Nullius in verba: the motto of the Royal Society
[general philosophy Nullius in verba (“take nobody’s word for it”) is the motto of the Royal Society, and as they explain, is “an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment.” At first glance, this motto is wildly hypocritical: why then does the Royal Society promote meetings and lectures? Why does it publish journals? It’s true that back in its early days (the 17th century), one could do actual science at a meeting. You could turn up with a new type of telescope, microscope or prism and demonstrate its use then and there. Such things are hardly possible now: modern science is a vast body of knowledge, derived from thousands of years of observations, these days done with equipment that few of us will ever even see. The distrust expressed by the motto seems appropriate for our sceptical age, where people assume that scientists have been bought or inhabit nothing but an elaborate belief system.
“Trust no one”
That is the tagline of the typical Hollywood thriller. The hero of such a movie will have a terrible time and will be lucky to be alive at the end. We trust others with our every interaction, and even the mighty eagle, an apex predator, still has to trust its own mother during infancy. Civilisation is impossible without trust. We trust the people we meet based on cues such as who they are, how they look, how they speak and what they say and do. In our interactions, we strive to earn trust by behaving appropriately and keeping our promises. Once lost, trust can seldom be regained.
But there are people who will not be convinced, no matter what you do. The recent COVID-19 pandemic is a striking case in point. To my mind, the scientific community responded brilliantly: from a standing start, confronted with a pathogen no one had seen before, they needed just a couple of years to achieve a deep understanding of the disease. They developed treatments to cure it and vaccines to prevent it. But many people saw something very different: shifting advice and draconian lockdowns coupled with scepticism that the disease even existed. Another example: due to the link between cholesterol and heart disease, people were for decades advised to avoid eggs and butter. We were encouraged to eat margarines made of polyunsaturated fat, which later were discovered to have their own risks while 1–2 eggs per day were shown to be safe. Scientific advice constantly changes, sometimes drastically. What can we do?
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
There is no proof that John Maynard Keynes ever actually said this. But whatever, it is hard to argue with the sentiment. In science we accept that we can never attain the truth, just increasingly close approximations to it. Prevailing theories change as we learn more, through observations or experiments. We went from the Earth at centre of the universe to the Sun at the centre, then we were one solar system in a galaxy, then there were countless galaxies. We went from atoms as ancient philosophy to a series of atomic models based on experimentation: the billiard ball model, the plum pudding model, the solar system model and progressively to the quantum-mechanical model used today. So was everybody wrong? The models captured the existence of atoms, then their composition from protons and electrons; the existence of neutrons was conjectured before they could be observed and the behaviour of electrons inferred from a great many considerations, such as the periodic table.
With both examples (cosmology and atomic theory), one can argue that scientists have been wrong for most of human history. But each of their conceptions had merit, and as we progressed from one to the next (whether incrementally or radically), they became more accurate and useful. Every scientific model is an abstraction of reality. Even if we could capture reality with perfect accuracy, no amount of experimentation could prove that we had done so.
And yet. Can anyone doubt that scientific theories have repeatedly demonstrated their effectiveness? We have been to the moon; we have accomplished miracles through modern medicine; we’ve built astonishing electronic devices; above all, our understanding of the atom has demonstrated its devastating power. If you are reading this and are not sitting next to me, you cannot deny the power of science.
Making your own observations
Modern physics emerged from countless experiments involving particle accelerators, cloud chambers and other esoteric devices. Chemistry, biology and other sciences also developed through centuries of laboratory work. You can’t try such things at home. Marie Curie died as a direct result of her research, and she is far from the only one. But we can still verify some things with nothing but our own eyes and easily obtained equipment such as telescopes or microscopes. Let’s consider some simple examples.
It’s remarkable that so many question evolution. People say that no one has observed it. (We have, in insects and microorganisms, but never mind.) One of the observations that led Darwin to his theory was the numerous finches on the Galapagos Islands. Why were there 18 species, so similar but different, over such a small area? Darwin realised that they must have emerged from a single species. Another form of direct evidence, for those who insist that there can be no link between humans and apes, is to watch a gorilla mother with her baby. Gorilla “toddlers” thumping their dads and then running away also look all too human. It’s not surprising that early naturalists wanted to classify the great apes as our close relations.
I hope that no one reading this is a Flat Earther. Numerous ancient peoples understood that the Earth was curved, even if they thought it was the back of a tortoise. The ancient Greeks already knew that the world was spheroid, and eventually calculated its diameter to astonishing accuracy. Fortunate to live in an age without Internet or television, they had plenty of time to observe the world and to notice, for example, that different constellations were visible at different latitudes. We owe it to them to keep up.
We live in an age of vaccine hostility. A woman who did research into the safety of COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women was rewarded with death threats. In the past year, people have lost children to measles and still insisted that their decision to avoid vaccination was correct. Such people sacrifice their own children to provide evidence for other parents.
In the case of global warming, direct evidence is not hard to come by. I was recently in Iceland, where the guide took us to the glacier observation point and then said “unfortunately the glacier has retreated and we have to walk for 15 minutes to get there”. I can look at my 50 year-old book on the care of roses and see that the recommendation to prune in mid-April is off by a whole month. I can walk past a field that was famous for ice skating a century ago; these days it never gets cold enough for that.
The problem is, for those sufficiently fixated on a particular belief, even observations do not help. Some flat earthers carry out experiments that detect the curvature or rotation of the Earth, and they simply reject the conclusions. People on social media post photos of clouds and declare that they are not normal but have been sprayed by the deep state. When it snows, they try to melt a snowball using a cigarette lighter and claim that the snow is not real. There are people who concede that the climate has warmed while rejecting the accepted cause. Confirmation bias is difficult to fight.
When science clashes with vested interests
There is nothing new about scholars falling foul of popular institutions. Galileo Galilei’s groundbreaking career as astronomer and physicist led to his being tried for heresy in 1633 and put under house arrest for the rest of his life. Today, although the Vatican now runs its own observatory, science continues to attract hostility from religious people. Tobacco companies, fossil fuel interests, the food industry and many others continually try to undermine science to protect their businesses. It doesn’t help that scientists have to seek financial support, giving rise to suspicions of conflicts of interest. But why don’t people see a conflict of interest when an influencer is funded by an oil company, a billionaire or even a foreign government?
Let’s ignore the obvious case of fossil fuel interests and look at tobacco instead. After World War II, many scientists were puzzled by a huge upsurge in long cancer. What could be causing it? That it might be the ubiquitous habit of inhaling smoke into your lungs was overlooked for some time. Eventually, the evidence became overwhelming. This did not stop tobacco companies from moaning that the connection to lung cancer was a “bum rap” originating with Nazi scientists. The Nazis did oppose smoking. That doesn’t mean smoking is safe.
“Facts and logic”
This phrase is particularly popular with people whose facts are preconceptions and whose idea of logic is mere ideology. As the examples drawn above from science remind us, it’s not always clear what the facts are. So it’s all the more important to combat lies. I vividly remember coming across Holocaust denial, decades ago. “Can it really be a coincidence that all the so-called death camps were located in communist countries? And all the so-called witnesses were communists or Jews?” Holocaust denial is particularly stupid because the evidence is pervasive and overwhelming. If you can deny the Holocaust, you can deny anything. Today, online influencers earn millions of dollars a year doing just that.
The well-known creationist Ken Ham has a favorite tagline: “Were you there?” He applies it to evolution, but it could be applied to anything that happened in the past. Was I there for the Holocaust? No. But I also wasn’t there when Ken Ham was born, yet I am sure he was. We often infer past events from evidence we see today.
Today, funded bot campaigns spew nonsense constantly on social media. A favorite is to portray London as a violent dystopia, when in fact it is far safer than any major US city. You might see a graph showing global temperatures declining from half a billion years ago, while cutting off the 20th century (and leaving the legend in place because they don’t expect anyone to look closely). Another bot might, later, post that the earth is indeed warming and it is great and has nothing to do with human activity. Later still, they might complain that some sort of “globalist elite” is controlling the weather. On another occasion they might insist that the Earth is no more than 6,000 years old. Meanwhile, the pro-business Financial Times is apparently “leftist”, WTF? If you choose to trust random online anonymous voices, you do not get to call yourself a sceptic. Nullius in verba.
Congratulations
And all of this was prompted by the election of my colleagues, Professors Anuj Dawar and Srinivasan Keshav, to the Royal Society. Kudos to them!