Tag: scientific method

Injecting Rationality Into Our Discourse

Posted on by japineda

The covid-19 pandemic has brought to light many deficiencies in our democracy, institutions, leaders, and ourselves. The exposure of such fissures in what make up the fundamental pillars of our lives has been crushing and humbling. It has left our minds aimless and searching for answers.  One of the foundational cornerstones exposed as more virtual than actual is our dependence on science and medicine. With no means to combat the coronavirus, no vaccine to inoculate us from its destructive actions, no medicines to withstand the multiple assaults on our body, we have lost confidence. Compounding that is a U.S. leader who rejects or confuses faith in science with faith in magical thinking. To lessen the risk, he advocates using drugs with no efficacy and considered highly dangerous.  His lodestar is not science but misplaced hope in superstition and instinct. But gut feelings untested by rational thinking are worse than ineffective, they can be deadly.

What this lack of trust in education and in the scientific method teaches our children undermines the very basis of contemporary living. How are we to fight these changes to our body politic, the environment, and psychological well-being? There are many answers, but for now I concentrate on what academia can do. As part of that community, I would like to know where the wisdom experts are when we need them the most? Where are the clinicians, investigators, educators, schoolteachers who can make the case for why we need to look to science? Where are the cognitive scientists, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers to steer us through these bleak and uncertain times? The world needs them now more than ever.

My call is for them to leave their ivory towers, commune with common folk, and share their insights. It is time to banish the fiction that science cannot mingle with politics. Science, intellectual thinking, and analytic reasoning must undergird policy. Policy should be receptive to alternative ways of discerning, including faith-based approaches. But science has won the right to take a principal role and help us assimilate what we learn. We must encourage citizen-scientists to present the argument to the public, not just to colleagues and not just in specialized periodicals. Further, we cannot support leaders who disdainfully minimize the hard-won fight over illiteracy and magical thinking without a response to reconfirm what we know. We are better off because we pay attention to, assess, and then conclude rather than acting only from instinct.

This response to the anxiety and ambiguity of the moment can only take place one way. When academics shed their cloak of protection from reality and immerse in the free exchange of information using all channels of communication. There is a striking ignorance of what science is and the benefits it provides. We encounter such ignorance in schools, and more so in the dark corners of the internet. It is time to flash the light of awareness and intelligence into this darkness. Everyone trained in science must step up before it’s too late. It is an invitation to arms. The world needs saving and a massive influx of rationality into our discourse would go a long way towards doing that.

In Defense of Science: A Middle Way

Posted on by japineda

Science is under increasing assault by President Trump and his administration. In his most recent decisions to take the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic for covid-19 and not to wear a mask in enclosed spaces, the President is refuting his own CDC recommendations. This is a pattern of anti-science, anti-medicine, and anti-intellectualism that has characterized this administration from the start. It is a reckless and dangerous stance, and something every scientist and health provider should oppose.


I trained as a scientist. And got a first-hand appreciation for the potential of this discipline to cut through the thicket of opinions, assumptions, hopes, and magical thinking to bring us closer to the truth.  I am convinced that science and the scientific method are humanity’s most sophisticated and impactful responses to the world of uncertainty in which we live. Science serves as an efficient way to resolve many of the questions our minds generate.

It works by verifying informed guesses against evidence and using the results as feedback to improve the guesswork. This scientific method involves systematic observation, experimentation, inductive and deductive reasoning, hypothesis testing, theory construction, reductionist and integrative approaches. These are all intellectual achievements of the highest order. They are the jewels of the human intellect, the right and indispensable tools to penetrate the thicket of the unknown.

Using such means, scientists have cured devastating diseases. Their investigations have increased human longevity. They have advanced farming to feed a growing race. And they have raised the standard of living for practically everyone in the planet. These are a few of the many triumphs brought about by science and its methodical approach. Such successes have provided it with an imprimatur of integrity and established an implied understanding that this is a trustworthy discipline.

If asked, most thoughtful people would agree that science, as a process for approaching truth, should be required teaching to our children. It is worth giving it the consideration it has earned. And it deserves defending as critical for the health and well-being of the world at large.

As a neuroscientist, I also realize there are diverse forms of obtaining knowledge, including faith-based methods, intuition, and other ways that complement the objective, scientific approach. Scientists must be modest enough to recognize the limits of the intellectual approach.  For one, science cannot deal with ultimate questions; It does not make moral or aesthetic judgments; It is not self-directed since it doesn’t tell us how to best use scientific knowledge; And it doesn’t draw inferences concerning paranormal explanations. When scientists dismiss these domains, and even worse belittle them, they place science at variance with other ways of acquiring knowledge.

Interestingly, our brains use these contrasting styles of thinking, of intelligence, and original ways of knowing. Linear and nonlinear, intellectual and intuitive approaches integrate seamlessly in our mind according to the needs and demands confronted. It’s a lesson that should instruct us when assessing whether to accept science over faith-based evidence or vice versa.  President Trump and his allies promote the use of faith-based, magical thinking, and intuition as the primary basis for decision making. They oppose science and intellectual thinking and by doing so create a conflict that isn’t real. The key is to know when, where and under what circumstances to apply such contrasting modes of thinking. That is the sign of a wiser mind.