"Settled Science"
Post #1141
Image attribution: CS Odessa, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons; found at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Projectile-Motion.png
Senator Hassan was attempting to interrogate RFK Jr at one of his confirmation hearings and she said that RFK Jr — by asking about the cause of autism — is attempting to re-litigate “settled science.” The insinuation is that the research question regarding the cause of autism is now a simple, settled fact:
Whatever causes autism has, none of them are related to vaccines.
But an absence of evidence of an effect is not evidence of an absence of effect, and to think that it is is a fallacy (a “thinking mistake”). It’s also surprising, given the proximity to COVID — when officials lied when they said that the science was settled on mask efficacy or whatever — that the Senator would use this tactic so soon.
Does she think that we don’t remember the last time that that tactic was used on us?
To help the Senator and others in the future to understand what “settled science” looks like, I’ll create a fictional story …
Heathrow: Hey Jethro, I just shot a 16-lb bowling ball straight up into the air at 66.2 mph and it came back down and hit the grown in 4.0 seconds.
Jethro: No, it didn’t.
Heathrow: What do you mean? You were not even there! I am giving an eye-witness account. How can you say, with such uncompromising conviction, that I am wrong?
Jethro: Because the physics of projectile motion is “settled science.”
Heathrow: Prove me wrong, then.
Jethro: Okay. A 16-lb bowl ball is dense enough to discount air resistance. The 66.2 mph is equivalent to 29.6 meters per second. Vertical velocity is initial upward velocity minus the acceleration due to gravity, itself multiplied by time (in seconds):
And the acceleration due to gravity, g, is 9.80 meters per second each second. When at the top, the ball has vertical velocity of zero, so that (initial velocity) = (g) x (t). To solve for the “time-to-reach-the-top” you put initial velocity over g and solve it:
That’s just over 3 seconds to get to the top, and it takes exactly the same amount of time to get back down to the ground (6.04 seconds in total). No bowling ball shot like you said ever reaches the ground in 4 seconds. It has always been true and, after the science of physics was discovered, it has always been known to have always been true.
Heathrow: But can’t it be imagined that there is a ball that would defy the physical laws of the universe?
Jethro: No. It is a settled fact, one that is no longer open to further investigation.
The End
This short story shows what settled science looks like, so that people can compare new statements about settled science to it. To verify the length of something, a ruler is used — something with known quantities of distance worked into it. If someone claims that something is 4 inches, then you check it against that standard.
Visualizing what settled science looks like helps you know if you have reached the standard. Regarding the claim that vaccines cannot possibly be at least part of the cause of autism, it is instantly clear that it cannot be known like the physics of projectile motion can. Because it does not measure up, it is not settled science.
To check future statements, ask if neither claim is any more certain than the other one is. Here is how to compare the statement about vaccines and autism:
vaccines do not contribute to the cause of autism
16-lb bowling balls shot straight up at 66.2 mph return to the ground in 4 seconds
Do we have an equal amount of certainty about the truth or falsity of each statement?