VII. The Scientific Failures
Science was the Enlightenment’s proudest achievement. Here, at last, was a method that worked: systematic observation, controlled experiment, mathematical formalization, rigorous testing. The results were undeniable. Physics, chemistry, medicine, engineering—the sciences transformed human life and demonstrated the power of disciplined reason applied to nature.
The prestige of science was not unearned. But the Enlightenment made a subtle and consequential error: it confused the success of scientific method within its proper domain with the sufficiency of scientific method for all domains. If physics could explain the motions of the planets, perhaps it could also explain the motions of the soul. If chemistry could analyze the composition of matter, perhaps it could also analyze the composition of morality. The success of science in one area became an argument for its supremacy in all areas.
This confidence has not aged well.
The institution of science, as distinct from the method, has proven vulnerable to precisely the corruptions that the Enlightenment imagined it would transcend. The guild structure of modern academia—tenure, peer review, grant funding, journal publication—was designed to ensure quality and independence. In practice, it has produced conformity and capture. The young scientist who wishes to advance must please senior scientists who control hiring, funding, and publication. Heterodox views are not refuted; they are simply not funded, not published, not hired. The revolutionary who challenges the paradigm does not receive a hearing and a refutation; he receives silence and exclusion.
The replication crisis has revealed the extent of the rot. Study after study, published in prestigious journals, approved by peer review, celebrated in the press, has proven impossible to replicate. The effect sizes shrink, the p-values evaporate, the findings dissolve upon examination. In psychology, in medicine, in nutrition science, in economics, the literature is contaminated with results that are not results at all but artifacts of bad statistics, selective reporting, and the relentless pressure to publish something—anything—novel and significant.
Peer review, that supposed guarantor of quality, has been exposed as inadequate to its function. The peers are competitors; the reviews are cursory; the incentives favor approval over scrutiny. Fraud, when it is detected, is detected years or decades after the damage is done. The process filters for conformity to existing paradigms, not for truth. The Enlightenment imagined science as a self-correcting enterprise; the corrections, it turns out, are slow, partial, and fiercely resisted by those whose careers depend on the errors.
It is in biology that the Enlightenment’s scientific project reaches its apex—and its most consequential failure.
