The Standard Model of Scientific Progress is Wrong

The scientific method is supposedly this clean process for “acquiring knowledge that has been referred to while doing science since at least the 17th century.“

In the 20th century, guys like Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn popularized now well-established models for how scientific progress happens.

According to Karl Popper, science means proposing hypotheses and then falsifying them.

Thomas Kuhn argued that scientific progress occurs through paradigm shifts, where established theories are overthrown by new ones that better explain observed phenomena.¹

The resulting “Standard Model of Scientific Progress” is that we keep doing experiments until we find enough data that cannot be explained by the existing model. Then we realize it’s time for a change. Theorists propose new, falsifiable models. These get tested until we find one that explains all data, including the one the previous theory couldn’t.

A lot of the structure of modern academia is motivated by these ideas.

People are hired and papers accepted based on the idea that science progresses through a series of sensible, rational steps.

And yet, when you actually look at the history of scientific discoveries, you quickly notice that genuine breakthroughs virtually never happened like this.

Obviously Wrong Breakthroughs

Most breakthroughs were initially in conflict with observed facts. They were easy to ignore and discard because they so obviously did not fit the available data.

Take, for example, to use one of Paul Feyerabend’s favorite examples, Galileo’s proposal that the Earth is constantly moving.

This idea is obvious nonsense. Clearly, you would notice if this was true just like you notice you’re moving when you’re sitting on a moving cart.

Also, you can falsify Galileo’s theory simply by jumping into the air. If the Earth was truly moving, you wouldn’t land in the exact same spot since the Earth moved while you’re in the air.

And last but not least, we know that when the Earth does in fact move during an earthquake, the implications are dramatic and obvious.

Now, of course, Galileo’s idea is correct. But that was far from obvious when he proposed it.

It requires serious work to figure out how Galileo’s idea can be true despite all the apparent issues.

At the time of a scientific breakthrough, an incredible amount of energy has already gone into the existing incumbent theory.

There’s no way a freshly born theory can operate at even remotely the same level when it comes to explaining observed facts.

"When a new idea first emerges, it usually seems pretty feeble. It's a mere hatchling. Received wisdom is a full-grown eagle by comparison. So it's easy to launch a devastating attack on a new idea, and anyone who does will seem clever to those who don't understand this asymmetry." - Paul Graham

For example, when Louis de Broglie presented his framework of quantum mechanics at the Solvay conference in 1927, he was quickly shot down by guys like Wolfgang Pauli and Hans Kramers.

Pauli’s objection was based on a misleading analogy, while Kramers demanded an explanation of a complex phenomenon that de Broglie was unable to provide on the spot.

Discouraged by the criticism, de Broglie abandoned his framework.

This stalled progress for more than 20 years until David Bohm rediscovered the same framework.²

Scientific progress typically requires someone sticking to an idea even though it initially seems inconsistent with the facts and most experts think it’s stupid.

In contrast to what Popper, Kuhn, and Wikipedia suggest, scientific progress isn’t a clean rational process. It requires irrationality.

“Every new scientific investigation must trace this same path. You must first estrange yourself from the old ways of thinking, and then you must fall in love with new ways of thinking, and you must do both of these things before they are reasonable.” - Adam Mastroianni

I would go as far as saying that if you adhere too strictly to the caricature version of the “scientific method” there’s a good chance you’re doing cargo cult science rather than real science.

The Anomaly Myth

Far too many researchers believe in the Standard Model of Scientific Progress.

For example, in physics, there is a widespread belief that we have to keep building bigger versions of existing experiments until we find data that so clearly invalidates our existing models that we’re forced to find new ones.

The issue is that this completely ignores the fact that it’s virtually always possible to save theories with enough creativity.

No matter what weird movements astronomers observe, you can always save the model with planet Earth in the center if you add enough epicycles.

Another story that illustrates this is when John Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781.

In the years after the discovery, several astronomers realized that Newton’s theory of gravity did not accurately describe Uranus’ motion.

But instead of abandoning Newton’s theory, they theorized that another planet, not yet discovered, needed to be added to the model to explain the anomalies.

One astronomer, Urbain Le Verrier, calculated where to find this planet, and, in 1846, this is exactly where Neptune was discovered.

A few years later, astronomers noticed that Mercury was also not quite moving as you would expect from Newton’s theory.

Once again, they didn’t throw out Newtonian gravity but instead, postulated the existence of another undiscovered planet. They called it “Vulcan.”

Several teams claimed to have discovered Vulcan over the years, but no discovery was ever generally accepted.

The puzzle was only fully resolved when Albert Einstein explained the motion of Mercury perfectly using his theory of General Relativity. No undiscovered planet Vulcan was needed.

According to the Standard Model of Scientific Progress, the anomaly in Mercury’s movement should have led to a paradigm shift. After all, the theory made predictions that did not match what was observed in experiments.

But that’s not what happened. The Mercury anomaly had nothing to do with Einstein’s discovery of General Relativity.

Physical theories are flexible frameworks that allow for an infinite number of models. So you can describe pretty much anything you observe using your current state-of-the-art theory. All you have to do is modify the model. There’s no need to throw out the theory itself.

“There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

This is also true for the current state-of-the-art theory, quantum field theory. There’s an infinite number of models you can describe using it.

Anything you observe in, say, a collider experiment you can describe using a model of quantum fields. If a future experiment finds data that cannot be fitted using the Standard Model, you can fit it by adding a sufficient number of new fields to the model.³

You can call that scientific progress, of course. But I wouldn’t call it a paradigm shift.

A paradigm shift would mean going beyond quantum field theory.

And that’s a step that will most likely not be forced on us through new data.⁴

Paradigm Shifts

So, in summary, the Standard Model of Scientific Progress is only suitable to describe the incremental progress happening within an established paradigm.

In physics, a new paradigm equals the introduction of a new theory. The last time a paradigm shift happened was in the 1960s when quantum field theory was invented.

Quantum field theory received harsh criticism initially. Non-sensical results were popping up left and right. It took decades before physicists understood that renormalization techniques were not simply methods of “sweeping infinities under the rug” but contain profound physical meaning.

In the years afterward, there was an avalanche of incremental progress as new models of quantum fields were proposed, falsified, and refined.

The result was the Standard Model of Particle Physics, which was finalized in the mid-1970s.

But since then, we’ve hit a ceiling. The time is ripe for another paradigm shift aka a new theory. But it’s futile to hope that it will be forced upon us by experimental data.

Instead, just like with most previous paradigm shifts before, it will require someone to propose a radically new theoretical framework that initially seems hard to reconcile with existing observations. It will face harsh criticism and dismissal from established authorities.

Someone has to be stubborn enough to pursue the idea despite widespread skepticism and initial inconsistencies.

But that of course does not mean that every new proposed theory that seems “obviously wrong” or “not even wrong” is worth pursuing further no matter what.

There are more dead ends than successful paths in science.

Eventually, new theories need to make predictions that are successfully verified through experiments.

How long should someone persevere? When should an idea be abandoned?

I wish there were any hard rules. The only thing history teaches is that there aren’t any.

That’s one key lesson: major leaps forward are not made through a clean, rational process. Instead, breakthroughs initially often seem rather irrational or dumb.

New ideas should be given more benefit of the doubt than they currently receive.

Demanding strict criteria like an “explanation of all observed phenomena” and “falsifiability” from day one is counterproductive.⁵

But thousands of physicists persevering for several decades without any sign of getting closer to an “explanation of all observed phenomena” and “falsifiability” is probably too much. (I’m looking at you, String Theory.)

The most important lessons, however, is that no one should wait for neat falsification of the current state-of-the-art theory or a tidy set of anomalies before proposing new theoretical frameworks. That moment will most likely never come.

The Standard Model of Scientific Progress is a fairy tale. There is no neat algorithmic process for uncovering nature's secrets.

Ultimately science is a fundamentally human endeavour.

It relies on taste and intuition. It requires a healthy dose of irrationality, the willingness to explore new ideas before data demands them, and the patience to stick with them despite initial inconsistencies - all while still insisting on experimental validation eventually to avoid endless dead ends.

1. Popper’s and Kuhn’s ideas were a lot more nuanced. What I’m describing here is the caricature version existing in many researchers minds.

2. It’s fun to imagine what physics would look like if the de Broglie-Bohm framework had been discovered first instead of the Heisenberg and Schrödinger frameworks. The de Broglie-Bohm framework is still commonly ignored because it’s unable to describe everything that can be described using the standard framework. This ignores the fact that probably 1000x more man-hours went into the standard framework vs. the de Broglie-Bohm framework.

3. Maybe the model would become too baroque just like the whole idea of epicycles becomes ridiculous at some point? Well, the current model is already so baroque that people use the term “particle zoo”.

4. There’s already data that doesn’t neatly fit into the existing paradigm. There’s, for example, dark matter, dark energy, g-2. These have been known for many decades and didn’t lead to any paradigm shift so far.

5. Atomic theory was once considered impossible to falsify.