Does this story sound familiar?
The narrative goes like this:
- The famous, brilliant scientist So-and-so hypothesized that X was true.
- X, forever after, became dogma among scientists, simply by virtue of the brilliance and fame of Dr. So-and-so.
- This dogmatic assent continues unchallenged until an intrepid, underdog scientist comes forward with a dramatic new theory, completely overturning X, in spite of sustained, hostile opposition by the dogmatic scientific establishment.
Michael White summarizes a common trope in the media and elsewhere; there’s often a misleading attempt to shoehorn the gradual advancement of science into a more dramatic story of sudden breakthoughs — especially by that mythical underdog fighting against the wicked establishment. It’s not true. Even Charles Darwin, a fellow who did advance a revolutionary story, was himself a respected member of, and working within, the scientific establishment of his time. Even the most radical new idea must incorporate and extend the existing body of evidence; good science does not spontaneously emerge out of a vacuum.
The context for this narrative in this case is the Joan Roughgarden story. She has been claiming some strange things, about her role as a transgendered outsider scientist who has identified deep flaws in Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, but I’m afraid her claims are absurd. She does offer an interesting perspective, but what she is primarily opposing is a simplistic version of sexual selection that neither Darwin nor any contemporary scientists have ever accepted — she is basically cobbling up the underdog narrative, and has been getting a fair amount of attention for it.
The article does mention a comment from me on the subject that is actually the mildest thing I said: I do have a more thorough assessment of Roughgarden’s hypothesis from 2004 that is much less polite.
So mainstream journalists play this game with scientists, and some scientists play it up as well; but the real masters are the creationists. It’s all they’ve got: rhetoric that tries to put them in the role of the brave, noble, clever underdog trying to overcome the stifling influence of a stagnant scientific orthodoxy. It’s even more false, but it does appeal to the media.
Can we just get something straight? Science builds on past discoveries. You don’t get to cherry pick what bits you want to include in your theory — successful new theories don’t throw away old evidence, they extend and strengthen and reinforce, and offer new insights. There may be new theories that follow the theory of evolution … but they will all incorporate the basic facts of earth’s history — its age, common descent, the relationships between species, etc. — and will not be any more appealing to creationists than what we’ve got now.
Isn’t this the “they laughed at Einstein” move?
…
How come they never say that about Carrot Top?
Isaac Newton (generally not known for his humility): “If I have seen a little farther than others, it’s because I stood on the shoulders of giants.”
Anon, are you implying that people laugh at Carrot Top?
One of the things about this is that the “underdog story” is well established in American culture. There’s a standard plot onto which the details can be nailed. And the individual overcoming all odds is quintessentially American.
Even PZ’s story of the history of science is itself a bit of a standard trope. Yes, science proceeds by gradually building, but there are moments when everything gets a bit messy and everybody is like, “Oh fuck now what?”
One of the problems is that narratives are themselves techniques for organizing social reality (watch gerry shriek and freak the fuck out over that one). We pick and choose certain elements of what’s going on and fit them into particular socially available plots (how many of y’all lab folks have “serendipity stories?” I bet there’s a common structure–and common plot–to the narratives.)
One of the broader problems for science communication is that scientific theories themselves make crappy stories–there’s no standard plot. What’s the “story” behind general relativity?
That’s not necessarily the case for scientific discovery–lots of good stories, and some standard plots–there. But, the story of the underdog overcoming odds makes a great story for those who have no actual experience with science and academia. Rudy is EXPELLED!
There’s a standard plot onto which the details can be nailed.
nailed. interesting choice of words.
:p
surely the judeo-xian “tradition” of america has had an influence on how the media ends up portraying everything, not just advances in science.
You forgot to mention arrogant. That stagnant, arrogant scientific orthodoxy.
But, but, but are you saying Geoffrey Simmons is wrong?
surely the judeo-xian “tradition” of america has had an influence on how the media ends up portraying everything, not just advances in science.
Yeah. Since there are a number of cultural forms of plots that are constantly retold, making them seem even more solid. That (we’ll call it “Western” ’cause there’s some Norse shit and some Celtic shit and some jewish shit and some chrisitan shit and some….) It’s not that life–or the worl–runs like a story, but that we have a tendency to understand it in story form; and we filter in and out parts of it to make stories (and to make it fit the standard stories we know).
Nails–I was thinking of thumbtacks or velcro-backing. I was seeing the process but having a hard time using my words (one of my usual problems–better visualizer than verbalizer).
And how, exactly, did evolutionary theory “build on” the design theory that it replaced in the late nineteenth century?
And how, exactly, did evolutionary theory “build on” the design theory that it replaced in the late nineteenth century?
read for comprehension:
Even the most radical new idea must incorporate and extend the existing body of evidence; good science does not spontaneously emerge out of a vacuum.
(emphasis mine)
evidence!=theory
the Theory of Evolution indeed REPLACED previous theory, but was based on the same evidences used to formulate “goddidit”, along with Lamarckian theory and several others.
That narrative is obsolete.
Here in the 21st, we understand that True Science and its Discoveries are measured by the scale of the mayhem resulting from said Discovery, calibrated according to the star quality of the rescue team sent in to save the day at the last minute.
I also wish we could put to rest the ridiculous notion that any single new idea without any body of research behind it is somehow a scientific theory. It’s exactly the sort of thinking that equates “theory” with its popular usage of “guess.” If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say that ID/creationism is a “theory” like evolution, I’d have less need for grants.
Haha… MAJeff, I’m glad for everyone who posts here, but I’m always doubly glad for your posts. You really put things in perspective for me. :D
Kuhn had a role in popularizing this vision of how science works. I never fully believed his examples. The early papers of the quantum physicists were published in accepted journals and very quickly became part of physics. I suspect what seems a slow uptake of a major new theory may be more the time and effort it takes to perform the experiments it suggests, create the conceptual framework it requires, discover the applications, and understand the results of these than any active resistance. Cultural inertia doesn’t come only from a comfort with the old or active defense of it, but also from the fact that the new requires a lot of work and development to fully realize. It’s easy to underestimate that work in retrospect, forgetting that at the time it was not yet known what was needed.
Nails–I was thinking of thumbtacks or velcro-backing. I was seeing the process but having a hard time using my words (one of my usual problems–better visualizer than verbalizer).
hmm, I was envisioning something different…
“nailed to a cross”
after all, isn’t that the quintessential “underdog” story americans like to tell themselves?
hell, just ask Mel Gibson.
Oh, but you just don’t know the new DNA facts! The DNA facts prove that we don’t inherit anything, it’s just that we’re born in such a way to be irreductably complex. You athiests just clinging to the old vestiges of Darwinism in a sad attempt to hold on to your power base.
Russell –
It’s been a while, but if I remember correctly, Kuhn also emphasized that the nature of scientific revolution was to happen after the accumulation of overwhelming evidence. Yes the dominant paradigm tends to take a lot of pushing to shift, but it only does so after sufficient evidence makes it necessary. That is totally contrary to the IDiots reasons for pushing this idea.
Again though, it’s been a few years since I read Kuhn as a primary source…
athiests
what’s athiest mean?
the most athi?
The DNA facts prove that we don’t inherit anything
frankly, if this isn’t parody, I would hope your parents aren’t as dumb as yourself, but I doubt it.
power base
LOL
yes, because of course us evil sciency types have been dominating the congress and the white house for eons now.
again…
I do hope that was an attempt at parody on your part.
so hard to tell these days.
btw, what’s “ireductably” mean?
British science historian James Burke’s work is always a good reminder that scientific and technological change is not always linear (though sometimes it is)…though Burke’s popularization of this fact may have unwittingly played into the exaggerated narrative PZ is decrying above. I’m a big fan of Burke, but yeah, the narrative PZ describes is problematic and also overlays some pretty powerful North American foundational myths & archetypes that do resonate, and are hard to swim upstream against, even if, as the saying has it, the “devil” is in the details.
Historian David Noble has some interesting things to say about the sociology of science and it for a long time being a Western and Male and Christian dominated enterprise. But I’m not willing to go along with PoMo theorists and declare science and the scientific method “just another narrative”, a la Stanley Fish and others. It also has the virtue of generally, more accurately corresponding to what we unreconstructed moderns quaintly call “physical, objective reality”, and tends to be self-correcting over time, allowing ever more revisions to previous understandings. It’s a qualitative difference which just isn’t true of other kinds of “narratives” that Fish, et. al., want to posit as “just as valid” as rational, scientific discourse.
How to piss off a Postmodernist…point out that the declaration of the end of grand narratives is itself a grand narrative and thus self-refuting. ;-)
Thought provoking post, PZ–thank you.
Perhaps the most striking example that reinforces PZ’s point is the theory of macroscopic thermodynamics developed in 19th century.
We may as well change quantum mechanics, prove that atoms do not exist, or maybe that there exists other dimensions, whatever, it will never change the fact that in everyday experiments, heat go from the hotter body to the coldest, or that such exchanges of energy are conservative, and any engineer will still use the same old tables to build his engine with almost perfect accuracy.
It would clearly be dumb to oppose this… because it is impossible to oppose this : it always works with macroscopic phenomenon!
Excellent post.
The “I-might-be-crazy-but-at-least-I’m-an-underdog” theme has also been taken up by a number of right-wing nuts in the recent past, if I remember correctly.
Research on chess expertise might amplify, at the individual level, the necessity for being immersed in the ideas of a field before being capable of advancing it or taking it in new directions. One of the most remarkable differences between chess experts and novices, for example, is the experts’ much greater amount of (mostly) monotonous practice and their much greater store of positional knowledge–their knowledge of the ideas that have come before them.
Knowing is a prerequisite for, not an obstacle to creative thought.
My favorite quote, from Stravinsky:
“My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful, the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraints, diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.”
Thank you, PZ. This is one of my greatest pet peeves about the public understanding of science. Even more so when it’s thrown back in our faces as an example of how scientists clearly know nothing since we’re ALWAYS pulling these sorts of 180s. Ugh.
One big problem with the media narrative is that they end up giving a lot of credence to crackpots and charlatans because those folks are “sticking it to the man”. Bob Park’s book Voodoo Science is filled with tales of people “reinventing” the perpetual motion machine, and still getting a serious bit of media attention. This in turn makes the general public even more ignorant about science.
When I teach quantum and relativity to students, I always emphasize the historical background of the theories, to try and counteract this goofy narrative.
Bravo on this post.
I’m not a scientist myself, but I like to say that my heroes in the sciences are the millions of those who toil away at the discipline every day, experimenting and hypothesizing, and never come up with some “breakthrough.” Those are the scientists who build up that massive base of evidence from which breakthroughs come.
It’s those scientists who have the guts to know when their hypothesis is wrong, and instead of sticking to it, saying, “I’m wrong, the evidence doesn’t fit. I’ll move on.” No, they’ll never get fame for being wrong, but they make the bulk of the contributions to the advancement of our species.
So let’s hear it for the scientists who are wrong!
There is a very simple way to state it:
A ‘revolutionary’ theory in science explains evidence that used to take more than a single theory to explain.
A corollary: Discredited scientific theories almost never fail in these sense of not providing adequately explanations… they are most often better thought of as ‘incomplete’.
Scientist who initiated revolutions did so through hard work and persistence in order to convince their peers, quite unlike the creo-IDists, who think their hackneyed ideas should gain automatic acceptance just because they constantly whine about their contrived persecution in the marketplace of ideas. Even more irritatingly, they constantly seek to gain advantage by distorting and misrepresenting the ideas of practicing scientists. You know, it must be nice, having ready access to the Disco teat, but the rest of us have to work hard to do real science. We work through peer-review, fair or not, to get our research published, we compete at getting grants.
Having failed at most of their recent lame attempts at gaining traction, they are obviously now intent on pursuing a purely political strategy of demonizing their opponents. Should it be surprising that they turn to a political ideologue like Stein to promote their ideas? Expelled is just the first salvo, and I doubt it will be their last. It is striking that in the last year there has been a concerted push by IDists in trying to link Darwin to Hitler. They know the big lie strategy works, and they will push it very hard the next several years. As Goebbels put it: “when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.”
Come April 19, it is unlikely that the general public will ever hear about Expelled again. Seems that there is a recession underway, and most people are a little more concerned about paying $4/gallon for gas and keeping their houses and jobs.
If they fail at their current form of intellectual terrorism, then there will be only route left to them. It’s worked for them before, and they may resort to it again.
So that story about helicobacter pylori ain’t true? I love that story. :(
I see others have already defended the oft-quoted, much misunderstood, Kuhn. It is indeed the accumulation of evidence under the old paradigm, the “essential tension” to use Kuhn’s words that gets things going.
Jeremy Bernstein’s essay “How Can We be Sure Einstein was not a Crank?” might also be relevant here.
There are three reasons why IDots cite Helicobacter pylori as an example of genetics ‘not adding new information.’ 1) No understanding of information theory. 2) Their ‘scope’ of operation is limited by their view, 3) cherry [dingle-berry] picking is hard work.
Basically the Galileo Gamit – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Gambit
Though I prefer Dr Sagan’s comment on people who claim oppression when their pet hypothesis is ‘dismissed by the orthodoxy’…
“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
I’ve always thought it ironic that the Medicine prize committee awarded the prize for the Helicobacter pylori result considering that that particular experiment would never be approved here in Sweden. Almost all medical papers here are part of someones PhD and require very strictly applied ethical approval – try submitting an ethical approval application up here for glugging down a beaker full of bacteria and see where that gets you!
The story that comes closest to fitting the ‘finally vindicated underdog’ narrative that I know of is Wegener’s. Even there the narrative doesn’t quite work: he wasn’t the only person to suggest continental drift, and continental drift was accepted in the end not because of his ‘brilliance and fame’ but because other scientists discovered both more evidence in support of his theory and a mechanism by which continental drift could occur.
One current and one recent ( 1960-70 ) case do make one wonder, sometimes, that that Kuhn’s paradigm, and the myth related by PZ at the top do have some relevance, sometimes.
The current case is “String Theory” – which makes, as far as we can see NO TESTABLE PREDICTIONS. Oops.
The recent case was, of course, Plate Tectonics – an outgrowth of Alfred Wegener’s theory/idea of “Continental Drift”. The switch-over, which occurred during my last years at school, and first tim at Uni, were fascinating to watch – fuelled, of course, by discoveries in undersea geology.
I wonder if the way in which Cladistics emerged, not without a struggle and much adverse criticism, during the period 1975-85 is another case?
PZ?
You must have this script mixed up with a ‘B’ movie screen writers formula. They did get off strike just to continue making these kinds of movies.
What about a black hole striking the earth killing the dinosaurs and spinning up the earths core magnetic core….
It’s funny, I responded to a relative who asked what I thought about the theories thrown around that HIV has nothing to do with AIDS. Within that I wrote something pretty applicable to the conversation (with some modifications just now. Please forgive if there is some inaccuracy here, I was writing partly from memory):
So, there is some truth to the underdog story in science happening from time to time. However, the underdog proves his mettle using the very tools of accepted science, which is something an ID/Creationist can not do.
@Sigmund
You mentioned the H. pylori thing as well, so I decided to double-check, since I was told long ago about his self-experiment by colleagues, but never went and looked it up for myself until now. It really is true (NIH link). Man, gutsy guy doing that!
There is a scientific establishment and there are fits and starts. The Helicobacter pylori is maybe a good example, I mean no one would take that guy seriously till he drank down the bacteria. There is some truth to the myth, though the new idea is always based on previous work. I remember the change over from steady state to expanding universe took a bit of time. Not for nothing do they say your success as a scientist can be measure by how long you held up new research in the field.
Off-topic, but concerning the famous quotation from Newton about the shoulders of giants. From the Wikipedia article on Newton:
“Historians generally think the above quote was an attack on Hooke (who was short and hunchbacked), rather than — or in addition to — a statement of modesty.”
Dr. Myers,
Gradual advancement of science? Does the narrative not depict a scientific revolution – albeit in a very simplistic way? Those are anything but gradual and it’s open to debate whether or not they constitute an addition to scientific knowledge.
I agree with pretty much everything else you wrote, though.
We can’t blame the laypress for trying to fit what they see into a story – after all, this is what they are after. However, it does irk me greatly that teams of scientists, 100s of students and lab techs, may toil for 2 decades from initial conception through rodent models, clinical trials etc and then the team that does crack it gets the credit for the break through. I think I’m just sore because I will be one of those poor forgotten students!
If we were stood upon a disc held up by four enormous elephants flying through space on the back of a giant turtle then yes, we could rely on narrative imperative. As it stands though….
;o)
Another aspect of this is that this sort of narrative is very much the same as what we hear about so much quackery, or, as Prometheus put it, the “Brave Maverick Doctors.”
I’ll raise you a Raymond Dart, discoverer of the first known Australopithecus specimen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Dart
He argued for years that it was basal to the hominid line but was ignored because it was assumed that the basal line must have evolved outside Africa and have a large brain prior to becoming bipedal. But again the narrative doesn’t quite work as a lot of his other theories simply don’t hold up any more, as well as the fact that the acceptance of his interpretation was held up considerably not so much by scientific orthodoxy as by confusion caused by out and out academic fraud:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_man
Michael White has a theory about that quote in his biography of Newton. It was written in a letter to Newton’s sworn enemy, Robert Hooke. Robert Hooke was a hunchback dwarf, so Newton may actually have been having a dig rather than being humble!
If any one has the time for an extended joke about the on the shoulders of giants thing, read Robert K. Merton’s On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript. It’s a hoot, although maybe you’ve got to be a sociologist of science to appreciate the humor. It includes his theory of a phenomenon that can only be called anticipatory plagiarism. E.g., I’m a grad student in history of science with this great idea about how science advances — paradigm shifts. What, you say some fellow named Kuhn wrote a book almost 50 years ago with the same idea? Well, obviously he stole it from me (anticipatory plagiarism) even if I hadn’t been born yet at the time Kuhn wrote The Copernican Revolution.
Though comparatively violent in that period (Clade Wars), it’s much more gradual. Hennig first published in 1950 (in East Germany), and even today not all subdisciplines of biology (let alone linguistics) use it. Three years ago I read a paper that defended the traditional approach to conodont “phylogenetics” — stratophenetics: just seeing the phylogeny in the fossil record (by making untested assumptions about the completeness of that record). Ammonites… Cenozoic fossil mammals… the Cladistic Revolution is still ongoing.
Though comparatively violent in that period (Clade Wars), it’s much more gradual. Hennig first published in 1950 (in East Germany), and even today not all subdisciplines of biology (let alone linguistics) use it. Three years ago I read a paper that defended the traditional approach to conodont “phylogenetics” — stratophenetics: just seeing the phylogeny in the fossil record (by making untested assumptions about the completeness of that record). Ammonites… Cenozoic fossil mammals… the Cladistic Revolution is still ongoing.
I think the main reason we see this plot as being so pervasive is that it *is* a standard story formula. If you don’t have a couple unfinished novels lying around, find someone who does, and ask them what a story needs. You’ll get an answer something like:
– A clearly defined good-guy (protagonist).
– A clearly defined bad-guy (antagonist).
– There must be real conflict to keep the story going.
– The good guy must be right, and the bad guy must be wrong. Not just in their conclusions, but in their methodologies and motivations.
– The good guy must succeed in the end.
– And, the kicker: the entire sequence must fit into a short enough time frame for the story to hold together.
Edgy fiction can change those rules a bit, but mainstream fiction always follows that formula. If you choose a scientist for your protagonist, you’re pretty much restricted the the formula PZ described.
The journalists are just following their own formula that the more they make reality seem like mainstream fiction, the more interest their stories will get.
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I know it goes against the stereotypical narrative of whiggish history, but sometimes theoretical change involves what Laudan has called ‘explanatory loss.’ It’s far from clear what sort of continuity can be found in the content of successive theories in a given domain. But we can be pretty confident that the old story about cummulative progress is a fairy tale.
Just a note on the Heliobacter story, it should be remembered that he wasn’t overthrowing the scientific establishment on disease, but on the cause of a single specific disease. In fact he was building not on a radically different theory, but on the classic Germ Theory of Disease used to describe and treat most other bacterial infections. Sure, there was entrenched dogma, but even if he hadn’t taken the extreme step to cause and cure his own ulcers, the evidence would have backed him up over time.
The “Underdog” story is useful in showing that science does modify itself based on new evidence, but it also shows the poredictive power of current theories. Unfettered, the Underdog narrative gives too much credence to the germ denialists we see in the Woo crowd and from Tara’s trolls.
Actually this interpretation of Newton’s famous remark, which is neither original by Wikipedia nor by Michael White, is almost certainly wrong. As Richard Westfall points out in his definitive biography of Newton Never At Rest, if Newton wanted to be insulting, which he often was, he did not indulge in sarcasm or irony and was never subtle but went straight for the jugular like a riled wolverine. Also if one reads the letter in which the quote occurs it is obviously one of Newton’s rare attempts at conciliation and meant sincerely.
Merton’s book is indeed a classic and should be compulsory reading for all historians of science.
Re. the Wegener example: Wegener’s theory, involving continental plates ploughing through oceanic ones, was frankly wrong. Plate tectonics, the modern theory, is not Wegener’s continental drift.
In science it’s frequently true that you have to be highly skilled in the old theory in order to disprove it in favour of a new one. Consider Kepler, who had a total grasp of Ptolemaic astronomy, and was thus able to show how a heliocentric astronomy with elliptical orbits works better.
The other thing worth mentioning is this. Ocassionally a bright guy has to fight against the grain to get his ideas accepted (and they always are evenutally when there is evidence, though sometimes funding for research can be hard to find). However for every brave and true guy with a brilliant idea beyond his time, there are well over ten thousand cranks with stupid ideas that are similarly against mainstream and come to absolutely naught.
I only know about Laudan from passing references. bob koepp, can you give a specific example of “explanatory loss?” An occasion when a new theory reduces our explanatory power?
Stephen Wells – First, just to be clear, the issue is not whether there is a _net_ loss of explanatory power, but whether there is any loss at all. Any explanatory loss is sufficient to undermine the idea that “Even the most radical new idea must incorporate and extend the existing body of evidence.”
With that qualification in mind, an example that I recall Laudan mentioning is Descartes’ explanation of why the planets all move in the same direction and in the same plane as they orbit our sun in terms of the action of a vortex. Newton’s gravitational theory overturned the Cartesian theory of planetary motion, but had to wait about a hundred years for Kant and Laplace to construct an explanation of this phenomenon on Newtonian principles. In the interim, virtually all working scientists recognized that Newton’s was the better theory of celestial mechanics, despite this explanatory loss.
Much denigrated computer scientist (some of us are real scientists) lurking for several months votes this quotation as best in Pharyngula in 2008. One of the points to hammer repeatedly in debates.
Frank Fenner along with two colleagues infected themselves with myxoma virus to allay public fears about the use of the virus to control the rabbit population in Australia.
Professor Frank Fenner
If only HIV Denialists would do the same!
Part of what makes the difference in the Underdog story is the personality of the underdog. It’s often the case that someone comes along with some solid evidence that overturns the received wisdom in some field, and then takes that as a license to overturn everything in the field, including things that they have no knowledge of and are quite well supported.
I got a view of this a few weeks ago (on a minor scale) at a seminar where a geologist showed that the Black Death and several other unusual plagues coincided with periods of narrow tree rings and ice-core evidence of comet impacts, which is very interesting in itself and worthy of further investigation. But he then went on to suggest that the Black Death wasn’t an infectious disease at all, but caused by toxins brought in or created by the comet, which is absurd given that its spread from ports in Europe can be tracked. In the end it just makes the guy look like a crackpot and his real evidence ends up getting ignored.