I find myself repeating the idea that a skeptical society is one that could advance science while a society that thrives on submission can hardly do it. Some exceptions may arise every now and then, but a society that deems questioning to be a sin can hardly lead to scientific discoveries, and if it does, it can never do it systematically. Science is advanced by questioning ideas then questioning results. It is built upon skepticism and no room for taking things for granted.
As I found myself rereading the chapter “Two-Way-Street” of the book “The Balance Within” by Esther Sternberg who is the Director of the Integrative Neural Immune program, it was reinforced within me how skepticism is what makes science flourish and advance. For academics to put forward their ideas, they need to face too much questioning and be ready to answer them using empirical science. Studies are often met with skepticism and that is not because the researcher is hated but because that is the right way to filter for good science. One has to clearly show how he reached to some form of conclusion without throwing out things in some blurry way.
As I was reading, I remembered that I once watched a conference in which Sternberg was part of the panel. The well-respected neuroscientist Jeffrey Shwartz (whom I highly respect though some people in the scientific community think that he is trying to push some pseudoscience by the name of neuroscience) was complaining that the scientific community is stagnant in accepting new ideas. He was saying that the scientific community is still fixed on a Newtonian way of thinking (and he had his reasons) but Sternberg replied back that it is for the benefit of science not to accept radical shifts without strong evidence. And as it is well known in science that the bigger the claim, the stronger and deeper the evidence should be. From Sternberg’s experience, it shows how highly she respects the scientific skepticism which is indeed very useful as it has been the very reason that science is usually found upon well-established studies.
(Paragraph with jargons) The chapter was talking about the researches that aimed to understand what caused the rise in ACTH and corticosterone in the blood following the introduction of some infectious matter, stressful material, or situation, and the role of IL-1 in all this. Which cells release IL-1 and which cells are affected by it? And also, is the increase of ACTH and corticosterone a result of the increased IL-1 release or there is something in between, maybe CRH? Do the pituitary cells need CRH to stimulate them or they can be stimulated directly by IL-1?
After all the researches and some conflicting results and so on, many things get to be disclosed in between, and all flourishes in a “skeptic” environment. Other researchers read certain studies and actively find flaws and try to point towards those flaws, then they manipulate (repeat and change certain factors) the research and show why the former studies were flawed, and they do that by coming with different results or similar results but by different causal pathways.
Then after all these results that were shown by experiments that took place either in vitro or in tissue cultures, the clinical researchers and physicians question everything by saying, can all this happen in humans or can all this happen in a natural environment? Is the causal pathway this much neat?
Then comes the “catch-22” of modern science and that is in order to prove something through experiments, you have to manipulate the physiological system, as you just can’t observe it, and when you interrupt it or replace it, you have made it an artificial system as it is no longer natural, and by that it is very hard to fully project conclusions reached from an artificial system to a natural one.
With all this, the very powerful fabric that makes the scientific environment maintain its curiosity and advance its researches is the skepticism bound to it.
