Fact or Fiction?

Our collective health and survival may well depend on where we place our bets

I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, rather than theories to suit facts.  — Sherlock Holmes (in “A Scandal in Bohemia” by A.C. Doyle)

While facilitating a board retreat, I noticed that a disagreement on certain issues was generating more heat than light. In fact, the disputes were getting downright personal with impugning of the motives and even the character and intelligence of those on the “other side”.

I assumed that people were operating from different sources of information, so I called for a pause in the discussion, sent the warring factions to their separate corners, and asked them to prepare to present the facts on which their positions and recommendations were based. Ten minutes later, these talented professionals admitted sheepishly that their positions were mostly based not on data but on strongly held beliefs, assumptions and traditional defaults. Everyone agreed that a fact-finding mission was the next step for the board.

Often wrong. Never in doubt.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. You’re not entitled to your own facts.  — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

It is not uncommon for even very smart people to argue strongly for positions formulated largely without the benefit of much supporting information. The root cause of this data deficit is that fact finding (re-search) is a heavy mental lift. It is like eating our vegetables when we want to hurry up and get to the dessert, which for many people is drawing conclusions with certainty, believing they are right and correct, and proselytizing those positions with others in search of confirmation and admiration. Not only is data gathering neither easy nor glamorous, but it also contains a significant risk of discovering something that disconfirms or undermines our cherished beliefs and advantages. Ouch!

If you have no data, you’re just another person with an opinion.  — W. Edward Deming

Opinions, attitudes and beliefs are hard to change. Even when facts are gathered, they often bounce off a person’s foregone conclusions. There are two powerful reasons for this:

• Each person’s beliefs, opinions and attitudes regarding themselves, other people and the world form a tightly knit model of reality (paradigm) that provides a sense of order, stability and control. Challenges to any of the building blocks in that foundation can threaten the whole structure with collapse. People do not welcome earthquakes, either geological or mental, which explains the strong resistance to changing opinions in mid-argument.

• There is usually a healthy dose of self-interest contained in our beliefs, opinions and attitudes.

Cui bono?

A really valuable question to ask when looking at a person’s position in any debate is: WHO BENEFITS if we conclude that everything you are saying is correct? When someone is trying to sell you something (a car, a drug, a stock, an idea), they obviously benefit if they are able to convince you they are right. People hold beliefs that further a variety of interests.

Question: how does someone benefit, financially or otherwise, from advocating the following positions (or their opposite):

• Fossil fuels do not promote climate change/damage

• Lowering tax rates for the wealthy creates more jobs, and raising the minimum wage results in job loss

• Women are not as good as men at math and science

• Group X is innately less intelligent, more violent etc.

• The way to recover from an economic recession is to cut the deficit through a strict austerity program

• The way to recover from an economic recession is by massive public sector spending on infrastructure and targeted R&D

• Political correctness undermines free speech

• Vaccines cause autism

• Marijuana should be legalized

• People should have complete control of their own bodies

• Voters need to show a photo ID to prevent a lot of fraud

• For-profit charter schools generate better student learning/behavior than public schools

In general, people take positions from which they and those they care about stand to gain something desirable (money, power, status etc.). This is why the most heated debates are rarely about the facts of the case, and why you can rarely change someone’s beliefs and opinions by simply presenting them with those facts.

But it’s worth knowing the facts/truth even if people choose to gloss over them.

Science

Science is not a major or a career. It is a commitment to a systematic way of thinking, an allegiance to a way of building knowledge and explaining the universe through testing and factual observation. The thing is, that isn’t a normal way of thinking. It is unnatural and counterintuitive. It has to be learned. Scientific explanation stands in contrast to the wisdom of divinity and experience and common sense.  — Atul Gawande

For most of human history, it was believed that one could discover the truth through divine revelation or philosophical reasoning. It wasn’t until the second century CE that seekers of the truth (referred to as “natural philosophers”) such as Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965–1039) and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) began to promote and engage in the “scientific method” of disciplined observation and ultimately controlled experimentation. This new paradigm triggered an explosion of the gathering/cataloguing of facts and data (do an internet search for “tree of life” for a beautiful example).

Charles Darwin spent 5 years as a naturalist on the ship HMS Beagle gathering plant and animal samples from many parts of the world, and the next 23 years cataloguing and pondering his finds before advancing his theory of “descent by natural selection” to account for the origin of species. Alexander von Humboldt, often referred to as the father of ecology, traveled around the world for 5 years taking numerous climate measurements and gathering thousands of samples, and then spent the next 21 years publishing multiple volumes based on that data trove. Gregor Mendel patiently cross-bred thousands of generations of peas for more than 7 years to create the data base from which he advanced the first valid theory of inheritance and genetics.

Much of our current health, wealth and happiness is built upon a foundation of careful, deliberate and extensive fact finding carried out by curious industrious indefatigable people (“scientists”) who sought the truth. They did the hard work of looking hard at the world and letting their observations speak to them until they could discern some pattern or deeper reality. And then they attempted to validate their new ideas by testing a disprovable hypothesis under controlled conditions. Lots of heavy lifting by many smart people over many years. We all benefit every day from their diligent intelligent effort.

(People) who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations. Of necessity, they observe with a preconceived idea, and when they devise an experiment, they can see, in its results, only a confirmation of their theory. In this way they distort observation and often neglect very important facts because they do not further their aim.  — Claude Bernard

Individual scientists, being human, are also vulnerable to twisting facts to suit their favorite theories (or their economic interests if working in a for-profit setting). The beauty of a global multi-generational scientific community is that the ruthless scrutiny of journal editors/reviewers and other scientists eventually separates the wheat from the chaff. No other method of seeking the “truth” has generated so much knowledge and removed so much error over time. What people chose to do with that is another matter.

“Confidence Men”, Snake Oil and Bridges for Sale

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.  — Charles Darwin

Most people tend to believe people not because of their knowledge or experience or expertise (which are difficult to assess), but rather because they present their opinions with a lot of self-confidence. But confidence is no substitute for real knowledge. And just adding the words “The science proves …” to a sales pitch does not necessarily add any validity to their claims (since science never “proves” anything!). So if you meet up with someone who tells you something with confidence wrapped in science, hold onto your wallet, because odds are they are trying to sell you something so THEY will benefit.

The best way to avoid the sucker’s bet is to follow the old advice caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) and do some fact finding of your own. Through the magic of the internet, that is easier to do than ever before. While a search engine is not a perfect source of accurate information, you can now test the validity of anyone’s claims by accessing curated evidence-based forums based on peer-reviewed research.

And while you’re at it, how about checking out some of your own ideas and beliefs and opinions? The only thing we have to lose is some of our unfounded and inaccurate certainty, for which we should be not ashamed but proud!

If we are to have another [civil war], I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.  — Ulysses S. Grant

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