Hi Kriston,
You raise an important issue. It's one that I think is very much misunderstood by the non-scientist public.
First, scientists would be the first to say that we don't have all the answers yet! Especially when it comes to understanding the brain, everybody in the biz knows that we have barely scratched the surface.
But that is a separate issue from,
second, whether a particular proposal has any truth to it. This is where scientists start to get impatient and sound like know-it-alls. Because, really, we've been around that block SO many times, it's like playing whack-a-mole.
This is where the burden-of-proof issue comes in. It is incumbent upon the person proposing a theory to provide SOME reason, ANY reason, why it should be taken seriously, before asking people to waste their time and scarce research funds looking into it. Our culture has this myth of the persecuted genius (think Galileo) who is eventually vindicated by history. But that kind of thing is rare. Vanishingly rare. Meanwhile, there is a river of crackpot ideas that will never be anything but crackpot.
It's like being asked, "You don't believe in the Easter Bunny? Why not? Give me all your reasons and arguments, in explicit detail. Oh, okay, I guess that sounds kinda convincing, but what about Santa Claus? Why don't you believe in him? Don't you think you're being a little closed-minded? What about Ganesh? Leprechauns? Aliens who built the pyramids? Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, ya know."
This analogy might sound rather snarky and unfair, but it's really pretty accurate. Because another feature of these kinds of theories is their sheer implausibility. Their quality of pulled-out-of-nowhere-ness. Their complete lack of fit with everything else we already know.
This leads to my next point, which is the myth that scientists are dismissive of any idea that hasn't already been proven. In fact, scientists LOVE new and promising ideas. Think of the history of AIDS treatment research. There were numerous ideas and approaches that seemed promising and raised scientists' hopes, that turned out to be dead ends, before real progress finally started happening. Those early treatments were taken seriously because there was some
reason to think they could pan out. For example, maybe a certain effect worked in the petri dish, but just didn't scale up (or whatever). This is one of the important features that distinguishes viable theories from theories that make scientists roll their eyeballs.
Thanks for raising this important issue, and giving me a chance to do another Public Service Announcement!
Meg
