Science is the latest thing to turn out to be not what I thought it was, a recurring theme that keeps my life interesting during unemployment, together with learning Spanish, memorizing Mozart, watching whales, hiking, and influencing my blood chemistry through diet.

During my recent greenhouse tour, our host kept emphasizing that science is reductionist. The expensive machines that maintain precise temperature, water, and light for the experimental plants do so in order to establish baselines, then precisely vary one parameter. If we vary only one parameter, he assured us, we can be certain that any changes are due to that alteration.

Yet this only works for the simplest cause/effect couplings. Any complicated system may well react to a change in one parameter, but that may not be the sole way to create that change, or even a reliable way.

It’s especially hard to do reductionist science on biological systems, even with cloned mice. Statistician Nassim Taleb says, “It is impossible, because of the curse of dimensionality, to produce information about a complex system from the reduction of conventional experimental methods in science.”

He’s right. That’s why SSRIs don’t eliminating depression and statins don’t eliminate heart attacks and strokes, and both of those classes of meds have damaging side effects. It’s why doctors keep changing their minds about whether we should eat eggs or drink red wine, convincing many non-scientists that scientists are arrogant know-nothings.

Though reductionist science plays a role in the widespread application of science “results” that don’t work, some even more human factors share the blame:

• Greater influence of the opinions of persons who are attractive, forceful, or ubiquitous.
• Tendency to believe what we want to be true.
• Tendency to believe what our friends and family believe.
• Effectiveness of advertising, which promotes lucrative solutions even when harmful.
• Well-meaning efforts to quickly implement perceived solutions for people who are suffering.

Psychologically, humans may be biased toward easy, socially-rewarding solutions, but we can understand complex systems if we try. There is a lot of groundbreaking work being done right now, particularly in the biomedical sciences, as reductionist-science failures inspire more scientists to find new ways to explore human/animal biology and Earth ecology.

Happily, I have a lot of time to read.