“11/10/2009, 10:22am EST”
Burden of Proof
According to UK outfit The First Post, recent scientific data demonstrates that certain religiously prescribed methods of slaughter cause pain for the slaughtered animals. I know what you’re thinking: who would believe otherwise? Well, for one example, there are the religious folks who believe that these rituals physically and morally minimize, or even neutralize, what they’ve done. Meanwhile, the author of the linked article only sees fit to raise less-than-urgent questions about human religious freedom, pivoting from the research to ask whether or not the British government should ban these ritual slaughter methods merely because they don’t jibe with other British laws, and despite a probable religious outcry. In fact, there is something much more significant to discuss: the anthropocentric standards of “proof” that implicitly dictate that non-human animals have nothing in common with humans, even pain responses, unless experiments show otherwise.
The concept of “burden of proof” is key in scientific inquiry (both in the formalized field of research and in everyday life). When examining the validity of any claim, the investigator makes a decision about which of the possible investigation outcomes is the more probable. This result, known as the “null hypothesis,” is assumed to be true until/unless the data suggest otherwise. For example, when testing a new medication, the null hypothesis is that the drug does not work any better than placebo. When deciding whether or not alien spacecraft have visited Earth, the null hypothesis is that they have not. Based on the data, these null hypotheses may either be rejected or not (for technical reasons, the null hypothesis can never be “accepted” because this implies certainty, and absence of evidence for something cannot technically disprove it). To reject the null hypothesis in the first scenario, the drug must be proven to work significantly better than a placebo. To reject it in the second, unambiguous evidence of alien spacecraft must be shown.
On the heels of the Enlightenment and before the concept of “common-ancestry” was vindicated by Charles Darwin, the prevailing consensus among scientists and philosophers — who were generally and not coincidentally religious at that time — was that humans are metaphysically distinct from all other animals, created separately and endowed with a proprietary and exclusive set of cognitive mechanisms like emotions, pain, consciousness, and so forth. Under this worldview, the “null hypothesis” for comparative scientific experiments was that non-human animals shared none of the manifest psychology of humans, and so the burden of proof fell upon anybody who believed otherwise. This is still the position of many individuals — scientists and laypeople alike — who approach animal research today.
This perspective is in direct opposition to a post-Darwinian worldview. It is accepted scientific fact that the essential human neural and cognitive structure is shared among all of our mammalian cousins; likewise for reptiles, amphibians, birds, and fish, to differing degrees. The systems regulating pain and emotion must be present in other vertebrates, in some form, because these psychological features have been salient behavioral motivators for hundreds of millions of years. It would be improbable indeed to have survived very long without them. To posit that these brain features sprang into existence only after our lineage split from chimpanzees and bonobos should be ludicrous to any modern biologist.
Why then the constant surprise whenever studies find that animals can do things we can do? Why should we have to hurt animals to prove that they can feel pain? The null hypothesis should be that of course they can feel pain and fear, because human exceptionalism is now the more outlandish claim, in light of a modern evolutionary framework. If anyone believes otherwise, the burden of proof is on them—but I’d rather they not try to prove it.
—Daniel Glass
Daniel Glass, aside from having an awesome last name, is HERE.am’s newest contributor. We’ll have a bio up soon in our About section.
Never leave home without it.
