But then I remember that I was flipping before and after I got this run of heads, that it’s embedded in a much longer and less interesting sequence: H T H T T H H H T H T H H H H T H T T H T H T T. If I’m permitted to pay attention to some results and ignore others, I’ll always be able to ‘prove’ there’s something exceptional about my streak. This is one of the fallacies in the baloney detection kit, the enumeration of favourable circumstances. We remember the hits and forget the misses. If your ordinary field goal shooting percentage is 50 per cent and you can’t improve your statistics by an effort of will, you’re exactly as likely to have a hot hand in basketball as I am in coin-flipping. As often as I get eight out of ten heads, you’ll get eight out of ten baskets. Basketball can teach something about probability and statistics, as well as critical thinking.
An investigation by my colleague Tom Gilovich, professor of psychology at Cornell, shows persuasively that our ordinary understanding of the basketball streak is a misperception. Gilovich studied whether shots made by NBA players tend to cluster more than you’d expect by chance. After making one or two or three baskets, players were no more likely to succeed than after a missed basket. This was true for the great and the near-great, not only for field goals but for free throws – where there’s no hand in your face. (Of course some attenuation of shooting streaks can be attributed to increased attention by the defence to the player with the ‘hot hand’.) In baseball, there’s the related but contrary myth that someone batting below his average is ‘due’ to make a hit. This is no more true than that a few heads in a row makes the chance of flipping tails next time anything other than 50 per cent. If there are streaks beyond what you’d expect statistically, they’re hard to find.
But somehow this doesn’t satisfy. It doesn’t feel true. Ask the players, or the coaches, or the fans. We seek meaning, even in random numbers. We’re significance junkies. When the celebrated coach Red Auerbach heard of Gilovich’s study, his response was: ‘Who is this guy? So he makes a study. I couldn’t care less.’ And you know exactly how he feels. But if basketball streaks don’t show up more often than sequences of heads or tails, there’s nothing magical about them. Does this reduce players to mere marionettes, manipulated by the laws of chance? Certainly not. Their average shooting percentages are a true reflection of their personal skills. This is only about the frequency and duration of streaks.
Of course, it’s much more fun to think that the gods have touched the player who’s on a streak and scorned the one with a cold hand. So what? What’s the harm of a little mystification? It sure beats boring statistical analyses. In basketball, in sports, no harm. But as a habitual way of thinking, it gets us into trouble in some of the other games we like to play.
‘Scientist, yes; mad, no’ giggles the mad scientist on ‘Gilligan’s Island’ as he adjusts the electronic device that permits him to control the minds of others for his own nefarious purpose.
‘I’m sorry, Dr Nerdnik, the people of Earth will not appreciate being shrunk to three inches high, even if it will save room and energy . . .’ The cartoon superhero is patiently explaining an ethical dilemma to the typical scientist portrayed on Saturday-morning children’s television.
Many of these so-called scientists – judging from the programmes I’ve seen (and plausible inference about ones I haven’t, such as the Mad Scientist’s ‘Toon Club) – are moral cripples driven by a lust for power or endowed with a spectacular insensitivity to the feelings of others. The message conveyed to the moppet audience is that science is dangerous and scientists worse than weird: they’re crazed.
The applications of science, of course, can be dangerous, and, as I’ve tried to stress, virtually every major technological advance in the history of the human species – back to the invention of stone tools and the domestication of fire – has been ethically ambiguous. These advances can be used by ignorant or evil people for dangerous purposes or by wise and good people for the benefit of the human species. But only one side of the ambiguity ever seems to be presented in these offerings to our children.
Where in these programmes are the joys of science? The delights in discovering how the universe is put together? The exhilaration in knowing a deep thing well? What about the crucial contributions that science and technology have made to human welfare, or the billions of lives saved or made possible by medical and agricultural technology? (In fairness, though, I should mention that the Professor in ‘Gilligan’s Island’ often used his knowledge of science to solve practical problems for the castaways.)
We live in a complex age where many of the problems we face can, whatever their origins, only have solutions that involve a deep understanding of science and technology. Modern society desperately needs the finest minds available to devise solutions to these problems. I do not think that many gifted youngsters will be encouraged towards a career in science or engineering by watching Saturday-morning television – or much of the rest of the available American video menu.
Over the years, a profusion of credulous, uncritical TV series and ‘specials’ – on ESP, channelling, the Bermuda Triangle, UFOs, ancient astronauts, Big Foot, and the like – have been spawned. The style-setting series ‘In Search of . . .’ begins with a disclaimer disavowing any responsibility to present a balanced view of the subject. You can see a thirst for wonder here untempered by even rudimentary scientific scepticism. Pretty much whatever anyone says on camera is true. The idea that there might be alternative explanations to be decided among by the weight of evidence never surfaces. The same is true of ‘Sightings’ and ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ – in which, as the very title suggests, prosaic solutions are unwelcome – and innumerable other clones.
‘In Search of . . .’ frequently takes an intrinsically interesting subject and systematically distorts the evidence. If there is a mundane scientific explanation and one which requires the most extravagant paranormal or psychic explanation, you can be sure which will be highlighted. An almost random example: an author is presented who argues that a major planet lies beyond Pluto. His evidence is cylinder seals from ancient Sumer, carved long before the invention of the telescope. His views are increasingly accepted by professional astronomers, he says. Not a word is mentioned of the failure of astronomers – studying the motions of Neptune, Pluto and the four spacecraft beyond – to find a trace of the alleged planet.
The graphics are indiscriminate. When an offscreen narrator is talking about dinosaurs, we see a woolly mammoth. The narrator describes a hovercraft; the screen shows a shuttle liftoff. We hear about lakes and flood plains, but are shown mountains. It doesn’t matter. The visuals are as indifferent to the facts as is the voice-over.
A series called ‘The X Files’, which pays lip-service to sceptical examination of the paranormal, is skewed heavily towards the reality of alien abductions, strange powers and government complicity in covering up just about everything interesting. Almost never does the paranormal claim turn out to be a hoax or a psychological aberration or a misunderstanding of the natural world. Much closer to reality, as well as a much greater public service, would be an adult series (‘Scooby Doo’ does it for children) in which paranormal claims are systematically investigated and every case is found to be explicable in prosaic terms. The dramatic tension would be in uncovering how misapprehension and hoax could generate apparently genuine paranormal phenomena. Perhaps one of the investigators would always be disappointed, hoping that next time an unambiguously paranormal case will survive sceptical scrutiny.
Other shortcomings are evident in television science fiction programming. ‘Star Trek’, for example, despite its charm and strong international and interspecies perspective, often ignores the most elementary scientific facts. The idea that Mr Spock could be a cross between a human being and a life form independently evolved on the planet Vulcan is genetically far less probable than a successful cross of a man and an artichoke. The idea does, however, provide a precedent in popular culture for the extraterrestrial/human hybrids that later became so central a component of the alien abduction story. There must be dozens of alien species on the various ‘Star Trek’ TV series and movies. Almost all we spend any time with are minor variants of humans. This is driven by economic necessity, costing only an actor and a latex mask, but it flies in the face of the stochastic nature of the evolutionary process. If there are aliens, almost all of them I think will look devastatingly less human than Klingons and Romulans (and be at widely different levels of technology). ‘Star Trek’ doesn’t come to grips with evolution.