Ascent of Man - Knowledge and Certainty

Recently, I was invited to attend an online workshop hosted by Data Leaders in the UK.  The workshop discussed The Culture Change Challenge: Effectively Overcoming the Common Barriers.  It was a really good workshop - timely for me with the work I am currently doing leading a Data Culture Enablement Project with the Canadian Forest Service and supporting the development of a roll-out plan promoting data literacy and data skills across all of Natural Resources Canada.  

One of the presentations looked at the way humans make decisions and the role of noise and bias in data-driven decision processes.  The presentation reminded me of an amazing TV series from the 1970's called The Ascent of Man, hosted by Jacob Bronowski. It was one of the early blockbuster series from the BBC. One episode in particular had a deep and lasting effect on me; Episode 11: Knowledge or Certainty.  The subject is Germany between the two world wars.  At the time (1920's) physicists were defining the principle of uncertainty, the idea that no matter how much you know - there will always be a degree of uncertainty that can be statistically measured.  For science it implied that we need to take all results with a degree of skepticism. Not that scientific results are wrong - but that the degree of "rightness" is never 100%.  At the same university were social scientists who were proposing theories of anthropological certainty that promoted theories of racial superiority. These ideas were adopted by the Nazis to justify the superiority of the white, Nordic race and concentration camps. 

At the conclusion of the episode, the host Jacob Bronowski visits Auschwitz and relates the story of how members of his family died in the Halocaust.  He walks into a stream, reaches down into the stream to pull up a handful of sand and states that this is a lesson in what happens when a society assumes certainty. It was a powerful moment that I will never forget. It reminds us that we need to be humble about the knowledge we have and how we use it. 

Data science is no different.  It is a powerful tool that can help us understand the world we live in and give us insights that contribute to inform policies, decisions and actions.  We must be wary of the noise and biases that may be in the models and work hard to eliminate them as much as possible.  In the end, however, there is always a statistical factor of uncertainty that we need to acknowledge and work with. Data science can never give us certainty.  The role of humans is to apply wisdom and common sense to the results of any data analysis.  We need to be open to the opportunities and insights data analysis can give us, but understand the limits of what technology can give us.