Rule #1: Science is hard.
Even if you're not a scientist there's a lot that's been written about science for people like you, some of it excellent, some of it rubbish. To add to the problem there are many different types of science, each with its own way of doing things. Then there's the stuff written about the philosophy of science, mainly by philosophers, which gives you an idealized view of science which is usually not very closely related to what practicing scientists actually do. Writing about science for nonscientists is something that mainstream scientists do with extreme reluctance. There's a widespread feeling that "real" scientists actually do science, and that somehow writing for the popular press is "slumming it", of less value. There are some exceptions. The top few expositors (I'm thinking of Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould here for example) get a kind of notoriety, but it's what you might call a left-handed compliment, sort of like "Expositors are a bunch of cretins but these ones are pretty good, just don't ask me have dinner with him" kind of attitude. No matter how good a writer you are though, you can't get around the following rule:
Rule #2: Science written for the popular press leaves out the details. The devil is in the details.
There are experimental scientists and theoretical scientists. Experimental scientists measure things, and theoretical scientists explain things. What a theoretical scientist does is create a toy universe, a very simplified account of part of the universe designed to fit the observed facts that the experimental scientists have measured. They call this toy universe a "model". It usually involves a lot of math. The process doesn't stop there, however:
Rule #3: It's not enough for a theoretical model to fit the known facts.
A theoretical model must also raise new questions. It has to make predictions, which experimental scientists go off and measure. If the predictions made by the model are correct, then the model starts to gain acceptance. Later new experiments may show faults in the model, or another theoretician may come up with a new model that explains the data better. It's this interplay between theory and experiment that is the hallmark of a mature science:
Rule #4: Science research is a complicated dance between theory and experiment.
It's key that you realize that science is not a static thing. It's constantly changing. There are a lot more things that are unknown than are known, a lot more questions yet to be asked, and even a few rogue answers lurking in the corner looking for questions. Old models are constantly being polished, updated, modernized, and new facts that don't fit the models are constantly being discovered:
Rule #5: Science isn't static.
Scientists communicate the results of their research by publishing papers. These papers are published in special periodicals called refereed journals. The "refereed" part means that articles submitted to the journal are peer reviewed, that is, reviewed by other scientists before publication is allowed. The Editor picks some scientists who work in an area of research related to the article and asks them to write a short report that discusses the pros and cons of the paper, how it might be improved, and so forth. These reports are showed to the author of the article (but anonymously, so the author has no idea who the referees were), who then has a chance to respond and if he or she feels it is appropriate, rewrite the article. Typically, after one to three rounds of this refereeing process, the article is either accepted for publication or rejected outright. So, as you can see:
Rule #6: Science is a community effort: a community of scientists.
So what does this mean to MS patients? MS research is an interplay of theoreticians and experimentalists who want to be able to understand the disease and cure it. If the theoreticians could come up with an explanation for the mechanism behind the disease, then maybe somebody can design a cure for it. Maybe if the experimentalists could find a drug that cures it, even partially, then maybe we are on the road towards finding a theoretical model of MS. Which comes first? The cart or the horse? The theory or the experiment? As I said, it's a complicated dance. We're trying to do both at the same time in the hope that we can "bootstrap" our way to a cure. Clearly some important things have been found, but we've got a long way to go.
We've seen that science is a community effort. There are always a few people out on the fringe of science. Mainstream scientists call them "crackpots" or "cranks". You can tell crackpots because they make grandiose claims that, for example:
- The scientific community is against me.
- The scientific community is trying to suppress my work.
- The scientific community is trying to steal my work.
- The scientific community is never "against" somebody. All they care about is the quality of the research. I could make facetious politically correct arguments about how science is a meritocracy, how noble scientists are, how gender, national origin, creed, religion, sexual preference, disability are overlooked and how it's only the results that count. But that's not really the whole picture. Scientists as a group are generally dysfunctional people with a monomania about science. They work long hours for low pay and no feedback other than the respect of a few dozen other scientists who work in the same research area. They don't dress well, they don't live in big fancy houses, they don't drive fancy cars, in general don't care a hoot for the metrics of success used by the rest of society. The scientist with the Trophy Wife and/or Boy Toy is rare indeed. They'll work through the weekend and schedule meetings on Saturday evenings. If you have a first-class brain, they don't care who you are or who you work for.
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Scientists believe in open publication. Papers are rejected from journals usually for some pretty simple reasons. Either:
- It's wrong. The research is flawed and the flaw is pretty easy to spot.
- It's badly written and the author won't rewrite it.
- It's trivial. Something you'd give to a student to do on a wet weekend.
- It's not a suitable topic for the journal. For example, it's a biology paper submitted to a mathematics journal.
- While it's true that companies will steal work from each other, scientists rarely do. There's always a few bad eggs, it's true, but they usually get rooted out in the end. When you submit a paper for publication, a referee could claim "I've already done that but it's just now ready for publication" and copy the results. However, Editors are not completely moronic. You can only pull that trick a few times before people begin to notice the trend. Anyway, mostly scientists don't even think about stealing results. Let me tell you an illuminating story from my own experience. I once had to explain a difficult and highly technical theoretical result from theoretical computer science to a physicist. After a couple of hours the physicist finally understood the proof and said "I understand now. That's trivial." I was a little offended that he had dismissed such a ground-breaking result requiring many person-years of effort and some sophisticated new mathematics as "trivial". I thought it was tough to understand. He responded "Anything that I understand is trivial by definition". That's how a true scientist thinks: now that I understand something, what can I do next? Scientists are always looking to the next result.
As an MS sufferer you should ensure that you pay attention to mainstream MS research and ignore the cranks:
Rule #7: With few exceptions, crank science is rejected by the scientific community for good reasons.
Usually crank science publications are either extremely long winded, or the explanations are complicated and leave out a lot of details. In either case, I don't usually have time to read them. Life is too short. Perhaps there are pearls buried inside, perhaps not. But I think my MS gives me an excuse to say "Sorry, you may be right but I don't have time to deal with that right now." Anyway, I'm congenitally attracted to short, pithy, simple proofs and arguments.
William of Occam is said to have noticed a long time ago that simple explanations are usually the best. We call it "Occam's Razor". Most scientists believe in it in the sense that if there are two possible explanations of the data, then the simplest one is probably the one that's right. That's probably true in everyday life too. Many people believe in the most bizarre conspiracy theories. I prefer to believe in snafu theories ("snafu" is a military acronym for "situation normal all f*cked up"). Let's take the Alien Conspiracy Theory that always seems to be popping up. What's more likely, (a) that there's a conspiracy among the government, the FBI, the CIA, and the military to hide the fact that aliens have visited the Earth, or (b) a few people have f*cked up vision and/or need a new prescription. Choice (a) requires that hundreds, if not thousands of people engage in a conspiracy. Choice (b) requires that a few people see things they can't explain. I think I'm a (b) believer.
If you are an MS patient, you may read of a conspiracy theory that claims that a radical new cure for MS is being suppressed by the drug companies. Don't waste your energy looking into it. What's more likely, a complicated conspiracy or that somebody, somewhere has jumped to a premature conclusion?
Rule #8: Remember Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is probably the best.
One other thing you need to remember is the Transfer of Authority Rule. Early this year while channel surfing I ran into a TV program about the Loch Ness Monster, a subject for crank science if there ever was one. I like watching crank science shows, they're better than sitcoms. At least better than American sitcoms, what Americans find funny I often find yawningly boring. I was enjoying the footage of Loch Ness, one of the better places in the world to visit by armchair, listening to some crank blithering on about some theory about Nessie. When he'd finished, he was acknowledged with an air of pompous grandiosity as a "Respected Aerospace Engineer". I almost fell out of my chair laughing. Even if this guy is a "respected aerospace engineer" (maybe he's just an aerospace engineer that other aerospace engineers make jokes about behind his back), what on Earth does an aerospace engineer know about the Loch Ness Monster? He probably knows all about propeller wash vortex dynamics and dynamic wing lift-to-speed ratios, but that's hardly relevant to Nessie is it? I've noticed that a lot of the crank TV shows that I watch assume that a person who is talented in one area is really smart and so must automatically be an authority on anything he or she puts their mind to. Wrong! So don't necessarily listen to stuff about MS from nonexperts even, or should I say especially if they're expert in another area.
There's no reason to believe me either. I'm an expert computer scientist, but I'm not an expert on MS. I'm only talking about my own experiences. I don't have any pet theories about MS or how to cure it. I only know that it sucks.
Rule #9: Authority doesn't transfer. A genius in one area is almost guaranteed to be a moron in others.
Some people make a philosophy out of science, some people even make it a religion. It's true that science can be regarded as an attractive metaphor for life. Thinking logically is good, but it can be taken to extremes. I've seen people who take it too far, you've probably met somebody who worships logic and takes Spock (the pointy-eared half-Vulcan, half-human Science Officer played by Leonard Nimoy on the original Star Trek TV series) as his personal hero. They tend to congregate at science fiction conventions, and I've noticed that they all have one thing in common: no babes.
I mentioned in Religion and Philosophy that there are some things that logic shouldn't be applied to. It's worse than that. It has been conclusively proved, using logic, that logic is imperfect. It's like this: there are some things that are neither true nor false. "Piffle" you might say, there are lots of things like that. But here's a stumper. I can give you a statement that can't be true, and can't be false. If you get vertigo or are confused by automatic teller machines, skip on to the next rule. The statement is this. Read it carefully.
Read it carefully one more time. OK, time for a little logic. Thinking caps on. Is that statement true or false? It certainly seems to express a strong opinion about itself. Suppose, just for the mental exercise the statement is true. Then what it says is true. But it says that it is false. So if it is true, then it is false. It can't be both, so our little mental exercise was a bit disappointing, it can't be true.
Now suppose that the statement is false. Then what it says is false. So, since it says that it is false, then it must be the opposite of that, which is true. So if it is false, then it is true. It can't be both, so it can't be false.
So we've seen that it can be neither false nor true. It's just an innocent four-word sentence, you probably didn't realize that it is a blow that shakes the very foundations of logic. The mathematician Kurt Gödel went one better than this. He proved that in any system of logic, either there are statements like the above which are inconsistent (can be neither true nor false without being both), or the system is incomplete (meaning that there are true things that can't be proved in it).
Some people use this result, called Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, as proof of the existence of God. I don't see it that way. It's just means that logic isn't a philosophy you should build your life around unless you enjoy hanging out around science fiction conventions which, as a general rule, tend to have a low supermodel attendance rate. Logic is nothing more than a tool.
Rule #10: Star Trek is great entertainment, but Spock is a lousy role model.
If you've been digging around on other MS websites, particularly the serious ones, you've probably bumped into some reports on correlations between MS and other stuff. You see, it may be important to figure out what causes MS in the first place. Once we figure out what causes it we might be able to (in addition to being able to avoid it) figure out how to cure it. You may read things like "50% of people who have MS have mercury amalgam fillings in their teeth" (I don't know what the real number is, I'm just making this up). That could just be a coincidence. It does not mean that there is cause and effect - there's no reason to believe that mercury-amalgam fillings cause MS, nor that MS causes you to have rotten teeth that need filling. It is a smoking gun, but no more than that.
Let me give you an example. Every day the sun comes up. Five days a week my alarm clock goes off. So there is a 71% correlation between my alarm going off and the sun coming up. Does my alarm cause the sun to come up? No. Does the sun coming up cause my alarm to go off? No. There is a relationship between the two events, they are correlated, but cause and effect are more complicated.
Rule #11: Correlation does not mean cause and effect.
It is, however, important to keep some skepticism. Just because we haven't found conclusive evidence that aliens have landed on Earth doesn't mean that there aren't any aliens. Just because we haven't found a virus that causes MS doesn't mean that there isn't one. I know which way I lean, but I'm not in denial:
Rule #12: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I can't help noticing that I've been a little didactic here. A little too rule-based. So I'll leave you with one final thought:
Rule #13: Every rule has an exception (even this one).