There were some interesting comments on the previous post, The 'Left Brain - Right Brain' Dancer. Some saw her turning clockwise, some anticlockwise, and others a bit of both. If you haven't looked at this picture, you might want to take a look now. If you see the dancer turning anticlockwise, perhaps you would like to try a little experiment for me? Place your attention on your 'heart center', the center of your chest, and hold it there for a while as you watch the dancer. Does she now turn clockwise, I wonder?
One of the people who commented on the post was Liara Covert of Dream Builders. I am grateful to Liara for the interesting - and sometimes challenging - comments she leaves here. This time she remarked: "...research studies always offer food for thought. We can choose to believe them or not. We can choose to take information with a grain of salt."
Having a scientific education, I'd once have disagreed strongly with this statement. These days, however, I think I'm closer to Liara's point of view than to my own stance back then. I wouldn't go quite so far as she does. If I jumped out of a plane, for instance, I think I'd want to take a parachute with me, whatever I might decide to believe about gravity. But this is an extreme example. Is our knowledge of things always so well defined?
In our society, we like to think of ourselves as being governed by logic, but the truth is that all too often we have insufficient evidence to come to a purely rational decision about things. Our lives these days tend to be complex, and a great many factors are often involved. We rarely have all the relevant information, and even what we think we know can often be based on guesswork and supposition. People who think of themselves as essentially rational will grit their teeth and try to apply logic nevertheless, in spite of the lack of sufficient evidence, but isn't this really like building a house on inadequate foundations? Is it really any more sensible than reading tea leaves or looking for signs in the sky?
It may seem like anathema to the modern mind to take notice of such signs and omens, but many of us do such things instinctively even though we may believe we are creatures of logic. Prime examples are buying a house or choosing a partner. Most of us wouldn't dream of doing either of these without giving a great deal of weight to how we felt about it.
If, on the other hand, we were buying, say, a refrigerator, we would be much more likely to rely on logic, ticking off a checklist of features perhaps. How we felt about it would seem much less significant. It is only when we step up to larger, more important purchases, such as a car, that our gut feelings come to seem important. Even more so for a house - and even more than that for choosing a partner. In other words, the more important the decision, the less we tend to go on logic alone and the more we go on our feelings, our instinct, our intuition. How does this fit in with our rational, scientific world view exactly?
Of course, it might be argued that there are whole areas of our lives where logic can be applied with complete confidence. Think of all the scientific evidence we have built up about this, that and the other. This allows us to build at least parts of our lives upon certainty.
Or does it?
Liara says we can choose to believe such information or not. But how can she say such a thing?
Perhaps she is simply keeping up with the news...
I wonder if you saw a news report last week about a research study carried out at the University of Hull here in the UK which reviewed the data from 47 clinical trials into the use of SSRI (and similar) antidepressants. The study concluded that in most cases, the drugs are no more effective than a placebo. This is contrary to the evidence from previous studies. So why the discrepancy? Simply because the Hull team studied unpublished as well as published data. It seems that the drug companies have chosen to publish only those studies which suggest that their drugs are effective. If the studies have shown the opposite, they haven't been published. The Hull team had to use freedom of information legislation to get hold of the missing data.
(It occurs to me that the team in Hull must have really gone out in a limb in order to do this - and I find myself wondering if the study has been reported outside the UK. Has anyone seen it in the US or other non-UK media, I wonder?)
So in this case at least, the research studies didn't reflect the outcome of scrupulous research according to rigorously applied scientific methods at all, but simply the vested interests of the companies which had financed them. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that a similar approach may have been taken in the study of other drugs.
Suddenly, the body of research evidence in the field of therapeutic drugs no longer seems such a strong foundation for rational analysis. Other areas of research may be less controversial perhaps, but we are fooling ourselves if we ignore the potential influence of vested interests in all such studies. What results will encourage further finance? What results will assist the researcher's career? When a scientific study has been carried out, it doesn't have to be published if the researchers don't like the results. And if they only like part of the results, they don't have to publish the rest. On top of which, of course, there's a lot of scope for different interpretations - the way the results are presented can have a significant effect.
It would be ridiculous, of course, to dismiss the value of scientific research entirely because of such factors - or to ignore the immense benefits which science has brought us over the years - but we the general public are fooling ourselves if we think that our science is based upon absolute certainties. It does not equate to our world. It is, at best, an incomplete and often inaccurate model.
When set against this, it is perhaps not so ridiculous to place emphasis on what our own experience and intuition tell us. What do we feel inside? Do we detect a voice inside us which sometimes seems to speak with absolute confidence? Is it possible that we are connected to some source of intelligence which transcends the shortcomings of the scientific model? That if we trust ourselves, we will find inside a knowing?
The next time I jump out of a plane, I'm still going to take my parachute. After all, it feels right to have something to hold on to. But bear in mind that I didn't discover gravity in a book. I did a lot of research as a child: falling over and painfully scraping my knees.
in a series of ten live interactive webcasts on Monday evenings. Each of the webcasts will focus on a different chapter of the book. You can sign up to participate 
Recent Comments