Deifying Science Has a Cost

Humble Pie

The media and scientific community has been agog and agag at the Italian earthquake scientists convicted of manslaughter.  Whether the conviction will remain standing is not clear: Italy has an automatic appeal system, so it may be overturned. 

The NZ Herald provides a summary of the case:

Defying assertions that earthquakes cannot be predicted, an Italian court has convicted seven scientists and experts of manslaughter for failing to adequately warn residents before a quake struck central Italy in 2009 and killed more than 300 people.  The court in L'Aquila also sentenced the defendants to six years each in prison. All are members of the national Great Risks Commission, and several are prominent scientists or geological and disaster experts.

This judgment provokes reflection on why anyone would for a moment think that earthquake scientists should be held to account for failing to predict an earthquake, let alone convict such scientists of manslaughter.

One probable cause lies in the widespread deification of science itself.
  Scientism, the religion of elevating science to the status of the only, final, certain arbiter and protector of truth, knowledge and fact, has been widely promulgated and prophesied in the West.  Scientists, academics, philosophers openly make such claims, with a straight face.  As G. K. Chesterton said, when a people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing; rather they begin to believe in everything.  Every culture requires a final arbiter, an infallible truth or entity of some kind.  When God is rejected, substitutes are elevated and deified.

The six earthquake scientists in Italy failed to do what was expected--to give a certain, infallible word.  In a sense they have defamed the gods--hence their indictment and judgment.

A second probable cause lies in the behaviour of the scientific community itself.  Far too often it has claimed and proclaimed certainty when it is really talking about speculation--often of the wildest kind.  The pronounced certainty about evolution is an apt example.  Whilst some of the more honest evolutionists have admitted that evolutionary theory is really a "just so" story we tell ourselves, most evolutionists vehemently proclaim its infallible and certain truth.  Alleged anthropogenic global warming is another example.  "Official science" has repeatedly claimed and asserted certainty whilst privately scientists admit to all kinds of doubts and criticisms. 

Having got on the high horse of declarative certainty, scientists cannot complain when the public takes them seriously and, therefore, holds them to account when it turns out they were wrong. In the US, however, a scientists' lobby group is complaining:

In the United States, Michael Halpern at the Union of Concerned Scientists lobby group said in a blog: "This is an absurd and dangerous decision that U.S. officials should rebuke, and Italian President Giorgio Napolitano should overturn."

But then Halpern goes on to make an excellent point:

"Imagine if the government brought criminal charges against your local meteorologist for not being able to predict the exact path of a tornado," said Halpern. "Scientists need to be able to share what they know - and admit what they do not know — without the fear of being held criminally responsible should their predictions not hold up".

The point is that scientists are neither trained nor required to provide qualified advice--advice that discloses the remaining uncertainties, what is not known, and the levels of speculation involved.  In finance, for example, most regulatory regimes require that investment promotional literature include a list of uncertainties which, although now largely reduced to the trite and formulaic, remind readers of risks.  In New Zealand, advertising and promotional references to historical performance require a disclaimer that past returns do not indicate nor predict future returns.  If promoters do not so qualify their language they are liable to prosecution. 

To the extent that official science and scientists have overreached they need to adopt a far more humble and qualified position and consistently disclose what is not known.