Where Did Scientists Go, and Why Are They Licking Their Lips?

We haven't noticed the switch because they also have unkempt hair, red glasses, and match checks with stripes.

Scientists left Earth. Someone replaced them with people who only find truth in studies with forty-six citations. We haven't noticed the switch because they also have unkempt hair, red glasses, and match checks with stripes. 

I'll call them cientists. Their behaviors are against the basis of science.

Scientists trust patterns

The more something happens under different conditions, the more we can trust in predicting it will occur. For example, humans have billions of genes. We can't study them all, so genomicists look at a few and infer a pattern. About half the women who inherit a mutated version of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene develop breast cancer. If genomicists spot these versions on you, they can predict you'll have it, as the pattern allows.

Cientists ignore non-scientific patterns. Over 3,000 years ago, Indians created Ayurveda, a holistic healing system. The digestive system is called agni in Ayurvedic practice—fire in Sanskrit, a classical language. Having a properly functioning agni is essential for optimal physical and mental performance. This can be achieved through a diet and eating habits appropriate for your body: 

• Ghee, cooked fruits, spices, rice, and herbal teas

• Breakfast between 7 and 9, lunch between 12 and 2, and dinner between 6 and 8

Ayurveda posits that toxins affect mental clarity and emotional balance when you impair your agni. The average adult knows this: processed food, excessive sugar and dairy, artificial additives, preservatives, high-fat foods, and tuna sandwiches between Zoom calls affect your gut. But many of us know it because scientists started saying so in the last two decades.

Before then, cientists doubted the relationship between what we ate and how we felt. They believed only the central nervous system regulated our emotions, cognition, and behavior. Once scientists challenged this idea, they found Microbes like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium produce neurotransmitters like GABA, serotonin, and dopamine that affect your likelihood of being anxious, depressed, and resilient to stress.

Indians knew it all together, but we needed a paper few can access and fewer will read to confirm their findings.

Science requires trust in the principles that rule a field

You can say that past knowledge is true based on the rules from the field that make it possible for it to be true.

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves for the first time. Einstein presented gravitational waves in his theory of general relativity. He got there by accepting Galileo's telescopic observations and Kepler's laws of planetary motion.

So far, these three scientists' observations are correct enough, but other fields haven't been as lucky. 

"I'm participating in the biggest intellectual scam of this era," said Paul Minot, a psychiatrist with 38 years of experience. "We claim to be a science but have no understanding of how thought or behavior is generated. Our diagnoses are contrived by our guild. 20 years of peak psychiatry has resulted in a 30% increase in suicide in the US. American psychiatry has absolutely nothing constructive to say about it."

"As a psych professor, I'll just say," the acclaimed Geoffrey Miller said, "this thread is consistent with my observations." 

Here's what I listen from what he's not saying:

• "We are half-assing how we save the 45 million people in the US seeking psychiatric treatment. The population of people that aren't in the condition to save themselves."

• "Those physiatry folks I saw while studying at Stanford and Columbia are talking gibberish."

• "I know this and more, but I won't tell you about it."

I get Miller. He's a professor. Saying more means criticizing what his university sells. He's also a psychologist, a field with plenty of statistical flaws. But, still, would you prioritize your career over millions of lives, or would the stress of leading people astray be worse? If Miller can't say anything about a field he doesn't participate in, what's he not saying about evolutionary psychology?

Yet, despite the six million people who saw the tweet, nothing will happen. The decision-makers from top universities read it, poured an Old Fashioned, and slept like a kid after a day trip. Tummy full and conscience-free. The business follows as usual. 

Science requires challenging existing ideas.

When Galileo discovered Jupiter's moons, he stood against Aristotle's view of physically flawless celestial bodies and the Catholic Church's geocentric model. He set the foundation of modern physics at the cost of villa arrest in Arcetri. Yet, cientists act like the Church by silencing unscientific opinions that can disrupt fields. 

I acted like a cientist for 23 years. I discounted the value of spiritual experiences because I saw science as the only authoritative form of knowledge. I did not trust unscientific patterns, considered foundational scientific knowledge irrefutable, and didn't challenge widely accepted ideas. 

This was okay when I craved results, data, and explanations. But not enough when I yearned to know what things meant. 

Many scientists don't think about meaning because they believe it is unnecessary to know how things work. But you are more likely to understand

how things work with the expanded sense of awareness and curiosity that you develop through spirituality. 

Once, a sixty-year-old woman held me like a baby across a pool in Puerto Escondido. Colored eyes. We would have dated if she was 20 years younger. I initially only thought I could have used that time to write. Then I closed my eyes, focused on how my body felt, and turned half-asleep. When I left the pool, I no longer had a scientific challenge I had faced for months. Spirituality didn't reveal any answer, although it could have. My openness expanded the breadth and depth of my reality, and the answer happened to be there. Openness won't always give you the answers, but it always takes you to a new reality that might have them.

Other times, spirituality and openness bring answers. Many scientists have lived with Buddhist monks. When they returned, they used science to explain their behavioral changes. Their findings didn't make what the monks taught truer, but they made it more trustworthy for the average skeptical population. Openness to the unknown was all it took.

Going from zero to one is often the most strenuous endeavor. We don't have to start from zero. Yet, we choose to because we are afraid of what we don't know. We disregard our ignorance. Cientists flatter themselves thinking about all the research they read in PubMed, Oxford Handbooks, Nature, ResearchGate, ScienceDirect, and the other "Sci." No finding here is too absurd to ignore until someone scrutinizes the results and finds out they are. Then, it is ridiculous but more respected than what someone with a Japa mala has to say. Cientists ignore spiritual practices until they glue cables into a bald head. They prefer reading Yuval Noah Harari. His science is wrong, but he includes citations. 

Cientists are open to the unknown. But their openness is shy of ambition. Challenging existing ideas, trusting patterns, and respecting the rules of a field are the basis of science. Without these components, we might learn what we always wanted but never what we always needed.