Objectivity is a beautiful lie

Think about the last time you heard a cover and liked it better than the original. Something in the reinterpretation unlocked the song. Maybe it had a slower tempo, riffs in new places, or grief where the original had swagger, and suddenly you can’t unhear it. Although written in black and white, the score was never meant to be final.

Science looks like the exact opposite of this. It’s the kind of subject where something is either true or it isn’t. But spend enough time near a lab bench, and you’ll start to notice that interpretation lives and even thrives in science research, too. After all, researchers are still humans venturing into a world that is mostly unknown. They fill in the gaps with assumptions and placeholders, leaving room for different combinations of interpretations. An immunologist might see an immune cell’s behavior at the center of a phenomenon, but a neurologist might point to neurotransmitters instead. Both have the same basic facts, but each places emphasis on different aspects.

I used to think this was a major flaw in research – I mean, how can two people look at the same dataset and arrive at different conclusions? There’s only one right answer! But now I realize that this is the beauty of it all. With so much unknown, we can only partake in guesswork. It’s all one big puzzle, and maybe someday, with enough interpretations, we can piece them together to form the complete picture.

Something we can all learn from musicians and artists is to have the courage to stand by our own interpretations.