Professional scientists, "lay people," and the truth by River X. Suh

I recently heard an unusual, horrified outburst: "You'd let lay people administer a scientific experiment?" Scientists have the right to be proud, but not to be too proud to fail. It got me thinking about ivory towers and the supposedly-unassailable authority that media often assigns to science. PhDs and MDs are a smart group of people. They peer into incredibly complicated mechanisms, try to explain the nearly invisible, and hunt down vital defenses against devastating illnesses. Science is increasingly specialized now, and scientists certainly deserve to be respected for their intelligence, dedication, and insight. Scientists, however, are not infallible--a large and necessary part of scientific progress is failure. Otherwise, many important discoveries might not be made. A failure in science is just as valuable as a successful end product (though some frustrated researchers might disagree).

It doesn't matter who makes the discovery if the method is sound and the results can be reproduced countless times by peer review. The same applies to the concept of professional scientists versus amateurs: science is agnostic, and a result is a result no matter who discovers. It only matters how. Gregor Mendel was educated (and incredibly patient), but he lived in a time where there was no professional "accreditation" for scientists. He was just a curious friar who wanted to figure things out. The teenagers who win the annual Siemens Foundation Competition--including seventeen year-old Angela Zhang's cancer stem cell-destroying nanoparticle, or Joshua Kubiak's molecular scaffold that could make mounting chemicals used in medicine more efficient--do not have PhDs, though they were mentored by PhDs. Certainly, it's more likely for someone trained in precise lab techniques and unbiased research design, to produce a remarkable discovery or result (or failure). A bright high school student can still strive to do the same.

Science is always striving towards the truth, but we'll never know if we've reached it. Yes, science assumes there is an absolute truth we strive towards with each experiment. Each rigorous, unbiased (or as unbiased as possible), empirical result gets us a little closer to that truth. If we're wrong, we revise all our operating principles, and it's perfectly fine to change our minds because the empirical evidence has shown otherwise. Science has authority not because there are cartoon characters in lab coats titrating green, bubbling fluid between Erlenmeyer flasks, and not <i>merely</i> because the discoverer has a PhD.

When the media overemphasizes the authority of science in a discovery, it creates assumptions that anti-science groups rely upon to try to discredit the importance of science (and scientific results) in education and debate. That's what I find dangerous about media reports that emphasize that scientists were the ones who made the discovery, and science makes the finding (often misinterpreted) super-true. When this authority is misused to debunk the very discipline itself--for example, when people point out that science shouldn't be trusted because they get things wrong--it's because science has been misused by the media to mean truth and authority, when in fact science is often wrong, and sometimes needs to be wrong. (I'd rather not link to these kinds of sites and give them more traffic, but I am referring to, though not exclusively, the kinds of creationist arguments used against teaching evolution in schools.)

By privileging science as an amorphous, unassailable authority, media creates a mystery around the discipline that discourages people from entering or trying it. Anyone can do science, and that's what's amazing about peer review, because everyone learns together (ideally, instead of sabotaging a competing lab or making up your own data). Creating this kind of mystery is incredibly intimidating for curious thinkers who do not have scientific backgrounds to encourage them to pursue their passions. And sadly, when science is criticized for being "fallible" and less than absolute, these thinkers will be even more discouraged to ask the questions that science could have tried to answer.

Science isn't perfect, and that's because we recognize our own fallibility. Because we're human, egos get in the way, stubbornness about a beloved hypothesis can lead to interdepartmental fights or tenure denial, and that's why science strives to isolate human bias from experiments, and to compensate for our failings.

A result is a result. The degree of truth it contains can really only be measured by rigorous peer review using empirically obtained evidence.