Inflated Authority, Deflated Science
Science and the appeal to authority.

Recently, a bit of a brouhaha occurred in the pages of the Scientific American, that also spilled over to other parts of the web. In February 2017, Ijjas, Steinhardt, and Loeb published an article in SciAm arguing against the predominant inflationary theory in cosmology, which posits that the Universe underwent an early period of inflation before slowing down and allowing the formation of galaxies. Titled ‘Pop Goes the Universe’, the article describes the problems of inflationary theory, points out an alternative ‘bouncy’ cosmology, and is somewhat scathing in its view on the proponents of inflation, asserting that some of them have proposed that ‘science must change by discarding one of its defining properties: empirical testability’.
The inflation camp seems to have missed the part in the article where the authors opine that proponents of inflation invoking authorities is ‘the wrong road to take’. In their response, the promoters of inflation did just that, including a roster of some of the most prominent cosmologists in that camp, led by Alan Guth, David Kaiser, Andrei Linde, and Yasunori Nomura, followed by four Nobel laureates, Stephen Hawking, and others. The original trio of instigators then proceeded to set up a website with an ‘FAQ’, refuting the points made in the Guth et al. letter.
While it is mildly amusing to see ideas in science being fought out in public (i.e., resources easily accessible to the layman, as opposed to science journals), what is disturbing is the presence of the list of authority signatories in the response letter. The implicit argument seems to be that if a bunch of Nobel laureates and other prominent astrophysicists support inflation, it must be true. Such a blatant appeal to authority is unbecoming of the scientific method that they bandy about. Unfortunately, in the age of information and social networks, science is increasingly prone to such, and similar displays. Real science and the real clash of ideas occur in peer-reviewed science journals. It is important that ideas in science be made available to the public who pays for the practice, but attempting to subliminally manipulate the public consciousness by attaching authority figures to opinions is deplorable.
At the risk of digression, it is to be noted that a ‘bouncy’ universe may only be as testable or untestable as inflation is, so Ijjas et al. cannot impeccably straddle the high horse of scientific method. They may not be in the same glass house as Guth et al., but they are in a glass house nevertheless. Although not in the same boat as string theory, cosmology is becoming what John Horgan, in his book The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age, calls ‘ironic science’, which is ‘science that is not experimentally testable or resolvable even in principle and therefore is not science in the strict sense at all.’
Nobody really cares about astronomy, and cosmology — ironic or not — is so far removed from practical applications that it has no real relevance to the world. But when appeal to authority takes place in other scientific fields that do, misguided behaviour can affect lives. When scientists, in a bid to influence public opinion, tell the public that ‘97% of scientists believe that climate change is anthropogenic’, the public is swayed, without understanding what is perhaps the most fundamental tenet of the scientific method: The fraction of scientists believing in something does not matter. Science is not a democracy. Science is not done by consensus. The laws of Nature and their effects do not care how many humans believe in them. If the goal of science is the enlightenment of society, teaching people that authority is paramount serves only to undermine that goal. Society would become the opposite of enlightened if science is to become religion, and its practitioners, priests.
If one finds this unconvincing, and craves the warm, familiar embrace of authority, here is Galileo Galilei himself (according to Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler): ‘In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.’

