Reasonable Doubts

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The English government insisted on Libya on Friday not to party the anniversary of the crooked Lockerbie bomber's release, uttering it would be "offensive and deeply insensitive to the victims' families."

The report from the British Foreign Office came precisely a year after Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi was free from a Scottish prison on humanitarian basis with doctors saying he had terminal cancer and just three months to live.

Al Megrahi was applauded when he arrived back home in Tripoli a year back. The United States, Britain and relatives of the victims condemned the scenes of celebration at the time.

In the interim, U.S. Senators Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg intended a news conference later Friday with families of the sufferers.

That Al Megrahi is still lively a year after his release has irritated many on both sides of the Atlantic, and forced U.S. senators to demand answers from Scotland regarding the details of his liberate.

Scottish authorities have shielded their actions in the case, stating Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill relied on a medical report from the pinnacle doctor in the Scottish Prison Service, with reports from the parole board and prison governor, in deciding to free al Megrahi, who had been serving a life sentence.

"We took the decision in good faith," Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said Sky News on Friday. "We followed the judicial processes, the law of Scotland and the jurisdiction the Lockerbie atrocity has been governed (by), not for the last year, but for the last 20 years."

Under the Scotland Act of 1998, Scotland has its own supervision that is accountable for most of the day-to-day issues there, including the jury system. It took charge of the case because the flight al Megrahi was condemned of bombing exploded in the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

Scottish authorities have claimed that three doctors hired by Libya to review al Megrahi's condition last year played no part in the verdict to release him.

Dr. Andrew Fraser, the director of health and care at the Scottish Prison Service, also told the three-month scenario was a reasonable estimate.

U.S. senators have also constantly voiced doubts that Scotland released al Megrahi as part of a contract allowing oil giant BP to drill off the Libyan shore. Salmond has already shot down such worries, saying "there is no evidence whatsoever" for any link.

Menendez plans to lead a U.S. Senate hearing in the upcoming months on the debate surrounding al Megrahi's release.

Al Megrahi is the lone person ever convicted in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which blasted over Lockerbie in December 1988, killing 270 people and 11 more on the ground.

Mainly the dead were Americans. The flight had been heading to New York from Frankfurt, Germany, via London, England, when it driven up.

http://www.supernewsworld.com

The Raven Paradox - How Hempel's Treatise Led to Questioning of the Inductive Reasoning Process

THE RAVEN PARADOX – THE FLAWS IN THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

HEMPEL’S LOGIC

All scientists use reasoning and logic at some stage, to create hypotheses and design robust experiments. In a beautiful and elegant treatise, the German philosopher Carl G Hempel, in 1965, showed that there were flaws in these long-established processes. His Raven Paradox called into question the established processes of inductive reasoning, generalization and falsifiability

THE INDUCTIVE HYPOTHESIS

Imagine that a scientist, after years of going for long walks in the countryside, observes that every single raven he has ever seen is black. As a dutiful researcher, he uses inductive reasoning to postulate the hypothesis:

“All ravens are black.”

This is a perfectly acceptable conditional hypothesis. Firstly, it is testable, because you could sample raven populations and verify that they are all black. The statement is also falsifiable because even one non-black raven amongst the sampled population would disprove the hypothesis.

This is all great science, so far, following the established methods of inductive reasoning. The researcher could even design an experiment to sample raven populations, with thousands of ravens observed. If they are all black, the hypothesis is supported and plausible. Over time, repeated experiments and observations further confirm this and the hypothesis becomes accepted as a law.

THE PROBLEM OF GENERALIZATION AND FALSIFIABILITY

The first part of the Raven Paradox proposal questions the process of generalization. It is practically impossible to sample every single raven in the world and there may a few non-black individuals. Hempel was not trying to comment upon the exact science, but as an interesting aside, about 1 in 10 000 raven eggs contain partially or fully albino birds.

Most albino birds are more visible to predators, suffer from health problems and may be a localized phenomenon. The odds of seeing an albino raven are very small and sightings are extremely rare. A researcher could sample many thousands of Ravens and not see one white bird, even though they do exist.

Thus, the notion of falsifiability is questioned and undermined by the Raven Paradox. Although the original hypothesis is technically falsifiable, in practical terms it is very difficult to disprove, because the chances of observing a white Raven are very slim. Even if you sampled the entire known population of ravens, there may be an undiscovered group containing a non-black individual.

FLAWS IN THE INDUCTIVE REASONING PROCESS

The next part of the Raven Paradox questions the processes of reasoning and deduction that are an integral part of the scientific process. When a researcher states that all ravens are black, the laws of logic demand that this conditional statement has a contrapositive statement.

Therefore, according to inductive reasoning, “Everything that is not black is not a raven.” This means that every non-black object observed, that is not a raven, equally strengthens the hypothesis. There are a countless number of non-black objects in the universe and we should pity the poor statistician who has to analyze this!

To take the analogy further, another researcher in another part of world, through fluke, may have only seen one raven in their life, which happened to be white. Their deduced hypothesis may be that “All ravens are white.” Every non-white object, which is not a raven, strengthens this opposing hypothesis too. This is the Raven Paradox.

THE END OF THE SCIENTIFIC PROCESS?

What does this paradox mean? Has the world of science come crashing down around our ears?

The answer is a resounding NO!

The Raven Paradox is a useful philosophical observation and helps to ensure that we constantly probe and test the steps of the established scientific processes. The examples given in the paradox are simplistic and unlikely, merely serving as an exercise to test the boundaries of the philosophy of science.

In reality, for the vast majority of cases, Hempel’s treatise makes no difference and the normal reasoning and experimental design processes work perfectly well. The paradox does not detract from science, but actually enhances it, by preventing scientists from believing that they have proved something beyond doubt.

The Raven Paradox should remind every scientist of the dangers of generalization and that they must ensure that all hypotheses are realistically falsifiable. If the researcher has said, “All ravens in Norway are black”, this is more realistic as ornithologists could feasibly observe every raven in Norway.

PARADIGM SHIFTS

Even long-standing theories, which became established as laws and immovable paradigms, can be proved incorrect over time. Science is really all about testing probabilities and assumption. If something has a 99% chance of being correct then it should be accepted as the likely explanation.

The chances of someone seeing only one raven in their life, which happens to be white, are tiny. However, this is not the same as impossible and that possibility must never be ignored. This is why all experiments are rigorously validated and reviewed before gaining widespread acceptance, to minimize the effects of the Raven Paradox.

For example, Newton’s laws were accepted as truth until Einstein’s theories blew them out of the water. In turn, General Relativity is not the answer to fundamental physics and has been superseded by other theories.

This is how science evolves, by challenging and adapting established paradigms and laws. The creation of Chaos Theory was a perfect example of ‘maverick’ scientists chipping away at the established laws until the theory could no longer be ignored. It eventually burst into the public consciousness and fractal models appeared as prints on T-Shirts.

Hempel’s Raven Paradox stands to remind us all that no theory, however established, should be immune to challenge or debate. As new evidence is uncovered, science must adapt and change to assimilate the new data.

Please find the original article, along with a host of other resources, at www.experiment-resources.com

Martyn's website is at www.amethyst-web.net

About the Author

Martyn is a freelance writer living in the beautiful Peloponnese area of Greece. He has soaked up some of the teachings of the Ancient Greek philosophers.

He specializes in writing science, technology and philosophy articles.

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