Photo by Tamiko Thiel via Wikimedia Commons
How do we know whether a claim someone is making is scientific or not? This question is of paramount importance because we are surrounded on all sides by claims that sound credible and use the language of science – often in an attempt to refute the scientific consensus. As we have seen in the case of the anti-vaccination crusade, falling prey to pseudoscientific arguments can have devastating consequences. So how can normal people, normal parents and normal citizens evaluate such arguments?
The problem of Demarcationor what is and is not science, has been troubling philosophers for some time, and the most famous answer comes from philosopher of science Karl Popper, who put forward his theory of “falsifiability” in 1963. According to Popper, an idea is scientific if it is conceivable that it could be proved false. Although Popper’s strict definition of science has been used over the years, it has also been criticized because so many accepted scientific findings were falsified at the time (Newton’s theory of gravity, Bohr’s atomic theory) and so many current theoretical sciences cannot be falsified (string theory, for example). Be that as it may, the problem for laypeople remains. If a scientific theory is beyond our comprehension, it is unlikely that we can see how it could be disproved.
Physicist and science communicator Richard Feynman has developed another criterion that applies directly to nonscientists, who are easily confused by high-sounding, scientific-sounding terminology. Simon Oxenham of Big Think cites the example of Deepak Chopra, who is “notorious for making profound-sounding but completely meaningless statements by abusing scientific language.” (What Daniel Dennett called “deepities.”) As a balm against such statements, Oxenham points to a speech Feynman gave at a 1966 meeting of the National Science Teachers Association. Rather than asking laypeople to confront scientific-sounding claims in their own way, Feynman wants us to translate them into everyday language to ensure that the claim is a logical concept and not just a collection of technical jargon.
The example Feynman cites comes from a very rudimentary source, a “first-grade science book” that “begins teaching science in an unfortunate way”: It shows students a picture of a “wind-up toy dog,” then a picture of a real dog, then a motorcycle. In each case, the student is asked, “What makes it move?” The answer, Feynman tells us, “was in the teacher’s edition of the book…’Energy makes it move.'” Few students would have intuitively grasped such an abstract concept unless they had first learned the word, and that is all they learn in this lesson. The answer, Feynman says, might just as well have been, “‘God makes it move,’ or ‘Mind makes it move,’ or ‘Agility makes it move.'”
Instead, a good science lesson should “think about what an ordinary person would answer.” Exposing the concept of energy in everyday language allows the student to explain it, and this, says Feynman, provides a test of “whether you have taught an idea or just a definition. Test it like this”:
Try to express what you have learned in your own language without using the new word you just learned. Tell me what you now know about the dog’s movement without using the word “energy.”
Feynman’s insistence on everyday language is reminiscent of the statement attributed to Einstein that you don’t really understand something if you can’t explain it to your grandmother. The method, says Feynman, guards against learning “a mystical formula for answering questions,” and Oxenham describes it as “a valuable way of testing ourselves to see whether we have really learned something or just think we have learned something.”
It is also useful for checking the claims of others. If someone cannot explain something in plain English, we should ask ourselves whether they really understand what they are claiming themselves… In the words of Feynman, “It is possible to follow the form and call it science, but that is pseudoscience.”
Does Feynman’s common language test solve the demarcation problem? No, but if we use it as a guide when confronted with plausible-sounding claims couched in scientific-sounding language, it can help us either gain clarity or debunk utter nonsense. And if anyone knows how scientists can explain complicated ideas in an easily understandable way, it’s Feynman.
Note: An earlier version of this article appeared on our website in 2016.
See also:
Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detection Kit”: A toolkit that allows you to scientifically distinguish sense from nonsense
The life and work of Richard Feynman in a three-part Freakonomics Radio miniseries
How to spot bullshit: A handbook by Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt (RIP)
Richard Feynman presents quantum electrodynamics for laypeople
Josh Jones is a writer and musician from Durham, NC. Follow him on @jdmagness
