This image says so much. I barely know where to begin.The intention of the cartoon is obviously to ridicule Science for constantly making new discoveries that change its paradigms. Given the source of the cartoon, you'd be safe in guessing that the message is something like this: Those Scientists change their mind all the time. They don't know what to believe! Meanwhile, we have all the answers right here in our Bible.
Let's address this a little at a time. Firstly, Science does not discover paradigm-shifting new information very often. Certainly not about the origin of life, as this cartoon suggests.
But I can understand why someone would have that idea. When we watch the news, we often hear of new studies or experiments that seem to challenge conventional wisdom. This is both a good and bad thing. It's good because it shows that research is still being done. We're constantly in a search for the truth, and research that might shake up the core of What We Know does get published and publicized.
It's bad because the news is bad about follow-up reporting. We hear about an exciting new study, but we don't hear about it when nine months down the road the study has been picked apart and shown to be flawed. We don't hear about the failures in replicating the results, or how brutal peer review has been. We just hear the initial "Hey, look at this crazy thing that might be true!" and that's the last we hear of it. Until another study comes out saying something completely different but also new.
There's also what is known as The File Drawer Effect. Whenever research is completed that confirms other research, scientific journals tend to publish them less often. They want to publish solid research, but they also want to appeal to their readers. They want exciting, groundbreaking work. If you do a perfectly good study that shows water is wet, you're less likely to get published. The mainstream media will only latch onto the best of the best (in terms of entertainment value), so studies showing what we already know don't really make the airwaves.
And in 2008, let's face it - Science has come a long way. We now have a much better understanding of our world than we did 100 years ago. New discoveries that shake the foundation of Science are few and far between. Most of the crazy new studies you hear about in the mainstream media turn out to be false alarms once they're sufficiently investigated.
Even Einstein's theories which shook Science to its core didn't really overturn much. Newton's model of the universe still holds true as far as it goes. Einstein just filled in the gaps and dropped out the bottom, teaching us much more. Quantum mechanics hasn't really overturned anything either, just filling in more gaps and leaving us all a little confused. One day we'll bridge the Einstein/Quantum theories and open up our understanding even more, but it's unlikely we'll overturn what we know now.
So I can get how scientists seem wishy-washy or unsure of much of anything. I get that. But don't people realize that's a good thing? Science is about the search for the truth. It's about being open to new ideas (as long as they're good ones). As someone once said, Science is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that must never be questioned.
The changes in our body of knowledge show that the system is working. The peer review process is constantly incorporating new ideas and new experiments, mixing them in the sea of What We Know and in a constant state of re-evaluation. Changes to what we accept as Truth is part of our learning. Sometimes we stumble. Sometimes we're wrong. Sometimes we get shown a new way we never thought of. But we keep learning and recalculating our world so that we end up with better understanding. New ideas are put to the test. If they're bad, they're discarded. If they're good, they get absorbed. You should expect big discoveries from time to time. If not, what are we learning?
Of course if all that's too much for you, you could just turn to religion. Put your money in the collection plate and take your answers home with you. They may not be the right answers, but hey. Correct answers are hard work. And sometimes you have to take "I don't know" for an answer. The horror!
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