• Question: How can we trust what we can see?

    Asked by BanannaX to Alex, Ali, Kerry, Philip, Theo on 13 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Alex Pool

      Alex Pool answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      That’s a brilliant question! And part of being a scientist is accepting that we can’t always accept what we see, but you rely on other information around you to trust it.

      So you rely on your other senses to help trust it’s real, along with past experience. So take yourself looking in a mirror, you know that there isn’t another version of you stood in front of yourself even though your eyes tell you they are.

    • Photo: Philip Ratcliffe

      Philip Ratcliffe answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      In short, we can’t!
      Presumably, you’ve heard of optical illusions, things that appear to different to what they are. Maybe you’ve seen those street paintings that make it look like there’s nothing below us, with a strange 3D effect, or the simply photographic trickes that make someone look taller than the Eiffel Tower.
      Now, I’m going to get on my high horse and pontificate, but it’s up to everyone wo reads this to think about what I say a draw their own conclusions. Intelligent people are always skeptical, that is they’re never sure that what they think they’ve seen was really that way and so they try to check – we have other senses, we can look again, we can ask someone else what they saw … Unfortunately, a lot of people find it easier just to believe in their first impressions, not only but also because is easier, not only but also it probably corresponds to what they wanted to see.
      This last point is one of the biggest problems a scientist faces: I have a theory and so I can only see things that agree with it and can’t see anything that contradicts it; this has really happened in history to important scientists.

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