Extinctions

Imagine you’re at a school board meeting and the principal takes the podium. In a frantic, panicking voice, he exclaims: “We think 30 students dropped out this past year! We need more money to address this problem immediately!” Wasting zero time, the board promptly votes and okays a resolution to petition the state government for more money.

What would come to your mind?

For me, I can think of a couple of questions right off the bat.

First, I suffer from tax fatigue, so any time a bureaucrat starts panicking about a “problem,” both my hands go to my wallet and I assume a protective, self-defense stance. My property taxes have gone up an even one-third the past five years I’ve been a homeowner in New Jersey, under the Democratic regime of Jon Corzine. I’m looking for some relief now that Chris Christie’s in, so there’s some hope. That one-third increase has translated into an extra $46 a week Trenton is ripping out of my family’s income.

The other questions I have refer to the principal’s numbers. As you can tell, this did not really happen. But I am using it to illustrate by analogy a larger point.

Take note of the fact that the principal said “… we think 30 students dropped out …” Interesting. What does that word “think” imply in this sentence? A guess? A running average? The mean between, say, 29 and 31 students, with two students showing up for only partial classes?

Also take note of what was omitted. How big is the actual class size? Don’t you think that is an important figure to consider? Why do you think the principal forgot to mention it? I don’t think it was because of emotional handwringing.

Let’s ask him: “Just how big is the student population you’re taking this approximate-30 number from?”

He doesn’t want to answer the question, but several of us concerned parents in the audience hem him in. “There are 150 students in this graduating class,” he states.

Then he quietly adds, “But we don’t know for certain. We can be off an order of a magnitude or two.”

Wow!

If there are 150 students in the grade, and 30 drop out, that’s a failure rate of 20 percent. Indeed, that is cause for alarm. A one in five chance any particular student will not get his diploma. But if he’s off by one order of magnitude, that brings the student population to 1,500 and a dropout rate of 2 percent. Not optimal, but not as terrible as the prior instance. And if the principal’s estimate of student population is off by two magnitudes, that’s a student body of 15,000, and a resulting dropout rate of point two percent. Still not utopian, but acceptable, given the nature of the human beast and all.

Where am I going with all this?

I’m creating an analogy to the scientific philosophic principle of extinction, one inspired by The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science (© 2005 by Tom Bethell, who cites the work of scientists Edward O. Wilson, Aaron Wildavsky, Julian Simon, Matt Ridley, among others, and Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, in his chapter on extinction).

The main point is, much like most controversy in contemporary science, is that there is so much that we don’t know and that we’re simply assuming or sometimes even guessing. We don’t know how many species fall extinct every year. Nor do we know just how many species there even are on planet Earth. (I take that orders of magnitude leeway figure directly from Bethell’s book.) There’s a lot of meaning between 20 percent and point-two percent, and a lot of responses dependant upon where you fall in that vast spectrum.

The problem ultimately boils down to, of course, money. Taxpayer-provided money from government largess. The more panicked your thesis, the more likely you’ll get money. The greater consensus, the more likely you’ll get money. (And who decided of late that “consensus” makes science? It certainly wasn’t Francis Bacon.) So Science devolves into a panicking herd mentality in the scramble for fundage.

That’s my problem with contemporary science. And part of me is a scientist at heart! There is so much cool and strange stuff out there to investigate and popularize that all this other P.C. nonsense non-issues sadly detract to all our detriment.

C’mon, Science! Buck up! Get rigorous and adventurous! Stay true to the inspiring vision of your forefathers!

I know you can do it!