Complex Numbers

Dueling Scientists

Today's article was published in the Before Times, but its theme is very relevant today.

https://theconversation.com/when-science-gets-ugly-the-story-of-philipp-lenard-a...

When science gets ugly – the story of Philipp Lenard and Albert Einstein

Never heard of Philipp Lenard? Neither had I until I read this article. His relative (pun intended) obscurity undermines the point that I think the article is trying to make. Let's take a look, shall we?

Scientists are not always as scientific as many suppose.

Well, duh. Scientists are humans. I know shows like to portray them as some sort of wizards, the Gandalfs of technology, but they're all people and thus subject to all of the biases, contradictions, prejudices, and just plain wrongness that plague the rest of us.

Recent well-publicized cases of scientific fraud prove that scientists can be as susceptible to the allures of wealth, power and fame as politicians...

Interesting comparison there. In science, theories that turn out to not fit observations are eventually discarded into the trash heap. In politics, well, for example, here in the US we have two houses of Congress and three branches of government, lots of different people thinking about stuff, so that eventually bad politics also gets discarded. Usually. Eventually.

Such breaches prove that scientists do not always base their work strictly on rigorous experimentation, data collection and analysis, and hypothesis testing.

"Prove" is kind of a dirty word here. I might have picked "demonstrate." That is, like I said, scientists are humans and thus fallible. However, that we know about these instances of bad science shows that science, as a process, is working as intended -- to smooth out the bumps in the road caused by individual bias and error.

In fact, scientists frequently disagree with one another, both as individuals and as representatives of competing schools of thought.

Feature. Not a bug.

The article goes on to provide a brief bio of both Lenard and Einstein. Lenard was "a German experimental physicist," while Einstein was "a Swiss theoretical physicist."

It's no secret that experimental and theoretical physicists are often at odds. They need each other, and collaborations have happened, but my impression is that, historically, members of each group consider the other somehow inferior. But, again, this is the intersection of humanity and science; eventually, the experimenters will either find results consistent with the theories, or they won't, in which case the theory has to be abandoned or modified.

Again, this is how science is supposed to work. It's not like scientists are supposed to be all one happy family, always agreeing with each other.

Lenard, meanwhile, was soon swept along in a wave of German nationalism that accompanied World War I. He became increasingly convinced of the existence of a distinctively German physics that needed to be defended against the plagiarized or frankly fabricated work emanating from other countries. Lenard also became more and more mired in anti-Semitism, accusing the “Jewish press” of, among other things, promoting Einstein’s dangerous work on relativity.

Ideally, science is universal. But scientists aren't always.

Lenard’s attacks on Einstein became increasingly vitriolic. He compared theoretical physicists to Cubist painters, who in his view were “unable to paint decently.” He lamented the fact that a “Jewish spirit” had come to rule over physics.

From everything I've heard, Einstein wasn't even a practicing Jew. So it wasn't even about religion; this was about ancestry.

Lenard’s conviction that science, “like everything else man produces,” was somehow grounded in bloodlines led him to become one of the early adherents of National Socialism.

And just to get this out of the way: Nazis were "socialists" the way North Korea is a "democratic republic." I can call myself a unicorn, but that doesn't make me a unicorn.

The story of Philipp Lenard reminds us that even scientists of the very highest caliber sometimes think, speak and act in utterly unscientific ways, swayed by prejudices that have no scientific basis.

And yet, as I said above, Einstein is a household word these days, while Philipp Lenard has been all but forgotten. Einstein's theories have been supported by evidence time and time again, from measurements of the precession of Mercury's orbit to the experiments in gravity wave detection. This is how it's supposed to work and, in general, it does.

And so science progresses. It's wrong to revere Einstein the man; I'm certain that he had his flaws just like everyone else. But again, his science has held up -- even though there seems to be growing evidence that they're going to have to tweak the equations to account for what they're calling dark matter and dark energy.

The problem comes in when people hear a pronouncement by someone with a degree or certification, take it as fact, and then ignore anything that contradicts it. So it's the last sentence of the article that concerns me:

They are human beings too, and members of the general public need to be careful to distinguish between a scientist whose arguments are based in evidence and one whose pronouncements stem from other, less reliable sources of conviction.

That's not always easy to do. Evidence, especially at the highest theoretical levels, isn't really accessible to "members of the general public." I mean, it is accessible, but not always comprehensible. But I know this much: if a so-called scientist, or doctor, or whatever, starts spouting off about demon sperm and lizard aliens, I think she can, and should, be summarily ignored -- at least until we have some hard evidence of lizard aliens.