Do Scientists Determine the Results in Advance?
A recently published essay has concluded something very interesting: The methodology that scientists use determines the outcome of the experiment. After examining more than 400 experiments on the connection between brain activity and consciousness, the researchers “found that supporting a specific theory can be predicted solely from methodological choices, irrespective of findings. Furthermore,” they conclude, “most studies interpret their findings post-hoc, rather than a-priori testing critical predictions of the theories.” This is yet another proof that as long as we are inherently partial, impartiality will not exist in science.
If we want to find conclusive results that all the people will corroborate and that will benefit everyone, we must emerge from our self-centered perception. When it comes to fields of research where our perception is limited to our personal view, we must either accept the results as pertaining only to ourselves, or expand our perspective to include everyone else’s views, as well.
The experiment, jointly conducted by the Department of Neurology at the New York University School of Medicine, the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University, and the Department of Psychology at Reed College, attempted to “present an unbiased, theory-neutral, quantitative and systematic review of empirical findings around leading theories of consciousness, providing a bird’s eye view of the field and looking for potential biases in interpreting empirical findings.”
Although clearly, neither the experiments nor their reviewers are impartial, the findings tell us that all of science is inherently partial, meaning driven by the ego. Because of it, we interpret all the natural laws that we discover through an egoistic lens, which paints everything we see as driven by the ego. This is why we cannot see that a non-egoistic force manipulates the connections between the egoistic particles that we perceive as independent.
We do see that humanity is becoming increasingly connected, but we interpret it as driven by egoistic interests, not realizing that even when we choose to separate, we cannot, since it contradicts the direction of the flow that is imposed on us. Hence, as hard as we may try, we will find ourselves increasingly entangled in a web of interdependence that connects us into one system.
Science makes life easy in more ways than we know. Without science, we would not even be reading these critical words about science. The problem with science begins where we cannot see clearly, yet still try to interpret. This is where we get conflicting theories precisely because each theory reflects not the truth, but the subjective perception of its progenitor. In such a case, it stops being science, and we should not rely on it for anything in our lives.
If we want to find conclusive results that all the people will corroborate and that will benefit everyone, we must emerge from our self-centered perception. When it comes to fields of research where our perception is limited to our personal view, we must either accept the results as pertaining only to ourselves, or expand our perspective to include everyone else’s views, as well.
To achieve the latter, we must emerge from our inherently self-centered nature. This is the only way to reach a uniform result that will be valid in everyone’s eyes and that everyone will be able to use.
As said above, we currently perceive the world as governed by egoistic forces because we ourselves are selfish to the core. As a result, we cannot tell if anything is non-egoistic since we do not have that unselfish perception in our psyche. Yet, if we try to put ourselves in other people’s shoes and see things through their perspectives, we will find that all our separate views make up a complete picture that is none of the elements that make it up, but the network that holds them together.
Think of it as an organism. There are some ten trillion cells, which make up the seventy-eight main organs in the human body. Each cell and each organ works separately and performs fundamentally different functions. Yet, together, they allow the body to exist and maintain its vitality and health.
So it is with humanity. Each person has a specific function in the global human organism. If we could adapt the perspective of all of humanity rather than our individual perspective, we would be able to draw the right conclusions and make decisions that are valid and beneficial for all of us. This is where we need to go if we want to exist in a world where people are happy and safe a few years from today.