This month we explore why science is like an elephant. Remember the story of five blind people each trying to describe an elephant by just touching one part of the animal’s body. “The blind man who feels a leg says the elephant is like a pillar; the one who feels the tail says the elephant is like a rope; the one who feels the trunk says the elephant is like a tree branch; the one who feels the ear says the elephant is like a hand fan; the one who feels the belly says the elephant is like a wall; and the one who feels the tusk says the elephant is like a solid pipe.” (Miedema)
A recent real life example of the elephant parable concerns the study of Uranus, the seventh planet. “Our understanding of Uranus might have been all wrong for nearly 40 years. In January 1986, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft zoomed past Uranus as part of a grand tour of the outer solar system. That flyby, lasting just five hours, remains to date the only visit to Uranus by a spacecraft from Earth, with much of our understanding of the planet coming from that brief encounter.” A problem with the data collected during that flyby was recently discovered. “As Voyager 2 soared about 50,000 miles above the planet, it found that Uranus was quite different from other worlds in the outer solar system. In particular, its protective magnetic field, known as a magnetosphere, was devoid of plasma, something prevalent around other planets.” The why of this unique phenomenon turns out to be “… that Voyager 2’s visit flyby occurred during an exceptional increase in solar activity, which caused shrinking of the planet’s magnetosphere. That created conditions at Uranus that occurred just four percent of the time in the data that the team analyzed.” (O’Callaghan) Thus, we assumed something that occurs rarely was the norm on Uranus. Unknowingly we looked at Uranus as an elephant; only seeing a part of the whole.
Another example of seeing only part of the elephant is the use of mercury (not the planet but the metal) to treat diseases. In 1916, Jack London, at the time America’s most famous author, died of renal failure. This was, again at the time, attributed possibly to alcohol abuse and an overdose of morphine. Recent studies of his writings have indicated that it was a cream he used on a skin rash in 1907 that may have contributed significantly to his death. Jack London’s skin medicine contained mercuric chloride. “Corrosive sublimate (mercuric chloride) was then considered one of the few existing therapies for yaws, along with arsenic and potassium iodide. However, the correct dosing and duration of use for these substances were not adequately established, and their potential toxicities were often unrecognized.” (Bomback & Klemmer) London’s kidney failure was linked to mercury poisoning from the medication he used on his yaws skin condition.
Here’s a point to ponder. “Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative that has been used for decades in the United States in multi-dose vials” of vaccines. What is the potential threat to health later due to that?
Finally, think of the parable of Schrödinger’s cat (adapted and simplified here) and the annoying tendency of things to change when you measure them. Is the cat in the sealed box asleep or awake. If the cat is sleeping and you open the box to check you wake him. If he is awake when you look, he is awake but you do not know if he was asleep before you opened the box. So the act of measuring adds error; another source of incomplete information.
The moral of the parable of the elephant is that unless we study a phenomenon in its totality, we are prone to draw incorrect conclusions about its nature and purpose. Science always behaves as a blind man studying an elephant. Why? Because it is nearly impossible to study anything totally. Hence, scientists must always know that what they assume they know about a particular phenomenon is incomplete. Still we use that incomplete information to make important decisions. We have no other choice really. If decisions must be made, then they must be made with incomplete information.
References
- The Parable of Blind Men and an Elephant, Sape A. Miedema, Delft University of Technology via TU Delft Open Textbooks, Libre Texts.
- Uranus – Sun affected magnetic fields at moment Voyager II passed by, Jonathan O’Callaghan, New York Times, November 12, 2024.
- Jack London’s “chronic interstitial nephritis”. A historical differential diagnosis, Andrew S. Bomback & Philip J. Klemmer, The Pharos of Alpha Omega Alpha-Honor Medical Society. Alpha Omega Alpha, 71(1), 26-30, 2008.
- Jack London, Wikipedia.
- Thimerosal and Vaccines, Centers for Disease Control.
- Schrödinger’s cat, Wikipedia.
- Image: My SL cat, Scooter, volunteered to be the cat in the box. See my version of Schrödinger’s cat on the Science Circle sim in Second Life.
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