黑暗之光sf:为什么科学家比政治家更聪明？

身为艺术家的其中一个好处是没有人能说你做错了事情。毕加索的画没有对或错，马勒的乐曲中也没有是或者非。当然了，那就是艺术作品的本质。

The opposite is true for science — and that's how it should be too. The scientific method is defined by the search for the irreducible truth. The riddle of a disease isn't solved till you've isolated the virus; no particle is fully understood till it's been successfully smashed. It's not for nothing that recent news of a neutrino that may have traveled .0025% faster than light is causing such a stir. If that vanishingly tiny anomaly can't be resolved and disproven, a century of physics could collapse.

科学则相反——这也是科学的本质。科学方法论就是寻找不可被再简化的事实。一个疾病的难题直到分离出病毒才能被解决；粒子只有在被成功粉碎后才能被全面的认识清楚。最近关于中微子能比光快0.0025%的速度运动的消息不是闹着玩的。如果这个细小得不可见的异常现象不能被正确解释或者证实是错误的话，一个世纪的物理学体系会崩溃。

But the stone walls between art and science aren't nearly as thick as they seem; indeed, in some ways they're entirely permeable. That's a lesson we badly need to learn if we're going to make sound policy decisions in an era in which science and politics seem increasingly at odds.

但是艺术和科学之间的那堵石墙不是看起来的那般厚；其实，在某些地方，他们是完全可穿透的。如果我们准备在这个科学与政治越来越相左的时代做出良好的政治决策的话，这是一个我们需要迫切地去学习的教训。

In the Oct. 3 issue of TIME, theoretical physicist Lisa Randall of Harvard University made a plea for greater deference to reason in the still-young but already-ugly 2012 presidential campaign. Randall lamented "the fundamental disregard for rational and scientific thinking" in a political culture in which Texas governor Rick Perry can dismiss evolution as "merely a theory that's out there," and Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann can traffic in poppycock about the HPV vaccine causing mental retardation.

在十月3日出版的时代周刊里，哈佛大学的理论物理学家Lisa Randal在刚开始但是已经十分丑陋的2012总统选举活动中为了更多的尊重进行恳求劝告。Randal 哀悼德州州长Rick Perry的驳斥进化论的观点：“那仅仅是一个存在的理论而已” 是政治文化中“从根本上对理性和科学思考的漠视”。而明尼苏达州的国会议员Michele Bachmann 竟能胡扯说HPV疫苗会导致精神痴呆。

Randall's new book, Knocking on Heaven's Door, takes the case one intriguing step further. The book explores some of the biggest ideas in contemporary physics and how they undergird such everyday matters as risk assessment, logic and even our understanding of beauty. But it's in her chapter on creativity — not a quality always associated with the data-crunching business of science — that she makes her most compelling case against the willful know-nothingism that plagues public debate.

Randall的新书——《敲响天堂之门》使用了让人更进一步感兴趣的案例。这本书探索了当代物理学中的某一些宏大的理念以及它们是如何支持日常生活总的一些诸如评估行为，逻辑甚至乎对于美的理解。不过正是在她书中关于创造力(一个怎么与科学的数据处理有关的性质）的这一章节中，她写出了与给社会舆论造成困惑的不可知论立场相反的而最让人引起兴趣的例子。

It takes a certain kind of hubris to be a pundit or politician and tell scientists — often many, many scientists — that they're wrong about what their studies have shown them. One of the things that makes it easy to make such counterfactual arguments is that there are often studies to back them up. The nonsense about vaccines causing autism began with a now- discredited 1998 paper by British physician Andrew Wakefield that linked the disorder to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. A far greater number of studies have shown that climate change is by no means fully understood. Anyone — scientist or not — can read papers on both sides and seem to come to a well-reasoned conclusion either way.

成为专家或者政治家和科学家往往会有一种目中无人的自傲——常常有很多这样的科学家——他们对与其研究的成果和观点往往是错误的。 其中使做这样一种违反现实的论证更容易的事情是他们有太多的研究结果是支持他们的观点。关于疫苗会导致孤独症的胡说是从一篇现在已经丧失名誉的1998年的英国内科医生Andrew Wakefield的论文开始的，他认为精神失常是与麻疹、腮腺炎和风疹的疫苗有关。有多得多的研究已经表明气候的变化是不可能完全被了解认识的。但很多人——不论是否科学家——不管怎么样，都可以看报纸并得出一个看起来很有根据的结论。

What distinguishes scientists from the rest of us is their ability not just to understand the data but to derive the data — which is a bit like the difference between being able to graph a 95-yd. touchdown run and being able to execute one, cutting across the seam and exploiting the gaps in coverage that the average person would never see. That's what good scientists do every day. "The cracks and discrepancies that might seem too small or obscure for some," Randall writes, "can be the portal to new concepts and ideas for those who look at the problem the right way."

决定科学家与众不同的一点是他们的获取数据的能力而非仅仅明白认识数据本身。这有点像能够用图表示一个95码的触地得分的跑动过程和能够真实去抄近路，利用普通人永远看不到的缺口去执行它之间的区别。 这是一个好的科学家每天做的事情。Randall 写到：”那些对某些人来说太小了而无法观察到的裂缝和不一致的的地方可以成为以正确方法看待问题的人的通往新的概念和理念的门。”

That's not easy, and not even all scientists do it artfully or well. Randall cites autistics and — not entirely in jest — bureaucrats and academics as good examples of how simply having extraordinary technical skills can be meaningless without the creativity to exploit them. She quotes Pushkin, who once said that "Inspiration is needed in geometry, just as much as in poetry." Similarly, some of the most touching scenes in the movie Rainman are those in which the autistic lead character recites Abbott and Costello's brilliant "Who's on first" sketch, hitting all of the words but understanding none of the wit.

这不是容易的事情，并且不是所有的科学家都能很好地、巧妙地做到。Randall引用自闭症患者（不完全是在开玩笑）、官僚和学者作为很好的例子来阐述为什么仅有卓越的技术而不能富有创造力地去利用它是没有意义的。她引用Pushkin曾经说过的话：“几何学研究中需要灵感，正如诗歌创造中需求的一样”。同样的，电影《雨人》中某几幕最感人的画面是自闭症主角背诵Abbott and Costello（美国著名滑稽秀演员）的精彩的《Who's on first》讲稿，背出了每一个单词但不明白其中任何的意思。

For any highly accomplished person, creativity begins with the least creative mindset possible — a near-obsessive ability to think endlessly about a problem, and indeed an inability not to think about it. "Even if golf pros perfect their swing over countless repeated attempts," Randall writes, "I don't believe everyone can hit a ball a thousand times without becoming exceedingly bored or frustrated." Tiger Woods could do that and — at least before his current woes on the links — the results showed not just in championship play, but in flat-out inspirational play. Something similar is true of science too.

对于任何富有成就的人，创造力来源于至少存在的创造性的思维模式——一种近乎不可控制的去对一个问题进行无尽思考的能力以及实际上一种不能停止对其思考的无能。“即使如果高尔夫运动员们进行无数次的挥杆练习来追求更好的技术，”Randall 写到，“我不相信每个人都能够击球一千次而不感到过于乏闷或沮丧。”Tiger Woods在他现时的性丑闻之前能够做到并且这样训练的结果不仅仅体现在冠军的表演中，还体现在平直而富有灵感地表演中。在科学中，同样是类似的道理。

"Once skills...become second nature, you can call them up much more easily when you need them," Randall writes. "Such embedded skills often continue operating in the background — even before they push good ideas into your conscious mind." Larry Page once told Randall that the "seed idea" for Google came to him in a dream, but that was only after he had been absorbed by the problem for months. We never questioned Woods' swing, and we certainly don't question the brilliance of what Page helped invent. But we feel free to sneer at what scientists tell us when it serves our political ends.

“一旦技能...成为了第二天性，你可以更容易地驾驭它们，”Randall 写到。“这样的嵌入的技能常常持续地在背地里工作——即便是在他们推送好的主意到你的意识中之前”。Larry Page  曾告诉Randall 关于Google的“种子理念”来自他的一个梦，不过那也是在他被这个问题缠身了几个月后的事情。我们绝不会质疑Woods'的挥杆，我们也当然不会质疑在Page参与发明出的辉煌成果。但科学家告诉我们的东西是为政治目的服务的时候，我们尽情嘲笑它们。

None of this means we should defer to scientists simply because they have the degrees to back up their claims. That kind of blind belief in the well-lettered has led to everything from the disgrace that was the eugenics movement to the nincompoopery of the vaccine scare. What's more, Randall herself is a scientist and not above a little inside-the-clubhouse bias. Still, history has tended to prove the points she makes.

这并不意味着因为科学家们拥有支持他们言论的学位而我们就应该对他们言听计从。这种受过良好教育的人们中村子啊盲目的信仰已经导致了令人丢脸的优生运动甚至愚蠢的关于疫苗的耸言。更重要的是，Randall她自己是一个科学家并且没有一点那种象牙塔的偏见。然而，历史已经证明她提出的一些观点。

Several years ago, when I was writing a book about the polio vaccine, I had the opportunity to spend months wading through the personal papers of Jonas Salk. It was only when I had gone through few the first few thousand letters, memos, notebooks and even scrawled phone messages that it occurred to me that I hadn't stumbled on a single doodle — not one. It became something of a game to look for one and finally, deep in a notebook in which Salk was recording data from a mouse study, there it was — a tiny triangular design made of perhaps six or seven pen strokes. That was it, the entire body of Jonas Salk's art work. And yet the inspiration to create a vaccine that hundreds of other scientists had sought — and the millions of lives that were saved as a result of it — is surely artistry of a far higher kind.

几年前，当我正在写一本关于小儿麻痹症的疫苗的书时，我有幸花了几个月来研读Jonas Salk的个人论文。当我看完前几千的信函、备忘录，笔记本甚至潦草的电话信息时，我突然发现我阅读其涂鸦般的笔记没有任何问题。于是找寻这个（找不能理解的东西）成了一种游戏，而最后终于找到了——在一本笔记本中的一个可能6到7笔画出的细小三角形标志。就是它了，Jonas Salk的作品的全部。它就是（Salks）研发出其他千百个科学家想研发出的疫苗的灵感——并且是亿万生命因此获救的原因，这当然是更高远的一种艺术才能。

Scientists aren't always right, but when they talk, they deserve at least the initial presumption of wisdom. All of us — especially the people who seek to lead us — could well learn something from listening to what they have to say.

科学家不总是正确的，不过当他们的发言应得到是“智慧的”的假设。我们所有人，特别是寻求带领大家的人，总能从科学家们说的东西中学到一些东西。