Global Warming And "Consensus": Mark Twain, T.S. Kuhn, And Scientific Knowledge

From the editor's notes in Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays (1891-1910)†, we find this amazing tidbit of science and medical history:

Ignaz Phillipp Semmelweis, (1811-65), a Hungarian physician working in Vienna, demonstrated the infectious nature of puerperal ("childbed") fever in 1846 and greatly reduced the maternal mortality rate by requiring childbirth attendants to wash their hands with a chlorine solution. He was ridiculed for his belief and forced from his hospital post by his supervisor. He returned to Hungary and accepted a part-time position at Pest hospital, offered on the condition that he not promote his theory. His book The Etiology of Puerperal Fever (written in the mid-1850s detailing his experiments in Vienna) was harshly criticized when it was published in 1861. He died in a mental hospital of an infection resulting from a self-inflicted wound with a contaminated scalpel. His findings were not widely accepted until the 1890s. (Page 1038)

Those of you familiar with Dr. Semmelweis' story might recall that he had tried a variety of experiments in Vienna with many of his internists to determine why the mortality rate of new mothers in one ward of his hospital was higher than that of new mothers in a different ward. What he discovered would be startling to us today: his students were going directly from working on cadavers to giving gynecological exams -- without taking ANY sanitary measures. He made a rather grisly connection after a gruesome observation: a young colleague with whom he was dissecting a corpse accidentally slipped with a scalpel and cut himself, leaving a small, infectious wound that led to the young man's death. Dr. Semmelweis soon instituted a hand-washing protocol -- a radical idea -- not only before examining women but between EACH examination: puerperal fever basically disappeared in his ward.

Dr. Semmelweis' own death via a contaminated scalpel was a suicidal statement: he was the victim of "scientific consensus."
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Mark Twain's Thoughts On Scientific Consensus

In "Dr. Loeb's Incredible Discovery," a short essay by Mark Twain, Twain prefaces his remarks with an excerpt of what was at the time a recent editorial by the New York Times (March 2, 1905: If you would like to read the original editorial, you can find it at this link; the PDF is worth looking at, as the column is shown in facsimile.)

Here is what Mr. Twain excerpts from the Times, with his emphasis added in quotation marks:

Experts in biology will be apt to receive with some skepticism the announcement of Dr. Jacques Loeb of the University of California as to the creation of life by chemical agencies ... Doctor Loeb is a very bright and ingenious experimenter, but "a consensus of opinion among biologists" would show that he is rated rather as a man of lively imagination than an inerrant investigator of natural phenomena.

Here is, in small part, Mr. Twain's reply to the New York Times' trust in consensus:

...[I]n the drift of years I by and by found that a Consensus examines a new thing by its feelings rather oftener than with its mind. You know, yourself, that this is so. ...

Do you know of a case where a Consensus won a game? You can go back as far as you want to and you will find history furnishing you this (until now) unwritten maxim for your guidance and profit: Whatever new thing a Consensus coppers (colloquial for "bets against"), bet your money on that very card and do not be afraid.

There was that primitive steam engine -- ages back, in Greek times: a Consensus made fun of it. There was the Marquis of Worcester's steam engine, 250 years ago: a Consensus made fun of it. There was Fulton's steamboat of a century ago: a French Consensus, including the Great Napolean, made fun of it. There was Priestly, with his oxygen: a Consensus scoffed at him, mobbed him, burned him out, banished him. While a Consensus was proving, by statistics and things, that a steamship could not cross the Atlantic, a steamship did it. A Consensus consisting of all the medical experts in Great Britain made fun of Jenner and inoculation. A Consensus consisting of all the medical experts in France made fun of the stethoscope. A Consensus of all the medical experts in Germany made fun of that young doctor (his name? forgotten by all but doctors, now, revered by doctors alone) who discovered and abolished the cause of that awful disease, puerperal fever; made fun of him, reviled him, hunted him, persecuted him, broke his heart, killed him. Electric telegraph, Atlantic cable, telephone, all "toys," of no practical value -- verdict of the Consensuses. Geology, paleontology, evolution -- all brushed into space by a Consensus of theological experts, comprising all the preachers in Christendom, assisted by the Duke of Argyle and (at first) the other scientists.

I must stop for fear of boring my reader with Twain's many examples of how scientific consensuses actually hinder scientific inquiry and progress. It is not merely a fact of history, but one of process: scientific knowledge is not advanced by consensus. If anything, it is advanced by the force of a lone voice, by the voice of a minority shaped and perfected by the stubborn denials of the majority.

By the way, Dr. Jacques Loeb was right. The New York Times, aligned with all the really "bright" minds united in consensus, was wrong.

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Twain Not Alone

T. S. Kuhn, years after Mark Twain, argued that prior to scientific consensuses bearing any epistemological weight, a period of conflict between rival theories and theoreticians must -- and does -- take place. This conflict not only revolves around differences of methodology, but also around anomalies in data and criteria of value. Once the conflict phase has been passed, a paradigm shift occurs, or, truer to Kuhn's language, there is a revolution in science.

I believe it can be clearly shown that the current "consensus of opinion" regarding global warming has attempted to leap right over the conflict phase of scientific progress. Anomalies do abound; there is disagreement about variables and constants and algorithms. But the consensus is presented as if none of those things exist; it is consensus' pretense that all is fine and all is understood, accepted and assimilated. Amazingly, lone voices, all equally expert (if not more so), are dismissed as crankish, peevish, fatuous or corrupt if they challenge the consensus, or if they point out systemic problems and anomalies.

In a series of essays I wrote at NHInsider wherein I critique the assertions of an alleged expert on global warming who works in my home-state, I was finally dismissed by one interlocutor as a "crank" (I make no claim to expertise, by the way). His dismissal of me is bemusing, and it reminds me of something Theodore Dalrymple wrote in In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Pre-conceived Ideas, (especially if Dalrymple specifically had addressed the problem of consensus):

This is what one might call the Forty-million-Frenchmen-can't-be-wrong argument: that what other people do, provided they do it in sufficient numbers, is a guarantee of its rightness. We are very far here from the autonomous and inquiring individual ... who always reasons out for himself what he should do [or believe].

It is rather disconcerting to see so many people choose NOT to examine things for themselves, and if that is not disconcerting, the popular dismissal of a person's skepticism or a single person's innovation very much is. Mark Twain's incisive remarks serve as an augur's alarm: he passed down to us observations and warnings we should always heed.

I am thankful to that old crank for being so generous -- and for being so right.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

†published by Literary Classics of the United States, Inc.; 1992: New York, New York.