A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age (30 page)

The fourth magician I asked about it was James Randi, the professional skeptic I (and John Tierney) mentioned earlier, who replicates alleged psychic phenomena through his deft use of illusions and magic tricks. Here’s what he wrote via email:

I recall that when David Blaine first showed up on television performing his stunts, I voluntarily contacted him with a friendly warning that he was—in my opinion as a conjuror—taking chances of personal physical damage. We exchanged friendly correspondence on this matter, until I was abruptly informed that his newly engaged management agency had changed his email address and that he’d been instructed not to correspond further with me. I of course accepted this decision, while hoping that Mr. Blaine would heed my well-intended suggestions.

I have not been in touch with David Blaine since that time. I was alarmed to see the unwise statements he made on the TED appearance, and I have respected the—to me—rather unwise slant that his agency has chosen to give to his claims, but I have respected his privacy.

He let his agency even terminate his connection with me, perhaps because I might have tried to keep him honest. Can’t have too much of that quality, of course.

The weight of our fact-checking suggests that the seventeen-minute breath hold is very plausible. That doesn’t guarantee that
Blaine didn’t use a breathing tube. Whether you believe Blaine pulled off the stunt legitimately is up to you—each of us has to make our own decision. As with any magician, we can’t be sure what’s true and what’s not—and that is the world of ambiguity that magicians spend their professional lives trying to create. In critical thinking, one looks for the most parsimonious account, but in some cases, as here, it is difficult or impossible to choose between the possible explanations or to figure which is more parsimonious. Does it even matter? Well, yes. As Falkenstein said, people who have a poor understanding of cause and effect, or an insufficient understanding of chance and randomness, are easily duped by claims such as these, leading them to too readily accept others. Not to mention the many amateurs who may try to replicate these spectacles, despite the ubiquitous warning of “do not try this at home.” The uneducated are easy targets. The difference between doing this by training and doing it by illusion is the difference between being duped and not being duped.

Statistics in the Universe

When you hear names like hydrogen, oxygen, boron, tin, and gold, what do you think of? These are chemical elements of the periodic table, usually taught in middle or high school. They were called elements by scientists because they were believed to be fundamental, indivisible units of matter (from the Latin
elementum,
matter in its most basic form). The Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev noticed a pattern in the properties of elements and organized them into a table that made these properties easier to visualize. In the process, he was able to see gaps in the table for elements that had not yet been discovered.
Eventually all of the elements between 1 and 118
have either been discovered in nature or synthesized in the laboratory, supporting the theory underlying the table’s arrangement.

Later, scientists discovered that the chemical elements were not actually indivisible; they were made of something that the scientists called atoms, from the Greek word
atomos
, for “indivisible.” But they were wrong about the indivisibility of those, too—atoms were later discovered to be made up of subatomic particles: protons, neutrons, and electrons. These were also initially thought to be indivisible, but then—you guessed it—that was found to be incorrect. The so-called Standard Model of Particle Physics was formulated in the 1950s and ’60s, and theorized that electrons are indivisible, but protons and neutrons are composed of smaller subatomic particles. With the discovery of quarks in the 1970s, this model was confirmed. To further complicate terminology, protons and electrons are a type of
fermion
, and neutrons are a type of
boson
(photons are also a type of boson). The different categories are necessary because the two different types of particles are governed by different laws. Fermions and bosons have been given the name
elementary particle
because it is believed that they are truly indivisible (but time will tell).

According to the Standard Model, there are seventeen different types of elementary particles—twelve kinds of fermions and five kinds of bosons. The Higgs boson, which received a great deal of press in 2012 and 2013, has been the last remaining piece of the Standard Model to be proven—the other sixteen have already been discovered. If it exists, the Higgs would help to explain how matter obtains mass, and fill in a key hole in the theory used to explain the nature of the universe, a hole in the theory that has existed for more than fifty years.

How do we know if we’ve found it? When particles collide at great . . . Oh, forget it. I’ll let a physicist explain it.
Here’s Professor Harrison Prosper, describing this plot and the little “blip” next to the arrow corresponding to 125 gigaelectronvolts (GeV) on the horizontal axis:

The graph shows “a spectrum arising from proton-proton collisions that resulted in the creation of a pair of photons (gammas in high energy argot),” Prosper says. “The Standard Model predicts that the Higgs boson should decay (that is, break up) into a pair of photons. (The Higgs is predicted to decay in other ways too, such as a pair of Z bosons.) The bump in the plot at around 125 GeV is evidence for the existence of some particle of a definite mass that
decays into a pair of photons. That something, as far as we’ve been able to ascertain, is likely to be the Higgs boson.”

Not all physicists agree that the experiments are conclusive.
Louis Lyons explains, “The Higgs . . . can decay to different sets of particles, and these rates are defined by the S.M. [Standard Model]. We measure these ratios, but with large uncertainties with the present data. They are consistent with the S.M. predictions, but it could be much more convincing with more data. Hence the caution about saying we have discovered the Higgs of the S. M.”

In other words, the experiments are so costly and difficult to conduct, that physicists want to avoid a false alarm—they’ve been wrong before.
Although CERN officials announced in 2012 that they had found it, many physicists feel the sample size was too small. There is so much at stake that the physicists have set for themselves a standard of proof, a statistical threshold, that is much stricter than the 1 in 20 used in other fields—1 in 3.5 million. Why such an extreme evidence requirement?
Prosper says, “Given that the search for the Higgs took some forty-five years, tens of thousands of scientists and engineers, billions of dollars, not to mention numerous divorces, huge amounts of sleep deprivation, tens of thousands of bad airline meals, etc., etc., we want to be sure as is humanly possible that this is real.”

Physicist Mads Toudal Frandsen adds, “The CERN data is generally taken as evidence that the particle is the Higgs particle. It is true that the Higgs particle can explain the data but there can be other explanations; we would also get this data from other particles. The current data is not precise enough to determine exactly what the particle is. It could be a number of other known particles.” Recall
the discussion earlier in the
Field Guide
about alternative explanations. Physicists are on the alert for this.

If the plot is showing evidence of a different kind of particle, something that is
not
the Higgs, this could substantially change our view of how the universe was created. And if it does exist, some physicists, such as Stephen Hawking, fear that this could spell the end of the universe as we know it. The fear is that a quantum fluctuation could create a vacuum bubble that rapidly and continually expands until it wipes out the universe. And if you think physicists don’t have a sense of humor,
Joseph Lykken, a physicist and director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, noted that it won’t happen for a long, long time—10
¹⁰⁰
years from now—“so probably you shouldn’t sell your house and you should continue to pay your taxes.”

Not everyone is happy with the discovery, and not because it may signal the end of the world—it’s because finding something in science that the standard theories predict doesn’t open the door for new inquiry. An anomalous, unexplained result is most interesting to scientists because it means their model and understanding was at best incomplete, and at worst, completely wrong—presenting a great opportunity for new learning. In one of the many intersections between art and science, the conductor Benjamin Zander says that when a musician makes a mistake, rather than swearing or saying “oops” or “I’m sorry,” she should say, “Now
that’s
interesting!” Interesting because it represents an opportunity for learning. It could be that the discovery of the Higgs boson answers all the questions we had. Or,
as
Wired
writer Signe Brewster says, “It could lead to an underlying principle that physicists have missed until now. The end goal, as always, is to find a string that, when tugged,
rings a clarion bell that draws physicists toward something new.” As Einstein reportedly said, if you know how it’s going to turn out, it’s not science, it’s engineering.

Scientists are curious, lifelong learners, eager to find the next challenge. There are some who fear that the discovery of the Higgs may explain so much that it ends the ride. Others are so filled with wonder and the complexities of life and the universe that they are confident we’ll never figure it all out. I am among the latter.

As of this writing, tantalizing evidence has emerged from CERN of a new particle that might be a graviton, or a heavier version of the Higgs boson. But the most probable explanation for these surprising new bumps in the data flow is that it is a coincidence—the findings have a 1 in 93 chance of being a fluke, far more likely than the 1 in 3.5 million probability used for the Higgs. But there are qualitative considerations. “What is nice is that it is not a particularly crazy signal, in a quite clean channel,”
physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed told the
New York Times.
“So, while we are nowhere near moving champagne even vaguely close to the fridge, it is intriguing.” Nobody knows yet what it is, and that’s just fine with Lykken and many others who love the thrill of the chase.

Science, history, and the news are full of things that we knew, or thought we did, until we discovered we were wrong. An essential component of critical thinking is knowing what we don’t know. A guiding principle, then, is simply that we know what we know until we don’t any longer. The purpose of the
Field Guide
was to help you to think things through, and to give you greater confidence both in what you think you know, and what you think you don’t, and—hopefully—to be able to tell the difference between them.

CONCLUSION

D
ISCOVERING
Y
OUR
O
WN

In George Orwell’s
1984
, the Ministry of Truth was the country’s official propaganda agency, charged with falsifying historical records and other documents to reflect the administration’s agenda. The Ministry also advanced counterknowledge when it served their purposes, such as 2 + 2 = 5.

Nineteen Eighty-four
was published in 1949, half a century before the Internet became our de facto information source. Today, like in
1984,
websites can be altered so that the average person doesn’t know that they have been; every trace of an old piece of information can be rewritten, or (in the case of Paul McCartney and Dick Clark) kept out of reach. Today, it can be very difficult for the average Web surfer to know if a site is reporting genuine knowledge or counterknowledge. Unfortunately, sites that advertise that they are telling the truth are often the ones that aren’t. In many cases, the word “truth” has been co-opted by people who are propagating counterknowledge or fringe viewpoints that go against what is conventionally accepted as truth. Even site names can be deceptive.

Can we trust experts? It depends. Expertise tends to be narrow. An economist in the highest echelons of the government may not have any special insight into what social programs will be effective
for curbing crime. And experts sometimes become co-opted by special interests, and, of course, they make mistakes.

An anti-science bias has entered public discourse and the Web.
A lot of things that should be scientific or technical problems—like where to put a power plant and how much it should cost—are political. When that happens, the decision-making process is subverted, and the facts that matter are often not the ones that are under consideration. Or we say that we want to cure an intractable human disease, but mock the first step when tens of millions of dollars are spent studying aphids. The reality is that science progresses by gaining an understanding of basic cellular physiology. With the wrong frame the research looks trivial; with the right frame it can be seen for the potential it truly has to be transformative. Money put into human clinical trials might end up being able to treat the symptoms of a few hundred thousand people. That same money put into basic-level scientific research has the potential to find the cure for
dozens
of diseases and
millions
of people because it is dealing with mechanisms common to many different types of bacteria and viruses. The scientific method is the ground from which all the best critical thinking rises.