Photo credit: Mysterious Beach Slime
There is no doubt that the scientific community suffers from a severe case of hubris, so severe that even though science could save lives and make the world a better place, there were many missed opportunities.
Take for example, this advice to justify mocking the anti-vaxxers who died of COVID-19. There were some genuine efforts made to educate the general public about How do mRNA COVID-19 vaccines work, but these efforts rarely come into the dialog when confronting the anti-vaxxers about their misbelief.
Or mocking Jordan Peterson’s comments on climate model as a “word salad of nonsense” rather than taking the opportunity to explain how to understand the climate model in a way that the common people can understand. Instead, they call Peterson as “stunningly ignorant”, “ill-informed” and said that “he has no frickin’ idea.” Jordan Peterson was a Professor of Psychology at University of Toronto until 2021, when he became a full-time YouTuber and podcast personality to monetize his fame within the conservative community that started in 2016 out of his refusal to use preferred gender pronouns.
Despite his controversy, Peterson raises a valid concern: if climate model makes prediction like how weather model makes forecast, then errors compound just like interest. Peterson is a smart person, and his concern is about an iterative model.
The error from f(x) will diverge over time.
Exactly one scientist tried to explain how the climate model works but not before throwing in an obligatory insult:
“Anyone who has taken an introductory course in climate or atmospheric science would spot this problem,” he said. “Errors in a weather forecast indeed accumulate such that after a couple of weeks the forecast is useless.”
But with climate, Sherwood said, the models work differently to project how the climate will respond to different factors, such as higher levels of CO2.
What that means is that climate model is formulated like this:
The model is not iterative. Instead, at each time t, it
merely extrapolates what the CO₂ level is going to be according to
current trend, and the model predicts how much heat is going to be
retained by the atmosphere. Although extrapolation is like shooting a
dart, even if you completely missed the target, it will still be
somewhat in the right direction.
Moreover, the extrapolation is still only predicting the best case scenario. It does not take into account the unknowns such as how additional resevoirs of CO₂ trapped in the ocean or permafrost could be released as the result of increased temperature, further accelerating the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Sudden eruption of CO₂ resevoir has happened before in the Lake Nyos disaster.
In the past, scientists were mostly concerned about rising temperature, but only in the past decade they started to look at the change in weather patterns. Rising temperature melts more polar ice, which causes rising sea level that threatens island nations such as Majuro and Tuvalu. But it also dilutes ocean salinity and weakens the Global Conveyor Belt which previously equalized temperatures. This caused the Jet Stream to meander more, which brings more unusually cold weather to Texas or unusually warm weather to Seattle. Prediction of weather pattern change can avoid using an iterative model if it only tries to predict the range of the extremes over a long interval rather than when exactly an extreme will happen.
As such, the climate model has become more nuanced. The scientists have no problem adapting to new models, but the general public sees a renegation on a political statement from the slow procession of global warming to acute climate change where extreme weather events become life threatening. Ironically, it is in spite of the fact that acute events are more noticeable, but people turn a blind eye after losing trust.
It is important for scientists to stay humble and admit that, while they try their best to understand the truth, they are not the truth. Instead of trying to win over another person, they wasted their words on insults. They are saying “I am the authority in this matter, but I am so much smarter than you, so you cannot possibly understand it even if I tried to explain.” This is hubris.
It is worse when even the most scientifically minded person could make mistakes, and they refuse to acknowledge it. While researchers in the academia generally hold themselves to a high standard which occasionally results in retraction of their publications, we could not say the same for those on social media. Yet, social media personalities are the most vocal and the most accessible to the general public.
Derek Muller makes scientific video content on his YouTube channel Veritasium, which he dubbed “an element of truth.” His videos are generally fun to watch, but when he makes an error, we can see why social media is not the best place to correct them.
One particular video that caught the attention of many YouTubers is his video on The Big Misconception About Electricity in which he claimed that “energy doesn’t flow in wires” and that the lightbulb will turn on after the energy travels from the battery through the airgap, rather than having to take the time to travel down a long circuit.
Theoretically, residual charge from wire capacitance can induce a small amount of current immediately, and wire can also act as an antenna. But the amount of energy delivered this way is very small. This has been explained by RSD Academy, and in a more entertaining fashion, by Medhi from ElectroBOOM. Finally, AlphaPhoenix demonstrated in an experiment showing that the amount of current flow over time follows this explanation.
Eventually, Derek made a follow-up video apologizing that he did not explain clearly in the original video (as opposed to admitting that he was wrong or misleading), but he also doubled down that the ensuing discussions were a positive rather than a negative.
Well, what if there was no discussion taking place?
In another one of Veritasium video, Derek claimed that it is impossible to measure the uni-directional speed of light because all measurements so far are done by measuring the round-trip time, and we simply assumed that the speed of the light is the same in both directions, which may not be true. Derek observed the limitation of round-trip measurement, but his error is in assuming that it is the only way to measure the speed of light.
There are actually several other ways you can measure the speed of light without relying on a round-trip measurement.
Light is a wave, so the length of the standing wave multiplied by the frequency is the speed of light. You can see this by heating chocolate in a microwave.
Light as a wave is also subject to the Doppler Effect. Objects traveling further away will shift towards red (longer wavelength), and objects approaching will shift towards blue (shorter wavelength). MIT Media Lab even developed a computer game A Slower Speed of Light that visualizes an exaggerated Doppler Effect if you slow down the speed of light. If the speed of light is different depending on the direction, we would be able to see that Doppler Effect becomes directional (in the sense that the universe would appear to expand on one side but contract on the other).
Last but not the least, there are already high-speed cameras fast enough to see light traveling through space. One was developed at MIT Media Lab in 2011, and there is another one more recently developed at CalTech featured by The Slow Mo Guys in 2019. You can see with a camera like that, that the speed of light is the same no matter which direction it travels.
Indeed, the hallmark of the scientific method is that experiment is how you do fact checking, and no amount of theoretical argument can trump that.
Derek’s speed of light video did not receive very much scrutiny, and sadly you can see in the comments section that many scientifically minded lemmings expressed their gratitude of the “enlightenment” and not knowing better.
From time to time, we do see a meaningful dialog between well-natured YouTubers who disagree on a scientific principle figuring it out collaboratively. Steve Mould and Medhi of ElectroBOOM disagreed on how the chain fountain works, whether a bead chain falling from a beaker could have its peak increase in height by velocity alone without pushing down on the beaker. They tried various hypotheses and experiments and found flaws with each other’s experiments.
Eventually, using Medhi’s idea, Steve Mould designed an experiment with a horizontally arranged chain laid on a stepping ramp and pulled at a constant velocity. If the chain is laid against the walls of the steps, which means it has something to push against, then the height of the peak increases. If the chain is laid along the edges away from the walls, then the height decreases. This finally settled the argument, and Medhi conceded amicably.
Even though Medhi is an electrical engineer and Steve Mould is a mechanical engineer, Steve never scolded Medhi just because the subject matter is not Medhi’s field of expertise. Instead, Steve used this opportunity to take Medhi’s input and improved how he could explain the chain fountain effect more effectively.
It is well-known that if you want to change someone’s mind, you have to show them consideration as a person and try to learn about their viewpoints. With the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change at stake, we need everyone to be onboard to take action even if they had a personal reason to believe in misinformation. This cannot be done if we are shrouded in our own hubris.