Pathological science, wishful science, or ironic science?

Irving Langmuir

In 1953, Irving Langmuir (Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry in 1932) gave a lecture on pathological science, a name he applied to the results of the investigations of perfectly honest scientists, enthusiastic about their work... but who are completely deluded. This is Lagmuir’s definition of pathological science, which Milton Rothman in 1990 called wishful science and John Horgan in 1996 called ironic science:

These are cases where there is no dishonesty involved but where people are tricked into false results by a lack of understanding about what human beings can do to themselves in the way of being led astray by subjective effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions.

Langmuir signalled five cases of pathological science:

• The Davis-Barnes effect. In 1929, those two researchers mistakenly believed that they had detected the fusion of an alpha particle with a free electron.
• N rays, discovered in 1903 by Prosper-René Blondlot, which turned out not to exist.
• Mitogenetic rays, proposed in 1923, a mysterious form of radiation that would be emitted by living things.
• The Allison effect, published in 1929, which led to the “discovery” of half a dozen new elements (alabamine, virginium…) and various isotopes of other elements. A few years later, the effect was considered spurious and all those “discovered” elements and isotopes were removed.
• Rhine’s experiments on extrasensory perception (ESP). Langmuir tells how Rhine refused to publish negative results, claiming that the participants had done it on purpose to annoy him.

Percival Lowell

Rothman adds three more, equally famous cases:

• The canals of Mars, observed by Giovanni Schiaparelli, Nicolas Flammarion, and Percival Lowell, which turned out not to exist.
• The detection of a magnetic monopole by Blas Cabrera in 1982, which has not been confirmed.
• Cold fusion, discovered in 1989 by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann, who announced their discovery in the mainstream media before going through ordinary scientific review, and which turned out to be incorrect.

According to Langmuir, these are the symptoms of pathological science:

1. Experiments and observations take place at the limit of human perception, so some observers see them while others do not. At the limit, real data are mixed with the inevitable background noise, which scientists eager to test their theories mistake for genuine observations.
2. The effect does not depend on the intensity of the cause, and since it is close to the limit of what is detectable, the statistical significance of the results is low, which lends itself to the striking out of experiments that do not conform to the theory being applied.
3. The theories associated with these experiments are often contrary to expectations.
4. Defenders always answer to criticism with ad hoc excuses concocted on the fly.
5. There are usually as many critics as supporters of these theories.

According to Rothman, this should be our attitude towards possible cases of wishful science:

1. Don't believe everything you read or hear.
2. Look suspiciously at studies or experiments where different researchers get different results.
3. Be doubly cautious if a “phenomenon” appears to violate some law of nature, such as the conservation of energy or momentum.
4. Be skeptical about the opinions of experts in different scientific fields.
5. Beware of scientists who fall in love with their theories.

Although all the above cases refer to experimentation and observation, theoretical science may also give rise to cases of wishful science. I will mention a few:

• The multiverse theories. I have talked about them in several posts in this blog.
• Time travel. Theories based on simulations, mathematical calculations and simple speculations frequently arise, asserting that time travel is possible.
• The theory of everything, according to which, after the standard model of particle physics and the standard cosmological model, we no longer have anything to learn.

Sometimes it seems that modern physics is losing touch with reality.

The same post in Spanish

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Manuel Alfonseca