Science offers an opportunity to learn something new by collecting new data. Acquiring the data requires money and equipment. The problem is that money and equipment are scarce resources which are often allocated by people with an agenda or the conviction that they know the answer in advance. As a result, scientific progress is slowed down.
The absence of evidence against popular views is prolonged by mainstream scientists who resist efforts to collect such evidence. They argue that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” but they do not seek the evidence because in their mind extraordinary claims are unlikely to be valid as they lead to a cognitive dissonance. These scientists often establish an echo chamber around a cult of believers, to promote their professional stature, fund their research and honor it with awards. Students and postdocs dance to the tunes of senior scientists in order to secure jobs at their universities. When mainstream scientists argue that there is no evidence against a popular view, it is sometimes because they ignore anomalies or because they fail to understand their significance. Their self-fulfilling prophecy maintains ignorance about anomalies, similarly to the suppression of dissenting views in religious or political cults.
Anomalies are opportunities to learn something new. The more data we collect about them, the better will be our chance to figure out what they mean.
I started my career as a theoretical physicist, but I now crave for a flood of data and I dedicate most of my attention to anomalies. My hope is that with enough data about anomalies, it will become clear beyond a reasonable doubt that a popular view might be incorrect. For example, once we collect enough data on many interstellar objects, we might find extraterrestrial technological trash among the icy rocks that mainstream advocates expect.
Science popularizers and reporters amplify the regression to the mean, by attending to where the wind of popularity blows and by prioritizing the number of likes they get on social media over an honest scientific report. The introduction of a political agenda to academia did not help in fostering an honest scientific debate on the lab leak origin of COVID-19. A few months ago, a House of Representatives committee released an extensive report criticizing several U.S. science agencies and concluding that the virus did not originate naturally, as many scientists think, but likely leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.
In an older example of a politicized scientific matter, the Ptolemaic model of epicycles and deferents explained the motion of planets in the sky assuming that they orbit the Earth. It was successful because planets orbiting in circles around the Sun would appear to be moving on epicycles, namely circles moving on another circle, from the vantage point of one of these planets — the Earth. Mathematically, any smooth curve can be approximated to arbitrary accuracy with a sufficient number of epicycles. With enough free parameters, the data on the motion of solar system planets in our sky was guaranteed to agree with the paradigm that the Earth is at the center. The Ptolemaic model was disfavored by Galileo Galilei because it could not explain the motions of moons around Jupiter. In this example, new data collected by an individual revealed a single anomaly that revolutionized our worldview. There was no need for a congressional committee.
My life so far spanned half of the century-old history of modern physics, starting with the discovery of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The first half of this remarkable century was marked by a dramatic impact of fundamental physics on society through the discoveries of dynamics in spacetime, quantum physics, nuclear energy, electromagnetic communication, electronics, computers, rockets and many more advances, but the second half was shaped by Information Technology in the form of the internet, social media and artificial intelligence. Why did fundamental physics become less consequential to society in the second half of this century? Is it because we discovered all the low-hanging fruits and the remaining fruits are too high for us to collect? Admittedly, if new physics exists only at the Planck energy scale, then we might not discover it in the near future.
The problem also stems from a change in the culture of physics. Theoretical physics, which in the first half of the last century derived the standard model of particle physics from a wealth of experimental data, focused on developing string theory on the foundation of extra dimensions and supersymmetry with no feedback from experiments throughout most of the second half of the last century. As of now, there is no evidence for extra dimensions. Moreover, supersymmetry was not discovered by the Large Hadron Collider in its natural parameter space. Over the past half century, a new generation of theoretical physicists explored ideas without feedback from experimental data. This left string theory sterile, without the ability to choose the correct model among many possibilities. A more devastating effect involved creating a culture of theoretical physicists who gain status by impressing each other rather than by deriving a theory that agrees with experimental data.
Cosmologists also developed a standard model of the Universe. But the mass budget in this popular model is dominated by dark matter and dark energy, whose nature is unknown. The cosmology community invested billions of dollars in missions to measure cosmological parameters to a high precision. It would make more sense to focus now on anomalies that could educate us about the nature of the unknowns.
It is often claimed by legacy media that we should protect science from anti-science sentiments in the general public and politics. But my forty years of practicing science indicate that we should also protect science from a Trojan Horse filled with scientists who suppress innovation by clinging to past knowledge or to untestable ideas.
The biggest enemy of progress in science is regression to the popular view. Scientists must take risks in exploring anomalies and should be expected to make mistakes in the process of gaining new knowledge. More funding and prestige must be allocated to those who invest their time in studying anomalies, for the same reason that discovering faint points of light around Jupiter made a convincing case that not all celestial objects orbit the Earth. By 1992, 350 years after Galileo’s death, the Vatican had no choice but to admit that Galileo was right, because a flood of new data left no doubt about it.
As of now, experts in the study of icy rocks argue that the anomalies of the interstellar object `Oumuamua imply that it was a dark comet spewing hydrogen atoms. With enough new data it will become clear whether they are right or wrong. Here’s hoping that we will not need to wait 350 years after my death for their admission that the anomalies of some interstellar objects imply an artificial origin and suggest that we are not at the technological center of the Universe. Gladly, the world’s largest digital camera was just installed this week on the Rubin Observatory in Chile and the movie it will record might reveal family members of `Oumuamua in the coming years. I cannot wait to watch this movie — which might be far more imaginative than science fiction movies from Hollywood.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
