Belief in pseudo-science is a widespread problem. But some entertainment is misleadingly condemned in that context, promoting the harmful image of the scientist as truth's ultimate custodian.
Science is more than following laboratory protocols. It is about framing hypotheses and devising ways to shoot them down. It is about imagination, of daring to look up from what is known, and ask "What if?" -- and then being able to work out the consequences.
That message is all too easily forgotten, sadly, by those who dismiss The X-Files as pernicious pseudo-science -- and even by those who think more analytically about the television series, at least to judge from an article in the British newspaper The Independent (21 August) by John Durant, professor of the public understanding of science at Imperial College, London. As he says, surveys show that the public treats pseudo-science, such as astrology, more as a recreation than a truth to be believed. So why should we be worried about it? Durant thinks that popular fascination with pseudo-science is about the free market of ideas: in which case, he lightly suggests that there should be some kind of consumer organization to tell the public what is truth and what isn't, "checking out the performance of ideas and beliefs".
That notion does the public understanding of science more harm than good. It implicitly casts scientists as heartless, white-coated Gradgrinds with no capacity for imagination -- yet scientists know that mental freewheeling is at the heart of their mission. How many rewarding experiments have come from kites flown in the coffee-room?
And now to The X-Files. For anyone who has missed it, The X-Files is a television drama series (and a movie) about a pair of FBI agents, Mulder and Scully, who investigate paranormal phenomena. Mulder's musings about aliens and suchlike are forever probed by Scully, who shows how the evidence in their casebook could have rational explanations. Very often, the results of their enquiries are inconclusive. The phenomena they observe could have a variety of interpretations, leaving the viewers to make up their own minds.
Is this deliberate looseness an unwitting laxity of plot? On the contrary, science is more like The X-Files than some detractors recognize. It can only progress darkly, up and down many blind alleys and false trails, from hypothesis to hypothesis. If that were not so, science would soon end. Perhaps as important, it invites participation, rather than enforcing the exclusivity of a secular priesthood of which the public would be rightly suspicious.
It is too easy to condemn The X-Files as "pseudo-scientific gibberish which would embarrass any self-respecting science-fiction writer" (as Durant polemically does). Again, that misses the point. Science fiction must follow the conventions of any other narrative or dramatic genre: it just so happens that just enough science (not too much) is added to the scenery to make it seem authentic. Yet the interaction of Mulder and Scully is as scientific as you please. They look at the evidence, they come up with hypotheses, they test them, and most are found wanting. Any truth that they think they find is soon undermined by new evidence that their preferred hypothesis cannot explain, and so they are forced to move on.
Why is The X-Files so popular? Partly, no doubt, because it responds (or, if you hate it, panders) to the general fascination for the obscure and inexplicable. But, thanks to science, today's oddball notion is tomorrow's orthodoxy. The existence of the inexplicable challenges us to question our hypotheses and, through investigation, extend them. The popularity of The X-Files suggests that the public clearly has more of a feeling for the spirit of scientific enquiry than some give it credit for. A rejection of the idea of custodians of truth does not reflect a preference for pseudo-science, but a dislike of being patronized.
The problem that remains is more general: that enjoying pseudo-science is a lot easier than enjoying science, especially if the latter, like the cod liver oil which is unpalatable but Good For You, is administered by a nanny. In the words of Mozart in the film Amadeus, who would not rather listen to their hairdresser than to Hercules?
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