I’m currently in the middle of a publicity campaign for my first book, The Idiot Brain. And yes, that previous sentence is part of it. It’s about all the things the human brain does weirdly, illogically and just plain wrong. As a result, I’ve ended up talking to a lot of people about the brain, from Libby Purves to Steve Wright to Tim Lovejoy, so I’ve been asked many questions about it.
However, these people are professionals; it’s when you take questions from the general public or more “alternative” media, that’s when things get bizarre. My favourites so far are:
- Which are smarter, tigers or wolves?
- How does astrology work?
- Do we have free will or not?
- Why do I have epilepsy?
- What’s up with vaccines?
- My laptop wasn’t working and I had a dream about how to fix it, and I tried the fix and it worked, so how did that happen?
Technically, I’m not trained to answer these question (assuming answers even exist). For the record, I’ve a PhD in memory processing. Obviously, if I’m going to put myself out there as an authority on things then I should expect questions. A fair point.
However, even during school and university, I’d regularly get asked things I had no ability to answer. They often weren’t even about neuroscience, but things like “how do radio waves travel through space?”, or “if evolution is true, why don’t people have wings?” (That last one is real).
Other scientists I’ve spoken to report similar, regular occurrences. It’s just something people do. If you’re a doctor, people you meet ask you to look at their rashes/lumps. If you’re a comedian, people you meet say “tell us a joke”. And if you’re a scientist, people assume you know all science, something which would likely require several lifetimes of study.
In truth, most professional scientists are very specialist. This is true for most fields of expertise. If you meet a professional historian who specialises in the Victorian era, asking them how ancient Egyptians stored their grain would be illogical. Maybe this does happen to historians? I can’t say. It happens to scientists though.
So where does this “scientists know all science” preconception come from? And why does it persist? As ever, there are numerous possible contenders.
The human brain
I just published a book about the brain (did I mention that already?) so I tend to blame it for many of life’s woes. But the ways in which it handles information could lead to this weird preconception of the omniscient scientist. Our brains, in fairness, have to deal with a lot of information, so often uses short cuts and generalisations, things like heuristics.
Heuristics are basically the brain’s way of using short cuts when it comes to decision making and problem solving. How we categorise the information we encounter is tricky enough as it is, but heuristics help us just clump information together in functionally useful ways.
You can see how this would lead to inaccuracies or even prejudices though. In this case, if someone struggles to understand science, they would mentally lump the totality of it together as “stuff I don’t understand”. Same goes for encountering scientists, they may label them as “people who understand things I don’t” without any of the specifics or nuances of it.
However, these preconceptions are likely to originate from somewhere.
Education
If you study science, you get more and more specific the further you progress. But everyone starts off with the basics, and, in the UK at least, at a young age you get taught “science”. So you start off with this notion that science is just one “thing”, and have to gradually figure out otherwise.
However, despite the debate over what age is best to start formal education, nobody argues that the things you learn at a very young age are extremely important and shape your development and later life. However, the existence of countless STEM campaigns and organisations reveals that it’s a lot of work to get children interested in science and related subjects. Would it be surprising then, if many people never really move on from the “science as one homogenous lump” phase due to a disinterest in science, and regard scientists as interchangeable as a consequence?
The media
How scientists are portrayed in the media probably doesn’t help either. Look at any new discovery or development or even just a quirky bit of trivia reported in the mainstream, and it invariably begins with “scientists have discovered…” or “Scientists claim…” or “According to scientists…” and so on.
You seldom get this in any other field. The latest government initiative does not begin with “Politicians have decided…” The sports news doesn’t tell us that “Football teams played football yesterday, with around half of them winning”. Any study or finding worth mentioning is invariably attributed to all scientists everywhere, so it’s understandable if the average reader ends up thinking they’re one and the same.
There’s also the narrative of the “lone genius” too, which is a popular one. Your usual lesson or story about scientists typically focus on a single, brilliant (invariably male) intellectual, changing the world via his all-encompassing genius. While this makes for an inspiring narrative, it’s a far cry from the collaborative effort most science is the result of.
And this doesn’t even include fictional scientists. Sherlock, House MD, Tony Stark, Dana Scully, Donatello, Brains, Seven of Nine, even Velma, it seems you can’t go 10 minutes in pop culture fiction without encountering some genius who knows everything about everything, usually in very helpful and plot-relevant ways. This is bound to rub off on some people in the real world.
Other scientists
Of course, this whole thing would be easier if it weren’t for actual scientists actively making matters worse. Some scientists, maybe unintentionally, often make declarations about other fields which don’t stack up with what the evidence says. I know I’ve done it myself in previous posts, judging by the comments I’ve had. I see it often, in pop science books where the author strays into issues of psychology and neuroscience, areas that they aren’t that familiar with but which need to be addressed in order to provide a coherent narrative. In many ways, books are maybe not the best format to communicate how science works.
Except mine of course, mine is great.
But also, sadly, you get the scientists who achieve influence and prestige (maybe by taking more credit than they deserve) who start to believe their own press, and end up making declarations about fields beyond their own, using confidence instead of actual awareness of how things work.
A very recent example came from the Guardian itself with an article by Oliver James, about how genetics don’t influence intelligence. Whatever James’s skills as a psychologist, his genetics knowledge seems, at best, seriously limited, as several scientists have pointed out. But he has a platform, so must be right, yeah?
Fact is, the idea that scientists know all science is a useful one for many, so isn’t disputed, maybe even actively encouraged. If scientists really did know everything, they’d know how to stop this. But they don’t. So they don’t.
Dean Burnett is aware that this piece contains a shameful number of book plugs but it’s the only way his publicist would agree to return his family unharmed. Are you happy now, Sophie?!?
Feel free to ask him any inane question you like on Twitter, @garwboy
The Idiot Brain by Dean Burnett (Guardian Faber, £12.99). To order a copy for £7.99, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.
