杏吧原创

EVERY year I receive a large number of unsolicited, self-published books and articles about science by authors I have neither met nor heard of, and whose names do not appear in standard directories of scientists. They have found a flaw in Einstein鈥檚 special theory of relativity, discovered a way to tap the zero-point energy of the universe, or exposed a government cover-up of the truth about UFOs.If they are right, the world needs to know 鈥� and it is possible that they could be. We have to be prepared to rewrite the textbooks.

So do I struggle through all their work on the off-chance they are onto something everyone else has missed? No. Life鈥檚 too short, and the warning signs are too obvious. I rarely need to look past the title page. Science is on a roll. Who has time to read stuff that is almost certainly wrong?

Science relies on the astonishing ability of the human brain to detect patterns in the information collected by our senses. The brains of our ancestors, evolved in a Pleistocene wilderness, enabled them to figure out that you have to turn the log over to find the grubs. Incredibly, that same brain can compose sonnets and solve differential equations.

Pattern recognition is the basis of all aesthetic enjoyment, whether it is music, poetry or physics. As we become more sophisticated in what we do, we learn to recognise ever more subtle patterns. Unfortunately, the brain that makes the link between the tides and the phases of the moon may also connect a comet to victory in battle. Science is about spotting real patterns.

Richard Feynman described science as 鈥渨hat we have learned about how not to fool ourselves鈥�. Science depends on openness: we expose our scientific findings, including the details of how they were obtained, to the scrutiny of the scientific community. This sounds like a prescription for chaos, but the result is the opposite because it reinforces the idea that science is conditional 鈥� always subject to being replaced by better information. This can be frustrating to non-scientists, who ask why science can鈥檛 make up its mind, but the alternative is dogma. Openness provides a mechanism for self-correction, setting science apart from other ways of knowing. Science is, in fact, the only way of knowing. Anything else is just religion, which is all about authority.

鈥淪cience is the only way of knowing. Anything else is just religion鈥�

So, science rejects authority. Anyone can play, including 鈥渙utsiders鈥�. Perhaps the most fundamental of all natural laws, that of the conservation of energy, was first recognised in 1842, not by a physicist but by a doctor studying human metabolism. This law might yet be disproved, but of the half-dozen attempts to challenge it every year, some are merely foolish, most are fraudulent, and all have been wrong. Whenever claims by outsiders are rejected, the charge is invariably that the establishment is resisting change.

Famous insiders can be a little cranky too. There鈥檚 a thin line between recognising subtle patterns and apophenia, the experience of seeing patterns where none exist. Apophenia is often associated with brilliant Nobel laureates like the American chemist Linus Pauling, who in his later years imagined that massive doses of vitamin C cured disease.

Even so, the pillars of modern science may yet have some cracks. Quantum mechanics has transformed science, yet it is still not understood. Einstein鈥檚 field equations may also have big problems. Meanwhile behavioural science, once sneered at as 鈥渟oft鈥�, is now the hottest new frontier, revolutionised by fMRI imaging technology and genomics.

The scientific process, in short, takes account of cracks, shortcomings and changes. Cranks, on the other hand, are a threat mainly to unwary investors. For scientists, they are a sort of background noise, annoying but rarely interfering with genuine discourse.