Groupthink Fantasies

How Scientists Get Stuck in Dead-End Research

While many amazing scientific accomplishments have contributed to building our modern world, scientific progress is not always a smooth, straight path into the future. Often there are different research approaches to the same problem. There are different ideas and different theories. Some research paths will lead to breakthroughs, but many will not.

Some hypotheses are more easily tested experimentally than others, and, in those cases, we can weed out bad ideas and dead-end paths relatively quickly. However, in many research areas today, it is not easy or even possible to test new ideas by experimentation. Research areas such as dark matter, dark energy, inflation theory, string theory, the multiverse, multiple dimensions, black holes, supersymmetry, the origin of life, and many more present formidable challenges to experimental validation. Without experimental validation, how does a research group know they are on a meaningful path?

Today, several prominent scientists are contending that in some research areas, groupthink has taken the place of experimental verification. Some say it has become such a powerful force that it has elevated misguided beliefs to the status of unchallengeable sacred cows. They contend that reliance on groupthink has caused many scientists to abandon the scientific method, critical thinking, and even common sense to the point that they’re wasting their careers on unproductive, dead-end research paths.

Groupthink Physics

In Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (2018), Sabine Hossenfelder writes that many physicists today seem to believe that if their equations are beautiful enough, then they must be a true description of reality. She says many of them have spent their entire careers lost in the beautiful math of such concepts as string theory or supersymmetry theory or the multiverse or 11-dimensional realities or holographic universes or worm holes or one of several other research areas that are beautiful, mathematical fantasy­lands with no connection to reality. In her view, this groupthink fascination with mathematical beauty has contributed to there having been very little progress in theoretical physics during her career.

Of course, many in the physics community disagree, but she points out in response that for almost forty years, string theory dominated theoretical physics. The math was beautiful. The intellectual atmosphere was exciting. The string theory community was large and influential. But the results were ambiguous and untestable. No breakthroughs or answers ever emerged. In her view, literally thousands of scientists have spent their careers in beautiful, mathematical fantasylands, detached from reality and accomplishing nothing.

Hossenfelder’s contentions are controversial, but they do have significant support within the physics community. The primary problem she is pointing out is that without experimental validation, scientific research can degenerate into a groupthink-led popularity contest.

Groupthink Biology

Physicists are not the only scientists wrestling with groupthink and sacred cows. Consider the biology community’s overwhelming belief in the power of natural selection operating on random variations to write all the DNA code. In this case, it is not some beautiful math supporting the groupthink; it is exactly the opposite.

Over the last few decades, many scientists and mathematicians have questioned the possibility of random accidents writing the huge, complex program contained within the 3.2 billion ladder steps in your DNA molecules. In his book, Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed (2016), molecular biologist Douglas Axe summarizes his research on the probability of accidental mutations creating the DNA code for a small protein comprised of only 150 amino acids. He concludes that the probability is less than one chance in 10⁷⁴ trials. Using the work of Dr. Stephen Meyer¹ and others,² we can extend this analysis to conclude that the probability of such mutations writing the DNA code for all the proteins your body uses must be less than one chance in 10²²⁶.³

This means that the probability of accidentally writing the code for all your proteins is about the same as your successfully picking one specific atom out of the more than 100 billion galaxies that make up the visible universe and then repeating that virtually impossible feat another two times in a row. Since the code for the proteins used in your body makes up less than 2 percent of the code in your DNA, it becomes apparent that writing the code for proteins is but a very small part of a very large problem.

This has led many scientists and mathematicians to conclude that random accidents, i.e., genetic mutations, are not a plausible pathway for producing DNA. The math is not even close.  Darwinism stands very precariously, however, upon this groupthink-based insistence that random accidents wrote these programs.

Groupthink Multiverse

Over the last 100 years, scientists have discovered that reality is amazingly complex, with layer upon layer of intricately precise, interlocking features. Mathematical analyses of such features as the fine-tuning of the universe, the sophistication of DNA, the complexity of a single cell, and the complexity of your brain and senses have led to the conclusion that the marvelous design of it all could not possibly have been created by a huge series of remarkably coordinated random accidents.

Leaders of the accidental-universe crowd realized that they had no answer for all the emerging mathematical analyses, and, in response, they have proposed a multiverse with infinitely many different universes. No need to be concerned about all this math challenging the sufficiency of random accidents to create this universe, because everything happens somewhere in the multiverse. Abandoning the scientific method, mathematics, critical thinking, and common sense, the accidental-universe crowd embraced groupthink around this multiverse fantasyland in which there are an infinite number of copies of you doing everything imaginable. Groupthink comes in handy when you are backed into a corner but have no evidence with which to argue your case.

The irony in all of this, according to Hossenfelder, is that while groupthink has led many scientists to spend their entire careers in beautiful, mathematical fantasylands, those same scientists have dreamed up a multiverse to explain away the incredibly beautiful math that has been discovered in our very real, clear, and present universe.

Groupthink Scientism

Everyone is impressed by science’s amazing accomplishments over the last 100 years, and this is contributing to a situation in which science—or its stand-in representatives—is replacing religion as the ultimate authority on truth for a growing number of people. As one political figure put it in 2021, “To question me is to question science, and you can’t question the authority of science.”

But this assumption that anything a scientist says constitutes unquestionable truth is another example of the power of groupthink. Hossenfelder points out that scientists are not infallible, and if scientific beliefs cannot be challenged in an open debate, then we are abandoning both critical thinking and the scientific method.

Groupthink Atheism

Scientific materialism is the de facto worldview of most of the scientific community, and it has led to the adoption of two deeply entrenched groupthink beliefs. The first is that this universe and everything in it came into being by accident and that there is no intentional design or purpose or meaning to it. The second belief, as discussed above, is that everything happens somewhere in the multiverse.

Well again, the accidental-universe crowd is on the wrong side of math. There is no evidence or mathematical reason to conclude that this is an accidental universe or that multiple universes exist outside of our own. On the contrary, all the mathematical analyses of the complexity of what has been discovered in the universe we can observe argue against it having been created by random accidents.

Yet the accidental-universe crowd refuses to acknowledge evidence that disconfirms what they already believe. Consequently, they dismiss any hint of purpose or meaning or intelligent design, case closed. At this point they have not only abandoned the scientific method; they have abandoned sound science. 

However, adopting scientific materialism and wrapping it in the aura of scientific authority is a classic case of false advertising. There is nothing scientific about its foundational assumption, nor about these groupthink beliefs. A much more honest label would be “Groupthink Atheism.”   

Time to Pull the Plug

Hossenfelder’s message is that scientists must not be intimidated by entrenched groupthink, no matter how many brilliant people are claiming something is true. We all must be able to exercise enough critical thinking and common sense to recognize when the emperor has no clothes—and then be brave enough to kill a few sacred cows when necessary.

This unsupported, groupthink-based belief in an accidental universe is a sacred cow that has been on life support for at least the last 25 years. It is time to pull the plug.

Notes
1. Stephen C. Meyer, Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries that Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe, (2021).
2. Ken Pedersen, Modern Science Proves Intelligent Design: The Information System Worldview, (2019) pp 129-148.
3. Axe examined the probabilities of accidentally creating a specific 150-amino-acid, functional protein. To create an average protein requiring 500 amino acids, you need to create the right 3-sequence codons of the amino acids, and they need to be joined in the right order. The probability of doing this has to be less than Axe’s probabilities raised to the third power (10⁷⁴)³ = one chance in 10²²². The probability of accidentally creating all 20,000 proteins your body uses has to be less than one chance in 20,000 x 10²²² or 2 x 10²²⁶.