musingsonwomenshealth.com

I guess the hunt is never over. Just when you think you’re winning, a sleeper cell surfaces, one you hadn’t even suspected, and closets itself somewhere you’d never think to look –an endless game of hide and seek. A Samsara of possibilities.

An yet, what would be the thrill of exploration if you knew all of the findings beforehand? We all need quests -adventures that uncover the hitherto unexpected, don’t you think? It’s what gets us out of bed in the morning. Me, anyway.

Questions and answers, for example… Let me play the devil’s advocate for a moment. We tend to assume that answers are the result of questions –we ask a question and then search for a correct -or at least appropriate– answer. But are we actually falling into a post hoc fallacy? ‘Post hoc, ergo propter hoc’ –because something occurred right after, or seems to be a response, we assume the initial thing caused the second. That’s just one way to look at it, of course. What if we assume there are answers lying around everywhere, and that the game is to find the appropriate question –the one that fits? A kind of ante hoc approach, I suppose, in which the answers come first.

Okay, try this. Answer: There are significant numbers of bacteria living under, and protected by, the fingernails. Question: Why doesn’t persistent scrubbing eliminate bacteria on the hands? I know this approach is merely a capricious inversion, but sometimes transpositions help us gain an interesting, if not useful, perspective. An article from BBC brought it to mind: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160622-what-lives-under-your-fingernails

I’m a surgeon, and early in my career it occurred to me that the water I was using at the scrub sink before an operation was itself not sterile. After a fastidious and lengthy hand and arm scrub with whatever cleansing soap was in vogue, I would then rinse off the soap with what amounted to tap water… And then, yes, I would observe ‘operating room technique’ and don sterile gloves for the procedure, but, apart from perhaps reducing the amount of whatever had been on my hands, what had all that scrubbing accomplished? Was it just a theoretical conjecture that it actually made a difference? A sop to sterile tradition? And if I were required to wear sterile gloves anyway why not just, I don’t know, use the same soap I used in the shower? It would certainly be cheaper. Questions! Questions swirling around hunting desperately for answers…

Had we posed the answer first, though… (Can you pose an answer?) Maybe the answer: ‘there are significant numbers of bacteria in the subungual compartment’ is a perfect fit for the question: why ‘is this hand region […] relatively inaccessible to antimicrobial agents during normal hand-washing procedures’?

Think about it for moment. Isn’t this the classic conundrum of basic science –science that is done for its own sake, science that has no existing practical applications? It consists of a whole platoon of answers to questions that have not yet been framed –or at least questions that were not anticipated at the time, or maybe just not the questions that were asked. A classic example of an answer (observation) looking for the right question was that of the findings of Penzias and Wilson –two physicists working on a new type of antenna at Bell Labs in New Jersey. In the early 1960ies they found a source of noise (the answer) in the atmosphere that they couldn’t explain. Finally, after eliminating other questions, they realized it was the cosmic microwave background (CMB) left over from the Big Bang. They received the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics for finding the proper question: ‘Is there any evidence of the Big Bang still around?’

And how about another answer: DNA is a large double helical molecule containing patterns of paired nucleotides and is found in cell nuclei for some reason. Question: why is it there? Or even: Could it be related to reproduction? Or heredity…?

Okay, I know this is a bit of a cart-before-the-horse stretch, but I think it does make us less complacent and maybe more appreciative of raw data. Details. Complexity. I’m not suggesting that Inductive logic is somehow flawed –it’s one of the fundamental tenets of the Scientific Method which posits using observation (answers) to derive general principles (more answers).

It’s not that confusing, really –it’s actually how things work in Science. The questions often arise because of the observations –after them, in other words- and so require experiments (questions) to see if the observations were indeed the answers…

So, isn’t the world a wonderful place? I ask that question -just one of many- after observing all the answers lying around unquestioned –unbothered, really- on the grass and among the flowers growing outside my window, all the unchallenged clouds in the sky above, and all the sunlight glinting off my polished floor.

I wonder, sometimes, whether the King James translation of the apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthians was unwittingly prescient: ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly.’ And only when we recognize the importance of the observation, are we encouraged to ask why is that?