Is there anything more promising than a child’s curiosity? Can anything discourage it faster than a barrage of facts? Facts are epitaphs to curiosity. They immobilize further inquiry…pretty much as intended. Endless facts have taken on the roll of biblical chapter and verse of earlier times; putting paid to independent or misdirected thinking; ensuring inquiring minds don’t wander from the path of the master. Conversational facts – always scientifically proven, always irrefutable, always with equal and opposite facts available but to be ignored – are tools, not truth.
In the most obvious cases – food, pharmaceuticals, money – we choose not to notice the vulnerability inherent in the execution of the scientific method even though there are inevitably alternative studies disproving most studies. Our determination in selecting the ‘true’ study is driven more by our conditioning and beliefs than a pursuit of truth. The scientific method is the best tool in our research arsenal but falls prey to our unfailing subjectivity. Recorded scientific events are always expressed through the beliefs of those doing the interpreting. It is inescapable. The best we can hope for is a researcher driven solely by curiosity; that selfsame natural wonder we discourage with our dedication to facts in the first place. Curiosity strong enough to survive the gauntlet of learning unfortunately does not have deep enough pockets to fund studies and market the results as fact.
Even at the highest levels scientific results are subject to questionable interpretation. We discover alphabets and think we understand the entire language and all the mystery it contains. Watson, of DNA fame, is a good example of things going seriously wrong. Beyond the dark cloud of the Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling debacle Watson went on to state about Africa “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really”. His take on women (“People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great.”) – one woman, one beauty – also displays a singularly minded approach to a world some thought may be improved by eugenics akin to the kind popularized by Nazis. He was part of the long process of identifying a living alphabet but unfortunately vanity may have reduced his faculties to such an extent he believed he could read wetware like tea leaves.
The scientific method is our greatest research tool but as a religion to advance one’s own agenda by a power greater than all of us it fails in all the old familiar ways – and that’s a fact.