The history of science is in many ways the history of uncomfortable ideas — of truths that displaced cherished beliefs and forced humanity to revise its understanding of its own place in the universe. Copernicus unsettled the earth from the centre of creation. Darwin unsettled the human species from its elevated perch above the animals. Freud, whatever his scientific failings, proposed that the rational mind was not master of itself but was governed by forces it could not observe. In each case, the discovery was resisted not merely because it contradicted previous knowledge, but because it carried a moral implication: that the world was not arranged for our benefit, and that we were not the authors of our own nature.
What is striking is that the resistance to uncomfortable science rarely takes the form of an argument. It takes the form of a feeling — a sense of affront, a wounded dignity. The critics do not typically say, 'Here is where the evidence is wrong.' They say, 'This cannot be right because it diminishes us.' This is a recognisable human impulse, but it is a poor method for arriving at truth. The evidence does not arrange itself according to what we find comforting.
The philosopher of science Karl Popper argued that science progresses not by verifying theories but by attempting to falsify them. A theory that cannot be tested, cannot be proven wrong, is not science — it is metaphysics. What distinguishes a good scientist from a bad one, on this account, is not greater confidence but greater willingness to be proven wrong. The best science is uncomfortable science: science that puts its own conclusions at risk.
