Skloot reports that when cervical cancer expert Richard Wesley TeLinde argued that “women with carcinoma in situ needed aggressive treatment, so their cancer didn’t become invasive,” an audience of pathologists “heckled him off the stage.” TeLinde’s theory, later confirmed, “could have saved the lives of millions of women. But few in the field believed him.”
Disagreements are understandable. New theories and concepts need to be probed and proved.
But what explains the animosity of an audience of experts toward one of their own? Does this anecdote reveal anything about science and scientists?
In the video below,
Thomas Kuhn's landmark theory of scientific progress, described in his 1962 book
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is explained via metaphor. As you watch it, consider how admirers of the first vase might feel when the second vase is put on the table.
I have yet to meet anyone who enjoys being proven wrong. There is a tremendous amount of jealousy within any community, and I would venture to say that the scientific community is no exception to this fact. When the paradigm shifts, everyone who was involved in the old paradigm feels denial, anger, and jealousy. As the paradigm continues to shift, most people within the scientific community feel these emotions at one time or another. Those emotions spark interest in discovering the newest theories which lead to improvement and innovation.
ReplyDeleteEmily Davis
I completely agree with Emily. I delt a lot with paradigm shifts in debate. It is so frustrating to come up with a solution you've put your heart into, only to have it smashed with a cinder block as seen above. What TeLinde was suggesting was so different from what was the status quo, i would expect nothing less then disproval to the extent of laughter. Galileo was once considered pseudo-science, he's now considered the father of modern science. A professor of mine once referred to it as "ugly duckling syndrome". TeLinde's theory had to be proven before it was thought of a swan.
ReplyDeleteThe question that comes to mind with this video is: When does the paradigm become permanent? Science is full of ideas and rules and exceptions to those rules. I grew up thinking Pluto was a planet and apparently he was voted off the island. Things change so much is society that adapting is practically installed in us. I just continue wondering if there will ever be a time where forward motion is no more. No more updates to the iPhone or a different paradigm.
ReplyDeleteIt can be awfully hard to take someone's critisisem of your work. No matter how hard or long you've worked on whatever it is. And all of these doctors took their work extremely serious and I'm positive that they didn't come to any of the conclusions that Telinde was tearing appart lightly. So to hear him go against their work, and in the back of their minds know that there was a chance he was right*, must have been enough to provoke them to heckle him down.
ReplyDelete*I can't imagine that some of the scientists there didn't entertain the possibility of Telinde being right. With as many brilliant minds as was there, surely some saw and understood his points and were a little open to his ideas.
I believe they criticized him mainly because what he was saying was flying in the face of everything they thought they knew. They had (in some cases) spent the majority of their lives working on this study in some fashion or another. To be told that you have been wasting your time for that entire process isn't likely to cause many people to get excited in a happy fashion. And why should they? They were wrong but nobody ever wants to hear that, no matter how humble they may be. He was (in effect) making them the laughing stock of science at the time, by pointing out how far off they all really were.
ReplyDeleteTell Jordan
As Emily said, no one likes to be proven wrong. There is an extremely large field of competition in the sciences. We've all heard about scientists that say other sciences, i.e. psychology, sociology, etc., are the lesser sciences because they deal with personalities and not "actual facts". This competition is directly related to that of sport. If someone is doing better than you are you want to make people like you more and, by extension, want them to do worse so you can do better. These scientists tried to make TeLinde seem stupid so they could seem more intelligent and successful.
ReplyDeleteKarli Plunkett
Another part of human nature is the fear of change. When a paradigm shift is suggested, people are reluctant to accept it until it is no longer deniable. As Emily Davis said, “I have yet to meet anyone who enjoys being proven wrong.” I also agree with Kelsea Rabe who said, “It is frustrating to come up with a solution you've put your heart into, only to have it smashed with a cinderblock.”
ReplyDeleteMost of you understand why the scientists would be threatened by TeLinde's views--they're human. But aren't scientists supposed to rise above self-interested emotion, like judges, doctors, soldiers, and police officers are supposed to (to offer just a few examples)? Do you think some professional groups in our society are better able to differentiate between their emotional response to a question and their rational response to it? Or do you think we overestimate the potential of an educated professionals to keep emotions out of their judgments?
ReplyDelete