Trials and errors: Why science is failing us

This assumption — that understanding a system’s constituent parts means we also understand the causes within the system — is not limited to the pharmaceutical industry or even to biology. It defines modern science. In general, we believe that the so-called problem of causation can be cured by more information. Scientists refer to this process as reductionism. By breaking down a process, we can see how everything fits together; the complex mystery is distilled into a list of ingredients.

There’s quite a bit that bothers me about this article. There are elements of truth to some of the critique, but the extrapolation doesn’t work. There’s no denying that reductionism is present and prevalent in science, but science is also pragmatic. You use the approach that works, up to the point that it doesn’t work. Scientists are aware of nonlinear phenomena, of chaos, of complexity in systems with multiple variables and also that correlation and causation aren’t the same thing — you may still have to look for an underlying cause.

The example of the red and blue ball film seems to me to be an example of people applying basic model — we expect things to be causal. We notice deviations from natural motion in animations, and it bother us a bit. We interpret data in the context of the science we know. The discovery here is that the animations are not reflecting reality. You recognize that (or not) and proceed. So it seems to me that this was more of a psychological/cognition test than a critique of science.

Another issue is using medical research as a proxy for all of science; there’s a lot of medical advice that seems to be based on conventional wisdom — a physician finds something that works, and that becomes a treatment, but while there’s plenty of science in medicine, it is not the best example of science in action.

The study concluded that, in most cases, “the discovery of a bulge or protrusion on an MRI scan in a patient with low back pain may frequently be coincidental”.

This is not the way things are supposed to work. We assume that more information will make it easier to find the cause, that seeing the soft tissue of the back will reveal the source of the pain, or at least some useful correlations.

My strong objection here is that this is exactly the way science is supposed to work. You have some data and you formulate a hypothesis and you check it. You have more information, but that new information is finding out that you were wrong. This doesn’t invalidate the method — it vindicates it!

The real story here is that complex science is hard to do. Research is full of false leads and blind alleys (and metaphors for such things) and subtle interactions. There are limitations in looking for correlations, but we are limited to piecing together what we are able to observe in finding out the underlying rules of nature. That’s science. As we learn more, it’s getting harder to push the boundaries. But if it’s failing us, what’s the alternative?