Interpreting Scientific Data – observation versus ‘religion’
In the Middle-Ages, Galileo was up against the most restrictive of regulators: the Catholic Church. The Church had decreed that heavenly bodies were perfect, not just good but perfect, because “God” had made them. They could not show blemishes. Furthermore, if the bodies were spheres, they were perfect spheres. Under this authority, the astronomers of the day acquiesced and investigation of the apparently visible uneven surfaces of bodies in space was not pursued.
However, Galileo was not expert in just a single discipline, he was also an artist. He had selected mathematics (he was Professor at Padua) and astronomy as his chosen callings a little reluctantly over art. However, it was his continued involvement with artists and his skills in drawing and in visualization that enabled him to interpret his astronomical data.
He discovered that there were odd dark shapes, which appeared across the surface of the sun (a bright circle reflected on paper from his telescope). After years of careful investigation, it appeared that these dark shapes traversed the sun within a fairly confined longitudinal band. The wisdom of the day among many astronomers, obeying the Church, was that whatever the shapes were, they must be at some distance away from the surface, because there could be no blemishes on the surface.
However, Galileo also noted that the dark shapes changed shape as they made their traverse – they grew along the path of their movement while their size lateral to the movement stayed constant. He investigated this phenomenon by drawing the ‘sun spots’ on paper and he realized that they were indeed on the surface of the sun, growing in size along their path as they came into sight around the edge of the sphere and staying constant in size lateral to the path. To come to this conclusion he had to use a branch of learning different from astronomy and he had to ignore the restrictions, which were confining thought.
We could learn from Galileo today. The truth of the effects of low level radiation on humans will not come from the expertise of radiobiologists alone, nor will it come if we work within current regulatory thinking (which is easily as blind and restrictive as the 17th century church.)
Presently, radiobiologists analyze radiation-effects data, even that collected by the Japanese investigators. However, they are specialists in their field with none of the skills to see differently from what the regulators require that they see. One needs a cross-fertilization of skills and one needs to start with an unrestricted mind.
The independent conferences called to review this question consist of ‘people in the know.’ Judging from a recent gathering in Arlie, Virginia, there is not an independent thinker amongst them. It is as if you called upon the staff of the Vatican to determine whether Christ was divine or just an activist of his day.
For this subject, one does not need nuclear engineers, one does not need classical physicists, and one certainly does not need health physicists of the priesthood. To analyze data on radiation health effects one needs mathematicians skilled in logic and parallel investigation, one needs pure biologists skilled in the parametric behavior of biological effects, one needs stress physiologists, one needs a multiplicity of experts dealing with the effects of interference, and perhaps others.
As an example, it was a Canadian sports physiologist, Hans Selye, investigating the effects of cross-country skiing on the human body, who discovered adaptation under stress. It is a phenomenon that we now know applies to all manner of biological species; to tree branches blowing in the wind, to cardiovascular ability in endurance athletes, to footballers’ neck muscles, and to the behavior of cells under irradiation.
Furthermore, and most importantly, one must healthily disbelieve the guardians of the religions – the regulators -if one is to investigate data without bias. Too often we hear that “this data does not disprove the linear theory.” How independent is such research when we start with the linear theory of radiation as a prime hypothesis?
I believe that the first papers that need verification, if that is possible, are the original papers that presented a convenient linear least squares fit for high level effects using the origin as another data point. Would those papers even be accepted by a reputable scientific conference of today or would they be sent back for correction and rework in the light of what we now know? I suspect the latter.
Of course, to the ICRP ‘church’ my suggestions that we involve parallel expertise instead of health physicists and also question the original findings’ are heresy. They are suggestions that we should not believe in the Garden of Eden and the Virgin Birth.
Yet, without a little healthy skepticism we will get nowhere. Occasionally, we need to ‘re-boot’ our minds.
This particular article came about because of an ongoing conversation with an eminent Harvard Professor who had reviewed one of my websites on this issue. He was discussing some of my statements and comparing them to some of the opinions that abound in the ‘priesthood.’ He said:
“I think you are very unwise (in) stating these things as truth when the scientists close to the issues think otherwise. The rest of your message will get lost.”
While I am not comparing myself to Galileo, I suspect he received similar messages when he suggested that the sun-spots were actually phenomena on the surface of the sun’s imperfect spherical shape. As I have pointed out, “scientists close to the issue” often cannot see the wood for the trees, especially when they have been told to believe only in trees.
This discourse raises a number of issues – in regard to independent research and how best it is conducted. While clearly it is good to enable researchers to talk to others in the same field, should we not also force’ them to discuss their assumptions and findings with experts in other field? – and I don’t mean through the mandatory and sterile monthly symposia, but through challenging and open debate.
What do you think? Am I stupid and was it really a Virgin Birth?
