The necessity of doubt ...

"... At that time when Warren and Marshall announced their findings, it was a long-standing belief in medical teaching and practice that stress and lifestyle factors were the major causes of peptic ulcer disease."

That was it ...

Some crazy Australian doctors, determined to understand the real cause of ulcers, figured out that a bacterium H. pylori was the likely cause in most cases. It doesn't negate the general statement "stress is bad for your health", it does however identify the true source of this illness; knowing the mechanism of ulcers means better treatment, better outcomes for patients. Sure, it's not that the controversy ended - but that's the point too ... an integral part of the scientific method, perhaps the most important component, isn't event part of the method itself - a willingness to doubt, to disbelieve, assume something is false and then prove that this is true, it's the gateway of exploring the natural world.

I'm writing on this subject, on this beautiful Pacific Northwest morning (and it's gonna be a scorcher today), in order to address the vilification of "doubters" ...

Doubters get a bad rap, but one wonders why? The only possible escape from a false or poorly constructed scientific model is a better one, and this is an ongoing process. Sure, some scientific discoveries are treated as "settled", but in science nothing should ever be settled. Science is, among other things, an unsettling process. Scientists seek to understand the world, but at the same time depend upon each other, and those that came before, in order to progress - the progress is good, as long as the turning-gear of that forward movement is solid, has no cracks ... but if a theory has cracks, then curiosity and science demands we ask questions. This idea that "any theory is better than no theory" is false - a bad theory can actually kill people.

Think of our friendly mirage ...

A mirage represents a visual phenomena that mimics something real, but is not real at all. The classic case is of the man dying of thirst in the desert, and then seeing, in the distance, a body of water ...

Before the modern age, mirages at sea could cause navigational errors - sending captains, crew and their ships to their deaths. Sure, there were captains who saw the mirage for what it was, but this is because they had a willingness to doubt what they saw, and just as important - to doubt the belief of their peers.

I know it's fun to beat up on people because they might hold beliefs you disagree with - but it's better to try to understand each other. Just because someone disagrees with a "commonly held truth" doesn't mean their bad or crazy (unless these are ethical norms - different subject). You don't think we went to the Moon? - fine, I'm ok with that. You don't believe in the threat of Global Warming? - cool, I'm down with that too. You think the Earth is flat? - I don't know if I believe this myself, but I know there are so many lies, piled on lies, when it comes to NASA, Antarctica, and "space" that ... well ... I have a hard time blaming people for ending up there, at the flat-earth model. Deception, among other things, impairs the progress of reason.

This is a kind of dialectic: those who defend the current paradigm, whatever it might be, against those who simply doubt its veracity. A tug-o-war. Yesterday's rebels are today's defenders of the faith - and radicalism, in science and culture generally, often gets co-opted by systems of power and control ...

Me? - at this point I believe I have been lied to my whole life about the nature of the world. This includes all my schooling, all the books, all the articles, all the lectures, everything ... this does not mean I know what the "truth" is about the nature of the world, but rather I've been driven to the point of perpetual-doubt. I can still suspend disbelief if I have substantial verifiable proof, but this kind of intersection between anecdotal experience and "scientific truth" isn't always guaranteed. So, I doubt a lot ...

I don't have cable TV - in part because I got sick of the lies ... on all sides ... "conservative" or "liberal", it was constant parade of manipulation and deception - still going on today, I only know when I stay at hotels ... (cable TV in the rooms)

There are very few sources of "news" I trust at this point - and that list is getting shorter every month ...

But, as annoying as my constant doubting might be it is essentially part of who I am at this point, and I don't think that's bad. I took too much for granted when I was younger, I didn't question enough. Don't get me wrong, I asked lots of questions, it just happened to be they were the wrong questions.

So doubt-away, question, don't just believe something because someone say's "it's true" - to the best of your ability, find out if it's really true.