Does Elon Musk Understand the Nature of Science?
I’ll be honest. I wasn’t even sure what Elon Musk was talking about when he posted this tweet.
That’s just wrong. That’s not how science works (don’t worry, I’m going to go over this stuff). Finally, he made the following statement.
After looking at the replies to this tweet, I’m going to guess that Musk is saying that we shouldn’t trust Anthony Fauci. That’s just sad.
OK, let’s break this down.
Science Isn’t About the Truth
Elon Musk is essentially correct here. Science doesn’t give us THE TRUTH. That’s not how it works. In fact, we can never find the truth with science. How about a quick example (I’m going to take this from my physical science class).
The students are shown a cart on a 1.5 meter track with a fan that pushes with a constant force. They see that with this fan, the speed of the cart increases as the cart travels the length of the track. Of course, this isn’t what they expect will happen. Many students think that a constant force will make the cart move at a constant speed.
Now for the next experiment. What if you make a MUCH longer tracker (like 4 meters long)? Will the cart still increase in speed the whole time the fan is pushing it? Yes, the cart still accelerates.
Does this mean that a cart will increase in speed FOREVER? Well, we don’t actually know. The only way to answer this question would be to let the fan push on the cart FOREVER. The problem is that forever is a long long time. Long time. So, we can’t answer that question. We just have to go with the model that it does accelerate (until we find evidence that contradicts it).
If you want to prove something is true with science, you would have to test EVERY possible case (which is impossible). However, you only need to show one negative result to show that a scientific model is wrong. That’s how science works.
So, I guess it’s not wrong to say “the science isn’t settled”. Science is never settled. It would be like saying “the water isn’t dry” — duh.
Should We Question the Science?
Um…yeah. That’s how science works. That’s how we find new things. But I think all too often people use this as an excuse to say something like this:
“Science is just based on evidence. This particular model could be wrong. If you want to believe it’s true, that’s fine. I choose to believe it’s false. You have your beliefs, I have mine. Both are valid.”
That’s just not the way science works. There’s something to say about experience and experts. When people spend a lot of time in a particular research area, it’s common to put more weight on their judgements.
When you go to the doctor, do you trust the diagnosis (after many years of medical school and practice)? If you get in an airplane, do you tell the pilot the correct way to land the plane in a cross wind? Well, you might speak up in these cases — but it’s difficult to put many years of experience ahead of your “belief”.
Science is about questions — but if you question everything, you are going to have to start over and build your own science. If that’s your plan, it’s going to be a while before you know enough to build something like Twitter.
In fact, science is a social endeavor. It’s not one old dude with whacky hair working in a lab by himself. No, it’s a community of learners. It’s people working together and building on the ideas before them. We don’t reinvent the wheel every time we need to roll something on a cart. But yes, it’s possible that there could be something better than a wheel (but the wheel is still awesome).
The Scientific Method
Let’s get right to it. What is the real scientific method? If you go to a middle school classroom, you will probably see some version of this hanging on the wall. You know the drill: ask a question, make a hypothesis, test the hypothesis.
This isn’t really the nature of science. Personally, I like to say that science is the process of building and testing models using real world evidence. That’s it.
It’s even fine to have a model that we know is wrong — but still useful. Just look at gravity. On the surface of the Earth we say that the gravitational force is constant. This is good enough to build and fly an airplane in the sky. But we know that gravity is not actually constant. It actually decreases as you get farther away from the center of a planet. We use this model to get from the Earth to the moon.
Even that model of gravity is wrong. It doesn’t explain how massive objects can bend the path of light. It doesn’t explain why two colliding black holes create gravitational waves. For that, you would need to look at general relativity.
Science is like an onion. Because it smells bad? No. Because it makes you cry? No. Science is like an onion because it has layers of models. Do you know what else has layers? Parfay. Parfay has layers. Everyone loves a good parfay.
