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Alex and Jason brought us a great episode of TARTLEcast recently. They had the chance to sit down with Dr. Avi Loeb. If that name is familiar to you, it\u2019s because he was on The Joe Rogan Experience a few months back talking about his theories about Oumuamua, that strange interstellar object that made its way through the solar system a couple of years ago. He joined our illustrious hosts to talk about his new book, Extraterrestrial. The book goes into the investigations on that strange object and what it reveals about how the world of science actually operates and what it could reveal about the universe.\xa0

Since the Harvard professor has not been shy about sharing his theories publicly (no, \u2018you have to read the book to find out\u2019 nonsense from him) the short version is that it might have been a piece of interstellar wreckage. A thin piece of metal or other material looks like the best way to explain its unusual behavior, especially its accelerating through the solar system thanks to the sunlight pushing on it.\xa0

As one might imagine, Dr. Loeb\u2019s theory met with more than a little resistance. On one hand, you certainly would have people resistant to the idea of intelligent alien life even existing, much less creating something that would find its way to our neck of the woods by accident. Then you have those who might be fine with alien life but simply don\u2019t believe interstellar travel is possible. Finally, at the other end of the spectrum are those who would find it difficult to believe our first sign of extraterrestrial life would be space junk and not a flying saucer filled with scientists or soldiers.\xa0

Now, if every argument brought against his theory were grounded in the actual data, with legitimate alternative explanations, Dr. Loeb might not have written the book. However, much of the opposition he faced was based not so much on science but on presuppositions.\xa0

\u201cBut scientists are always objective and never succumb to prejudice! They never are more worried about their image, or their tenure, or their book sales, or grant money! They are always serious and just want the facts!\u201d Would that be the case? Sadly, scientists are just like you and me and face the exact kinds of temptations of pride and ego that we do. The white lab coat doesn\u2019t endow them with special virtues. Just look at the case of scientific racism, better known as eugenics. It was basically the idea that all of society\u2019s ills could be traced to bad genes and certain races had more of these bad genes than others. You might recall a certain National Socialist movement in Germany that latched onto those ideas. Then of course there were the Tuskegee experiments in which African Americans were given syphilis so scientists could study their response. These men were so blinded by their prejudice that they saw their fellow Americans as acceptable lab rats.\xa0

Dr. Loeb has challenged those in the scientific world who would rather rest in their assumptions rather than spend the time and money to actually test some of his ideas. He\u2019s also encouraging others to do the same. He hopes with Extraterrestrial to inspire others to enter the sciences, people from all kinds of backgrounds and not just the approved elites. The astrophysicist has seen a trend developing of science being regarded as the realm of the elites, of the privileged class. Science should be open to all, Dr. Loeb says, to anyone willing to approach the world with curiosity and humility.

The curiosity is of course understandable. But why humility? Too often we act as if we know more than we do. We treat our guesses as facts. Scientists are prone to this, to vigorously defending positions that haven\u2019t been thoroughly tested. Sometimes, they are exposed and knocked down a necessary peg or two. Other times, they succeed in shutting down challenges and so shutting down scientific inquiry. If science is instead approached with humility the scientist remembers that he doesn\u2019t know everything and that he could very well be wrong. That allows for more questions being asked, more data being collected and more truth being discovered.

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