Cynicism and credulity

We live in irrational times. Astrology and crystal healing have never been stronger. Political argument is gradually eroding, to be replaced by mudslinging and the repetition of half-baked opinion. Recently a sweet-looking old lady sitting next to me in an aircraft told me how glad she was that the experimental medication she was taking hadn’t been tested on animals. I didn’t point out that if this was true, she had just been made the experimental animal herself (it didn’t seem perfectly British and polite). Isn’t it a relief to be a scientist, last bastion of truth in a world that has willingly decided it’s cool to be gullible? Recently, though, things have conspired to make me wonder if we’re as questioning as we ought to be. Several (maybe even most) fields centre around work that contains obvious errors, but nobody seems to mind because the answers agree with their preconceptions. A brief ask-around in the coffee room reveals that this is nearly universal. Everyone’s field depends on inhibitors that aren’t specific, or only inhibit a fraction of what they should, assays that will only work under artificial, distorted conditions, or whatever. The literature, too, is full of howlers. I spotted a particularly good one recently — a much-cited result in which two completely unrelated protein sequences were aligned and said to be homologous (it’s amazing what you can do with a sprinkling of gaps and judicious use of bold text). I’m sure you have your own examples. It’s not surprising that this type of error exists or gets published. We’re all mortal, and nearly everyone is prepared to tweak their work a bit, if only to show the world how cool it is. The thing that really surprises me is how many bits of dogma are known to be wrong but are still trotted out because they point in the right direction. It’s as if science has a split personality. Referees will brutally criticise a conclusion that is probably correct but not proven beyond doubt, while arguments that they know to be wrong are untouched because everyone in the field accepts them. The most rigorous critics of other people’s work believe some astonishingly dumb things themselves, and never seem to notice the inconsistency.