Wrong more than wrong

Not all false theories are equal 

"A graceful mockery is worth a thousand insults," wrote the 20th century lawyer Louis Nitzer. Indeed, witty jabs were made at the genre in the beautiful literature that abounds with quotes such as: "I did not attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter, in which I welcomed her existence," as Mark Twain said, and "He had all the virtues I detest and none of the vices I A fan," as Winston Churchill said, and even in pop culture, as demonstrated by Groucho Marx: "I spent a perfect evening. But it wasn't this evening." When it comes to hurling insults at colleagues, even scientists don't keep their hand in the plate. The theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli reached an almost canonical level of perfection in a scathing criticism he lashed out at some article and wrote: "It's not true, it's not even wrong." I call this sentence Pauli's proverb.

Mathematician Peter Woit (Woit) of Columbia University recently used Pauli's proverb as the title of his book "Not Even Wrong", criticizing string theory (Basic Books, 2006). White argues that not only is string theory based on untestable hypotheses, but that it depends far too much on the aesthetic nature of its mathematics and the high status of its proponents. In science, an idea that cannot be disproved is not a wrong idea, but rather an idea that cannot even be determined if it is wrong, that is, it is not even wrong.

Not even wrong. What could be worse than that? The answer is: more wrong than wrong, or a situation I call "Asimov's axiom", which he articulated well in his book "The Theory of Relativity of Error" (Doubleday Publishing, 1988): "When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When humans thought the earth was a sphere, they were wrong. But whoever believes that thinking that the earth is a sphere is exactly the same error as thinking that the earth is flat, is more wrong than the other two errors combined."

Asimov's axiom comes from the assumption that science works by accumulation and progress. It is built on the mistakes of the past, and although scientists are often wrong, the extent of their error decreases as the accumulation of data and the construction of theories continues. For example, satellites have accurately measured the degree to which the Earth's shape deviates from the shape of a perfect sphere.

The opinion that all false theories are equal, actually means that there is no one theory that is better than the other. This is a theory that advocates the "strong" social connection of science, and it claims that science is inextricably linked to the social, political, economic, religious and ideological tendencies of the culture, and especially of the individuals who stand at its head. Scientists are knowledge capitalists who produce scientific papers that report the results of experiments conducted to test (and usually confirm) the hegemonic theories that reinforce the status quo.

In some extreme cases, this theory, that culture shapes the way science is conducted, is a correct theory. In the middle of the 19th century, doctors discovered that slaves suffered from drapetomania, or a tendency to disobey. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, scientists measured the differences in the thinking ability of different races and found that blacks were inferior to whites. In the middle of the 20th century, psychiatrists found evidence that allowed them to define homosexuality as a disease. Until recently, women were considered genetically inferior in science classrooms and corporate boardrooms.

But these gross examples do not undermine the extraordinary ability of science to clarify how the natural and social world works. Reality exists, and science is the best tool used so far to discover and describe this reality. The theory of evolution, although there are fierce debates about the rate and manner in which life developed, is infinitely superior to the theory of creation, which is not even wrong (in Pauli's sense). And as the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins observed on the subject: "When two opposing opinions are expressed with equal force, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly in the middle. There is a possibility that one of the parties is simply mistaken."

Just wrong. When people thought that science was not biased and not related to culture, they were simply wrong. On the other hand, when people thought that society completely controls science, they were simply wrong. But if you believe that thinking that science is not biased is the same error as thinking that society controls science, it is not necessarily more wrong than wrong.