Of course we can trust the experts. We have to. Nowadays we have no choice. This is the age of the experts.
I cannot fly an aeroplane. Yet I travel by air dozens of times every year. I fasten my seat belt and then relax in my seat, trusting the pilot to do his job properly.
In his turn the pilot has to trust lots of other experts, upon whom his own safety depends. Fifty years ago, pilots took a pride in flying by the seat of their pants, as they called it. They meant that they depended entirely on the feel of the plane, and the sight of their own two eyes. They were even their own mechanics and checked their flimsy craft for airworthiness before taking off.
Those days are gone for ever. Nowadays it takes a large team of experts to design and build an aircraft. Aerodynamicists, electronics engineers, stress analysts, and hosts of other narrow specialists all work together. None of them can do the jobs of the others. They all trust their colleagues to do their own jobs properly.
Before the plane takes off one set of experts is needed to service the engines, another the hydraulics Systems, another the radar equipment. Even in the air the pilot is not the master of his own aircraft. He obeys the instructions of a whole army of air traffic controllers whom he trusts to keep him free from mid-air collisions, and takes advice from weather forecasters.
All these experts do their jobs well. They are trustworthy. They have to be. Otherwise planes would come crashing down in all directions like roofing tiles in a hurricane, and the airlines would never get any passengers.
Even if you never go by air, you can’t live in the modern world without relying on experts. You may take for granted services like water supply, gas, electricity, telephones, television and transport. But they all depend on experts to keep them functioning. Even the food we eat and the medicines we take might poison us unless lots of experts in the food and drugs industries and the Public Health Departments were reliable.
In the same way, I could never have written this book without trusting a great many experts. Every quotation of the Bible in English accepts the work of many scholars. Some of them have compared large numbers of ancient Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of the Bible to produce the best possible Hebrew and Greek texts, and other scholars have translated these into English. I have been forced to quote experts in history, archaeology, biology, geology, anthropology and many other fields where I have no expert knowledge of my own.
Without a doubt it is very useful to have a world full of experts. But it also brings some very real dangers. It is easy to forget that experts are just as human as the rest of us. But they are. And in their common humanity lies a great danger.
I am not merely referring to the fact that even experts can make mistakes. There is a more serious danger than this. Lord Acton put his finger upon a deep-rooted characteristic of human nature, when he said:
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”1
He was thinking mainly of political power. But it is true of every kind of power. Experts today wield a kind of intellectual power over the man in the street. And there is every sign that they are in danger of being corrupted by that power.
The whole purpose of this chapter is to sound a very necessary warning. Don’t let the experts pull the wool over your eyes. In many respects your opinion may be worth as much as theirs-even in some matters where they might reasonably claim to know better than you.
Perhaps you think that this is a very negative matter with which to occupy a whole chapter. If so, it may help to look at it this way. When good King Josiah came to the throne of Israel he found Jerusalem full of idols. Before he could begin to restore the true worship of Jehovah, he had first to destroy all those idols.2
“The experts” are the false gods of our age. They pretend to have an authority, a near-infallibility, that they do not possess. And most people are taken in by them.
For example: “Fornication won’t hurt you - it will do you good!”, say many psychologists. (With my own ears I once heard a psychiatrist proclaiming this.) Millions of people have lapped up this teaching, and now the foundations of family stability are tottering throughout the western world.
Worse still, “the experts” have undermined people’s faith in the Bible. If you doubt this, take any unbeliever you happen to know, and ask him exactly why he does not believe the Bible. Press him hard. Don’t let him evade the issue. Keep on until he states his real reasons.
Will he say, “Because I have made a very careful study of the Bible, and have proved it to be quite inaccurate.”? Will he? Not likely!
It is almost certain that, if he is honest, his real reasons will begin like this: “Because they say that . .
“They say.” They. The experts. He has a vague notion that “the scientists” say the Bible is unscientific, “the historians” say the Bible is historically inaccurate, and “the leaders of religion” say that the Bible is not what it makes out to be.
And that’s enough for him. If “they” condemn the Bible, why should he look any further? They are the experts. They are bound to be right. The Bible is dead-long live the experts! Thus our friend justifies his unbelief.
So before we can safely begin to look at the objections raised against the Bible, we must first take a look at the people who raise them. Who are “they”? Are they really as wise as they like us to think? Are we really being foolish if we dare to question the experts’ conclusions?
To see the matter in perspective it is necessary to note a number of points that are often overlooked. Because of their importance I shall list these points first, and then go back and expand them.
A philosopher might not agree that experts deal with both facts and opinions. He might say that there are no such things as facts, only opinions of differing degrees of probability.
For practical purposes, however, the distinction between facts and opinions will serve us quite well, so long as we remember that there is no sharp line of distinction between the two. Now and again we might meet a borderline statement, one that Mr. A would call a fact and Mr. B would call an opinion. But most statements can safely be classified as one or the other.
For example, suppose that in 1968 you had asked a chemist, “If I spray my kitchen with DDT, will it keep the flies down?” He would have answered, “Yes”. That would have been a fact.
If you had gone on and asked, “But is DDT harmful to man?” he would probably have replied, “No.” That would have been an opinion. And it would have been wrong. Yet if you had disagreed with him, he would probably have thought you were a cheeky ignoramus.
This illustrates the first pitfall we must avoid. Because they are generally right on their facts, the experts nearly always attach too much weight to their opinions. And so does a gullible public.
Whatever the man in the street may think, many intellectuals are well aware of the unreliability of experts. For example, the Australian philosopher Alan Wood has stated:
“Subjects should be arranged in a kind of hierarchy - for instance, Mathematics, Physics, Biology, Economics, Politics, Psychology - in which experts are more and more likely to be wrong.”3
He does not state where his own subject, philosophy, comes in the pecking order. But he obviously has no illusions about philosophy, because he reveals in the same book that Bertrand Russell, the most famous philosopher of the century, said when he was in his late seventies:
“…philosophy is nonsense. I am now left regretting my ill-spent youth. . . . nine-tenths of what is regarded as philosophy is humbug.”4
When I first heard those words quoted, I felt sure that they must have been taken out of context, so as to misrepresent Russell’s views. So I obtained the book, only to find that Russell undoubtedly did mean what those words imply-that most of the subject that had occupied his great brain for so long was a load of old rubbish.
Wood’s list of subjects is well chosen. Mathematics comes top, because provided that a careful mathematician starts with the right assumptions he is almost bound to arrive at the right conclusion. Physics is on rather more shaky ground, because it is based on a mixture of experiment, mathematics and deduction. Experiments can go wrong, and deductions can be false.
Biology is one rung further down the ladder. This is because living things are vastly more complex than atoms and molecules. Biological experiments are therefore much more likely to give misleading answers than experiments in physics.
Then come economics, politics and psychology. These all deal with the behaviour of that highly unpredictable creature, Man. Lots and lots of scope for making mistakes here!
Unfortunately the experts in the high-mistake-rate subjects (like biology and psychology) try to bask in the reflected glory of the low-mistake-rate subjects (like mathematics). They say, for instance, “We’ve installed a big computer in our laboratory, so we shan’t make nearly so many mistakes in future.” In fact the possession of a computer would not make the slightest difference to the accuracy of their conclusions. It would merely enable them to turn out their dubious results a lot faster than before.
In 1954 I took a first-aid course at the laboratory where I work. We used the latest textbook, published only a few months before. This is how it told us to treat a shocked patient:
“The application of warmth is the first of the measures to be applied to a shocked patient. Cover the patient with blankets; place hot-water bottles round him...”5
Some years later I enrolled in a refresher course. Again the latest textbook (published in 1965) was used. But this time the advice on treatment for shock began with a warning in heavy black type:
“WARNING: DO NOT OVERHEAT A SHOCKED PATIENT. Heat causes the superficial blood vessels to dilate and so increase their capacity. The amount of circulating blood thus becomes even more inadequate for the needs of the body.”6
Thus in 1954 the experts said, “Keep ‘em warm!”; in 1965 they said, “Keep ‘em cool!” But it would be naive to imagine that at some fixed date between 1954 and 1965 the whole medical profession changed its views overnight. There must have been a period of controversy, while the Coolists gradually conquered the Warmists.
Similar differences of opinion among experts are going on all the time. Biologists argue bitterly about whether certain drugs and pesticides should be banned. Educationists disagree violently about comprehensive education and corporal punishment. Space scientists cannot agree whether men or machines should be used to explore the moon. The list of disagreements could go on until it filled this book.
The lesson is clear. Very often, “The experts say . . .” means nothing more than, “The opinion of the side that happens to be winning at the moment is . .
Physicists come near the top of Alan Wood’s reliability league. Yet even physicists can go hopelessly astray when they try to predict the future. A scientific journal in 1968 published an article, “How Fallible Can you Get?”7 This showed how wrong physicists had been about the future of atomic power.
Lord Rutherford, perhaps the greatest atomic physicist of the early twentieth century, was convinced that there never would be any practical application of atomic research. Around 1950, leading atomic scientists in France, Russia and America all declared that atomic power stations would not become commercial propositions until the end of the century.
What happened, to make these wise men such false prophets? Simply this: they took the present as a guide to the future. Unfortunately for them some completely unforeseen events occurred, which made the future very different from what they had envisaged.
There are two lessons in this. The first is obvious: it is very dangerous to use the present to predict the future.
The second lesson is much less obvious, but just as true: it is equally risky to assume that the present is a sure guide to the past. Unknown events in days gone by can upset a scientist’s deductions about the past, just as surely as an unforeseen event in days to come can upset his predictions.
This is a very important lesson indeed. Experts of all sorts-astronomers, geologists, biologists, anthropologists, physicists and others-often make sweeping statements about the past. Some of these statements, if true, would make nonsense of the Bible. It is therefore most necessary to remember two things:
The popular conception of a scientist is of a man in a pure white coat with a pure white conscience. He could no more tell a lie than a computer could make a mistake. Deceive the public? No, not he!
Consequently, when a politician makes a promise everybody knows to take it with a grain of salt; but if a scientist states something, everybody accepts it as truth, perfect truth. But honest scientists have no desire to be set on a pedestal like this. We know that we cannot live up to it.
Recently the editor of one of the world’s leading scientific journals warned the public:
“There is no evidence that scientists always tell the truth, and the chances are that they are only marginally more honest than, say, politicians.”8
Another well known scientific journal published an article by Dennis Rosen of London University on scientific frauds.9 After dealing with some famous frauds, like the Piltdown Man, Rosen considered the problem of widespread scientific cheating. He suggested that up to five per cent of scientific papers submitted for publication contain material that the authors know to be false. Fortunately editors are good at spotting frauds, and only a minority of these deceitful papers get published.
It would be wrong to make too much of this. Scientists are no less truthful than their non-scientific colleagues. But it is as well to remember that they are no more truthful than the average man, either. And the same applies to every other kind of expert.
Although only a small minority of scientists would deliberately deceive others, a much larger number are liable to deceive themselves when under emotional pressure. There is plenty of proof that this is so. Here are three examples.
Well into the 1960s, when the evidence that smoking caused lung cancer was absolutely overwhelming, quite a few research scientists were still fighting a desperate rearguard action. Even when it looked a hopeless task, they kept on trying to find some other explanation for the evidence.
Why did they waste their time and energy in this way? In most cases because their scientific judgement was warped by emotional pressures. Some of them had well paid jobs with tobacco companies. Some were young men addicted to smoking who did not want to give it up. Others had been heavy smokers for many years, and were pathetic ally trying to reassure themselves that they were not in danger of death.
A second example comes from Russia. As the translator of a Russian book on the Lysenko affair10 has said in his foreword:
“The story of Soviet genetics in the period 1937-1964 is, perhaps, the most bizarre chapter in the history of modern science.”
Briefly, the story goes like this. Lysenko was an ambitious young Russian with very little scientific knowledge but a flair for politics. By mixing the two he became one of Stalin’s favourites. In 1937 Stalin gave him supreme control of all research in agriculture and biology in the Soviet Union, and he hung on to this position for twenty-seven years.
The results were disastrous for Russia. Lysenko directed agricultural research along so many unscientific paths that Russian agriculture practically stood still, or even slipped backwards, for a quarter of a century.
Worse still, he outlawed the whole modern science known as genetics. This science is concerned with the way in which characteristics are passed from parents to offspring (in both the animal and the vegetable kingdoms) by invisibly small objects known as “genes”. By 1937 there was already a great deal of experimental evidence that genes existed, although nobody had ever seen one. In 1953 Watson and Crick in England showed what genes were evidently made of, and in 1958 were awarded a Nobel prize for their discovery.
All through this period Lysenko laid down the law to Russian biologists: “There are no such things as genes. They are a capitalist myth. Heredity works on entirely different principles. Toe the line or go to jail!”
Some strong-minded scientists, including Vavilov, one of the greatest agriculturists in history, went to prison and died there. A few others formed a kind of “scientific underground”. But the great majority of Soviet biologists and agriculturists were swept along by the tide, and accepted Lysenko’s crazy ideas. Textbooks were rewritten, and research programmes into the most ridiculous subjects were set up.
Three hundred higher degrees were granted for research into “vegetative hybridisation by grafting’ ‘-something that has long been known to be impossible.11 A Stalin Prize of 200,000 roubles was awarded to a lady called Lepeshinskaya, for (allegedly) discovering how to create living animal cells out of vegetable cells and vice versa! 12
It was the heyday of quacks and crackpots, but the dark night of Soviet biology. And all this at a time when in some other fields (astronautics, for instance) Soviet science was leading the world.
The most alarming feature of the story is the way in which the great majority of Soviet biologists were genuinely deceived. In 1964 Lysenko was at last sacked, and for one year (1965-66) biology teaching was suspended in all Russian schools while textbooks were rewritten. Yet in 1966 Medvedev (the writer of the Russian book about Lysenko’s activities) lamented that so many Soviet scientists had been brainwashed for so many years that Lysenko still had many supporters.13
It is clear from this story that scientists-whole regiments of scientists-can be led hopelessly astray. In the early years Lysenko suppressed his opponents by force. But afterwards a whole new generation of Soviet biologists grew up, genuinely believing that Lysenko was right. They were taught that way at school and college, and hardly any of them questioned it.
In his concluding chapter Medvedev makes two very wise observations:
“The false doctrine of Lysenko is by no means an isolated instance. . . . Many theoretical branches of science and the well known and flourishing system of homeopathy fall, no doubt, into the category of false doctrine.”14
“Monopoly in science by one or another false doctrine, or even by one scientific trend, is an external symptom of some deep-seated sickness of a society.”15 (The italics are mine.)
These vigorous warnings by Medvedev are a fitting introduction to the third and last example. A friend of mine is a professor who holds a science chair in a famous British university. Like a number of my scientist friends he rejects the Darwinian theory of evolution as a piece of guesswork based on inadequate evidence.
One day in 1968 I went to see him, and outlined a novel programme of research that would fall right inside the scope of his department. If successful it would have thrown new light on some aspects of evolutionary theory, and would probably have exposed some important weaknesses in the Darwinists’ case. I suggested that he might like to set a Ph.D. student to work upon it. (A Ph.D. student is a young graduate who stays on at university for an extra three or four years doing research, to gain a doctorate.)
He shook his head sadly. “I couldn’t possibly do that.”
“Why not? Don’t you like the suggestion?”
“Yes, I do. I think it’s a good idea, and if I have time I’d like to work on it myself. But I wouldn’t dare to let a student work on it.”
This mystified me. “Why not a student?” I asked.
“You obviously have no idea of the prejudice that exists in British universities. No matter how brilliant the research, or how sound the conclusions, a research thesis exposing the weaknesses of Darwinism would never get a fair hearing. The scales would be so heavily weighted against him that the poor student would be most unlikely to get his doctorate.”
What did Medvedev say? “Monopoly . . . by one scientific trend is an external symptom of some deep-seated sickness of a society.”
Hmmm.
Every so often some far-sighted expert tries to warn the public. In 1950 an American scientist, Anthony Standen, published his best-selling book, Science is a Sacred Cow. But by 1969 his warning had been forgotten, and another scientist, David Horrobin, had to say it all over again in his book, Science is God.16
Despite the rather flamboyant title, there is nothing blasphemous about the book. Horrobin’s title means that modern man has turned science into a false god, and given it far more respect than it deserves.
Horrobin, like Standen before him, tries to cut science down to size. He is a professor of medical physiology, and is particularly severe about his own branch of science. He lifts the lid off, and shows the layman what lies underneath all the pronouncements of the experts. Here are a few quotations from his book:
“The history of science is littered with so-called facts which were later found not to be facts at all.... Anyone who has ever worked in a laboratory, particularly a biological laboratory, is fully aware of the vulnerability of experimental fact. Experiments are always going wrong..”17
“The scientific study of man is a myth, perhaps the most dangerous of all the myths of modern civilisation. Ultimately the psychologist, the psychiatrist, the sociologist must each confess that his work must be prefaced by ‘I believe’ and not by ‘I have proved scientifically’. The intellectual basis for what the scientist says of man is no stronger than that for what the theologian says. By means of a gigantic confidence trick, by pretending that the study of man is science) by hanging on the coat tails of so lid) successful, reliable physics and engineering, an army of atheists and agnostics has forced many theologians to turn and flee.”18
“In a manner of which any unthinking nineteenth-century bishop would have approved, many scientists are defending with untoward vigour positions which seem to me and probably to most people to be untenable.”19
“Five equally clever men may have access to precisely the same information, and yet may express five different opinions about a particular issue. Their answers depend more on their preconceived ideas than on the facts available.”20
“Science is the modern god.... Twentieth-century scientists, like nineteenth-century theologians, make the wildest claims on behalf of their god.... Twentieth-century charlatans of a myriad varieties offer their panaceas for society and attempt to mislead the people by calling their misbegotten ideas scientific. And bewildered twentieth-century common men have a crude faith in their god which they do not care to have questioned too closely…”21 (The italics are mine throughout.)
Very well. We have been warned. The experts (scientists in particular) thrust their opinions at us with the zeal of false prophets. And ordinary people lap it up, like devoted worshippers of some false god.
Compare that last quotation from Horrobin with some words from the Old Testament, written about 2,500 years ago:
“A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely and the priests bear rule by their means, and My people love to have it so”22
Human nature doesn’t change much, does it? People always have liked to listen to the voice of “Authority”. People positively love to be led astray by false prophets and dogmatising experts. That is the way we are all made.
Yes, we have been warned!
Who decides whether a man accused of murder is guilty? A panel of legal experts? Certainly not. The legal experts set out all the evidence, and then a jury of ordinary men and women-folk like you and me-make the vital decision.
Who decides whether Britain shall invest hundreds of millions of pounds in developing a proposed new aircraft? A group of aircraft engineers? Certainly not. The decision is made by civil servants and politicians who couldn’t tell a jet engine from a brass trumpet except by its size.
Who decides whether to ban certain chemicals from foodstuffs, or to limit the use of x-rays in hospitals? Again it is not the chemists or the doctors, but the civil servants and politicians that decide.
This is the one redeeming feature in the present situation. We are not yet governed by the experts. Top decisions are still made by non-specialists, who listen to their expert advisers, weigh the evidence, and then reach a conclusion.
This is enough to show that you do not have to be an expert to make up your mind about some important subject. Like a jury, like a civil servant, you are well able to consider the evidence and decide for yourself.
So don’t be overawed by “the experts” as you read on. Do not let anybody bluff you into thinking that the majority view is the only view, or that those who accept the minority viewpoint taken in this book are feeble-minded.
Weigh up the evidence for and against the Bible as honestly as you can. Then make up your own mind, without worrying about what “they” say.
Remember that all through history, in every branch of knowledge, minority opinions have often proved right in the long run.
1 Lord Acton, Historical Essays and Studies (Appendix). Macmillan, London, 1902
3 Alan Wood, Bertrand Russell the Passionate Sceptic. George Mlen and Unwin, London, 1957
5 Ambulance Hand-Book, i9th Edition. St. Andrews Ambulance Association, Glasgow, 1954
6 First Aid Handbook, 2nd Edition. Published jointly by Red Cross and St. John and St. Andrews Associations, London, 1965
7 New Scientist. June 20th 1968, p.615
8 Nature. (London). August 17th 1968 (Editorial) New Scientist, September 5th 1968, p.497
9 New Scientist September 5th 1968, p 497
10 Z. A. Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko. Columbia University Press, New York and London, 1969. (Translated by Prof. I. M. Lerner of the University of California.)
16 David F. Horrobin, Science is God. Medical and Technical Publishing Co. Ltd, Aylesbury, 1969