On theory, data and mathematics in ecology

According to a dominant school of thought the standard scientific procedure is to confront a theory with a set of relevant data, that is, to test the theory. Then, if theory and data are in conflict, it is the former not the latter that has to go. This is assumed to be the case without exception, for data are clean and pure; they are "hard facts". In short, data are considered as the given objective basis for knowledge, whereas theories, being only mental constructions, have to conform to this basis, or else they be ruled out. As a corollary, when mathematics is invoked it is assumed to play the role solely of providing an accurate rewording of ideas that could as well have been expressed verbally. This view has long been questioned by many physicists and philosophers of science, (e.g. Kuhn 1970, Bunge 1971, Feyerabend 1975) but for some reason it is still advocated by many ecologists. I shall argue here that it is untenable within ecology as well; first, because most ecological data are anything but "hard facts"; second, because as a matter of historical record it is standard scientific practice to reject ecological data that are in conflict with established theories; third, because many contemporary ecological theories are in fact retained and rightly so although they are demonstrably wrong; and fourth, because it is by no means obvious that the proximate goal of theorizing should be to find the truth, hence an important role of mathematics is to provide productive lies. The view that data are "hard facts" is untenable for methodological reasons because most data are produced, digested and interpreted with the aid of theories and apparatus. They are, therefore, open to re-interpretation within the constraints set by the accuracy of these aids. For example, during the Second World War the Royal Air Force introduced radar as an aid in detecting aircraft at night. A new and frequent type of echo was then discovered that could not possibly be aircraft; instead, everything such as altitude, speed and size suggested that these new things were bird flocks. However, the ornithologists of that time had difficulties in convincing the radar engineers, who refused to believe that bird flocks could be so abundant at night. They suggested, instead, that the new thing was some meteorological phenomenon, e.g. a pocket of air with a different density than that of the surrounding air. That explanation, however, was marred by obvious weaknesses: the thing at hand could both take off and land, and, most distressingly, was also able to fly against the wind. The issue was then temporarily resolved by calling the new things "angels" presumably not because people actually believed them to be celestial, but to underline the elusive nature of these unknown creatures. Not until after the war it was confirmed that these things were, in fact, bird flocks and this discovery marked the beginning of a very productive branch of bird research, radar ornithology (Eastwood 1967). The crucial point with this example, then, is that the available data were not direct observations of the flying things, but rather blips on a radar screen. In other words, the data were produced with the aid of scientific equipment which, in its turn, relies on pieces of scientific theory. Data were, therefore, just as uncertain as the combined contribution of uncertainty from the theories used to produce them. For obvious reasons this uncertainty was greater when the radar was new; for example it was not clear which kinds of objects could, in fact, give rise to blips on a radar screen. The view that data are "hard facts" is untenable for psychological reasons because the mere act of perception is guided and constrained by the limitations set by our minds. That is, we do not report what we see with mindless eyes, but we report rather what we think we see; and this is, by and large, what is according to current theories possible to see and what is according to current moral and ideological streams acceptable to see. Thus, for a long time the idea that foreign adult birds should help parents to raise a brood was unacceptable, because it did not fit in with evolutioiary theory. The helpers would then increase the fitness of the parents without gaining anything themselves; therefore, helping should be efficiently eliminated by natural selection. Accordingly, helping became an "unpermissible" kind of observation and, although there were early reports of helping (e.g., Skutch 1935, 1961), biologists frequently dismissed the phenomenon as abnormal. For example, Williams (1966) wrote "The evolutionary explanation for this phenomenon should be obvious. The helpers are precisely the kinds of individuals that would be expected to show irrelevant reproductive behaviour, such as homosexuality or misplaced parental care. ". It was not until theoreticians (Hamilton 1964) invented the concept of kin selection that communal breeding got a plausible theoretical explanation. The rapid increase in the number of reported cases of helper systems during the last few decades and the fact that Hamilton's seminal papers were published in 1964 is unlikely to be