The problem with Science...
... is that it ignores the wisdom of experience.
Summary
Science is a structured way of new knowledge creation. It proceeds by falsification of hypotheses.
Experience is an unstructured way of new knowledge creation. It proceeds by telling stories.
Statistical results from scientific experiments are insufficient to make reliable predictions about individual experiences.
Science training too often blinds the scientist to the knowledge created by experience.
Introduction
When I was in graduate school, my doctoral advisor cautioned me with an old joke in science that goes something like “Two years in the laboratory can save you two weeks in the library.”
Maybe read that again because it took a minute for it to sink in with me back then.
The moral of the joke is that no matter what problem you’re facing, the first thing to do is find out what worked for other people who faced similar problems. That is, before you start a series of expensive, laborious experiments, it behooves you to check the library to see if someone else has already figured it out.
I resolved to approach my personal problems the same way I approached my scientific research -- by taking my doctoral advisor’s advice. I read everything I could find about relationships, business, self-improvement, and health. I sought advice from my mentors, from men’s groups, from friends, and in anonymous online forums. I became a systematic knowledge gatherer and began testing some of what I’d learned.
In some ways, my life got better. For example, by skipping lunch and quitting processed food and alcohol, I dropped my weight from 250 to 190 lbs. My kids were proud of me and women found me attractive again.
On the other hand, I was dropping weight so fast that some of my faculty colleagues who only saw me at academic conferences told me they were worried.
“Are you OK?” they asked. “Do you have cancer?”
I told them the truth – that I’d stopped eating crap and that I’d never felt better.
Science structures experiments, not experiences
There is a professional expectation among scientists that we will scrupulously document our experimental findings in books and peer-reviewed journals – even if no one except other scientists will ever read them. For those, like me, who have access to publications through a major University library, the wealth of scientific knowledge now available is extraordinary. Unprecedented electronic access makes the successes, experiences, and sometimes the mistakes made by centuries of scientific forebears readily available.
Nonetheless, this expectation to publish does not extend beyond our professional lives. Rarely do scientists feel compelled to document what they may have learned from personal experiences. For example, it is now understood that the famous physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton lost a small fortune speculating in stocks and options issued by the South Sea Company in 1720. Newton himself never published anything about it, although rumors about his finances circulated for nearly three centuries. It was only after the modern discovery of ancient archives at the Bank of England that a credible account of Newton’s losses was pieced together (Odlyzko 2018).
Given that Newton had a keen interest in finance, served as Chancellor of the Exchequer for the Royal Mint, and published several scientific works on alchemy (Newman, Newton the Alchemist, 2018), why shouldn’t one of the world’s greatest mathematical geniuses feel compelled to document the futility of his experiences in stock speculation?
Newton was no stranger to experimenting on himself. He once stuck a needle into his own eye socket to investigate the perception of colors (Katnelson 2013).
But perhaps he never reported on his “experiments” in finance during the South Sea Bubble because he never regarded them as scientific – which is a shame.
Science as a process for knowledge creation is a wonderful thing. It disciplines our thinking, organizes our investigations, and sharpens our intellect – but science is not the only source of reliable knowledge.
There is also personal experience, and science suffers from its blindness to it.
The super successful McGonigal twins
Kelly McGonigal, PhD and her identical twin sister Jane McGonigal are both super successful authors. Kelly writes as a scientist, which fits her position as a psychiatrist on the faculty at Stanford. In her book The Upside of Stress (K McGonigal 2012) she describes scientific studies that show how beliefs about stress are more dangerous than the stress itself. When she writes about her personal experiences, it’s typically in the context of a class she’s teaching or a student she is counseling. It’s rarely about the really stressful experiences in her own life.
In contrast, Jane McGonigal is a game designer. In her book Super Better (J McGonigal 2015) she writes about her struggle to recover from a severe concussion. Jane’s symptoms were persistent, and she became despondent that she might never recovery. Superbetter is her chronicle of how she gamified her recovery to challenge herself with small, incremental obstacles and rewards. In other words, it is a story about Jane’s experience.
As a scientist, Kelly proceeds by examining data to verify or disprove a hypothesis. As a game designer, Jane proceeds by telling stories.
The placebo problem in medical science
Medical science, in particular, suffers from enormous misconceptions about translating science to experience. The most admired medical studies are randomized, double-blind, controlled, clinical trials. In this type of study, participants are divided into two groups. The first group receives an experimental intervention, like a drug treatment, diet, or exercise program. The second group is called the control, and it exists as a point of comparison to the experimental. Everything about a randomized controlled trial (RCT) is designed to eliminate experience as a variable.
Well-designed experiments provide the control group with an identical experience in every respect to the experimental group except for the one aspect being tested. Moreover, participants in both groups don’t know which group they are in. In a “double-blind” trial, neither the participants nor the clinicians (e.g., nurses, doctors, or whoever administers the program) know which participant belongs to which group.
In this way, science seeks to remove any confounding effects attributable to experience. When the experience of the two groups is exactly the same, researchers can deduce that any measured difference must be due to the one variable that is different. This eliminates the possibility that something like the color or taste of the pill, or the attention of a caring medical professional, will distort the results.
The inactive pill that control groups receive in drug trials is called a placebo. Without an active ingredient, any improvement in signs or symptoms cannot be attributed to the therapy, but instead to the placebo effect. Most people have heard of the placebo effect, but many misunderstand it. If you ask around, you’ll discover that most people think the placebo effect means “a fake drug that doesn’t do anything.”
That’s not true.
The placebo effect can have powerful, beneficial effects. For example, most psychological maladies, like mood disorders and pain, are diagnosed from self-reported, subjective symptoms. In his book Brain Energy, Dr. Chris Palmer differentiates between symptoms, which cannot be verified or measured by objective instruments, and signs, which can be observed in scans, blood tests, biomarkers, or tests performed by someone other than the patient (Palmer 2022, p36).
That’s partly why the placebo effect has such a bad reputation. Because people associate it exclusively with self-reported, subjective symptoms that can be “faked.” However, in his book You Are the Placebo, Dr. Joe Dispenza describes several well-documented cases in which seemingly spontaneous remission of objective, diagnosable diseases (including cancer) can only be attributed to the placebo effect (Dispenza 2014, pp. 9-22).
In one case, a terminally ill lymphoma patient in California received an injection of an experimental drug that was undergoing clinical trials. Three days later, his tumors had shrunk, his mood and energy improved, and his cure seemed inevitable. He was discharged from the hospital a week later, feeling wonderful.
That was his experience, and who could deny it?
However, when the failed results of the clinical trial were reported in the media two months later, the patient became distraught. He relapsed immediately.
According to Dispenza, the oncologist suspected the patient’s improvement was due to the placebo effect, not the experimental drug. This time, the oncologist told the patient a complete fiction about a new, reformulated, super-powerful version of the experimental drug, but injected him only with saline. The patient recovered again.
It was only after the initial drug trial was revealed as a complete fraud that the patient gave up belief in his cure. An investigation discovered that even the initial injection contained no ingredients that could be considered active – just mineral oil and amino acids. The patient died two days after finding out.
And that’s the problem with science.
Science works at a group scale and is expressed through statistics. Clinical trials seek to discover what is statistically likely for a large group of patients. Results are not considered “significant” until researchers measure a difference between the experimental and control groups that they can say with 95% confidence is not due to random chance. The problem is that when those results are published, everyone seems to forget about the 5% that cannot be proven. They accept the 95% as “true,” as if that will always be the case for everybody, when in fact we are all different.
Experience, on the other hand, works at an individual scale and is expressed through stories. For example, there is nothing particularly scientific about the story of the lymphoma patient who experiences remission of his cancer after receiving a placebo. Which is to say, there is little reason to believe that his results could be reliably reproduced in other lymphoma patients. Nonetheless, we cannot deny his experience.
Similarly, there is no large, randomized, double-blind, controlled trial that can say with certainty what the experience of a single individual will be. Who knows whether you’re in the 95%, or the 5%?
It is a logical fallacy to attempt to apply findings from a statistical ensemble to a particular individual because results that typically work for many people still might not work for you. The best anyone can do is integrate both the science and experience of people in similar circumstances to generate ideas about what might work for them.
Integration for self-actualization
The ‘Self Actual Engineering’ newsletter seeks to integrate knowledge from both experience and from science. For example, it chronicles what has worked for me and others in relationships, trauma recovery, and physical health. Then, wherever it can, it describes the science that helps explain those experiences, so that when you’re ready, you can also have the knowledge you need to prioritize your experiments in transforming your own life