Descartes before the horse....

Yes, colleagues, the New York Times did indeed include the subject line for this posting in a recent article (in fact, it was the article about which both Mr. Gauker and I blogged two weeks ago), as a direct quote from a physician who was one of the doubters about the conclusions drawn by his/her colleagues (and which was consequently excluded from the STRIB reprint of the the article).  Why does this matter?  Because the physician was trying to say, however gracelessly, that the conclusions being drawn from the data available were the results of unsound logic.  AND, you may ask, why does THIS matter?

Here is where we must insert our friend M. Descartes; the rules of deductive logic, stated most elegantly in Latin "cogito ergo sum" are very strict.  If your premises are sound and your conclusion logically follows from your premises, your argument must be valid (or sound).  For my NYT vs. STRIB posting we had two very different groups:

Group One:
Premise 1. Vegetative patients respond to yes or no questions with brain activity that is similar to a non-vegetative patient's response during an MRI
Premise 2. Vegetative patients do not respond to questions
Conclusion: Therefore, the patients in question are capable of thought
(3a. If you can think, you exist - you are not in a truly vegetative state)

Group Two:

Premise 1. Vegetative patients respond to yes or no questions with brain activity that is similar to a non-vegetative patient's response during an MRI

Premise 2. Vegetative patients do not respond to questions

Conclusion: Therefore, one set of stimuli resulted in some type of indeterminate response from a limited number of the sample group.

(3a. Therefore, more testing and more definitive parameters must be set)

M. Descartes was one of the thinkers of the period who helped to put forward some awesome premises and come to some very difficult to dispute conclusions.  To this day, we are hard pressed to dispute sound deductive arguments, and we have adopted this mode of argument and conclusion as very, very acceptable, almost past the point of needing further review.  But what do we do when the conclusion drawn from the same premises, by people of equal stature and credentials, are different?  This is our problem!  Cartesian deductive reasoning would have us believe that one of the premises used are invalid or that the conclusion drawn from the premise is unsound - but it does not help us out much when we have very smart people drawing vastly different conclusions from the same data.

At this point, we are left, in my opinion, with skepticism and ad hominem choices.  Who funds the people in group one? Are the scientists more sound at Johns Hopkins than they are at Harvard?  Does this group two scientist have a relative in a vegetative state that we don't know about? Is somebody on the board at this or that research hospital a member of the RNC or the DNC?  Can it be that we have only these facets upon which to focus our scrutiny when everything else is equal?

I think that we are left with very unscientific choices when the people in whom we trust for "scientific truth" do not agree.  I also believe that this is the reason why a class like CSCL 3331 is more important than ever before.  A country divided so closely along political lines, full of vituperative rhetoric, polarized and angry discourse on nearly any topic can not possibly wield so much wealth (economic, cultural, technological, power) without many people to question not only the scientists and their conclusions, but their paradigmatic approaches to their conclusions - are the conclusions TOO steeped in four hundred year-old methodologies?  We must watch the watchers and the conclusions they reach, not so much because we don't trust them (though perhaps, sometimes, too often, we do not), but because there is great need to be constantly vigilant, constantly aware of the fact that "empirical and deductive" conclusions become laws, become policies, become funding initiatives worth many billions of dollars.  Nothing can be more important right now.