How to Make an Informed Decision When You Are Out of Your Element

Can I ask a favor? So there is some controversy in interpretation of quantum mechanics between the Copenhagen interpretation which says that the randomness is an innate part of the universe (in fact things like position and velocity don’t have a specific value until they are measured), and the Realists who say that the randomness and uncertainty are a result of our inability to measure with the needed precision. (Einstein was a realist, in fact that’s what his “God does not play dice with the Universe,” quote is referring to.) Anyway, I was wondering if you could look over this paper which claims to propose a method to demonstrate whether the Copenhagen or Realist interpretation is correct and this experiment (direct link to PDF) which claims to have data in support of the Copenhagen interpretation. What are some of the strengths and weaknesses of the experiment? Can you think of any other avenues that should be investigated? I’ll give you a few minutes to glance through it.

    Ok, if you suspect I was being a smartass asking you to read that and get your opinion you are absolutely right. But let me ask you some honest questions: did you understand the material and were you able to interpret the information? Unless you have a degree in physics and/or math, my bet is “no”. Why? It’s not because you aren’t intelligent enough to comprehend it, it’s because you don’t have the necessary knowledge and experience to translate the papers from this weird math gobbleygook into something resembling the English language. Bell’s Theorem is an incredibly important concept in physics that showed the weirdness of quantum mechanics was actually weirdness of reality, not just do to the fact that we can’t measure it well enough. If you are curious about it and would like something less technical, Minute Physics had a great video on it. However, I want to point out this is all second hand knowledge: someone is serving as “translator” taking the material and explaining it to you; basically, you are trusting an expert in the field. And the whole point of this post is to say there is nothing wrong with that...as long as you listen to actual experts.

    I have a confession to make: before getting my Covid vaccine, (team Moderna!) I did absolutely no research on it. I wasn’t part of the group that sequenced the virus’s DNA. I didn’t have anything to do with isolating the spike proteins. I didn’t determine the lipid carrier to prevent the mRNA from breaking down too quickly. I can’t tell you how to synthesize large amounts of mRNA. I don’t know what animal would have the most representative immune system to test on. In fact, my knowledge of medicine and biology isn’t much more than I had when I graduated high school. I took 0 biology classes in college and besides for evolution, haven’t done a whole lot of reading on the subject. Simply put, I’m an idiot in biology, or at least woefully uneducated, and definitely not equipped to examine the vaccine for myself. Just as most people don’t have the background calculus, linear algebra, quantum mechanics, and probability/statistics knowledge to evaluate the evidence for Bell’s Theorem, I don’t have the genetics, microbiology, biochemistry, and medical knowledge to evaluate the Covid vaccine. (Quick aside, I do have the statistical expertise to evaluate that aspect of the studies and they looked good to me)

     So what did I do? I read a read a few Nova, The Scientist and Scientific American articles on it. I listened to an online question and answer session with Dr. Emily Smith (Friendly Neighborhood Epidemiologist) and Dr. Kaitlyn Jetilina (Your Local Epidemiologist). I talked with Anne and my old running partner, Steve, about it and their experiences as a doctor and someone who got an early shot. Basically, I found experts and listened to them. So this is the secret to making an informed decision in two steps: the first is realizing when you don’t have background to do it yourself. The next is finding expert sources that you trust and listening to them. The problem is, we often fall short in both of these steps. 

     I’ve talked before about the Dunning-Kruger Effect about how we often overestimate our ability to do something especially when we are bad at that thing; it’s an easy trap to fall into. So this is the downside of “thinking for yourself”, we make bad decisions about stuff and aren’t aware we’re making bad decisions. Think back the original papers I asked about; I can easily make the Copenhagen interpretation sound completely crazy and the Realist to sound much more reasonable. I mean cats that are simultaneously alive and dead, electrons that don’t have a position until we look at them, spooky action at a distance where somehow looking at one particle instantaneously changes another one literally miles away? Picturing those electrons going around the nucleus like little ping pong balls makes a lot more sense, and yet, experiment after experiment shows that is wrong. Likewise, we shouldn’t be surprised that we are unable to evaluate evidence in other specialized fields when we don’t have the knowledge base. 

    Defining “expert” is hard and it’s definitely a sliding scale. A primary care doctor knows a good amount about a whole bunch of stuff. A general surgeon probably knows more than the primary care doctor about heart surgery and less about blood pressure medication sided effects. Similarly, a cardiac surgeon is going to know more about heart surgery than the general surgeon or primary care doctor. But less about removing a gall bladder than the general surgeon and less about blood pressure medication than the primary care doctor. By necessity, the more we learn in one field, the less time and brain space we have to learn things in other fields. Similarly, if I want to know if the CERN particle accelerator will cause a black hole, I’m going to talk to the particle physicists over the electrical engineers. Now, if I want to make sure the wiring in the CERN particle accelerator is safe and up to code, I’m locking the physicists in a room so they stop bothering me and checking with the electrical engineers. Too often we will have an opinion and then “expert shop” for anyone having something that approaches expertise in that area while ignoring those who have even greater knowledge and disagree. This is a reason why I tend to trust science popularization publications over individuals: different individuals report on their specialties and are critiqued by others. The chances of an idea that is not commonly accepted getting through is less. In addition, when I’m looking at what individuals have to say I’m evaluating if this is their expertise and what are they presenting to support their assertions. Are they talking about papers or personal experience? Are citing one paper that’s been withdrawn or a meta-analysis of dozens of papers? What type of publications are they referencing, are they predatory journals? All of this need to be taken into consideration in evaluating the trustworthiness of an expert. 

    Now I can hear the question, “Well aren’t experts sometimes wrong? Isn’t skepticism and the questioning of the established quo the bedrock of science?” to which I say, “Absolutely, but I would add one word to it: Informed skepticism and the questioning of the established quo is the bedrock of science.” This is going to sound elitist and probably a bit arrogant, but I can all but guarantee that the next great scientific revolution isn’t going to be revealed on a YouTube video. We celebrate the rebels who overturn well established scientific ideas: Einstein, Darwin, Fleming, Watson and Crick (oops, I mean Rosalind Franklin), are all rightfully venerated. But I want to point out two things: 1) all of these people studied science up to the highest level of their fields at the time. 2) When they spread their ideas they published in scientific journals, presented at conferences, and sought out more information. Basically, they tried to convince other experts knowing that those experts would be the best able to shoot them down. To illustrate this, I often compare two scientists: Georges Lemaitre and Peter Duesberg. 

Imagine Einstein saying,
"Welp, you were right.
I was wrong."

     In addition to having a Ph.D. in physics, Fr. Georges Lemaitre was also a Catholic Priest in Belgium. He studied Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity and noticed it implied something that went against the general scientific consensus of an eternal, static universe. He approached Einstein about it who responded, “Your math is correct, but your physics is abominable.” In spite of that, Einstein encouraged Lemaitre to publish his ideas and he did in 1927. Lemaitre was quickly attacked by many astronomers who accused him of letting his religion get in the way of his science. However, in 1929 Hubble published data on the red shift of galaxies that provided support for Lemaitre’s idea. In 1931 his papers was translated into English and in 1933 he was invited to give lectures in the US. Einstein was in the audience of one and afterward stood up, applauded and said, “This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened.” Other scientists began to pick up his work and a paper by Ralph Alpher and George Gamow showed the observed proportion of elements in the Universe matched what was predicted by Lemaitre. It wasn’t all peace and love however, as Gold Metal of the Royal Academy of Science holder Fred Hoyle proposed his “Steady State Model” derisively referring to Lemaitre’s idea as “The Big Bang”. However, the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964 pretty much put the nail in the coffin for most supporters of the Steady State Model (and netted the pair of astronomers who discovered it, Wilson and Penzias, a Nobel Prize) and led to Lemaitre’s idea being accepted throughout the word. So to review, Lemaitre, an expert in his field, published an idea that went against the majority of other experts. He presented his ideas in lectures to other experts, convinces some who carried on his work finding more evidence to support him. Contrasting ideas fought it out in scientific journals and conferences until eventually, as piece after piece of data came in, the vast majority of experts came to agreement and it’s now something taught in schools all over the world. 

    This all contrasts with Peter Duesberg who studied cancer early in his career becoming a tenured professor at UC Berkley at 36, inducted to the National Academy of Sciences at 49, and receiving an Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Institutes of Health. In 1987 he published a paper, “Retroviruses at Pathogens and Carcinogens: Expectations and Realities” where he argued that HIV was a harmless virus and that AIDS was caused by recreational or anti-viral drug use. Many researchers took this seriously and began to investigate other potential causes was for AIDS and more and more data came in. However, unlike Lemaitre and the Big Bang, this data went against Duesberg’s ideas. In addition, unlike Einstein, Duesberg refused to admit he was wrong. He continually doubled down, cherry picking data to criticize the idea that HIV causes AIDS and unwilling to bring data to show he was correct. In 2000 Duesberg approached the government of South Africa and presented his ideas directly to them and convinced them to back off antiretroviral drugs and other lifesaving treatment. The result was policies that exasperated the HIV/AIDS epidemic for the country and led to literally literally hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths and suffering. During this time, journals have stopped publishing his ideas on HIV/AIDS (though his work on cancer still is), his last one published in 2009 in the Journal Medical Hypothesis where he referred to HIV as a “harmless passenger virus” and labeled antiviral medicines “inevitably toxic” was later retracted. He has kept his post at UC Berkley though his lab has a hard time finding workers and grad students. Duesberg claims to be the victim of the scientific community being unreasonably close minded. Yet, he is still able to research, still able to publish, the scientific community just decided that they weren’t going to give a stage to the dangerous shit he was spouting any more. So let’s review his methods, Duesberg started publishing his ideas in scientific journals, then when the evidence went against him he doubled down. Seeing he couldn’t convince experts he turned to politicians and the public but still didn’t provide positive evidence. Even after literally decades of research seeing the average life expectancy of those with HIV grow 30+ years, he refuses to admit he made a mistake. 

     Many people pushing what the scientific community hasn’t accepted want to don the mantle of Galileo. However, history has shown there are many more Peter Duesbergs than Galileos and, even when a scientific revolution occurs, it comes from within the field and usually the experts are convinced well before the general populace. We live in a time of unprecedented information sharing, where anyone can present their ideas to literally billions of people. However, this brings a torrent of misinformation, as well. In the skeptic community there is what’s known as Brandolini’s Law: “The amount of energy to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.” Because of this, the rebuttals come later, aren’t as well shared, don’t have nearly the reach. But they are there, look for them. Look for the well-established science popularizers, look for skeptic communities, look for groups dedicated to science communication like Sci-Moms. The truth is out there, but it is most likely to be published in a scientific journal that is hard for anyone outside the field to understand. But luckily, there are experts in those fields that can help us and listening to them is how we make informed decisions.