Of Different Deniers
Early man walked away as modern man took control
Their minds weren’t all the same, to conquer was his goal
So he built his great empire and slaughtered his own kind
Then he died a confused man, killed himself with his own mind
We’re only gonna die
From our own arrogance
– Bad Religion
Science Denialism
I am fascinated by science denialism. To me, science is the most amazing cultural achievement which humanity has produced; while language, tool use and self-consciousness are present in other species, science is truly unique to humans, and has given us both fascinating insights about the workings of the real world, and the ability to manipulate that real world to an amazing degree. Beavers and apes can split clams with rocks; we can split atoms.
To disregard the methods and insights of science is to waste one of the most precious gifts our ancestors have left us since the times of antiquity. Yet, lots of contemporaries do exactly that.
Everyone knows about the freak-shows which are the creationists, flat earthers and climate change deniers of the world. But early on in my scientific career I encountered a more curious and more benign, both on a personal and a societal level, form of science denialism: ion channel denialism!
Göttingen, Early 2000s
About two decades ago when I was a neuroscience graduate student at Max Planck in Frankfurt I used to regularly attend the German neurobiology conference in Göttingen. This was a mid-sized conference with a very family-like feel, with students of Göttingen University and not corporate minimum-wage-slaves taking care of the logistics. I knew many of the participants of these Göttingen conferences, and the event was both scientifically interesting and socially fun.
Many of the contributors worked on the ion channels which make brain cells electrically excitable in such an interesting way, or their work built on some kind of understanding of ion channels; Neuroscience is organized in levels; The higher-up levels make only sense if we understand the lower levels, and ion channels are at the base of many phenomena. I personally was working on the electric activity of whole brain cells at that time, and frequently applied ion channel blockers to these cells in my experiments. Ion channels are at the very core of neuroscience. Everyone agreed on that.
But for one man.
An older colleague with a big white beard, academically based in the Göttingen was not part of that consensus. He would attend lectures and afterwards ask questions, which would routinely peter out into monologues about how there, really, is no good proof that ion channels do anything important at all, and we (the rest of the scientists at that conference) were building our work on un-proven assumptions. The monologues would often go on a bit too long, as compared to what’s normally deemed acceptable for a question after an academic lecture.
By all accounts the dude was a really nice guy, and a good teacher (friends of mine had taken his classes at Göttingen University). During the conference party he would occasionally sit down at the piano and entertain musically. I don’t know what happened to him, but I hope he is well. I do remember his name, but I have no intention of shaming him in any way, rather I want to tell you about him as an interesting counterpoint to today’s climate change deniers; I shall refer to him as Dr. Whitebeard.
At one point, nervous-grad-student me gave a presentation about my work on synaptic plasticity between rat nerve cells, and Dr. Whitebeard did his usual thing, and asked me how I could even be remotely sure that all the receptors I talked about even play any role in the physiological effects which I had measured. My 28-yer-old self’s answer was something along the lines of “Ahm. Well, no, I did not do work directly on ion channels. So-and-so et al. did show that the chemical I used blocks the receptor which I think it blocks. I am building on their work. I did not re-test their results.”
Rebuked by Arguments
Later during that year’s conference, the late great Roger Tsien who several years would later win the Nobel Prize for his contribution to fluorescence microscopy gave a plenary lecture, and, after he was done speaking in front of several hundred neurobiologists, predictably Dr. Whitebeard stood up and gave Tsien his spiel on why ion channels are some kind of overblown hoax.
Professor Tsien was a much more confident speaker that 28-year-old-Klaus. Before answering in more detail he asked: “Are you Dr. Whitebeard? I have heard about you.”, to the applause and laughter of the whole audience. Then came a mini lecture about ion channels, the many lines of evidence supporting their existence and importance, and how science can be more and more confident about a theory, but never, as a matter of principle, completely certain – which is a strength of science. There is always more science to do, and every theory should be re-tested and re-assessed. Which does not mean that the theory is useless or wrong. So, for now he, Tsien, takes the action of ion channels as the best possible explanation for the electrophysiology of nerve cells.
The answer was both humble and spot-on.
I thought this was a great moment for science, a dissenter was given a voice, and was rebuked by arguments, and not by authority, even though the person rebuking was someone with lots of authority in the community.
Different Deniers
There are some some stark differences between Göttingen’s Dr. Whitebeard and the climate change deniers of 2020. Dr. Whitebeart was an amateur, denying out of passion, and not heavily sponsored as are some “think” tanks by the fossil fuel industry. He denied alone, without a bubble full of fellow deniers. In addition, he had an actually an alternative theory to the ion channel theory of the electrical excitability of nerve cells, something based on membrane lipid motion, if I remember it correctly. Dr. Whitebeard’s theory of electrophysiology of nerve cells is almost certainly not true, but it still is a scientific theory. A lot of the climate change deniers don’t have an actual theory what they think happens, just vague conspiratory notions that “Greta has an agenda”. There is typically no proper alternative, even semi-scientific, explanation for present-day atmospheric measurements. In contrast, Dr. Whitebeard’s theory lies somewhere on the gradient between a (falsified) fringe scientific theory and a proper conspiracy theory.
Dr. Whitebeard also held a science doctorate, while climate change deniers very rarely have graduate degrees in relevant disciplines. This is anecdotal evidence, but I think may of them have an intermediate level of education (engineers, teachers), in other fields, which gives them a false sense of competence.
Lastly, Dr. Whitebeard’s ion channel denialism was curious, but it did not do any damage. At this point it’s pretty clear that a reasonable climate policy is urgently necessary, and that climate change denialism can delay it – just look at the Australian governments of the last decade. So, there is no reason to be angry at Dr. Whitebeard, and his curious own physiological theory was almost certainly wrong, but it’s not on par with misguided and dangerous movements like climate change denialism.
Still, the absurd climate change denial I sometimes encounter and Dr. Whitebeard’s ion channel denialism have some commonalities, on a deeper level. There is this “Whaaaat? You can’t be serious!” reaction which anyone with actual knowledge in the relevant fields experiences when hearing about either kind of science denialism. This denial of scientific facts in the face of overwhelming evidence causes an visceral reaction in anyone serious about the pursuit of knowledge. There is this stubborn stare in the wrong direction, this ignoring the trees in the forest, which is deeply irksome to anyone who values truth and knowledge.
Both kinds of denialism are conscious choices to ignore facts about the world which are established with a very, very high likelihood. Not only that, the denier feels the urge to vehemently defend and spread his (more often than not, it’s a “his”, sadly) misguided views. To me, this is akin to the conscious choice to eat sand with shit, and then insist that it tastes like chocolate cake, and that everyone who does not agree is a misguided sheep.
That some uneducated hick, exposed to right-wing tabloid television as his main source of information about the world, falls for some branch of science denialism is un-surprising. But that an educated scholar, immersed in a community of scientific colleagues, will chose to ignore scores of experimental results in favor of his own, falsified, pet theory is surprising. It makes me think that the psychological roots of anti-rational thought run deep.
What to Make of This
After being amazed by such bizarre human behavior for decades, I have come to the conclusion that things more or less come down to something like this: The human mind is not primarily a machine for rational thought. It still remains, to a large degree, a stone age man’s cognitive tool for finding food, shelter and mates. The rational reasoning machine is part of these cognitive tools, but it can be voted out by other elements. Under the right conditions – genuine motivation to seek the truth and formal or informal scientific training – the faculty for rational thought can be brought out. This happens sometimes in some humans, but it never happens during their whole lifes in others, and even in someone leading a mental life mostly colored by rational thought, reason can too easily be buried by ego, fear and group-think.
Modern man is much closer to early man than he’d like to admit.
