Anomaly Hunting and the Search for Truth

[_Res Ipsa]

In another thread, DrW contrasted the difference between the scientific method and anomaly hunting. This contrast is pretty important in understanding how we learn about the universe through the accumulation of evidence, but gets little discussion.

Steven Novella wrote pretty good piece on anomaly hunting. http://theness.com/neurologicablog/inde ... y-hunting/.

The best contrast between the scientific method and anomaly hunting is that between scientists and Young Earth Creationists on the age of the earth. To determine the age of the earth, the scientific method relies on multiple lines of converging evidence, using methods based on the laws of physics and verified by repeated experiment.

YEC's on the other hand, base everything on the Bible. All evidence is spun to support the biblical account of creation. Rather than collect a robust body of evidence and follow it to conclusion, they rely on anomaly hunting. The problem is, of course, they don't do the legwork -- or in fact any work at all -- to determine whether an apparent anomaly is actually a real anomaly.

As an example, in another thread, someone posted a picture from a YEC webpage of a person holding a piece of wood with a caption that said the wood was 19,000 years old and was found embedded in limestone dated at 110 million years old. This was offered as proof that limestone dating was wrong.

Here's the problem: no attempt was made to determine whether this apparent anomaly was a real anomaly. Someone genuinely interested in figuring out the truth would want to verify how and where the wood was found, where was it located within the formation, whether the material in which the wood was embedded was dated, the methods and reliability of the dating methods, whether the piece of wood could have been transported into the formation by some natural process (Hint: water can run through a limestone formation).

Contrast the YEC's treatment of apparent anomalies with the scientific treatment of anomalies. When an experiment recently appeared to show particles moving faster than the speed of light, the scientific community didn't start burning all references to the special theory of relativity. Rather, they conducted an investigation to determine whether or not they had a genuine anomaly on their hands. They stripped the experimental apparatus down and tested it, piece by piece and found flaws that explained the result. They also set up experiments with different equipment to try and reproduce the result. The conclusion: Einstein is safe, for now, and the apparent anomaly was not an anomaly at all.

But there is a larger point to be made (which I think was DrW's main point). The scientific method is a reliable method for accumulating accurate knowledge about the universe. It is not a perfect method, and will never deliver perfect knowledge. Omniscience is for gods, not people. Because our knowledge will never be perfect, any large body of evidence is likely to include anomalies. Ironically, the greater the body of evidence, the more anomalies we should expect.

So, what do we do with anomalies? First, we do the hard work necessary to distinguish between an apparent anomaly and a genuine anomaly. Second, when we find a genuine anomaly, we don't automatically discard every other piece of evidence in favor of a single anomalous piece of evidence. Rather, what we need to look at is if the anomalous evidence fits within a robust, explanatory body of evidence that leads to conclusions contrary to the body of evidence we've been relying on. If it does, we then roll up our sleeves and do the hard work of figuring out which body of evidence more likely leads to the correct conclusion.

[_Gunnar]

Great post, Brad!

[_DrW]

And for those who tend to be more interested in the anomalies (you know who you are), there are always the adventures of Arno Penzias and Bob Wilson, who went looking for the source of a very bothersome (and believed to be anomalous) signal in their large horn microwave antenna and ended up with a Nobel Prize for the discovery of the microwave echo of the Big Bang (the cosmic microwave background).

They won the Nobel prize even though another group (at Princeton, no less) had already accurately predicted the existence of such a signal based on theoretical considerations alone.