A Note on Fringe Science

In my previous post, I said that the pseudoscience in Fringe bothers me in ways that other bad science doesn’t, and now I want to expand on what makes this show particularly damaging. Where most shows simply present false facts, Fringe presents a false sense of how science works.

There’s a common idea out there that great discoveries are made by lone geniuses working in isolation. Their ideas are written off by the narrow minded scientific establishment, and the public suffers as a result. The truth is that most advances in science are incremental and carried out by scientists working within the accepted framework of academia, industry, or government.

Occasionally there are great leaps, and those ideas do tend to start out as fringe science. But when an idea is right, it will stand up to repeated testing while previously accepted ideas fail. The scientific community will eventually recognize the truth of it. The process is slow, but it works.

But isn’t the public harmed because the fringe idea wasn’t immediately accepted? Well, no. The vast majority of fringe science is flat out wrong and often dangerous. Caution about accepting new ideas is how we make sure that only the good ideas get through. Delaying the acceptance of new medical treatments hurts those who have to wait for the improvements, but implementing untested harmful treatments would be much worse.

Even trusting geniuses is not a good way to go. Linus Pauling did some unquestionably brilliant work, but his ideas about vitamin C as a medical treatment  were completely wrong. Science is successful because of its process and not the genius of individual scientists. I worry that Fringe teaches the exact opposite lesson.

Putting fringe science on the same level as established science is why some parents won’t vaccinate their children against potentially lethal diseases. It’s why some cancer patients will pass up conventional treatment in favor of homeopathy or a special diet. The next fringe cure you hear about may indeed work, but the odds are greatly against it. When I fall ill, I will bet my life on the scientific consensus, and I hope you'll do the same.