Certainty

This article was originally published for Cambio Ltd. on 11-10-2012. Access it here.

So, it’s the beginning of a new year, and campus is once again filled with students venturing into the world of university. I will confess I seem to have reached an age where I find myself thinking “Pull your trousers up! And get a haircut!” But the beginning of term always gets me thinking about when I started uni, and how much I felt I knew when I left. Everything I learned seemed certain.

But you only need to view comments on YouTube to appreciate the certainty of teenagers. I remember being accused of “acting like I knew everything”, and if challenged I probably would have agreed that this was the case. Having seen something I disagreed with it was pretty easy to conclude that the opposite must be the better option, e.g. I disagreed with how animals were slaughtered so became a vegetarian.

This certainty was only reinforced by what I was taught in school. By the end of A-level I was fairly sure I understood the basics of genetics: DNA, chromosomes, selection, punnet squares. Then I went to university and learned some more information – it was harder, but still delivered with a lot of certainty: genes, PCR, GM. It’s great – you come out of your course feeling you know a whole bunch ‘o’ stuff.

These days, if I’m asked by a student what something is, or why their experiment hasn’t worked, I can no longer answer their question with any certainty – despite the fact that my knowledge base is much larger than it used to be. I find myself saying things like “well, it’s probably because of…” or “maybe it’s this… show me what you did”. I remember demonstrators being like that when I was a student, and it drove me mad! I’d be thinking “you’re meant to be smarter than me, how come you don’t know?!” When I start answering a question I can hear 19-year-old me shouting these things in my head, but I just can’t respond any different. I can see now that being ‘smart’ or knowing more just makes you aware of all the uncertainties and things that can go wrong.

I also wonder if teaching science with certainty is a useful thing. I have friends who seem to think that ‘science’ holds all the answers, when in reality, science is really just a collection of probabilities. If something happens more than 95 times out of 100, it’s probably right. But there’s a still a 5% chance it’s wrong. I used to believe that if a paper showed a result, it was certain. Sadly, now I realise that while X, Y and Z studies found a result, they may each have had different equipment, protocols or sample sizes – while studies A, B and C may have found the opposite result with the same equipment, protocols and sample sizes. I can only make my best judgement and pray that other academics think the same way!

I miss certainty. It made me feel clever and knowledgeable. I often take solace in Socrates quotation that “the only thing I know is that I know nothing” (although, on investigation it seems that this quotation is not certain*) as he was by all accounts a rather clever chap. However, whilst a lack of certainty is certainly a cause of my stupidity conundrum (see previous posts) I also think it’s kind of liberating: that nothing is certain means anything is possible. I like that.

*According to the great oracle, Wikipedia, the correct quotation is “I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.” I know which version I prefer.