Questioning Science and Proper Research

I often have discussions with my fellow Zeitgeist Movement members in which we disagree on the appropriate measure of skepticism to apply to mainstream science. I often agree with mainstream science while my colleagues may not. I am often encouraged to place greater skepticism on mainstream science so as to avoid profit-related bias. I find this argument silly, and in some ways, dishonest and self-defeating.

When I am interested in a scientific claim, my first reaction is to hit the peer-reviewed journals. I research the most-cited papers and examine the evidences presented. This is a process of gathering "indirect sources." I exercise my right to demand evidence to support whatever conclusion science is attempting to sell me. I am rarely disappointed. This is a manifestation of the very skepticism my colleagues often accuse me of not having. I do not believe any claim ex nihilo and I try to not hold any one source as the only truth. There are no absolute authorities because knowledge necessarily comes from people, and every person, without exception, has a bias somewhere. The key is knowing how to minimize the impact--eating around the bias, so to speak.

There is one other avenue of research that is less convenient but just as effective, and often necessary for laymen like me. I firmly hold that ad hoc education with little or no interaction with at least some experts is fundamentally hazardous. Therefore, I have compiled a mailing list of experts, university professors and scientists in a variety of countries, educational backgrounds, ages, employers, and other varying circumstances to contact for answers to any questions I may have. I select my experts based on whether or not they have demonstrable expertise in the field I am studying. These are known as "direct sources." I ask what evidences they find compelling and what papers they suggest I read. This process is often necessary because, let's face it, peer-reviewed papers are VERY technical, and I can't be expected to understand what I am reading without at least some assistance. I have to ask questions! Therefore, expert interaction is a must, most of the time!

So why go through the trouble of diversifying my sources? First, it provides access to the latest research which I may not find in the journals yet, though I certainly don't hold this class of information as citable. Second, it gives me a direct route to the most compelling evidence, saving me precious time. Most importantly, it is the correct way to filter out personal biases related to the circumstances I mentioned earlier, rather than subjectively picking my favorite sources, as some of my colleagues often do. I never get a 100 percent return on my contact campaigns, but I can extrapolate the good information from the bits where most (not all) of my experts agree. And they always provide me with their evidence and sources. In cases where there is a clear division down the middle among experts--when there is no overwhelming majority consensus--I have revealed a legitimate scientific controversy that has not yet been resolved. The correct course of action for me in that case is to be humble and withhold my conclusion until more research is done.

Many of my fellow Zeitgeisters are baffled by my willingness to question any expert. "Some of them work for the government/pharma or will just lie because of the profit motive! You can't trust them," I am often told. Sometimes, I am even told to wait until the Resource Based Economy is here before I can trust the experts in the liberal manner that I do! I have come to call this the "Pure Science Argument," because holders of this position often claim that "science is not yet pure, therefore we must be spotty in our acceptance of scientific consensus." This is a fallacious argument on many levels and reflects a considerable need of an education on how science and epistemology work.

Science will never be "pure" in this sense. A Resource Based Economy cannot and will not change this. It is not meant to do so. Individual bias cannot be 100% eliminated from people, because it is a necessary component of desire. Anywhere there is desire for a thing (i.e. a new scientific discovery); a bias is present to some degree. It is a motivational response. Even if we had a Resource Based Economy right now and the profit motive were gone, scientists and people would still have personal biases related to prestige, personal and religious values, and from other facets of motivation that we Zeitgeisters propose will still be around in the absence of money. Absent a monetary incentive, scientists may still attempt to cheat in pursuit of the fame and recognition associated with winning a Nobel Prize or being the first person to discover something exciting! Bias will never go away.

Fortunately, science is structured in such a way that the impact of individual biases on the whole of the project is minimal. Science demands large sample groups, peer review, independent repetition of results, and double-blind experiments to filter out such anomalies as well as honest human error. Science is already doing this! We don't need to wait until the Resource Based Economy is realized. Any one biased result, whatever the reason for it, will be discovered and recognized for what it is. This notion marks the difference between "making a decision" and "arriving at a decision," which is why we purpose science as the methodology for dismissing the monetary system. It gets us results and it doesn't need to be pure!

The fact that some of us are willing to cherry-pick our sources is itself, a textbook case of confirmation bias! We end up leading the evidence based on our subjective, and therefore uncertain, assessment of the sources we select as trustworthy, and then attempt to label our favorites as "more authoritative than the rest." This is embarrassingly dishonest and amounts to little more than falsifying research and using it to justify disregarding proper science at our convenience--special pleading. This is the exact opposite of how science is done.

To discover the truth, we must assess sources and evidence fairly and with equal measure. Cherry-picking your source(s) doesn't make you more skeptical than I am. It doesn't make you more informed than I am. It makes you more biased and dishonest than I am and less scientific.

Finally, this argument takes into account one type of bias, but utterly ignores every other kind. All kinds of biases, not just the profit-related, are built into the human organism. It doesn't matter that we're against the monetary system! We must not become over-concerned about the profit-related bias and completely ignore the other kinds (i.e., religious, cultural, etc). Organizations like the Discovery Institute have little or no government or corporate affiliations, yet demonstrate a mind-numbing degree of religious bias. Gary Null from the alternative health camp has his own profit-related incentives, absent government affiliations, to sell his alternative health goods and convince the rest of us that the science cannot be trusted. Therefore, corporate/government affiliation is not a benchmark to indicate a probable degree of bias.

So how do we minimize biased information? The proper way to filter out bias is using the method I described above: a simple application of math and probability and some honest legwork. No five people all share the same bias when you pick them at random from among a diversified set of circumstances. This is a mathematical reality. If you select 15 sources from an even more diversified set, the odds get better that the information you receive is good if it parallels to a compelling degree. I tend to shoot as high as I can, getting dozens of sources with as much diversity as possible. I ask the exact same questions and compare the answers. If I can establish what the majority consensus is, I can compare their evidences to what the minority sources are providing and account for any anomalies among experts that don't agree with the rest.

Researching and forming our own meta-analysis is, in itself, a science. In order to do the job right, it is critical that we avoid our own biases while we work hard to recognize the bias among our sources. Otherwise, we're just spinning our wheels and fooling ourselves, potentially doing damage to ourselves and others.