The brilliant philosophical writer (and my old friend) Anthony
Gottlieb has been ruminating on whether science should be
sceptical about itself.
There is no full-blown logical
paradox here. If a claim is ambitious, people should indeed tread
warily around it, even if it comes from scientists; it does not
follow that they should be sceptical of the scientific method
itself. But there is an awkward public-relations challenge for any
champion of hard-nosed science. When scientists confront the
deniers of evolution, or the devotees of homeopathic medicine, or
people who believe that childhood vaccinations cause autism-all of
whom are as demonstrably mistaken as anyone can be-they
understandably fight shy of revealing just how riddled with error
and misleading information the everyday business of science
actually is. When you paint yourself as a defender of the truth, it
helps to keep quiet about how often you are
wrong.
Very true. On scientific questions where I am orthodox (eg,
alternative medicine, evolution), I notice that the heretics use
precisely the same sorts of arguments as I do in those fields where
I am a sceptic (eg, climate projections, crop circles). There seems
to be no easy answer to the problem: when should you go for a
heresy.