Some people dismiss scientific claims when these conflict with their instinctive views or their religious beliefs. But while instincts can be important and faith can be valuable, when it comes to reliability, what makes ‘scientific thinking’ distinctly dependable is that it is characterised by its approach to reason and evidence. In short, for any claim to be scientific, it must stand up to the on-going tests of rational analysis and evidential examination. To make any claim that fails or ignores such critical tests is to make an arbitrary assertion, which offers nothing to justify its believability.
It is important to remember that what validates a claim as scientific is not that some particular person – formally designated a scientist or not – has made that claim. What is crucial is the manner in which that claim has been tested and found to be provisionally sound. It does not have to be declared absolutely, eternally correct. Indeed, any such declaration would cast doubt on the claim being scientific at all. What we are looking for in the testing process is genuine attempts to demonstrate what the claim entails would happen does happen under conditions of objective observation, and that systematic searches for counter-examples or alternative explanations have not produced a case to undermine its credibility.
In medical research, forensic investigation, or electrical engineering, we can see how claims that are put forward from different quarters are subject to vigorous tests, and only upheld if confirmatory findings are obtained and replicable, while no contrary evidence is discovered. And the acceptance of such claims is open to revisions should further challenges and explorations lead us to reconsider what is being put forward.
By contrast, an arbitrary stance reveals itself when one insists on the correctness of a claim regardless of the evidence. This can be seen with people who would reject any questioning of their assertions even though they have no tangible basis for making them. For example, anti-vaxxers dismiss all vaccinations as unacceptably dangerous irrespective of extensive studies of different types of vaccine; climate change deniers maintain whatever substantial climate changes are detected have nothing to do with human activities in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary; cult followers would not rethink any of their leaders’ claims even when they are blatantly false according to every objective assessment; and xenophobic conspiracy theorists attribute blame to foreigners for things with which there are no detectable causal links.
Of course, makers of arbitrary claims can resort to the old ‘science hasn’t got all the answers’ proclamation. But it has no relevance. Science, or more accurately, the totality of scientifically validated claims at any given time, does not have all the answers to every conceivable question. Neither has any other source of information – be they preachers, self-styled clairvoyants, astrologers, or the rumour mill. The difference is that those who work on scientific claims know the limits of the available evidence and are prepared to suspend their judgement, or revise their views, in light of what actual investigation and experiment are able to find.
So long as we remember that ‘pseudo-science’ – the pretence that absolute knowledge is attained in the name of science when it rests on anything but scientific evaluation – is not science, we can safely say that we should let claims be put on a scale that has scientific at one end and arbitrary at the other, and where any individual claim sits would indicate to us what credence we should attach to it.
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