カーゴ・カルト・サイエンス
Cargo Cult Science, by Richard Feynman, 1985
池田光穂
科学のふりをした非科学、似非(えせ)科学、偽科学 のこと。科学のふりとは、「研究の一応の法則と形式に完全にしたがってはいるが……何か一番大切な本質がぽかっとぬけているもの」(ファインマン[大貫 訳]2000:294)のことをさす。"So I call these things cargo cult science, because the follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential " (Feyman 1985:340).
異名や異表記がたくさんあり、カーゴカルトサイエン ス、カーゴカルト科学、積み荷科学などとも呼ばれる。カーゴカルト(Cargo Cult)は、文字どうり訳 すと「積荷崇拝」あるいは「積荷カルト」であり、19世紀後半から20世紀中ごろまでに、メラネシアを中心として、西洋の植民地主義により、先住民・原住 民に大量の物量や、彼らの技術にはない珍奇で 奇跡的な技術の導入により、彼らの間で認知的混乱がおこり、その時に同時におきた社会不安に乗じておこった「千年王国運動(millennium movement)」と呼ばれる宗教的熱狂運動のことをさす、文化人類学の用語である。カーゴとは、船や飛行機の積み荷のことで、彼らは、自分たちが物質 的に西洋人に対して貧困である ——そのようなイデオロギーは西洋人が武力と物量で持ち込んだのだが——ことの原因を考え、それは(キリストの救世主に似た)救済主が豊かな物量をもたら す至福の時が、いずれ近々おこるだろうと信じて、手作りの飛行場——もちろん実用的価値はない——や、木製の飛行機の像を造って、その積み荷の招来を期待 した。もちろん、積み荷などやっては来ずに、各地で熱狂的な運動は急速に醒めることになったが、広域的な地域の局所的な部分で、この間(7-80年間)散 発的に起こりつづけた。カーゴカルト運動は、メラネシアとりわけ、ニューギニアで発生した(Vailala Madness 1919-1922, Taro Cult, Cargo Cult)やヴァヌアツ(John Frum)などで起こったが、こ れらは急速な文化変容による現地社会のストレスマネジメントの社会的適応——それもかなり虚しい帰結を結ぶ——だと現在では解釈されている。
このようなことは、現場に居合わせた宣教師や人類学 者によって、西洋社会に些かか面白おかしく伝わり、「未開人の無知蒙昧」のさまとしてステレオタイプとして伝わった。リチャード・ファインマン(Richard Feynman, 1918-1988)は、このステレオタイプに基づいて、自分の身近にある似非科学の実態——彼は、そのひとつにリフレクソロジーを挙げている——をカー ゴカルトサイエンスとして『ご冗談でしょう、ファインマンさん』(1985)の中であげている。
『ご冗談でしょう、ファインマンさん』愛読者ならよ く知られた事実だが、ファインマンのこの著作の最終章で、彼は健全な科学的精神の称揚をおこなっている。しかし、同書には、いたずら好きの天才であるリ チャードが、さまざまな科学上のレトリックや先行する知的知識や方法を「(修辞的)加工」して、自分の知的遍歴を開陳しているので、彼の科学者の人生物語 という寓意そのものが、その読者にカーゴカルト化している感はいなめない。フォークサイエンスは純粋な科学的議論のなかでも、実験データの捏造つまり研究不正の結果として登場するものがある。その好例が、常温核融合(Cold Fusion)である。常 温核融合が、カーゴカルトサイエンスになる理由は、科学社会学的にかんがえると氷解する。すなわち、1)発見より発明の文脈で評価され、大きな科学的栄誉 と名声がえられる、2)産業界に計り知れない影響を与えるので、すぐに実用化されなくても、その材料や製造法に大きな投資的価値が生まれる、などである。
カーゴカルトそのものはメラネシアで終焉したが、よ くよく考えてみれば、我々の近代社会でのカーゴカルトサイエンスの弊害は大きな問題である。「脳科学ブーム」や「天才の育て方」、はては「FXで驚異的に儲ける金融工学の精髄」など宣伝文句で表現される多くのものをみても、 我々の身の回りにもカーゴカルトサイエンス(積み荷科学)が蔓延している。 ナンシー・マクダウェル(Nancy McDowell)は、カーゴカルトと いう信仰形態は、宗教ではなく、西洋の学者が「未開人の思考」につけたオリエンタリズムで あり、「カーゴ・カルトなる概念は西洋人の偏見が作り出した虚構のメラネシア文化であり、現実にはそのような文化は存在しないと主張」した。「メラネシア の人々のこの信仰は、突如現れた旧来の常識では理解不能な異文明を、旧来の常識をもってどうにか止揚した彼らなりの解釈のしかたであり、この思考自体は何 ら突飛なものではなく全世界普遍の反応であって「カーゴ・カルト」とは人類普遍の考え方の一部を切り出して名前を付けただけのものである、としている」 ウィキペディア;Ton Otto, What Happened to Cargo Cults? Material Religions in Melanesia and the West, Social Analysis. 53 (1): 87. )。
そのため、墓場のファインマン先生には申し訳ない が、メラネシアの先住民・原住民に は、それ以外のすべての住民を代表して謝罪したいと同時に、カーゴカルトサイエンスは、人類の普遍的な「知的態度」ないしは「宗教的態度」のひとつである ことを申し添えておきたい(福井栄二郎は(あまりよい造語とは思えないが)「未 開の理性」と表現している。むしろ「理術」のほうがいいかな)。
●カーゴカルトプログラミング
カーゴカルト=無意味な抵抗(表現行為)という意味 が転じて、コンピュータサイエンスでは、"Cargo cult programming" なる用語と実践が存在する。
"Cargo cult programming is a style of computer programming characterized by the ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. Cargo cult programming is symptomatic of a programmer not understanding either a bug they were attempting to solve or the apparent solution (compare shotgun debugging, deep magic).[Raymond, Eric S. (1996). "The New Hacker's Dictionary". MIT Press] The term cargo cult programmer may apply when anyone inexperienced with the problem at hand copies some program code from one place to another with little understanding of how it works or whether it is required. Cargo cult programming can also refer to the practice of applying a design pattern or coding style blindly without understanding the reasons behind that design principle. Examples being adding unnecessary comments to self-explanatory code, overzealous adherence to the conventions of a programming paradigm, or adding deletion code for objects that garbage collection automatically collects. Obsessive and redundant checks for null values or testing whether a collection is empty before iterating its values may be a sign of cargo cult programming. Such obsessive checks make the code less readable, and often prevent the output of proper error messages, obscuring the real cause of a misbehaving program."-Cargo cult programming. | 「カーゴ カルト
プログラミングは、本来の目的を果たさないコードやプログラム構造を儀式的に組み込むことを特徴とするコンピューター
プログラミングのスタイルである。 カーゴ カルト
プログラミングは、プログラマーが解決しようとしているバグも、見かけ上の解決策も理解していないことを示している (ショットガン
デバッグとディープ マジックを比較せよ) [Raymond, Eric S. (1996). 「新しいハッカーの辞書」。 MIT Press]
カーゴ カルト プログラマーという用語は、当面の問題に不慣れな人が、その仕組みや必要性をほとんど理解せずに、ある場所から別の場所にプログラム
コードをコピーする場合に適用される可能性がある。 カーゴ カルト
プログラミングは、その設計原理の背後にある理由を理解せずに、盲目的に設計パターンまたはコーディング スタイルを適用する慣行を指す場合もる。
例としては、不要なコメントを自明のコードに追加する、プログラミング パラダイムの規則に過度に固執する、ガベージ
コレクションが自動的に収集するオブジェクトの削除コードを追加するなどがある。 null
値の強迫的で冗長なチェックや、値を反復する前にコレクションが空かどうかをテストすることは、カーゴ カルト
プログラミングの兆候である可能性がある。 このような執拗なチェックにより、コードが読みにくくなり、多くの場合、適切なエラー
メッセージが出力されなくなり、不正なプログラムの本当の原因がわかりにくくなる。」 |
●ファインマン先生の略伝(ウィキペディア「リチャード・P・ファインマン」等を参照)
1918 5月11日:
ニューヨーク市クイーンズのファーロッカウェイにおいて、白ロシア、ミンスク出身のベンダー・アンド・ゴールドシュタイン社の制服販売業を営む父メルヴィ ル・フィリップス・ファインマンとイーストサイド育ちのポーランド系母ルシールの2男1女の長子として出生。
1918年 - 1935年: ファーロッカウェイに居住
c 1929
「ラビ達が言っていたユダヤ教の奇跡を少年なりに
強引な解釈をして理解、納得に努めていたが、死にゆく登場人物の回想シーンという説話に整合性が見出せなかったリチャード少年は大泣きしてしまう。驚いた
ラビは「これは作り話なんだよ」と説明するが、これをきっかけにファインマンの宗教嫌いが決定的なものになり無神論を大っぴらに標榜するようにな」る。
c 1930
1935 コロンビア大学を受験したが、当時アイ
ヴィー・リーグを中心に設けられていた「ユダヤ人学生上限枠」のため不合格となったため、MITに進学
1935-1939 MIT
「MITを卒業した1939年の夏休みの間、プラ
スチックに金属メッキをするメタプラスト社にアルバイトで入り、それまでよりはるかに多くの種類のプラスチックにメッキできるようにしたり、何時間も掛
かっていた作業をたったの5分に短縮するなどの才能を発揮した。ファインマンが化学においても優れた知識とセンスを持つ」エピソード。
1939-1949 「リンストン大学の大学院生と なり、ジョン・ホイーラー教授の助手」
1942 最初の妻アーリーン・グリーンバウムと結 婚
1943 ロスアラモス国立研究所に移ってマンハッタン計画の任務を遂行(〜1946年11月):「理論グループに所属していたが、下っ端の雑用からテネシー州オー クリッジにあるウラン濃縮工場の視察、および、計算機を使った膨大な計算等々、様々な任務に携わ」る。
1945 アーリーンが結核で死去。
1946 コーネル大学教授(〜1951)
1952 メアリー・ルイーズ・ベルと結婚(〜 1956)
1953 国際理論物理学会で来日
1960 グウェネス・ホワースと結婚。後、実子 カールと養子ミシェルの2児を授かる
1965 量子電磁力学(QED)の発展に大きく寄 与したことにより、ジュリアン・S・シュウィンガー、朝永振一郎とともにノーベル物理学賞を共同受賞
1972 エルステッド・メダル
1978 腹部にガンが発見されて1987年まで4
回の手術
1979 アメリカ国家科学賞
1986 1月28日に起きたチャレ ンジャー号事故に際しては、ロジャース委員会の調査員の一人として事故原因の究明に参加.
1988 2月15日カリフォルニアで死去。69 歳。
●ファインマンさんの魅力(Leonard
Susskindさん→4分後に注目)2011/05/16
︎
●現代のカーゴカルトサイエンス(2020年6月上 旬の朝日新聞)
︎SSRI, 選択的セロトニン再吸収阻害剤▶日本における自殺研究︎▶〈こころ〉と社会︎︎▶︎レ
ジリアンス▶︎︎医療による統治性▶︎▶︎︎▶︎▶︎︎▶︎▶︎
●カーゴカルト科学(テキスト)
Cargo Cult Science* *Adapted from the Caltech commencement address given in 1974. |
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During the Middle Ages there
were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn
would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the
ideas which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn't work,
to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science.
And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age.
It is such a scientific age, in fact, that we have difficulty in
understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing
that they proposed ever really worked or very little of it did. |
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But even today I meet lots of
people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFOs, or
astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types
of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I've concluded that it's not a
scientific world. Most people believe so many wonderful things that I
decided to investigate why they did. And what has been referred to as
my curiosity for investigation has landed me in a difficulty where I
found so much junk that I'm overwhelmed. First I started out by
investigating various ideas of mysticism, and mystic experiences. I
went into isolation tanks and got many hours of hallucinations, so I
know something about that. Then I went to Esalen, which is a hotbed of
this kind of thought (it's a wonderful place; you should go visit
there). Then I became overwhelmed. I didn't realize how much there was. |
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At Esalen there are some large
baths fed by hot springs situated on a ledge about thirty feet above
the ocean. One of my most pleasurable experiences has been to sit in
one of those baths and watch the waves crashing onto the rocky shore
below, to gaze into the clear blue sky above, and to study a beautiful
nude as she quietly appears and settles into the bath with me. |
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One time I sat down in a bath
where there was a beautiful girl sitting with a guy who didn't seem to
know her. Right away I began thinking, "Gee! How am I gonna get started
talking to this beautiful nude babe?" I'm trying to figure out what to say, when the guy says to her, "I'm, uh, studying massage. Could I practice on you?" "Sure," she says. They get out of the bath and she lies down on a massage table nearby. I think to myself, "What a nifty line! I can never think of anything like that!" He starts to rub her big toe. "I think I feel it," he says. "I feel a kind of dent is that the pituitary?" I blurt out, "You're a helluva long way from the pituitary, man!" They looked at me, horrified I had blown my cover and said, "It's reflexology!" I quickly closed my eyes and appeared to be meditating. |
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That's just an example of the
kind of things that overwhelm me. I also looked into extrasensory
perception and PSI phenomena, and the latest craze there was Uri
Geller, a man who is supposed to be able to bend keys by rubbing them
with his finger. So I went to his hotel room, on his invitation, to see
a demonstration of both mindreading and bending keys. He didn't do any
mindreading that succeeded; nobody can read my mind, I guess. And my
boy held a key and Geller rubbed it, and nothing happened. Then he told
us it works better under water, and so you can picture all of us
standing in the bathroom with the water turned on and the key under it,
and him rubbing the key with his finger. Nothing happened. So I was
unable to investigate that phenomenon. |
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But then I began to think, what
else is there that we believe? (And I thought then about the witch
doctors, and how easy it would have been to check on them by noticing
that nothing really worked.) So I found things that even more people
believe, such as that we have some knowledge of how to educate. There
are big schools of reading methods and mathematics methods, and so
forth, but if you notice, you'll see the reading scores keep going down
or hardly going up in spite of the fact that we continually use these
same people to improve the methods. There's a witch doctor remedy that
doesn't work. It ought to be looked into; how do they know that their
method should work? Another example is how to treat criminals. We
obviously have made no progress lots of theory, but no progress in
decreasing the amount of crime by the method that we use to handle
criminals. |
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Yet these things are said to be
scientific. We study them. And I think ordinary people with commonsense
ideas are intimidated by this pseudoscience. A teacher who has some
good idea of how to teach her children to read is forced by the school
system to do it some other way or is even fooled by the school system
into thinking that her method is not necessarily a good one. Or a
parent of bad boys, after disciplining them in one way or another,
feels guilty for the rest of her life because she didn't do "the right
thing," according to the experts. So we really ought to look into theories that don't work, and science that isn't science. |
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I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas he's the controller and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land. | |
Now it behooves me, of course,
to tell you what they're missing. But it would be just about as
difficult to explain to the South Sea Islanders how they have to
arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not
something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the
earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing
in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have
learned in studying science in school we never explicitly say what this
is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific
investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and
speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a
principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter
honesty a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing
an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make
it invalid not only what you think is right about it: other causes that
could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that
you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked to make
sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated. |
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Details that could throw doubt
on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the
best you can if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong to
explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put
it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with
it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle
problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate
theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those
things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the
theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out
right, in addition. In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another. |
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The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for example, with advertising. Last night I heard that Wesson oil doesn't soak through food. Well, that's true. It's not dishonest; but the thing I'm talking about is not just a matter of not being dishonest, it's a matter of scientific integrity, which is another level. The fact that should be added to that advertising statement is that no oils soak through food, if operated at a certain temperature. If operated at another temperature, they all will including Wesson oil. So it's the implication which has been conveyed, not the fact, which is true, and the difference is what we have to deal with. | |
We've learned from experience
that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your
experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's
phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And,
although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not
gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very
careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this
kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in
much of the research in cargo cult science. |
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A great deal of their difficulty
is, of course, the difficulty of the subject and the inapplicability of
the scientific method to the subject. Nevertheless, it should be
remarked that this is not the only difficulty. That's why the planes
don't land but they don't land. |
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We have learned a lot from
experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One
example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment
with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be
quite right. It's a little bit off, because he had the incorrect value
for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of
measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If you plot
them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bigger than
Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the
next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle
down to a number which is higher. |
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Why didn't they discover that
the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are
ashamed of this history because it's apparent that people did things
like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's,
they thought something must be wrong and they would look for and find a
reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to
Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the
numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that. We've
learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don't have that kind of a
disease. |
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But this long history of
learning how to not fool ourselves of having utter scientific integrity
is, I'm sorry to say, something that we haven't specifically included
in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you've caught on
by osmosis. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that. |
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I would like to add something
that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe,
which is that you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a
scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on
your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when
you're not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary
human being. We'll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I'm
talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying,
but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, that you
ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our
responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I
think to laymen. |
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For example, I was a little
surprised when I was talking to a friend who was going to go on the
radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he
would explain what the applications of this work were. "Well," I said,
"there aren't any." He said, "Yes, but then we won't get support for
more research of this kind." I think that's kind of dishonest. If
you're representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to
the layman what you're doing and if they don't want to support you
under those circumstances, then that's their decision. |
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One example of the principle is
this: If you've made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to
explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way
it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make
the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of results. |
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I say that's also important in
giving certain types of government advice. Supposing a senator asked
you for advice about whether drilling a hole should be done in his
state; and you decide it would be better in some other state. If you
don't publish such a result, it seems to me you're not giving
scientific advice. You're being used. If your answer happens to come
out in the direction the government or the politicians like, they can
use it as an argument in their favor; if it comes out the other way,
they don't publish it at all. That's not giving scientific advice. |
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Other kinds of errors are more
characteristic of poor science. When I was at Cornell, I often talked
to the people in the psychology department. One of the students told me
she wanted to do an experiment that went something like this it had
been found by others that under certain circumstances, X, rats did
something, A. She was curious as to whether, if she changed the
circumstances to Y, they would still do A. So her proposal was to do
the experiment under circumstances Y and see if they still did A. |
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I explained to her that it was
necessary first to repeat in her laboratory the experiment of the other
person to do it under condition X to see if she could also get result
A, and then change to Y and see if A changed. Then she would know that
the real difference was the thing she thought she had under control. |
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She was very delighted with this
new idea, and went to her professor. And his reply was, no, you cannot
do that, because the experiment has already been done and you would be
wasting time. This was in about 1947 or so, and it seems to have been
the general policy then to not try to repeat psychological experiments,
but only to change the conditions and see what happens. |
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Nowadays there's a certain
danger of the same thing happening, even in the famous field of
physics. I was shocked to hear of an experiment done at the big
accelerator at the National Accelerator Laboratory, where a person used
deuterium. In order to compare his heavy hydrogen results to what might
happen with light hydrogen, he had to use data from someone else's
experiment on light hydrogen, which was done on different apparatus.
When asked why, he said it was because he couldn't get time on the
program (because there's so little time and it's such expensive
apparatus) to do the experiment with light hydrogen on this apparatus
because there wouldn't be any new result. And so the men in charge of
programs at NAL are so anxious for new results, in order to get more
money to keep the thing going for public relations purposes, they are
destroying possibly the value of the experiments themselves, which is
the whole purpose of the thing. It is often hard for the experimenters
there to complete their work as their scientific integrity demands. |
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All experiments in psychology
are not of this type, however. For example, there have been many
experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes, and so on with
little clear result. But in 1937 a man named Young did a very
interesting one. He had a long corridor with doors all along one side
where the rats came in, and doors along the other side where the food
was. He wanted to see if he could train the rats to go in at the third
door down from wherever he started them off. No. The rats went
immediately to the door where the food had been the time before. |
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The question was, how did the
rats know, because the corridor was so beautifully built and so
uniform, that this was the same door as before? Obviously there was
something about the door that was different from the other doors. So he
painted the doors very carefully, arranging the textures on the faces
of the doors exactly the same. Still the rats could tell. Then he
thought maybe the rats were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to
change the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell. Then he
realized the rats might be able to tell by seeing the lights and the
arrangement in the laboratory like any commonsense person. So he
covered the corridor, and still the rats could tell. |
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He finally found that they could
tell by the way the floor sounded when they ran over it. And he could
only fix that by putting his corridor in sand. So he covered one after
another of all possible clues and finally was able to fool the rats so
that they had to learn to go in the third door. If he relaxed any of
his conditions, the rats could tell. |
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Now, from a scientific
standpoint, that is an Anumberone experiment. That is the experiment
that makes ratrunning experiments sensible, because it uncovers the
clues that the rat is really using not what you think it's using. And
that is the experiment that tells exactly what conditions you have to
use in order to be careful and control everything in an experiment with
ratrunning. |
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I looked into the subsequent
history of this research. The next experiment, and the one after that,
never referred to Mr. Young. They never used any of his criteria of
putting the corridor on sand, or being very careful. They just went
right on running rats in the same old way, and paid no attention to the
great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not referred to,
because he didn't discover anything about the rats. In fact, he
discovered all the things you have to do to discover something about
rats. But not paying attention to experiments like that is a
characteristic of cargo cult science. |
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Another example is the ESP
experiments of Mr. Rhine, and other people. As various people have made
criticisms and they themselves have made criticisms of their own
experiments they improve the techniques so that the effects are
smaller, and smaller, and smaller until they gradually disappear. All
the parapsychologists are looking for some experiment that can be
repeated that you can do again and get the same effect statistically,
even. They run a million rats no, it's people this time they do a lot
of things and get a certain statistical effect. Next time they try it
they don't get it any more. And now you find a man saying that it is an
irrelevant demand to expect a repeatable experiment. This is science? |
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This man also speaks about a new
institution, in a talk in which he was resigning as Director of the
Institute of Parapsychology. And, in telling people what to do next, he
says that one of the things they have to do is be sure they only train
students who have shown their ability to get PSI results to an
acceptable extent not to waste their time on those ambitious and
interested students who get only chance results. It is very dangerous
to have such a policy in teaching to teach students only how to get
certain results, rather than how to do an experiment with scientific
integrity. |
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So I have just one wish for you the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom. |
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Do not paste, but [re]think this message for all undergraduate students!!!