1.0   The detective and the prosecutor

    In general, the majority of theorists will agree with the definition of the term scientific method found in
    the American Heritage Dictionary:

    “The principles and empirical processes of discovery and demonstration con-
       sidered characteristic of or necessary for scientific investigation, generally
       involving the observation of phenomena, the formulation of a hypothesis
       concerning the phenomena, experimentation to demonstrate the truth or
       falseness of the hypothesis, and a conclusion that validates or modifies the
       hypothesis.”  [1]

    I extract from this definition the relevant elements – observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and
    validation – a sequence most authors more or less express in similar ways:

    “ observation…hypothesis…prediction…experiment…analysis” [2]  

    “ observation…hypothesis…predict…experimental tests”  [3]

    “ observation/experimentation, deduction, hypothesis, falsification”[4]   

    Curiously, this definition fails to make provisions for two traditional pillars of the scientific method:
    definitions and theory. Can a juror understand what the prosecutors are talking about if they haven’t
    illustrated the objects or defined their terms? Can the prosecution make its case without a theory? And
    what does the phrase ‘modifies the hypothesis’ mean? Isn’t a hypothesis supposed to be an immutable
    assumption? Are we to interpret, then, that the prosecutors may amend their assumptions retroactively
    when experiment refutes their findings? More revealing still is the subtle circularity that emphasizes
    research: ‘The scientific method is a process… necessary for scientific investigation.’ So science is
    science! Great!  

    Such sloppy definitions so late in the game clearly show that the establishment has no clue as to what
    the scientific method and science are about. So-called ‘scientists’ have the gall to protest the attempt by
    Kansas rednecks [5]  to redefine the word science for secondary schools when they themselves have
    but vague notions of its meaning. If the foregoing definition synthesizes their perceptions of science, it
    should not surprise us that the theories of relativity and quantum are still around today and that
    biologists and religionists have yet to settle whether Evolution is fact or theory.

    The vision that comes to mind when you hear the word scientist is of an individual working with test
    tubes in a laboratory, a fellow building rockets for NASA, or a physicist accelerating particles at CERN.
    The word science is generally associated with the development of technology, with progress, and with
    prediction, all of which invoke experimentation and the future. Francis Bacon synthesized the popular
    view of science 400 years ago:

    " Men have sought to make a world from their own conception and to draw from their
       own minds all the material which they employed, but if, instead of doing so, they had
       consulted experience and observation, they would have the facts and not opinions
       to reason about, and might have ultimately arrived at the knowledge of the laws which
       govern the material world." [6]

    Others identify science with theoretical groups and think tanks, people whose daily tasks consist of
    brainstorming ideas in order to elucidate the nature of our Universe.

    Actually, science is something quite different, but in order to get an intuitive feel for an adequate
    definition, it helps to focus first on its purpose. What does science hope to achieve? Does a scientist
    investigate the past by reading up on a little bit of history or tempt the future by running an experiment?
    Is a biologist who studies birds a scientist? What about a relativist who jumps from a ladder to test how
    fast he hits the ground? Are these activities what we call science? What if, after observing birds for a
    year, the biologist didn’t learn anything? What if the relativist arrived at the wrong conclusions or
    designed the experiment wrong or timed his fall with a lousy watch? How will we know what they did or
    whether they understood what happened if they fail to publish their findings and open their theories up
    to criticism? Hopefully, when secondary school kids take science courses they either read something
    that someone wrote or tell the class what they learned from a personal experience. Without
    communication, science is dead.

    Science involves two distinct individuals: a detective and a prosecutor. A detective is a lab technician, a
    researcher, an engineer, the fellow who finds happiness in observing and tempting nature. Think of
    Galileo, Fresnel, Faraday, Michelson, and Curie, individuals who labored incessantly and somewhat
    selflessly to sift secrets from Mother Nature. An investigator has an insatiable curiosity, especially for
    phenomena that appear to work by magic.

    In order to elucidate this particular secret of nature, the detective prepares a deliberate observation: an
    experiment. If this new observation satisfies his curiosity (i.e., he thinks he has found a logical
    explanation), the investigative phase is over. Otherwise, he has merely opened a new can of worms and
    continues his research. In a nutshell, the steps the researcher took include:

    •        casual observation of a phenomenon
    •        tentative explanation
    •        recreation of the event to confirm the hunch
    •        new or refined explanation for the phenomenon or new experiment if
             the explanation is unsatisfactory.

    This sequence pretty much synthesizes the establishment’s perception of the scientific method and is
    consistent with the definition I transcribed above.

    The detective is a highly admired individual, but unfortunately a relatively inconsequential phase of
    science. The detective can make countless predictions, run countless successful experiments, develop
    the most sophisticated technology, and still understand nothing about nature, which is actually the
    present situation in science:

    “ Not only do we too easily draw the wrong conclusions from the given evidence, but
       we can all too easily 'see' things different than how they really are, or are not even
       there at all!”  [7]

    But even if the detective did understand something it wouldn’t matter anyway. A detective is
    accountable to no one but himself. If he is lucky, he gets the theory right, but if he is equally unfortunate
    and suffers a heart attack from the excitement a moment later, he takes his secret to his grave and
    Science is neither the better nor the worse for it.

    It is when the detective changes hats and becomes a lawyer that science really vibrates. Science has to
    do with information bequeathed from one generation to another. Like an opera villain, the prosecutor is
    the true anti-hero, the embodiment of the scientific method. We confer medals upon and glorify popular
    prosecutors especially when they cheat, lie, and steal successfully. On the other hand, no one gives a
    damn about an anonymous although diligent and decent detective.

    The role of the prosecutor is not to run experiments, but to communicate ideas to others and help them
    understand:

    " Science, which attempts to understand the observable universe, proceeds
       by discovering generalizations (laws) about phenomena and providing
       explanations (theories) for these generalizations. Theories are the ultimate
       goal of science!" [8]

    A scientist is someone who contributes to the pile of published papers. All alone in his lab, the
    prosecutor is just a detective, his own jury, a ‘mad scientist’ obsessed with a pet peeve. A detective
    communicates ideas only to himself. There is no one in his dark and humid basement to challenge what
    he has allegedly discovered. A secret is that which only one person knows. It becomes confidential the
    moment the individual shares it with someone else. Science is not secretive. Science is confidential. It is
    insufficient to try; you must succeed, and we don’t know whether you succeeded until you share your
    findings with us. Science does not have to do with investigation or with proving, but with
    communicating ideas. Otherwise, all the animals in the wild kingdom who go about their daily routines
    would be scientists. They all experiment and test their world around them, but not all understand. The
    entire body of science consists not of people, not of experiments, not of technology, but of published
    theses. The great maxim that a genuine scientist should tape to the office wall is ‘publish or perish’. I’ll
    rub it in one more time in case you missed it: without communication, Science is dead.

    Science: The body of recorded material accumulated by man, usually in
                     written form, that follows the guidelines of the scientific method.

    The prosecutor is the individual that the establishment has overlooked because of its insistence on
    research and experiment. The mainstream has mistakenly concluded that an experiment is a necessary
    ingredient of science because of the alleged impressive successes of the first to use the Inductive
    Method (Bacon, Galileo, Brahe), from the stunning accomplishments of technology (radio, TV,
    computers, rockets, the A-bomb), and from the seemingly successful explanations offered by
    theoretical Physics (gravity, light, and our Universe). The erroneous idea has developed that without an
    experiment (or Math) the prosecutor only has a tentative explanation: a hypothesis. And if the tentative
    explanation is not even supported by observation, the prosecutor is merely speculating or guessing. [9]

    Actually, a prosecutor only rarely runs an experiment in the courtroom, and when he does, he has slyly
    put on yet a third hat that has nothing to do with science or with the scientific method. The prosecutor is
    now acting as a politician. The purpose of an experiment is to add weight to argument and coax the jury
    to change its mind. A consummated experiment is just another piece of evidence and, as Popper noted,
    constitutes neither proof nor knowledge. The prosecutor differs from a politician in that he focuses on
    his thesis, attempting to present it objectively and logically. The politician is more concerned about
    public opinion. We will discover that the detective typically contributes hypotheses whereas the
    prosecutor is the person who conjures theories. In this sense, they are both equal and necessary
    partners in the formulation of a scientific presentation.

    To summarize, the detective is a person who wants to learn what happened whereas the prosecutor is
    responsible for exposing the results of an investigation to public scrutiny. A prosecutor that doesn’t
    communicate ideas is just a detective, and a detective holding on to his secrets contributes nothing to
    science. A pair of keen researchers does an even better job of summarizing my arguments:

    “ A discovery does not consist merely of launching a tentative exploration of
       an interesting problem and producing some calculations; it also involves
       realizing that one has made a discovery and conveying it effectively to the
       scientific world.” [10]


    2.0   Too proud to publish

    History is full of detectives who were too modest or proud to publish their findings, yet their respective
    countrymen seek world recognition for them and their alleged discoveries. For example, Fermat [11]  
    was apparently too proud to publish the proof to his famous Last Theorem, and Tesla [12]  boasted of
    having discovered a unified field theory. This is not science but ignorance disguised as arrogance. No
    one today can test whether they did or not or whether their proofs and experiments had flaws. These
    claims actually harm science because gullible, ordinary people get the wrong idea that their hero made
    a priceless discovery, but that, because of the establishment’s inertia, the genius was not given his due.
    It's a similar argument to the one made by fools who say that UFOs exist, but that the US Airforce is
    keeping it from the public to prevent a panic. Likewise, the longstanding debate on the invention of the
    calculus and the discovery of Neptune should be resolved objectively. Newton did not publish his
    alleged discovery of calculus (1693) [13]  until after Leibniz (1684), [14] (both were probably upstaged by
    Stevin in 1586), while Adams [15] [16] did not publish his alleged discovery of Neptune at all. Therefore,
    from a strictly objective point of view, the credit for discovering calculus belongs exclusively to Leibniz
    and the credit for discovering Neptune to LeVerrier [17] who published his paper in 1846. And it was not
    Thomson (1897), [18]  but rather Perrin (1895) [19]  who discovered that cathode rays were comprised of
    negatively charged corpuscles. Thomson merely proposed that the electrons were part of the atom.
    There are also cases like that of Peirce, [20] a prolific writer who published little to nothing of what he
    wrote. His manuscripts were discovered in his home after his death. I say that anything that Peirce
    wrote is inconsequential if someone had to reinvent the wheels he discovered. The credit should be
    given to the new discoverer if the unpublished material did not add to or serve as a basis for new
    knowledge. The discovered material is just a footnote in history. It is the responsibility of the discoverer
    to seek to publish if he wants credit and not the other way around. What excuse do we have for not
    knowing of the alleged discoveries of Fermat, Newton, Adams, Peirce, and Tesla? Did they not have
    access to a printing press, or were they simply overly modest geniuses? [21] [22]  If they were too
    modest to publish, perhaps they would also be offended if we now put them on a pedestal. Maybe they
    would rather remain anonymous.

    Perhaps the most stunning case that shows the difference between a detective and a prosecutor is the
    phone controversy involving Meucci and Bell. Meucci [23] [24] is the unambiguous inventor and early
    developer of the telephone, but he didn’t exploit it commercially. Manzetti [25]  re-invents Meucci’s
    telephone independently and gives Bell a presentation many years after Meucci.  Bell [26]  was
    researching telecommunication to solve problems with his mother’s deafness and with his work with
    deaf people. Bell begins to tinker with Manzetti’s device, realizes the telephone’s potential, takes the
    idea to America, discovers that Meucci has filed a temporary patent that has the potential to upstage
    him, apparently bribes patent officials to get rid of Meucci’s temporary patent, and replaces it with his
    own. Bell ends up becoming a millionaire, while Meucci rots in hell. Over 100 years later, as a footnote in
    history, the U.S. Congress finally recognizes Meucci as the genuine inventor.

    Assuming that this sequence of events is correct, who should we give the credit to? We have to bear in
    mind that in those days many chose to publish their findings through newspapers as opposed to
    through scientific journals. Many inventors were not in tune with the formal ‘scientific’ literature of the
    day or aware of the value of patenting their inventions. So culture played an important role in this
    specific case. However, the hard facts are that Meucci did not apply for a patent until many years after
    he had successfully developed his phone and got into some economic trouble. And had he filed it in the
    patent office in Havana, Cuba, where he first tested his device, no one would have heard about it
    anyways. Perhaps someone in the Italian collectivity suggested the idea to him to patent his device as a
    way to overcome poverty. Meucci even sued Bell, but apparently did not have the funds to continue the
    litigation, so the case was dismissed, giving Bell a strategic reprieve.

    Again, the Meucci – Bell story is a classic example of the differences between science and technology.
    Technology has to do with inventions. Science has to do with publishing a rational explanation.
    Inventors invent and patent. They die without recognition and have a lousy tombstone somewhere in an
    unmarked grave. Scientists explain and publish. They are granted copyrights, become millionaires, and
    end up sleeping with the wives of the detectives who are too busy working in their basements. Meucci
    was a technician, an engineer, an inventor. He was not a scientist. He held no copyrights to anything he
    wrote. He didn’t take the trouble to publish in a way that would reach the masses or the scientific
    community when he still had the chance to do so. This implies that he was so immersed in the task of
    discovering the secrets of telephoning that he didn’t realize its enormous potential. Meucci was a
    solitary detective, a ‘mad scientist’ working all alone in his dark basement. Meucci was not a prosecutor.


    3.0   Conclusions

    If we define science as the body of knowledge accumulated by man, we keep 100% of it in one form of
    recordable medium or another. What wasn’t recorded, never happened! Verbal claims of tribal story-
    tellers, witch-doctors, and elders scatter in the wind. A prosecutor does not usually run nor has to run
    an experiment. In fact, it is immaterial whether any prosecutor ever ran an experiment in the lab,
    acquired knowledge from a bad dream, stole the idea from others, or derived conclusions from
    impeccable mathematics. What is important is that the prosecutors expose the theory publicly in a
    logical manner. We call this rational step by step process the scientific method.

    As a final note, it is important to reinforce that science is distinct from technology. We may discover
    what artifacts nature allows us to build through trial and error yet understand nothing about what
    makes them tick. Man realized early that two magnets attract each other and eventually discovered that
    he could use magnets to deflect cathode rays. We use this technology to build TVs and computers.
    However, to this day not a single person on Earth can explain to you what is physically happening. Why
    does one magnet physically attract and then repel another. The 'experts' at think tanks like Cambridge
    and Harvard only have opinions about the physical nature of magnetic fields and electrons (and
    misconceived ones at that). Science has to do with theoretical interpretations (i.e., explanations and
    opinions). Technology has to do with objects developed mostly through trial and error.

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    Last modified 02/13/08


        Copyright © by Nila Gaede 2008
The prosecutor
The detective
There's our hero!
Yes. I know that
lawyers are a bunch of
charlatans. But they
are the true scientists!



So what is Science, really?
Adapted for the Internet from:

Why God Doesn't Exist