How do you know?

Where do you get your news from (if you follow the news at all)? Social media? Radio or TV? An old fashioned newspaper? Do you subscribe to specialist sites or magazines to keep you up to date? How many news streams do you follow, and why did you choose them? Most important of all, how do you know whether to believe them?

Major broadcasters like the BBC are supposed to stay strictly neutral, reporting the facts and allowing their journalists to comment on the stories they’re covering, and interviewing knowledgeable people on their opinion. They probably do a reasonably good job, despite the intermittent accusations of bias. But if you follow an event live – say a parliamentary debate or a coronation – you may find that your experience of it differs from the potted, edited version you’ll get later. Take the recent Harry and Megan ‘car chase’. They and their spokespeople describe it is as ‘near catastrophic’. The New York taxi driver whose passengers they were begged to differ, as did the paparazzi and the NYPD. So whose account should prevail? The chasers or the chasees? Admittedly, Harry has grounds for being alarmed by being followed by photographers, but does that mean we shouldn’t privilege his and Meghan’s accounts? If not, why not?

Because that’s what we do with every piece of information that comes our way: we judge it. If it comes from what we consider a reliable source, we accept it as true. But what constitutes a reliable source for one person is unreliable for another. No opinion is formed in a vacuum. We are influenced by our upbringing, our education, our ethnic background, our social status and our personal experiences. ‘I saw it with my own eyes’. Courts of law privilege eye witness accounts over hearsay, so if you saw it with your own eyes, it must be true. But is it? Ask twelve eye witnesses for statements on the same event and you may get unanimous agreement or twelve different points of view.

Whose view should prevail is a matter of great significance, and there is no sure fire way to decide. English law maintains the fiction of the ‘reasonable man’ (or these days, person). Who is this reasonable person and who decides they are reasonable? Employers are obliged to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ for certain employees, but the employee for whom those adjustments are being made may not agree with their reasonable employers.

So let’s turn to a subject where we might think ourselves on sounder ground: science, with its hard facts. Scientists do experiments, starting with a hypothesis which is then tested to get an answer. But one experiment is not enough. Many, many experiments must be done using roughly similar methods to get slightly closer to an answer. Findings have to be replicated, meta-analyses have to be carried out to eliminate bias so that we can say, for example, yes, the Covid vaccine makes a difference and is by and large not harmful. Yet that still doesn’t convince everyone.

The rationalist philosopher Karl Popper believed in the theory of falsification, ie that for a theory to be considered scientific, it must be able to be tested and conceivably proven false. Another philosopher, Thomas Kuhn, disagreed. He thought that theories evolve and adapt as new knowledge comes to light. And this interview with Popper neatly demonstrates that Popper is human, with opinions and emotions, which must have influenced his ideas.

So maybe that takes into the realms of psychoanalysis. It’s only by examining the unconscious that we can understand why people do as they do and think as they think. But it’s also possible to carry out scientific (whatever that means) studies to explore this: we now know, or say we know, that ACE’s – adverse childhood events - are correlated (and remember correlation is not causation) with worse health outcomes. Many aggregate studies support that conclusion, at least today. In one hundred years’ time (if we’re still here as a species), we’ll probably believe something different. After all, one hundred years ago phrenology was in vogue. Knowledge advances and changes our way of thinking. Take the germ theory of disease. It’s right up to a point, but it’s not the whole story. Social background, diet, education, ethnicity and whole range of other things also affect susceptibility.  

Knowledge is complicated and hardly ever conclusive. It’s about using the best available information and acting on that. It’s about keeping an open mind and revising your opinion if something comes along that makes it hard to cling to your previous ideas. It’s about tolerance, consensus and respect. Mind you, if you don’t believe it gravity and I throw out of the window, I’d bet my bottom dollar you won’t fly. Unless you’re a bird.