Astro2 had a talk today on the subject "Science, on a collision course with reality". The talk had two halves. The first half was directly related to the title and was given by Catherine Ansbro of Space Exploration Ltd., the second half was technically a "surprise" and was given by Dr. Massimo Teodorani, a scientist from Italy who gave a very interesting talk on his work in SETI (in particular OSETI and SETV). There was a loose link between the two halves of the talk in that during the first half some of the difficulties faced by scientists working at the edges of the accepted boundaries of science were discussed and Dr. Teodorani could be considered to be one of the scientists working at that ‘bleeding edge’. I will discuss the second half of the talk at the end of my article but I want to concentrate mainly on the issues raised in the first half of the talk because that is what really got me thinking about what science really is, what the issues are facing science and why science is special.

Firstly I should point out that the main speaker should consider herself to have been successful in one of the stated aims of her talk, to make people stop and think. The very existence of this article is evidence that at least one person stopped and thought after going to the talk!

The central point of Ms Ansbro’s talk was that science needs to be taken down off it’s pedestal. I strongly disagree with this despite the fact that I agree with her about all the problems she pointed out in our implementation of science today. I agree that our attempt at carrying out science is not perfect but that is no reason to lessen the ideal of science. We should leave science on it’s pedestal, not because it is perfect but because all scientists should be constantly stretching up to try achieve the perfection that is the concept of science.

What is the scientific ideal?

What is it we should all be striving for? The discovery of the objective truths about our universe. To achieve that we must be free from prejudices, pre-conceptions and pride. This is where the practice of science today fails. We do not always want to know the real truth! True science is noble and altruistic and each and every scientist should be striving to help bring us closer to the truth about our universe, regardless of what that truth is.

So why are we falling short of the ideal?

This is exceptionally simple to answer, we are human! Whether we know it or not we all have our biases on how we think the universe should work and when science starts to look like it’s heading in the opposite direction we inevitably fight against that. Adults are generally not naturally objective. I believe that children may well start out being objective but I think that by the time we reach adulthood that objectivity is gone because we all pick up baggage on our journey to adulthood. An example from my personal experience is that as a young teenager I felt that everything in nature should form a cycle so I adopted the pulsating universe model (big bang – big crush, big bang – big crush ……….) and clung to it. As the evidence began to mount against that model I just refused to believe it and ignored the evidence. Eventually I realised that you cannot be a scientist if you stick your head in the sand every time the Universe gives you information you don’t like. That is a prejudice I know I have and that I have put aside, thing is, I probably have many more I’m not aware of and so does every scientist!

Another human shortcoming that really detracts from science is greed. Greed often manifests itself in special interest groups who have an agenda to push for the personal gain of their members. These interest groups turn to science, not to find out the truth but to seek legitimacy for what they want to be the truth. This is exceptionally dangerous and results in really bad science and real harm to society as a whole. A wonderful example of the threat posed by special interest groups is the Tobacco lobby who suppressed the truth about the dangers of Tobacco for decades and in so doing killed millions of people for their own gain. Currently I believe the oil companies are doing similar with regard to the vitally important question of climate change.

Science is slow to react and reluctant to change

I’m in two minds as to whether or not this is a strength or a weakness. On the one hand this reluctance to accept change ensures that science remains on a very solid footing because it means new ideas need to be really well thought out with lots and lots of evidence before they become accepted, on the other hand, this reluctance to change also has many negative effects as it can stifle the work of free thinkers and many good ideas get stone-walled out of existence. It could be argued that truly great ideas, no matter how bizarre, do make it into science because good ideas just never die. That may be so but the life of a scientist ‘on the edge’ is not a pleasant one! Again, I think balance is needed and I don’t think we getting that balance at the momnt. There are just too many people with vested interests in the status quo, too many egos and big business is directing research too much to the point that it has become very difficult to do "blue skies" work at all.

Strangulation by Purse Strings

Pure science, i.e. science for the sake of knowing, is not really acceptable in the modern academic environment. If you can’t promise any concrete deliverables no one wants to know you when you come looking for support or funding. If you don’t believe me try to get funding for research that has no marketable deliverable. The people with the purse strings are increasingly being controlled by big business and other vested interest groups because that’s where the money for research is coming from more and more. I am not saying for one moment that there should not be targeted research. The vast sums of money being pumped into the explicit target of curing cancer are most certainly not a bad thing! However, great leaps forward don’t tend to come from work directly targeted at tangible deliverables. Truly great leaps tend to come from pure science, from people seeing something that we don’t understand and trying to understand it. Funding ONLY this kind of science would be insane but NOT funding this kind of research is equally insane and exceptionally short sighted. Thankfully the value of pure science is beginning to dawn on people and companies like Google are starting to really value so called "blue skies" projects. Hopefully more companies and governments will start to see the intrinsic value of science for the sake of understanding as well as science for the sake of the bank balance and science for the sake of solving specific problems.

What Makes Science Special?

The point at which myself and Ms Ansbro really parted ways was when Ms Ansbro claimed that scientific knowledge is no different to other kinds of knowledge like intuition, spiritual knowledge and knowledge from a perceived ‘sixth sense’. Although these other kinds of knowledge can feed into science in very important ways they are fundamentally different to scientific knowledge. All these other forms of knowledge are SUBJECTIVE, science is OBJECTIVE. One’s spirituality is deeply personal and although it can be vital in helping us understand our personal view of the universe it does not tell us about the objective universe that we all share with each other.

What makes science different is that scientific knowledge can be verified and tested by anyone. If you are not convinced of Galileo’s laws regarding pendulums you can hang up a pendulum and re-do his experiments to see for yourself. It is this repeatability and verifiability that makes scientific knowledge special. You don’t have to take anyone’s word for anything, it can all be independently verified, if it can’t then it isn’t science!

However, science without other forms of knowing like intuition or spirituality would not get very far. It would be mechanical and boring and would lack the spark to drive it on. Afterall, what is science without inspiration!? However, that does not mean that scientific knowledge is the same as these other forms of knowledge. Each scientific experiment we do tells us something real and objective about the universe, that makes it special.

SETI and SETV

I will now move on to the second half of the talk presented by Dr. Massimo Teodorani. I found this absolutely fascinating. Dr. Teodorani explained the way mainstream SETI operates and then pointed out a distinct weakness in the way it operates, it is ONLY looking for stationary transmissions and not moving transmissions. Dr. Teodorani believes that it is realistic to assume that alien technology could be very advanced and as such could have mastered inter-stellar travel, hence there could be alien technology in our solar system. He has devised a number of techniques for searching for such visiting technology. This field of research is referred to as SETV (the Search for Extra Terrestrial Visitations) and is a classic example of science on the edge. Many people do not take this kind of research seriously because they are afraid of crackpots, however, what really impressed me about Dr. Teodorani was his insistence that this field needs to be taken on by rigorous scientists who apply real science to the problem before the field gets lost in a sea of pseudo science. He does not expect anyone to believe that there is alien technology here unless there is proper scientific evidence presented.

Hessdalen

For details on the bizarre and un-explained happenings in Hessdalen checkout the Project Hessdalen web site. Basically there are odd lights that occur in the sky in this area and no one has a clue what they are. Dr. Teodorani believes they may be caused by Extra-terrestrial technology entering our atmosphere but they may also be natural phenomena that we simply don’t understand. Either way we should be researching these things to figure out what the hell they are but finding funding for this research is exceptionally difficult. Dr. Teodorani has worked out exactly what equipment he would need to properly study these phenomena but he can’t get the money to do the work. What really puts it all into perspective is that he believes he could solve the mystery with the price of just one cruise missile.

My view on Hessdalen is that I am very sceptical that the mystery lights are evidence of alien visitations but since we have no scientific explanation for the scientifically recorded phenomena that occur in Hessdalen (and other places around the world) we must study them to find out what is going on. I think we will discover a new natural process that we are not aware of at the moment but it would be rather cool of we did discover ET!