco playbook that the likes of the Trump and Brexit campaigns have been following either intuitively or explicitly.

So how do you combat inconvenient but true facts? To quote Harford about the indisputable facts from unquestionable sources on smoking: “The indisputable facts were disputed. The unquestionable sources were questioned”. The aim? To manufacture, encourage and maintain ignorance rather than knowledge and truth, an exercise Robert Proctor, a Stanford historian, has called “agnotology”. In fact, last May, during the election campaign, then president Obama spotted this and commented on it in a speech delivered at Rutgers University. He pointed out that ignorance is not a virtue. Clearly, however, as a tactic it’s pretty effective. Look what happened come last November. It turns out that ignorance is in the interest of some people, and that truth is not an unalloyed good. So make an issue sound as complicated as you can, with certainly more than one side and preferably more than two. Question the motives of those whose facts you don’t like and give them motives if they don’t apparently have any. Destroy the notion of the seeker after truth for truth’s sake. 

Of course the problem is, and this is why these tactics are so potentially powerful, that we live in a messy world in which many issues are complicated and motives mixed. Put this together with the observation that genuine facts are tricky things to find and trickier to deal with effectively, and you begin to understand the problem. And then of course (and this is why I was being naïve) clearly there are those (like of big tobacco) whose motives are very decidedly less than pure (profit over lives). The answer can’t just be more facts, although if repeating non-facts (ie lies) gives them a deal of credibility, then repeating facts and finding new and relevant ones must count for something. It has to be a more subtle analysis that sifts the facts, looks at the sources, weighs competing motives and judges the relative importance of different outcomes.

This all takes time and effort. But maybe for democracy to function, that’s what as citizens we have to do. Investigate, collate, triangulate, think, judge. Perhaps this is not something we are prepared to do. Could it be that in complacency most of us would rather stick to narrow sources of information (our favourite web site, like-thinking friends on social media, a single newspaper or tv channel), be told what to think, be credulous about what we’re told, allow ourselves to believe alt-facts we find convenient? If democracy ceases to function, we’re heading towards something less palatable.  In this and other domains it’s time to “be adults in our thinking” (1 Cor 14:20).

A bit of Trumpian perspective

Pundits have been having a bad time. They've been badly beaten up by the people. It’s been a bad time for experts too. Ignored and even mocked. Leading up to the EU referendum in the UK, we were told that Brexit would cost us all money. It would cost jobs. There would be political, educational and cultural costs. A majority ignored the advice. Some didn't believe if. Some didn't want too. Some wilfully listened to different voices that made carefully calibrated and worded, deniable, non-promises. We embarked on an uncertain course to an uncertain destination.

I remember waking with a palpable sense of déjà vu to something else that was scarcely believable right up to the moment it actually happened. One Donald Trump won the US Presidential election. The insurgency that wasn’t really, won again. A rich insider persuaded enough voters in the US (although not a majority) that he was an outsider like them, and that he would be their man if they elected him. Post-inauguration something approaching chaos has ensued, despite claims by the President to the contrary. The “Muslim ban” that wasn’t has been stymied by the courts. He claims that his executive order was good and its implementation smooth, but that the administration had encountered a “bad court”. Courts matter in the US. There will probably, eventually, be a more conservative Supreme Court. But even then, President Trump will have no control over Justices once raised to the Supreme Court. Given that reality has a way of reasserting itself over fantasy, it remains to be seen what the effects of a more conservative court will be. And what happens when the “Mexican” wall doesn’t appear? Or when a combination of tax cuts and infrastructure spending either doesn’t happen or does happen and cripples the economy? An uncertain course is unfolding towards an uncertain destination. And how will we know what’s going on? Bad news is likely to be constantly derided as fake news. And meanwhile it looks like real fake news will be used to distract and confuse.

What has any of this got do with science? Well, it's never nice to see facts trashed and experts ignored. Mind you for the sake of full disclosure I should admit that write from the perspective of an expert (if only in eye movement control). During the US presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton said in her stump speech that she 'believed science'. At the time she was referring to issues around climate change. But this was a risky thing to do politically. It probably contributed in a small way to her democratic demise. It suited quite a lot of voters to discount the science of climate change (complicated and nuanced) in favour of the much simpler idea that their jobs and standard of living, at least over the short term, were much more important. She was also drawing a contrast with someone who claimed to know better experts, whether generals, economists or yes, scientists. And with someone whose connection with anything resembling reality appears, at least on the basis of his public pronouncements, to be tenuous. Given the Trump presidential campaign, and the early weeks of the Administration, given the misinformation on a heroic scale, insults and fantasy we’re hearing and seeing, things are not looking good.

But facts matter, there is a reality that can be usefully contrasted with fantasy. You can get away with voting for comforting fantasy for a while. There are circumstances, after all, in which it is possible to deny the reality of gravity for a little while. But in the end the reality reasserts itself. Get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and the end result is unlikely to be pretty.

As an aside it’s interesting (and humbling) to note that a reality TV star and shady businessman, has had more effect on the world, than most scientists toiling away diligently will ever have. Time will tell whether the effects are good or bad. But it’s a reminder that science the institution is limited in its influence and heavily dependent on other institutions, including cultural and political institutions. Before my science chums get sneery about the 'ordinary' folk and their choices, it's worth remembering that those are the folk science serves. And they are also the folk that, at least in the UK, fund most science via their taxes. Science has its realm, and is spectacularly successful at dealing with certain kinds of questions. But they are not the only questions that bother people, and indeed may not even be the most important ones. Whether I should vote to leave the EU, or vote for a Trump or Clinton, or beyond that how I should live, science is only part, maybe just a small part, of the picture.