THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE

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THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE

In science, as in life, truth is not always value-free

A case study in careerist politics

By Anthony Liversidge

 

The Cultural Studies Times, Fall 1995

 

 

 

 

What science is, is a slippery topic, as the science wars show. According to

some, it is a religion, ripe for deconstruction as a myth-making cultural

activity. Well, fine. That strikes a chord with anyone familiar with the way

scientists operate in real life, and as even the clear headed Karl Popper

remarked, " science must begin with myth, and with the criticism of myths. "

Others say that, on the contrary, science is an internal process insulated, if

done well, from social and even psychological influence, and therefore from such

analysis. That argument, too, seems undeniable.

 

Perhaps it simply boils down to which science, and which scientist, one is

talking about. Sciences vary. As do scientists, a species that includes, as

Peter Medawar observed, " collectors, classifiers, and compulsive tidiers up;

many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers, some are artists and

other artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a

few mystics. "

 

The practice of science varies according to which community one is considering.

At one end, there is mathematics, clean and tidy and a law unto itself, its

results immune to culture, unaffected by human foibles and prejudice. Then there

is the rest of science, in various degrees hypothetical, uncertain, and open to

interpretation, and thus influenced by human psychology, sociology, politics,

and other corruptions. " All the sciences aspire to the condition of

mathematics, " as Santayana observed, but they rarely make it. Personally, I love

the scientific ideal, and wish all scientist were pure as mathematicians. But

since they aren't, I welcome the attention of science studies professors.

 

Any fresh way of scrutinizing science, and drawing attention to the difference

between the naive ideal and the more complex reality, can only be helpful.

Sometimes this gap is a chasm. Scientists rule without much challenge as the

high priests of today's popular faith, and they do so by virtue of their

monopoly on expertise, which outsiders are ill equipped to dispute. A little

demystification never does any harm, where there is self-serving arrogance to be

deflated.

 

There is one dim corner of science in particular, where there is every sign that

the public interest is being mugged daily by the arrogance and bias of

scientists, and even science editors. I refer to the science of AIDS. What has

happened over the past decade in AIDS is a tutorial in how supposedly ideal

science as practiced under modern conditions may be massively subverted by

careerist politics and possibly unconscious self-interest.

 

To understand how this can happen, one has to realize that much of science is

more open to extraneous influence, and internal manipulation, than pure

mathematics. When Andrew Wiles announced his solution of Fermat's Theorem after

over 300 years, he produced his written proof, it was gone over by his expert

colleagues and he was sent back to his attic study to labor for a further year

before the major kink the reviewers had found could be smoothed out. In physics

too, when cold fusion in a jar was announced, it took only a few weeks worth of

independent checking in other laboratories to indicate that journalists could

begin writing interesting books on how scientific ambition feeds self-delusion.

Even Einstein's most radical ideas were validated by observations and the

paradoxes of quantum mechanics deconstructed in experiment. Among the tracings

of linear accelerators you can even see subatomic particles that have, in

theory, traveled " backwards in time " . This is not to say that paradigms won't be

overturned, as understanding is improved with fresh evidence, and even more

brilliant hypothetical speculation to fit the jigsaw together. But at least in

such cases the ideas are wide open to inspection, they can be tested with

repeatable experiment, and one can confidently say, with Karl Popper, that the

test of theory is 'correspondence with the facts'. It is hard for the orthodox

or the unorthodox to maintain a position for very long with hocus-pocus, bluff,

bluster or influence.

 

But why then did Popper also say that the task in science is to separate bias of

any kind from scientific results. ( " Science must begin with myths, and with the

criticism of myths. " ) Because in science, as in life, truth is not always made

apparent in black and white. To a greater or lesser extent, it is a matter of

inference, and interpretation of incomplete evidence. Many results, particularly

in certain fields, are wide open to different interpretations, and thus to human

bias, witting or not. Who can deny a sophisticated awareness of external mental

influences at work in the less certain fields of medicine, biology,

paleontology, zoology and the like, where limits to experiment so often confound

certainty? No one can travel to examine a pulsar close-up or revisit past eras

to see the incomplete fossil record, or the broken finds of archaeology, in

life. Evolution can't be rerun to test a new theory of life's beginnings, or the

development of wings. Truth is inferred, provisional, the best guess.

 

Nowhere is this difficulty more obvious than in medicine. The results of health

studies, for example, are often extremely provisional, as the day's news often

teaches us (as I write, we are being told that eggs, bad for us last year, have

just been rehabilitated). So much depends on epidemiology, the statistics of

disease, and on studies where all the variables cannot all been controlled at

once, and experiments (testing candidates for fatal disease on humans, for

example) cannot always be done. Scientists who cultivate these vineyards must go

with what incomplete evidence they have. Opinions and informed judgments replace

verifiable fact, and this room for interpretation opens a Pandora's Box of anti

scientific forces, from government interference to commercial influence and self

interest, whether unconscious or not.

 

Just how far from the purist ideal the practice of science really is has been

clear since Jim Watson's account of the discovery of DNA, but science as

careerist struggle was most exhaustively portrayed by David Hull in Science as a

Process (University of Chicago, 1988). Hull concluded that while scientists

cooperate well enough, the very engine of scientific achievement is the

competitive urge which won't let them sleep till they have bested their rivals.

Historians of science find many examples of corners being cut as scientists

compete. Just recently, research on the papers of as great a hero of science as

Pasteur has revealed claims which anticipated proof. All in all, science in

practice is not always a gentlemanly business.

 

What this all means is that overturning the orthodoxy is no easier in science

than other disciplines, despite the professed open-mindedness of science as a

vocation. As Thomas Kuhn pointed out, updating the received wisdom in a science

is typically a no holds barred struggle where all the forces of bias and

entrenched interest are brought to bear against the challenger, at least until

the weight of logic and evidence becomes overwhelming, and perhaps even beyond

that point. The opinion, for example, that the blueprint of life was contained

in a protein, rather than the simpler molecule of DNA, lasted well past firm

evidence to the contrary. The proof was dismissed as a mistake. Talk to any

Nobel prize winner, and he/she will tell of the prejudice and closemindedness

which met their novel publications. The establishment reviewers will strenuously

resist a new interpretation, and it doesn't take a cynic to suspect they are

rationalizing their stake in the old paradigm, even if the motivation is

unconscious.

 

Which brings us to the latest and greatest example of paradigm protectionism,

the sputtering, almost suppressed challenge to the ruling notion in the science

of AIDS: the hypothesis that the syndrome is an infectious disease caused by the

notorious retrovirus, HIV. What is still not widely enough appreciated is that

there is substantial doubt among some well-informed scientists and commentators

that this simple retrovirus is the right answer to the puzzle of AIDS, that is,

the severe immune collapse and its many attendant diseases, which are called

AIDS if HIV is present. But over the past decade this doubt has been largely

stifled, and prevented from attaining a full airing in the science journals and

in the media.

 

There are many reasons for the doubt, not the least of which is that the theory

was announced before compelling evidence was in. In fact even today, despite the

theory's universal adoption by virtually all of the scientists in the field

(those who publicly think otherwise cannot obtain federal funding), there is no

published paper any scientist can point out as quotable proof that HIV causes

AIDS (A Conversation with Kary Mullis, California Monthly, Sept 1994, p. 16).

Tens of thousands of published papers assume the notion as a premise, and thus

appear to bolster the paradigm beyond dismantling critique. The very name of the

retrovirus Human Immunodeficiency Virus suggests certainty about its role. Yet,

critics point out that, after a decade and some $25 billion worth of

investigation, convincing lab proof for how HIV might induce immune collapse on

the molecular level is still missing. Another indication of a problem with the

current hypothesis is that it has " failed to produce public health benefits, as

no antiviral drug, no vaccine, and no efficient prevention have been developed.

Above all, the HIV-AIDS hypothesis has failed to make valid predictions, the

acid test of scientific hypotheses. For example, the prediction that AIDS would

spread exponentially in the general population proved to be flawed. " (P.

Duesberg, Genetica, Vol. 95, No. 13, March 1995, p.3).

 

Perhaps the greatest weakness of the ruling paradigm is that the evidence that

HIV is the cause of AIDS remains purely epidemiological, an association of HIV

with AIDS that doesn't prove it is the cause, because correlation does not prove

causation. This sole exhibit of the prosecution is vitiated by a circularity;

according to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), if HIV is present, the

disease symptom (for example tuberculosis) must be AIDS, and if it isn't, then

it's not. To add to the illogic, critics count more than 4000 references in the

scientific literature to patients whose symptoms were classified AIDS although

HIV was absent, and the CDC acknowledges that a positive test for HIV has not

been documented in over 43,000 of the 253,000 cases registered in the US by

1992. (Genetica, Vol. 95, Nos. 13. March 95, p. 84).

 

Year after year, the position that HIV is the cause of AIDS is maintained by the

scientific establishment in the teeth of a gale of findings that cast doubt on

the idea. Among the latest is a new probable cause of Kaposi's Sarcoma, the rare

purple skin cancer that was originally the prime marker for what was eventually

named AIDS. Now mainstream researchers believe it is not caused by HIV, but a

new virus (L. Altman, The New York Times, 16 Dec. 1994). Another concern is the

accuracy of both the Elisa and Western Blot blood test, which have proved to

cross-react with an abundance of other diseases including malaria, casting grave

doubt as to the reality of any AIDS epidemic at all in Africa (AIDS in Africa:

Distinguishing Fact from Fiction, World Journal of Microbiology and

Biotechnology, 1995). Whether the skepticism is ultimately vindicated or not is

beside the point here. What is important is that it is clearly well-founded, and

the history of the early suffocated debate perfectly illustrates that enormous

pressures can be brought to bear against dissent, even when the challenge comes

from the ranks of the leadership in a field. In this case, the chief exponent of

review was a senior, prize winning retrovirologist, who first urged reassessment

in Cancer Research, a leading journal, and then at exhaustive length in what is

arguably the most reputable scientific journal in the world, The Proceedings of

the National Academy of Science, eight years ago. (Both articles are so far

without reply in the same journals, though at the time of the Proceedings

article Robert Gallo, the NIH scientist who invented the HIV-AIDS theory,

promised the editors a refutation).

 

The Berkeley professor of retrovirology who so rashly took on this role was and

is one of the most prominent figures in retrovirology, blessed at the time with

one of the richest federal grants ($350,000 a year) in science to pursue

research avenues wherever his mind led him. Today, however Peter Duesberg is

virtually without grants, graduate students or influence, prevented from

replying to his critics in leading journals and routinely ignored or detracted

in the mainstream press. The Nobel he was expected to win for his earlier work

has gone to others, and coverage of his ideas in the science news journals and

in the mainstream press has been fitful, gratuitously antagonistic and uniformly

disparaging of the heresy and heretic both.

 

All this, despite the plain fact that Duesberg's doubts have not been satisfied

in any respect, his credentials are otherwise unsullied, and his hundreds of

scientific supporters now include at least three Nobel prize winners. Of his two

most influential opponents on the issue, one (Gallo) barely fought off public

censure for stealing credit for the discovery of HIV, and the other (David

Baltimore) was forced to resign a prestigious university presidency after

unsuccessfully resisting the retraction of a false research article to which his

Nobel-prize winning name was attached.

 

None of that affects the scientific argument, of course, but it does raise

questions as to why the media has proved so reluctant to cover the dissent. The

New York Times, for instance, which systematically refers to HIV as the virus

that causes AIDS, has covered the Duesberg dispute with only five brief stories

in nine years. A string of mainstream magazines have assigned pieces only to

kill them and coverage by network television has been non-existent until

recently, owing to pressure from scientists at the NIH. (B. Ellison and P.

Duesberg, " Why We Will Never Win The War On Aids " , Inside Story Communications,

1994 and Regnery Gateway, 1995).

 

Blatant, even admitted censorship has also been seen in the coverage of the

dispute by the most widely read general news journals in science, Science and

Nature. Science early on published a four page exchange between Duesberg and his

opponents, but then cut off the debate and, apart from a sprinkling of letters,

has published only tendentious news articles since, casting Duesberg and his

ideas in an unfavorable light, quoting his critics liberally and limiting his

replies. Nature has three times published unreviewed 'correspondence' claiming

to refute Duesberg's ideas, and remarkably, has then explicitly declined to

allow Duesberg to respond in full. Indeed, editor John Maddox advertised the

censorship in a full page editorial entitled " Has Duesberg a Right of Reply? "

(The answer was no).

 

The peculiar extent to which Nature is willing to head off Duesberg's views was

further exhibited when the Sunday Times of London printed extensive coverage of

the unorthodoxy and of what it called " The Conspiracy of Silence " last year.

Maddox wrote an editorial blasting the newspaper, and advising his readers not

to buy the paper. The episode was reminiscent of an incident earlier when a NIH

bureaucrat important in AIDS warned that reporters who covered Duesberg " are

going to find their access to scientists may diminish. " (The AAAS Observer,

Sept. 1, 1989, p. 4)

 

Paradigms are not overthrown save by new ones, and Duesberg has argued

exhaustively that drugs are the prime candidate for a cause of AIDS. His latest

work on the topic, refuting a study published in Nature which claimed otherwise,

is in Genetica, a journal published in the Netherlands, which has devoted a

special issue to alternative AIDS hypotheses, intended to redress the balance in

the debate. Experimental work on such hypotheses remains limited, however, by

the monopoly of federal funding by the AIDS establishment. Duesberg has applied

for numerous grants to carry out experiments exploring the drug hypothesis but

has always been turned down even, as in the latest instance, when his proposal

had the strong support of the editor of Science.

 

Thus the Galiliean challenger is censored, and the 20th Century Church of the

science establishment maintains its hegemony as effectively as the Church of

Rome did in the 17th. In modern times the repression is abetted by an uncritical

press, and the cooperation of funding officials who have an incestuous

relationship with the ruling scientists. Then there is the power and influence

of the drug companies, on which the few investigative reporters in the field

have had nothing good to report.

 

All this difficulty in overturning the entrenched orthodoxy may be nothing

special to AIDS, or to science in general, but it hinges on a close-mindedness,

a psychological and perhaps even venal attachment to the status quo that is

contrary to the values professed by scientists as vital to good work. Is it

naive to demand better? Much of the philosophy of science, and much of what has

been written about the way science and scientists work, seems to argue that this

behavior is inevitable as long as scientists are human, and anyway not entirely

a bad thing. I once asked Thomas Kuhn whether the political battle forced on

every reformer of orthodoxy in science was not contrary to the professed ethic

of scientists, and he gave the question short shrift. Without such an obstacle

course, he demanded, how otherwise would the new paradigm be tested?

 

Such philosophical equanimity might fit with Kuhn's essential point that we must

understand science as realpolitik, but I suggest that its force dissipates in an

instant if one asks the obvious question: would Kuhn feel the same way if his

own doctor informed him that his blood had tested positive for HIV? It is hard

to imagine that he would not quickly develop a consuming, not-so-philosophical

interest in seeing what conclusion might be reached freed of all political,

cultural and psychological bias.

 

And that's my point. We need cultural studies in science because some science

isn't being practiced as good science. The philosophers may be right in saying

that ultimate reality is forever beyond our grasp. The pragmatists may be right

that complete objectivity is impossible for any human. But the aim, at least,

should be good science, as far as we can achieve it. The public interest demands

that scientific method in practice has to try, at least, to bring the fantasy of

theory as closely in accord with reality as humanly possible. To that end,

scientists should be ashamed of restricting the free flow of information and

debate which is the lifeblood of good science. So should the science editors who

abet them.

 

In the end, the best definition of science may be Peter Duesberg's. He has

sacrificed much material advantage to a sense of public responsibility and to an

ideal of science which is simple, straightforward, has absolutely nothing

worldly about it, and no mystification either. " Science " , Duesberg has written,

" is the search for the ultimate match between facts and theory. " Science studies

may, ironically, help to educate scientists, the press and the public to restore

this fundamental notion to primacy by suggesting that scientists have their

moral obligations as well. They do, when lives hinge on truth. *

 

Anthony F. Liversidge is a writer and contributing editor at Omni magazine with

a special interest in the ideas and behavior of leading scientists. He lives in

New York City.

 

 

 

 

 

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