While life expectancy increased steadily during the 19th century, advances in medical science may have had nothing to do with it, according to Richard Lewontin.
Lewontin, an Alexander Agassiz professor of Research at Harvard University, has spent much of his career trying to change the public's perception of science. Lewontin is most worried that people will believe things that the scientific community has not proven to be true.
One such misperception that Lewontin said was popular in the press is the belief that genes are the only determinant of a person's traits.
"Genes are not sufficient. They are relevant, but not sufficient," Lewontin said. "You have to know the environment as well."
Lewontin claimed that he wanted the public to be skeptical of scientific claims. He presented a series of cases in which science had not been proven to have dramatically helped the lives of the public. He mentioned tuberculosis and the war on cancer as two examples.
Several professors at the University expressed skepticism at Lewontin's conclusions.
"He gave a number of exceptions to the rule to show that there are misconceptions in the public," Genetics professor Brian Calvi said. "He may have himself given the misconception that those [scientific] rules are not important."
During the question-and-answer session, another audience member pointed out that while there may not be concrete evidence that medical science increased life expectancy, there was also not evidence against it.
After the lecture, Lewontin claimed that he preferred when audience members disagreed with him.
"I like it when they get annoyed," he said.
Another problem with reporting on science, according to Lewontin, is the oversimplification of scientific concepts for the public through the use of metaphors.
Lewontin said one such metaphor is the comparison of molecules to billiard balls which bounce off of each other.
"We know there are huge amounts of information in the metaphor that we are [supposed] to disregard," Lewontin said. He added that unless a person is an expert, he or she does not "know which parts are incidental and to be ignored."
The problem, according to Lewontin, is that while many scientists do not really believe the metaphors they use, the public often accepts them without question.
Lewontin is the co-author of a textbook that he said is filled with lies due to oversimplification. "It says things are true that the authors know not to be true," Lewontin said.
Other professors also acknowledged that there is a problem in reporting scientific findings to the public.
"He did a good job to highlight the disconnect between what scientists do and public perception," Calvi said. "It often gets simplified to the extent of distortion."
Lewontin spoke Wednesday night at the School of Medicine as part of the Penn Humanities Forum on Belief.
