I love Jon Stewart’s work on The Daily Show, which manages to be consistently fresh and intelligent. Their segment on the Large Hadron Collider was sheer brilliance, and I’ve often said that between Stewart and Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central is the best place to go to hear insights from real working scientists on TV these days.
Which is why it was so crushing to listen to this interview he did with Marilynne Robinson, a leader among the movement to reconcile science and religion. I didn’t agree with much of what Robinson said, but then again I didn’t really expect to. Nor did I expect Stewart to challenge her in any way; a “why just can’t we all get along” perspective is very consistent with his way of thinking. But I admit I was hoping he would not misrepresent modern science as thoroughly and lazily as he managed to do here. (It’s a 2010 interview, brought to my attention by Scott Derrickson’s Twitter feed; apologies if these complaints were hashed out elsewhere two years ago.)
| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Marilynne Robinson | ||||
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If you skip ahead to 2:50, here’s what Stewart has to say:
I’ve always been fascinated that, the more you delve into science, the more it appears to rely on faith. You know, when they start to speak about the universe they say, well, actually, most of the universe is antimatter. Oh, really, where’s that? Well, you can’t see it. [Robinson: “Yes, exactly.”] Well, where is it? It’s there. Can you measure it? We’re working on it. And it’s a very similar argument to someone who would say God created everything. Well where is he? He’s there. And I’m always struck by the similarity of the arguments at their core.
Obviously he means something like “dark matter,” not “antimatter,” but that’s a minor mixup of jargon. Much worse is that he clearly has absolutely no idea why we believe in dark matter — what the actual evidence for it is in real data. He betrays no understanding that we know how much dark matter there is, have ongoing strategies for detecting it, and spend a lot of time coming up with alternatives and testing them against the data. What kind of misguided “faith” would lead people to believe in dark matter, of all things? (The underlying problem with appeals to faith is that they cannot explain why we should have faith in one set of beliefs rather than some other set … but that’s an argument for a different day.)
In reality, the more you delve into science, the less it appears to rely on faith. When it comes to modern biology there are large parts I accept because of the testimony of experts; but when it comes to physics I actually understand the evidence behind it. There are certainly some good philosophical issues about what assumptions science must make to get off the ground: does it presume naturalism, can it address miracles, does it admit nomological facts, are there a priori truths about the physical world, can it deal with unobservable things? But Stewart isn’t engaging any of these issues; he’s just taking lazy swipes at parts of science he doesn’t understand, which he therefore feels justified in equating with faith. If believers in God spent a tiny fraction of the time that modern cosmologists spend trying to invent alternatives to their favorite ideas and testing them against evidence … well let’s just say the world would be a very different place.
For which I blame us, at least as much as I blame him. Stewart is obviously a smart guy who likes science and is interested in it, and frequently has scientists on his show. And yet, we have clearly completely failed to communicate the reasons why we scientists believe in apparently spooky-sounding things like dark matter.
“Science communication” is a many-faceted thing, and all of its facets are important. We need to do better getting K-12 students excited by science and grounded in the basics. We need to do better educating college students about how the world works, since they’re going to be running it soon. We need to do better in helping policymakers understand the science behind their decisions. We need to do better at encouraging and enabling a lifelong interest in science among the general public. And we clearly need to do a much better job at clearly conveying the foundations of our practice to interested non-specialists. There’s a strong temptation to emphasize the weird and bizarre things that we discover, because after all the natural world is full of surprises. But if we don’t at the same time do a good job at explaining why we believe the bizarre things, it will come back and bite us eventually.
i do know that jon stewart attempted to major in chemistry before he switched over to psychology.
He has a point in that the closer you edge to the front of research, the less evidence you have. I wouldn’t say that scientists who work at the frontier of the known rely on faith, but they rely on other motivations that are not science-based. Some might have religious reasons, others call upon things like elegance and beauty. Dark matter is arguably not a good example because we do have a lot of evidence for that. But many people put forward hypotheses that are supposed to be tested in the future, and before the test is done, what is it that they are based on?
Isaac Asimov wrote a great letter on what science is: http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
“For which I blame us, at least as much as I blame him.”
I think this is the most important sentence in this blog post. Many of the comments above are quite insightful and raise many pertinent issues about how science is misinterpreted by laypeople. But, as scientists, it’s up to use to communicate our principles better.
@TychaBrahe: “And perhaps then we need to teach that in school as part of the science curriculum. What you have here is Gerber’s. The meat is very far out of reach, but you can get there. And if you aren’t willing to devote your life to getting there, then you do need to take on faith the pronouncements of those who have done so.”
Oh my. This is, plain and simple, how one would define a priest chaste: “True understanding is very far out of reach, but you can get there. And if you aren’t willing to devote your life to getting there, then you do need to take on faith the pronouncements of those who have done so.”
The crux of the problem appears to be that a fairly large portion of scientists are – at heart – positivists, meaning that they think science makes assertions about what is true. (Even if most of them do publicly tell that they are Popper’s followers, meaning they believe science makes assertions about what is false, a very different kettle of fish).
When – inevitably – some of the previous “truths” is falsified, that turns out not to be good science PR.
A number of people claiming to speak in name of science also goes around making statements about the very small probability of something happening. (This is, by the way, bad methodology: a book called “The Black Swan” explains why.)
When that something happens, (say, Fukushima blows up, the Challenger disintegrates) that also turns out not to be good science PR.
Scientific eschatology can also be called to task as not being a source for good PR, seeing as, these days, it touts as sound a version of the anthropic principle depending on the existence of 10^500 universes created by the vagaries of an inflaton field whose existence is “theoretically testable”.
Last, but not least, the attitude of many subscribers to the so called “new atheism” movement (aggressively ridiculing anybody not adhering to their point of view), isn’t helping any.
Ideas for better PR, anyone?
Cheers,
alf
Not even relying on the testimony of experts requires faith, so long as one understands how science works. The trust is in the process, not the person. And it is *trust* rather than faith; science has useful applications and there is ample evidence that it works.
46. amphiox
That.
And please, leave alone comedian Jon, mocking hundreds of `scientists` telling us everyday on Discovery ‘Science’ channel tons of fairytales about wormholes, interstellar human expansion, dinosaurs ruling universe etc. This is not the comedians fault, dont shoot him, he’s only the piano player.
That is terrifying (to see Jon Stewart say those things). Somebody famous should contact him or otherwise confront him about it. If Jon Stewart thinks science is like religion, what hope do we have for resisting the right’s onslaught…
All he is saying is that scientists are so bad at explaining their findings to non-scientists that when they do they often sound very similar to theists explaining how they know that God exists. Something like, “Believe me, I used science.”
He has a point. Scientists are bad at explaining the connections between results and conclusions to anyone but experts in their own field. It’s all they are expected to do.
Jon Stewart is right about dark matter, it doesn’t exist and yet it put up by many as dogma, despite a complete lack of evidence.
@60 Quarkgluonsoup
I suggest you read
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/02/26/dark-matter-just-fine-thanks/
@61 Chris,
I have, and the author makes the same mistake that he does here: confuses an observation (more gravity appears to exist in the universe than should) with evidence of something unrelated (a theory that, if true, could explain this)
Sean, the solution is simple: write a book to get invited into Jon’s show and then you can speak your mind.
Perhaps it’s just semantic pedantry to some, but I tend to think there’s a big distinction between religious faith and concepts like “trust” or “confidence”. The latter two need never be absolute, in my mind (i.e. “trust, but verify”). Conflating confidence in experts’ ability to achieve accuracy through honest investigation with “faith” sets up a gigantic straw man. I tend to think it’s a willful misrepresentation trotted out by the more sophisticated ideologues, and I’m pretty sick of it.
Low Math,
Look no further than the authors belief in dark matter for faith without evidence.
Scientists water down science which is the reason laid back folks don’t understand it. They don’t understand the basic principles of science let alone its intricate implications. Scientists water down science so much that anybody on the street can imagine an alternative theory of anything and claim to be the new Einstein. This borderlines faith where you are not expected to test, but just to imagine and believe wholeheartedly. Science also uses confusing terms. If you meet someone for the first time chances are you will catch just the first name. So if you are introduced to two different notions in the same context, dark energy and dark matter, a regular person on the street would remember the dark, because neither matter nor energy are regular in his vocabulary. Therefore both notions will melt into one.
Don’t forget how long it takes a trained scientist to understand the underlying principles and what ideas can be challenged in science. So don’t be upset when regular folks fail at times. After all, they don’t receive the same day-in and day-out drilling as scientists do.
I think that instead of being frustrated, scientists should continue to communicate to the wider audience what science is-both in general and in particular term. The more the audience is bombarded with a message, the more clear the message will get, and the more audience will be intellectually involved with it….
Don’t forget that your frustrating comes because you are living in the back-end realm of science. There is more to science than its fundamentals(set-up=back-end). The applications that folks use and are familiar with are the front-end of science, and as long as scientists succeed in relating the intricate back-end to the familiar front-end, folks would relate and appreciate what science does and is. There is a disconnect between the ‘real’ world as we experience it and the ‘abstract’ world which allowed us to experience/develop the ‘real’ world as we did/do.
The questions of faith involve exclusively the fundamentals of science-has anybody questioned their i-PAD yet? Just as per faith one believes in a given deity, one per faith believes in the fundamental laws of physics.
The difference between the two is that the laws of religious faith are not challenged because they are deemed self-evident truths (just like your human rights), but the fundamental laws of physics are unknown and their working forms are allowed to change. The working forms of the fundamental laws of science are assumed to evolve towards one true ultimate fundamental law of science. This fact is a form of faith because it is predicated on a self-evident truth that the terms used to formulate this fundamental law are self-evident.
I believe that religion and science are inconclusive in their fundamental formulation. There will never be a winner at that level. It will always require some form of faith in accepting the correct interpretation of the fundamental laws.
The large scale different between the two is in their front-end. Science is evolving and progressing, irrespective of changes in its working laws. On the other hand, religion, lives in the past. Religion looks at a bunch of books and interprets them but makes no progress. They send the same message over and over, and sadly it does not sink in. There is no peace on half the planet. Science does make progress, people in general are content with the new tools in their hands. It is a completely different question of what the price of this progress is-if all tools from the last 100 years are removed, people will not know how to survive in the world, they would have lost the fundamental survival skills which have been replaced by conveniences through gadgets.
There was a nice line in the early 1900s when faith in science improved the survival among humans, but with the on-look of a nuclear war, this seems like a short-lived improvement over the imminent wipe-out of the human race(may take a few thousand years).
byby,
You have a very limited definition of “religion” that represents no actual religion. Your claim about science is teleological, not historical. Science (like all human endeavors) has a history of stagnation and retrogression (eugenics for example).
#62 Quarkgluonsoup:
Clearly you didn’t read the article, because you didn’t mention this:
Even with MOND, you still need dark matter.
#68 Beer,
MOND is just as fictional as Dark Matter. Neither exist, and both are modern-day versions of epicycles.
I also remember Jon Stewart having Lisa Randall on the program to discuss her latest book. She clearly wanted to discuss exciting stuff about the LHC and dark matter, and beautiful theoretical ideas surrounding supersymmetry, extra dimensions, etc. But I remember Jon really didn’t give her the chance to discuss any of this whatsoever. He just wanted some generic discussion about global warming, or something, and I had no clue why he was only discussing this with her. But I think I have a better sense now. Jon Stewart, like many people, just have no clue about modern physics. Which is okay. But instead of him saying “that is tough stuff that I would have to work hard to properly grasp”, he takes the lazy-man approach “it must be speculative garbage, since I can’t immediately understand it”. Very disappointing.
Quarkgluonsoup:
Dark matter don’t exist? That’s nonsense, but I understand you will not accept that it exist, no matter what you read. You find evidence in the microwave background radiation, the way galaxies rotate, gravitational lensing, and more.
I your earlier post, you said:”All science can do is produce a mental model of reality, not tell us how reality actually works”
Well that settles it then? We can clearly give up putting satelites in orbit around the earth or other planets, since “science do not tell us how reality actually works”..
#70 Bob,
And most who know the specifics of physics theories don’t know that science is not metaphysics and much of reality can’t be described with science. They also think that the fact that their theories are the most internally coherent explanation of observation, that this is by design (they are typically, as with Big Bang cosmology, designed to fit observation) and as such the theories are almost certainly not true.
#71 Beer,
It is nonsense? You sure? What we know is that the universe seems to behave as if there is a lot more gravity than there should be. That is all we know. No one knows what the cause is. Dark Matter is a common explanation, but not a shred of evidence exists that Dark Matter actually exists or is the cause of this.
All of those observations you mention (such as lensing) are observations that validate the claim that there appears to be more gravity in the universe than there should be, not observations that validate Dark Matter.
And science doesn’t tell us how reality works, but provides possible explanations for how parts of it (the material natural world) might work. That you think otherwise is logical positivism and nothing more.
@BOB (#70),
I agree that most in the media are “lazy” in the way you describe, but one who is most definitely not is Rachel Maddow. Her coverage of Fukushima, for example, was phenomenal–she actually took the time to learn and to ask the right questions of the scientists she had on her show. It strikes me that it may be more worthwhile to praise those who do things right than complain about those who don’t.
@QGS (et al.),
First: yes, it is possible that many of our theories could be wrong–or better, incomplete–but one of the ways science works in the real world is to (provisionally) support the best extant theory as we continue to “trust, but verify”. On the other hand, you seem to be advocating for the position that “There may exist (though I have no evidence for it) some other thing that could correspond better to reality, therefore the current best idea is not worth holding.” I don’t see such radical skepticism as particularly more virtuous (or more likely to arrive at a useful picture of the universe) than the position you are opposing.
Second, Dark Matter has come across as some sort of mystical notion in popular culture, but it really is just particular classes of particles that (for the most part) we haven’t directly detected yet. Particle physicists detect other new particles all the time (I think there was one just last week, in fact…), so it is eminently reasonable (almost required, I would say) to think that there are a few more out there waiting for us.
For that matter, we *have* detected “dark matter”, i.e. non-baryonic particles with nonzero mass: we know that (at least two types of) neutrinos have mass, and we can determine what fraction of the overall mass budget of the universe neutrinos comprise. We have rigorously detected them in certain settings even if we haven’t seen them directly in astronomical situations (which is where the dark matter that everyone is looking for lives). But we know they are out there with roughly the same level of confidence that we know electrons are there.
So I have to ask: since we have positively ID’ed some fraction of dark matter, why are you so hung up on the rest of it?
Sean Carroll Doesn’t Understand How Science Works Even a Little Bit.
On the Colbert Nation show in 2010 Sean says “If science had all the answers we would stop”.
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/267142/march-10-2010/sean-carroll
Just shows you how ignorant Sean is of science, we will never know ALL the answers. No wonder he was denied tenure at the University of Chicago.
Then he states in a alternate universe the Colbert Nation show might be on more often, this guy just has no clue whatsoever with anything to do with the scientific method.
The above is as fair to Sean as he was to Jon.