Reviews
Free Radicals
Wilson Poon
Free Radicals: The secret anarchy of
science
Michael Brooks
Profile Books, 320pp
In the popular mind, and probably in the minds of many science
graduates, the professional scientist is a cooly detached,
supremely rational individual making steady progress in extending
human understanding (and therefore control) of the universe by
following an algorithm known as ‘the scientific method’. This image
is propagated more or less consciously by teachers of science at
all levels, and subliminally by the persona projected by
professional scientists in public. The ‘scientific method’
enunciated in many an elementary text goes something like this: a
hypothesis is formulated, experiments are conducted, and if the
data confirm the hypothesis, then hey presto, we have a new
scientific finding; but if not, then it’s back to the drawing
board. Michael Brooks sets out to debunk this popular portrait of
‘the scientist at work’.
In my experience, it is not until one gets to do one’s own
research that one discovers the secret that science doesn’t quite
work in this way. The so-called scientific method is silent on some
crucial issues. For a start, it doesn’t tell us where the
hypothesis comes from. In a student laboratory exercise, this is
supplied by the teacher. But the great unknown does not come served
up with ready-made questions to be investigated. Out of the
potentially infinite number of possible hypotheses (‘All
extraterrestrial planets are made of cheddar’ is one), the
fledgling researcher has to learn how to formulate ones that are
fruitful and testable in finite time. Alas, there is no algorithm
for doing that!
Then there’s the problem of deciding when there is ‘enough data’
to say that the hypothesis is either ‘proven’ or ‘disproven’. A
single piece of datum never clinches the argument; instead, as in
most criminal trials, one has to rely on the cumulative weight of
evidence. Yet again, there is no algorithm for deciding how much
‘weight’ is enough for going to press.
Finally, especially in biomedical fields, ethical considerations
crop up all the time, and there is certainly no algorithm for
deciding between ethically acceptable and unacceptable experiments,
or for weighing up risks.
At these and countless other junctures, the image of a detached,
rational scientist following a well-defined ‘scientific method’ is
clearly inappropriate. A scientist is a human person, and humans
simply do not do anything exclusively by detached ratiocination
following clear-cut rules. As in any other human activity,
scientists follow hunches and rely on intuition; they often simply
go where their passions lead – scientists are usually fiercely
committed to the truth of the hypotheses they are testing; and
they’d better be, if they are to have the persistence required to
push through arduous investigations. In the heat of the moment,
corners are sometimes cut, leaving holes in the reasoning to be
filled in later, if at all. Real science is a messy business, as is
anything else done by real humans. The surprising thing is that
something approximating to the truth usually emerges from this
untidy process.
That this is so has been said before. Famously, the philosopher
Paul Feyerabend set the cat among pigeons in 1975 by his book
Against Method, arguing that science proceeded much more
anarchically than the textbook description of ‘the scientific
method’ would allow. Earlier, in the late 60s, the Nobel
medical laureate Sir Peter Medawar had confessed to the same awful
secret as an insider. Going back another decade, the distinguished
physical chemist turned philosopher Michael Polanyi discussed why
and how science was a form of ‘personal knowledge’ in a 1958
classic with that title. Michael Brooks’ book fits into this
tradition, although as one might expect from a consultant for the
popular magazine New Scientist, this volume is in a far racier
style than any of its predecessors. Through well-chosen case
studies, Brooks documents the human face of science. There is, as
others have argued before, no such thing as a single, coolly
detached, scientific method. Instead, scientists would stop at
almost nothing to make discoveries, and to get the credit for doing
so.
The term ‘anarchy’ in the subtitle is clearly an echo of
Feyerabend. It is a ‘secret’ because it seems that many scientists
do not want this state of affairs to become widely known. Brooks
relates how Feyerabend was lampooned for being ‘anti-science’ after
his book came out. He also tells us that when James Watson, the
co-discoverer of the DNA double helix, published an autobiography
revealing the same kind of messiness in his scientific career, his
fellow Nobel laureates (Crick and Wilkins) were furious, apparently
because they thought it a betrayal for a fellow scientist to give
away such dirty secrets.
Here is precisely where Brooks is at his strongest and most
distinctive. He argues towards the end of Free Radicals that it is
vital that the messy humanness of the scientific enterprise should
not be kept secret, but should be widely disseminated and
appreciated. Science is simply too important in our modern world
for us to put its practitioners on a rationalistic pedestal. If we
do so, then every time the veil is pulled back slightly (willing or
unwilling) to reveal the underlying messiness, there is the danger
of an anti-science backlash: ‘Gosh! Scientists are human like us
after all, so we can never trust them again!’ Brooks argues that it
is not until the ‘secret anarchy of science’ becomes common
knowledge that science can truly take the place it deserves in our
culture and in public life. I agree.
The book is mostly well written and entertaining. The quality of
the non-technical explanations of the science associated with the
case studies is admirable. I do worry that at several points in the
book, Brooks labels the real methods followed by scientists as
‘irrational’. Moreover, it is a pity that an author who has so
successfully shattered one myth should spill significant ink
perpetuating another – the supposed necessary conflict between
science and religion. Brooks repeatedly talks of the
‘irrationality’ of religion. It is true that the way real science
proceeds, and the way religion operates, very often does not fit
into the rationality of some supposed ‘scientific method’. But that
surely does not render either of these ‘irrational’. It’s just that
we have to widen our definition of rationality. And that surely is
the enduring message of this book.
