Scientific Probability

Scientists or doctors sometimes talk about the probability of success of a particular event. This is deduced based on similar operations. For example, all operations at a particular hospital may be successful ninety-nine times out of one hundred. However, heart operations may be successful ninety times out of one hundred, and thus have a 90% success rate. On people aged over 70 they may only succeed half the time, so the operation is described as having a 50% success rate. On people over 70 with high blood pressure there may only be a 30% success rate. So if someone is going into an operation what is their success rate? Clearly, this depends on how much we know about the situation: the hospital, the type of operation, the age of the person, previous medical history, maybe the surgeon and even the time of day. In the end, the operation either succeeds or fails 100%.

If we have no history and there appears to be no pattern then it is said that the event is random. A comment on the probability of an event is therefore as much a comment on our knowledge as it on the event. Scientists often say that events are simply coincidence and that there is no cause and effect. For instance, if I was to predict a major airplane disaster and this came about within a short time, they would say this was simply coincidence as there is no known cause and effect.

When scientists say that evolution is a result of selection from random genetic mutations they are really saying they have no idea what causes the genetic variation to take one form rather than another. Similarly, when they say that movement of atomic particles is random they are saying something similar. Scientists have turned ignorance into an art form.

If we go back some few hundred years, the establishment attributed events to the will of God and ‘explained’ them using interpretations from the Bible. Anyone who criticised them was accused of heresy; to attempt an alternative explanation was to question the church and was often punishable by death. The current established scientific orthodoxy acts in a similar fashion and although they don't put their opponents to death, there are many cases of them being ostracised.

When Copernicus first suggested in 1530 that the Earth revolved around the sun, his ideas were met with ridicule and derision in many circles, particularly by the church who considered that this was blasphemous as it questioned the idea of man having a special place in the creation. After all, it was believed, Jesus was the Son of God who had come in the form of a man and therefore proved that mankind had a unique position in creation. In all history the winners rewrite history and many of the criticisms of Copernicus’ theory not commonly circulated.

There were a number of objections that people had in accepting that the sun was the centre of the universe:

What keeps Earth and other planets moving?
Why should things still fall to Earth?
What don't objects fly off the rotating Earth?
How does the sun produce so much heat if it is so far away?

It took Einstein's theory of relativity before many of these questions could be answered. If we look at modern sceptical criticisms of many alternative theories they have a similar ring to the criticisms that were made of Copernicus. For example, if the sun is millions of miles from earth then the amount of coal it would need to burn to generate its heat meant that it would only last for a few hundred years. Nuclear fusion was not discovered until hundreds of years later.

So when sceptics say, for example, that machines can’t produce more energy than they use or there can’t be aliens because they would have to travel faster than light then we should be reminded of the objections to Copernicus. Such theories should be examined on their own evidence, not on whether they fit in with existing scientific orthodoxy.