Induction as Scientific Investigation: An Attempt

In my last post, I wrote about a certain kind of inductive argument. Appealing to the authority of a legitimate expert is a common way we construct arguments. All of us rely on this kind of argument to make decisions about all sorts of issues: who to vote for, which charity to contribute to, which movie to see, which book to read, which college to attend, and so on. 

For this post, I'm still going to write about inductive reasoning, but I'm going to connect it, as best as I can, to the scientific enterprise. You've probably heard of the Scientific Method before. When considered as a method of reasoning, the Scientific Method is an empirical form of inductive reasoning. 

A scientist's curiosity (I guess, given human history, an aspiring scientist's curiosity would be just as dynamic. After all, before Einstein won his Nobel Prize for Physics, he was a Swiss patent clerk wondering what would happen if a person were to travel at the speed of light.) is piqued. Suppose our wondering scientist works as a zoologist at Lincoln Park Zoo. 
"I wonder," the scientist might say to herself after watching a late-night showing of Stand by Me, "if non-human mammals can experience "friendship" either within their own species or outside of it?" (This was the subject of a recent episode of Nature.  If anyone is interested, here is the link: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/animal-odd-couples/full-episode/8009/ 

The zoologist would then go beyond mere wondering. She would create a hypothesis and then create an experiment to test her hypothesis. In the Nature episode, the zoologist closely observed a troop of macaques and then would test their feces for a chemical, I think it was cortisol, that is released when a macaque experiences stress. Thus, there would be two fundamental sets of data for the zoologist to analyze. 

The behavior of the macaques, in particular behavior that indicated "friendship" would be one set of data. For example, macaques groom each other. Thus, grooming might indicate "trust" between two macaques. 

The level of cortisol would be the second set of data. 

Even before the zoologist examines her data sets, she has performed thousands of inductive reasoning chains. Most of these inductive reasoning chains involve the following basic structure:

X has happened repeatedly in the past, thus X will continue to happen in the future e.g.,

-In the past, the sun has always risen in the East; thus the sun will rise in the East tomorrow. 

-For the past 10,000 years , the tropical island (I think it was Costa Rica) that the macaques live on has not experienced a blizzard; thus, the tropical island that the macaques will not experience a blizzard during the zoologist's research 

-For the past 1000 years, most of the members of a troop of macaques in Costa Rica have not died simultaneously from natural causes; thus, most of the members of the troop of macaques she observes on a Monday will still be alive on Tuesday.
  
-For as long as macaques have inhabited Costa Rica, they have pooped. Thus, macaques will continue to poop in the future. 

-In the past, other scientific research has established beyond a reasonable doubt that cortisol is a chemical that is released by macaques when they experience stress; thus, in the future, when a macaque is experiencing stress, its body will release cortisol.

In the past, other scientific research has establish beyond a reasonable doubt that zoologist's can accurately measure the amount of cortisol in a macaques body, thus in the future, when a zoologist measures the amount of cortisol in a macaques' body it will be accurate. 

And so on.    

Once the two sets of data have been collected, it will carefully examined. The zoologist will see if a correlation exists between, say, lower levels of cortisol and number of grooming events. 

Suppose, for the sake of simplicity, there were a 100 macaques in the troop that our zoologist was observing. Suppose further that the 10 macaques that participated in the most grooming events had much lower levels of cortisol in their bodies.  Here the zoologist would produce an inference to explain the data. 

1. "During my observations of macaque troop #1, I observed 10,000 grooming events." 

2. "For the purposes of my experiment, each "grooming event" will be interpreted as indicating an episode of "monkey-trust" between two macaques."

3. "For the purpose of my experiment,  each episode of "monkey-trust" will be interpreted as indicating evidence for a macaque's ability to experience "monkey-friendship."

Assumption 1: "Experiencing less stress gives any mammal an evolutionary advantage to survive and procreate."

Assumption 2: "Monkey-friendship is analogous to human friendship in that it reduces the amount of stress the body produces."

Assumption 3: "If a pair of macaques experience "monkey-friendship," then that pair of macaques will each experience less stress than a macaque that does not experience "monkey-friendship."

Hypothesis 1: "If a pair of macaques experience "monkey-friendship," then each of those macaques will produce lower levels of cortisol than any macaque that does not experience "monkey-friendship." 

Hypothesis 2:"If hypothesis 1 is true, then macaques can experience friendship in a way analogous to the way that human's experience friendship."   

Conclusion: "The macaques that participated in the most "grooming events" had the lowest levels of cortisol, thus macaques do experience friendship analogously to humans."

Now here things may get a little confusing. In fact, this entire reasoning process as its stated above is deductive. If the premises and the assumptions and the hypothesis are all true, then the conclusion would also be true.

But every one of the premises and assumptions and hypothesis would itself rely on an inductive argument. For example, (2) simply stipulates that "grooming events" will be "interpreted" in a certain way. But why think that "grooming events" should be interpreted in this way? Well, by way of induction, a grooming event would seem to more consonant with an explanation that postulate "trust" than one that postulate "dominance," but no one can be sure this intuitive relationship actually holds.  

Thus, the beauty and the curse of inductive reasoning. 

Fallacies in the World: An Ideal Example

In November I wrote a post about how someone could use numbers, especially averages, in a fallacious way: Some Words about Numbers.

I'd liked to revisit this particular fallacy. When it comes to even the most basic laws of logic and good reasoning, the world is a hostile place. People use fallacies in order to manipulate you, to trick you into believing something that, as it is presented, you shouldn't believe.

I don't watch a lot of TV, but I love PBS. Since PBS uploads a lot of their shows online, I can view them at my own leisure. One of my favorite shows on PBS is a news/investigative journalism program called FRONTLINE.

Unlike many other news/investigative journalism programs that push an agenda or sacrifice thoroughness for advertisement sales, FRONTLINE provides a detailed, disinterested analysis of a topic that is usually politically and emotionally charged.

A few years ago, after the crash of Continental flight 3407 in Buffalo, FRONTLINE produced a documentary that explored America's increased reliance on regional airlines. It's an excellent documentary although it is horrifying.

The part that is important to my post this week is an exchange that happens around the 21:00 mark between FRONTLINE correspondent Miles O'Brien and Roger Cohen who, at the time of the interview, was President of the Regional Airline Association.

Here's the transcript of the entire documentary: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/flyingcheap/etc/script.html

By using this address, you can see a button at the top of the page that allows you to watch the full episode online.

The part that I am interested in begins with Miles O'Brien pointing out the following to Mr. Cohen:

Mr. O'Brien: "Commuting has always been a part of aviation, but if you're making $16,000 to $18,000 a year and you're commuting, you're sleeping on the Barcalounger in the pilots' lounge. And that's not good is it?"

Mr. Cohen: "Let's get the facts out on-on the table on this, Miles. The average salary for a regional airline captain is $73,000. The average salary for a first officer at a regional airline is about $32,000, $33,000 a year."

Let's take a second and look at Mr. Cohen's response. Notice the prelude before he answers?

He's not just going to answer the question; he's going to correct Mr. O'Brien's ignorance. "Let's get the facts out..."

But what are the "facts?"

For all we know, Mr. Cohen is telling the truth. It may be true that the mean average salary of a first officer at a regional airline is a figure somewhere near $32,000, $33,000.

How does Miles O'Brien respond to Mr. Cohen's generous distribution of "facts?" Let's take a look.

Mr. O'Brien: "I'm not talking about average. There are some people, as you well know, who make $18,000 to $20,000 a year. We're not talking about average. We're talking about human beings who are flying my grandmother to Buffalo, right? OK, so there are people there living this life, and it seems as if they're in an untenable position economically."

It's an impressive piece of argumentation, isn't it?

Perhaps, for the sake of logical consistency, Mr. O'Brien could have stuck with the same salary range he used initially, but I think his error, if it is an error at all, is superficial.

There is something satisfying to me about witnessing a harmful and fallacious piece of reasoning get exposed.

Calmly. Civilly. Rationally. Exposed.

I would humbly suggest that an important reason Mr. Cohen used his fallacious reasoning during the interview was because he did not expect to be exposed.

In fact, he probably had that mean average calculated the night before by fourteen accountants. He couldn't wait to give that statistic, but Miles O'Brien was ready for it. He knew that Mr. Cohen was obscuring the issue with an equivocation.

He didn't tolerate it. And we shouldn't either.

The tragic events that culminated in the crash of Continental Flight 3407 were the result of a lot of factors. One factor that the documentary cogently presents is that the first officer was forced by the salary she earned to endure a financial situation that made her co-piloting flight 3407 very risky. In this instance, the risk cost 50 people their lives. In this instance, no one cares about the mean average.

At least, I didn't. And I'm glad that Miles O'Brien didn't either.