It’s in the method

Sometime in the past several weeks I heard a blurb on the news about how researchers believe they have found a way to erase bad memories. It was mentioned that this could help people who had experienced traumatic events. I’m sure there were people saying, “Yeah, right. It’ll help people. We’ve seen all about that sort of thing. Hmph.”

I try to take announcements such as these with a grain of salt. The media, always searching for something new to hype, likes to get people fired up about new scientific research, while leaving out the salient point — they are reporting on the results of ONE research project.

It’s as if everyone forgot what we should have learned by the eighth grade, that the scientific method allows for infinite hypotheses, but that testing is required to validate them, and that such testing must be repeatable. Research results must be repeated and confirmed by multiple sources. Period. And even if results are repeated and confirmed, it doesn’t mean case closed. That’s the beauty of the scientific method: everything is up for rebuttal.

By hyping initial research results, the media has managed to leave much of the public feeling suspicious of the scientific method. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, “First they say eggs are bad for you, then they say just the yolks are bad for you, then they say eggs aren’t as bad as they thought. You can’t believe anything they say. They don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Even though this conclusion is incorrect, I understand how they’ve reached it. Many people want things to be clear-cut. They dislike the notion of theories which are refined. Changing a conclusion makes them distrust the question.

Look at politics. There’s nothing one side loves more than to accuse the other side of than flip-flopping on issues. The charge could be countered with, “I changed my mind for a good reason. I learned new information which showed my old stance to be incorrect,” but the public won’t hear it. They eat up the idea of a changed opinion somehow equating to cowardice or knavery. They loved to call Bill Clinton “Slick Willie.”

Long-running jokes back in the days before such jokes became either trite or lost due to charges of misogyny, were often told of how often women change their minds, and how stupid, laughable, mysterious, confounding and/or ridiculous this was to men.

As a society, we revere leaders who are able to make instantaneous decisions in times of crisis, and that decision must not be changed if we are to trust that leader. If a leader says, “Give me a while to think it over,” his/her followers’ confidence crumbles. We cherish instant action more than outcome.

Nowhere is our desire for certainty more clear than in the case of religion. Take Christianity, for example. Any disinterested party can read the Bible and state with utter certainty that the stories in the book can be interpreted in uncountable ways. And yet, people with a stake in the book, will split their churches and even spill blood to somehow prove that their interpretation is the one and only correct interpretation.

With or without the schisms, religion provides that human need for definitive answers. It doesn’t seem to matter that the plans of this or that God are unclear, but the simple perceived fact that the Gods do have a plan is definitive enough for them.

People have feared, and still do, that science will take over the world, that the so-called mystery and beauty of the unknown will be lost somehow. Such a fear is illogical. Nothing removes the mystery and beauty of the unknown more than ignorance. It is ignorance that makes people seize at explanations, any explanation, regardless of its validity, in order to appease the need for certainty.

The scientific method does, and always will, keep the mystery and beauty of the unknown alive, because it refuses to provide definitive answers. With this refusal, the unknown remains unknowable in totality, and must always be in mind, never lost. The scientific method seeks knowledge while defying certainty.

To me, that’s beautiful.