For painfully obvious reasons, Other Aspects has addressed the topic of Dishonesty often and in some depth. Entering the New Year called for a more aspirational theme.
A reader recently brought to my attention the commencement address of legendary physicist and Nobel Laureate Richard P. Feynman to the Cal Tech class of 1974. I am indebted to both the reader and to Feynman (5/11/18 – 2/15/88).
Crazy Ideas
Feynman starts by mentioning “crazy ideas” from the Middle Ages, then describes history’s gradual discovery of a method for separating ideas: to “try one to see if it worked, and if it didn’t work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age.”
Despite such progress, Feynman notes, they were still awash in crazy ideas, so many in fact that he finds them overwhelming to contemplate. The speech is fun reading for the wacky examples he gives, ranging from quiet little interactions with strangers to then-famous people and schools of thought. When such movements find many adherents and are said to be scientific, however, Feynman feels the need to “look into theories that don’t work, and science that isn’t science.” These he dubs Cargo Cult Science.
Cargo Cult Science
Feynman’s name for junk science came from the behavior of certain people in the South Seas. Having seen airplanes land during the War loaded with desired provisions, they sought to have that happen again. So they build runways, and burn fires along them for illumination, with a man stationed in a hut wearing a wooden contraption resembling headphones. And they wait for airplanes that never land.
“They’re doing everything right,” Feynman explains. “The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.”
The Utter Honesty of Scientific Integrity
So what’s missing? Well, it’s not something like making the supposed headphones look more realistic. What’s missing is the central point he has for the graduates:
“[T]here is one feature I notice that is generally missing in Cargo Cult Science. It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards.
For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked—to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.”
What’s Required
Feynman elaborates on what scientific integrity, his “utter honesty” requires: “Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can—if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong—to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it.”
Also, one who decides to test a theory must publish the results “whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of result.” If you do not publish results considered unexpected by yourself, or unfavorable to someone’s commercial interests, “you’re not giving scientific advice. You’re being used.”
Finally, “In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.” This is our best shot at getting things right.
An example given of how we tend to fool ourselves is how long it took to discover that Millikan had under-measured the charge on an electron. At least for a while, subsequent studies simply dismissed measurements “too much” higher than Millikan’s, while favoring results closer to his.
Takeaways of Lasting Value
Feynman’s advice to these new scientists: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists.”
The responsibility is not only to other scientists, by the way. Indeed this “extra type of integrity”, this “bending over backwards” to point out potential weak spots in one’s own approach, is at least as important elsewhere. One’s scientific expertise is not to be abused to fool others less equipped to fend for themselves.
Not Limited to Science
Notwithstanding any number of lawyer jokes, Law is another field that values, in fact insists upon, this sort of integrity. Following the Rules of Professional Conduct (“RPCs”) requires of lawyers conduct well beyond merely not lying.
Thus, RPC 3.3 not only forbids a lawyer from making a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal, but also from:
- Failing to correct a false statement of fact or law the lawyer previously made before grasping the falsity
- Failing to disclose legal authority known to be directly adverse to that lawyer’s client’s position, even if, and especially when, not cited by the opposition and
- Offering evidence (testimony by witnesses or documents) known by the lawyer to be false.
Points 2 and 3 might surprise those unfamiliar with Legal Ethics, given the lawyer’s near-absolute duty of loyalty to the client. While very few considerations outweigh fealty to the client, the integrity of the judicial process is one of them.
There’s More
So, actually, there’s more. Lawyers must:
a) take “reasonable remedial measures” if their witnesses’ testimony is known to be false or if a person is engaging in fraudulent or criminal conduct in the case and
b) withdraw from representing a client who demands illegal or unethical behavior by the lawyer (RPC 1.16).
Meanwhile, under other Rules, lawyers must not:
a) bring a case unless it has some basis in law and fact that is not frivolous
b) obstruct another party’s access to evidence
c) alter, destroy or conceal potential evidence
d) falsify evidence or assist a witness to testify falsely
e) take frivolous positions in the information-sharing process known as “discovery” or
f) make reference in trial to matters that are either irrelevant or not admissible under the law.
Note that these and many other rules require balancing with a host of duties toward the client. Less than honorable clients often place their lawyers in positions of tremendous stress sorting out the right thing to do in difficult circumstances. Unsurprisingly, practicing lawyers suffer depression and substance abuse at rates well above average.
Attention, Cynics
Can scientists keep both the grant money and some of their integrity? Will lawyers retain their clients while doing just enough to avoid disbarment? No, the point here is not to identify the poorest conduct one can employ and nevertheless continue practicing the profession.
Feynman is clearly correct in pointing out the jeopardy. In cutting ethical corners, indeed in any conduct short of scientific integrity, wrongdoers “are destroying—possibly—the value of the experiments themselves, which is the whole purpose of the thing.”
New Jersey’s landmark legal ethics case, In Re Wilson, gets at similar concerns. In disbarring the lawyer, Chief Justice Wilentz considered clients’ willingness to allow lawyers to handle their money in transactions: “[T]he client permits it because he trusts the lawyer. It is a trust built on centuries of honesty and faithfulness. Sometimes it is reinforced by personal knowledge of a particular lawyer’s integrity or a firm’s reputation. The underlying faith, however, is in the legal profession, the bar as an institution. No other explanation can account for clients’ customary willingness to entrust their funds to relative strangers simply because they are lawyers.”
The fundamental building block of our freedoms and democracy is the rule of law, and resulting trust in the independent system of justice. AND much of the progress we’ve made emerging from the primordial ooze has been owing to the utter honesty of science. In each of these realms, all we cherish collapses and disappears if not for the integrity of the practitioners and the processes.
It’s hard not to notice that those who peddle lies for fun and enormous profit despise and fear both real science and the courts. Nothing new, there.
This is no anti-theism rant, by the way. The Eighth Commandment came down on the tablet for a reason. The God to whom I pray in my better moments is pleased when we stumble into shards of comprehension about His creation, and very displeased when phonies foment ignorance, idiocy, and harm in His name.
These Days
If Feynman thought his times, or even the Middle Ages, were fraught with crazy ideas, he should have seen the last several years. Would we have some cults for him! At least people back then had the excuse that they were living in the Middle Ages, even if they had no way of realizing it. What excuse have we?
Well, for one thing, it is no less tempting than ever to fool ourselves. We want, need, to be proven right. When the evidence is to the contrary, there must be something wrong with the evidence. It can’t be we, or our beliefs, that are wrong.
Still. One would expect thinking persons to be not only resistant to, but offended by and furious with, attempts to fool them. Yet, the contrary seems more like what’s happening with astonishing numbers of fellow citizens. They want, sometimes desperately, to be fooled in ways that bring them comfort.
For them, sustaining and promoting error is preferable to “losing” an argument. This is so even where the error does terrible damage. No amount of harm can outweigh the unbearable shame of admitting one was simply wrong about something. I must win; you must lose. My numbers cannot suffer.
Individual Resolve – Shared Benefit
As a people, we’ve been doing the Limbo (“How LOW can you GO?!” See post of 1/25/19) far too long. The result is real, substantial harm. Can we do the hard work of raising the bar back up from near the ground, where the current crazy ideas have placed it?
Poking through various choices to be among this New Year’s resolutions, we could do a lot worse, and could scarcely do better, than this:
Double down on integrity – the kind Feynman was addressing years ago: utter honesty, that bending over backwards – in living our lives. Resist the ever-present temptation to fool ourselves, or to submit to being fooled.
Stopping the outright lying in its tracks is a start; it’s necessary, but not enough. What Feynman championed to young scientists – full disclosure, candid consideration of ideas on the merits, relentless pursuit of truth and discernment – that’s the ticket. Consider again his sentence: “After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists.” He means avoiding the inadvertent misleading of others. It assumes no intent to deceive. This is a world-view, a way of life.
We’ll find that just as dishonesty’s harm begins with the self and always spreads, so does integrity ennoble first from within.
There will always be crazy ideas available, and no one easier to fool than ourselves with lazy or corrupt acceptance of self-serving falsehoods. What we demand of ourselves – and then of each other – determines who we are and what we become.
Happy New Year.
Ken Bossong
© 2022 Kenneth J. Bossong