Scientific Myths

“Buy the truth, and sell it not” -Pro. 23:23

Myth or fact? A woman swallows about 6 pounds of lipstick in a lifetime. Myth or fact? A junior high school student won a science fair contest by circulating a report about the dangers of “dihydrogen monoxide” (water). As part of the blessings of our internet age, we are regularly bombarded by newsy items that often fall into the category of “urban legends.” It has led to the development of websites such as snopes.com whose main purpose is to help sort out truth from fiction.
While the above items do not have much bearing on our lives one way or another (unless you despise eating lipstick), here is one that colors the way we view knowledge, science, and technology. Myth or fact? Scientific knowledge is the only reliable form of public knowledge. If you answered “fact,” you would be at odds with a new book by Steven Shapin entitled, Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as If It Was Produced by People with Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority. While it might be interpreted at first glance as some fundamentalist Christian’s attack on the credibility of science, it is helpful to know that Shapin is the Franklin L. Ford Professor of the History of Science at Harvard; hardly a bastion of Christian thought.

What Never Pure attempts to point out is that our modern cultural assumption that scientific knowledge is “real” knowledge because it is supposedly free of the biases and prejudices of flawed human beings is more myth than fact. While not an enemy of science per se, Shapin desires to lower the rhetoric that surrounds scientific knowledge and “bring some realism and humility to the very human practice of science.” Much of the god-like reverence to modern science we see today stems from a book written in 1874 by William Draper entitled, History of the Conflict Between Christianity and Science. In lofty tones, Draper declared that “science and religion were necessarily at war; the one representing the expansive force of the human intellect, the other obscurantism and dogmatism.” While many today are not quite as optimistic about the ever expanding beneficence of modern science, it still is assumed by governments, education, and social institutions that scientific knowledge is the only true and verifiable form of knowledge accepted without question in the public forum. What this myth overlooks is that science is still a very human undertaking and prone to all the passions and foibles of mankind. Even after “laboratory tests prove…”, the scientist must still establish the credibility of his claims and in so doing he calls upon the whole gamut of human expression and argumentation.

Modern man has also attributed a certain degree of infallibility to the scientific method. Shapin rightly points out that there is no one scientific method. Scientists do not even know how to quantify and define with wide agreement any singular method. Some use induction; others deduction. It seems that there is much more interest in and reverence for THE scientific method among artists, social scientists, and historians than in the field of the natural sciences.

In a week where we celebrate the mysteries and the power of science, it is well to remember that it yet bears the stain of human reasoning. It can still be twisted and manipulated for ideological ends and bent to serve our selfish interests. If nothing else, modern science has amply demonstrated its need for containment and direction by the soft sciences of philosophy, history, and theology lest it prove itself a destructive Mr. Hyde that comes out raging well beyond the control of its kind hearted host, Dr. Jekyll.

By the way, women do not consume anywhere near 6 lbs of lipstick in a lifetime. And yes, Nathan Zohner (14) of Idaho Falls did win a science contest by proving how many became alarmed at the dangers of water when cloaked in scientific terminology.