Sky & Telescope October 1992 [antikvár]

FOCAL POINTWhy Oddball Ideas Have It Tough in ScienceAs THE AUTHOR of a weekly science column in the Boston Globe, I frequently receive oddball theories from out-of-the-mainstream amateur scientists. These range from the clever and thoughtful to the merely silly Many seek to prove Einstein wrong. Others offer variants of creationism, astrology, parapsychology, and other pseudosciences. Most are accompanied by protests against the closed-mind-edness of the scientific establishment.Even mainstream scientists sometimes claim their work is unfairly excluded from normal channels of communication. Witness, for example, the ftiror over cold fusion. But is there any basis for these complaints? Can a fresh or oddball idea receive a fair hearing in science? Or is science locked up in an iron-bound orthodoxy that admits no breach of faith?I think there is truth to the charge that science is exclusionary. Yet I also believe the conservatism of science is part of its strength. Any system of ideas that makes a claim to truth must be conservative. If every idea has equal currency in the marketplace of ideas then truth becomes a matter of whim, politics, expediency, or the tyranny of the strong.Science has evolved an elaborate system of social organization, communication, and peer review to ensure a high degree of conformity with existing orthodoxy This conservative approach to change has allowed for an orderly and exhaustive examination of fruitful ideas. It has allowed science a measure of insulation from fads, political upheavals, religious conflicts, and international strife.An oddball idea has a hard time in science, but not an impossible time. Revolutions in thinking do happen. Science may be conservative, but of all truth systems that help us organize experience, science is the most progressive.In a recent article titled "When Do Anomalies Begin?" (Science, February 7th), Alan Lightman of MIT and Owen Gingerich of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics describe the conservatism of science. They acknowledge that scientists may be reluctant to face change for the purely psychological reason that the familiar is more comfortable than the unfamiliar. But they also recognize that a conservative system of truth provides an efficient framework for assimilat-ing the multitude of observations that scientists make.Lightman and Gingerich are particularly interested in the fate of "anomalies," observations that do not fit the accepted orthodoxy. They offer examples from astronomy, geology, and biology of exceptions to a prevailing theory that were simply ignored.For example, they ask us to consider the so-called flatness problem in cosmology. The Big Bang model allows three possibilities. The universe may expand forever, with the outward motion overwhelming the inward pull of gravity an "open" universe. Or gravity may be great enough to halt and reverse the expansion a "closed" universe. But the third possibility, a "flat" universe, holds that the gravitational energy and kinetic energy are in exact balance.Current estimates place the ratio of gravitational to kinetic energy between 0.1 and 10, which means, according to the Big Bang theory, that in the eariiest moments of the universe the ratio must have been extraordinarily close to unity W^y should this be so? Nothing in the original theory makes a flat universe any more probable than an open or closed one. As early as 1969 the flatness of the universe was recognized by a few cosmologists as an anomaly that required explanation. But most others dismissed this coincidence as irrelevant or derided it as a problem for religion or philosophy, not science.Then, in 1981, physicist Alan Guth ofMIT proposed an addition to the Big Bang theory called the inflationary universe model. In his thinking the ratio of gravitational to kinetic energy in the early inflationary epoch of expansion would have been driven to unity, regardless of its initial value. Thus, the universe's anomalous flatness became a necessary consequence of the model. Suddenly cosmologists began to take the flatness problem seriously.Usually, say Lightman and Gingerich, such anomalies are recognized only in retrospect. Only when a new theory gives a compelling explanation of previously unexplained facts does it become "safe" to recognize anomalies for what they are. In the meantime, scientists often simply ignore what doesn't fit."Exactly!" say the creationists, astrologers, parapsychologists, and assorted proponents of new theories of the universe. "Scientists ignore what doesn't fit." "Scientists work with blinders on their eyes." "Science is an orthodoxy more rigid than the most conformist religion."Well, yes and no. Science is conservative, as it must be to provide a stable framework for understanding the world. But science is also radically open to marginal change and marginally open to radical change, as it must be if progress is to be made at all.Progress toward truth is the central goal of science. I know of no scientist who does not admit that our present understanding of the worid is tentative and incomplete. Even cherished ideas have been overthrown when the pressure for change became irresistible.Pseudoscientists concentrate on anomalies and ignore the vast system of interlocking ideas that is orthodox science. Scientists focus on the orthodoxy and generally ignore the exceptions. Neither attitude is ideal, but the latter approach is certainly more fruitful.