Massimo Pigliucci Fights Back

Dr. Massimo Pigliucci is an esteemed advocate of evolution. He is a professor of bioology at Stony Brook University. Massimo smarts at the idea of biology, and specifically evolutionary biology, being considered a “soft science”. Frequently accused of “physics envy”, biology needs a new defense, and Massimo puts one together. He takes on the “soft inference” charge by looking at a publication in Science magazine, 1964, of an article by John Platt, who describes a “proper scientific method”, and calls it “strong inference”. What Platt describes is empiricism, which is difficult to apply to biology for reasons Massimo describes.

From the article in Science:

John R. Platt, 1964: “Science Strong Inference – Proper Scientific Method (The New Baconians)”, Science Magazine, 16 Oct 1964, Volume 146, Number 3642.

http://256.com/gray/docs/strong_inference.html
“In its separate elements, strong inference is just the simple and old-fashioned method of inductive inference that goes back to Francis Bacon. The steps are familiar to every college student and are practiced, off and on, by every scientist. The difference comes in their systematic application. Strong inference consists of applying the following steps to every problem in science, formally and explicitly and regularly:
1. Devising alternative hypotheses;
2. Devising a crucial experiment (or several of them), with alternative possible outcomes, each of which will, as nearly is possible, exclude one or more of the hypotheses;
3. Carrying out the experiment so as to get a clean result;
4. Recycling the procedure, making subhypotheses or sequential hypotheses to refine the possibilities that remain, and so on. “

Massimo protests that “strong” actually refers to an “easy” science (physics), one with only a few variables and that has it easy in testing the hypotheses. Comparatively, he argues, biology is much more complex, has more data and more variables, and thus relies on different metrics: probabilities.

The complexities of reproductive biology are not to be denied:

1. Sheer volume of data needed to be examined.

2. Variable: number of different entities such as species (not to mention defining “species”);

3. variable: individual differences within species.
4. Variable: molecular considerations within the cell, its nucleus, its DNA behaviors;

5. Variables: mutations, viral introgressions, lateral gene translations.

6. Variable: unknown variables, epigenetic and other, yet to be discovered.

So, are stochastic inferences warranted out of such a morass of variability? Ordinarily, one variable is chosen to be examined experimentally while all others are held constant. Is this possible in the current state of biology? Is it possible when other, new variables are being discovered all the time?

If it is not possible, then what are we to make of pronouncements of probabilities of certain inferences being “true”?

How is a purely inferential science to keep its integrity and to avoid charges of metaphysical claims?

Answer: By not claiming to know more than it really knows.

For example, Massimo is not just an objective scientist, he is actually an activist, Philosophical Materialist who needs the aura of scientific integrity for the support of his metaphysical philosophy. This biased perspective is what decreases the respectability of the associated science – in this case, evolution – in the eyes of outsiders wishing to obtain empirical validity for understanding the science, rather than its religious (or antireligious) overtones.

The obvious metaphysical filtering of evolution produces a strong suspicion of the validity of its underpinnings, and a subsequent search for objective, “strong inferential” evidence shows this suspicion to be warranted, so far.

Massimo’s claim of a high degree of complexity in biology is valid. Massimo has essentially made the case for “Weak Inference” being the standard for evolutionary biology. I probably agree with that. But at that point one should not also make truth-statements about it. Because that makes it a metaphysic.