Pathologically Genuine (commentary): Our Understanding of Complex Problems is Rarely Absolute and Clear.
It is hard to keep anyone’s attention with tentative and uncertain.
As a professor of biology and as an autistic person I worry a lot about information literacy.
I also worry when anyone else presents information as “absolute and clear.” I give myself a lot of grace, though. I grew up learning that arguing was an actual sport in my family and arguing sometimes involved taking an absolute and clear stance even when I knew the topic is anything but absolute and clear. That is the only way that arguing was any fun for me even though it is quite annoying to others, including my golden retriever. Canines don’t generally appreciate someone arguing with them about their need to go out and pee. Especially when that person is completely wrong.
But, when I write or teach, I try really hard to be humble in the face of complex problems where very little is absolute and clear.
In one class I teach, “The Biosphere,” the exams are take-home. Students are given a problem that is actively being researched. They have to read primary scientific literature and synthesize it into their own conclusions. And, they have to appropriately cite literature. For some students, it has been really hard to help them discriminate between AI, websites (particularly environmental advocacy sites in my class), non-peer reviewed reports that pop up on the web, and the peer reviewed scientific literature. A challenge, particularly with websites and AI is that information is often presented as “absolute and clear,” when it is not.
Absolute and clear seems to be the preferred communication method on social media. One reason is that absolute and clear requires many fewer words than tentative and uncertain. University press releases or research magazines on research tend to also present research findings as absolute and clear. It is hard to keep anyone’s attention with tentative and uncertain.
One of the great aspects of science to me is that most every conclusion is tentative- science is anything but a series of facts. Explanations are always tentative in the sense that if new data are produced that lead more strongly to a different explanation, than the different explanation wins. So, I tend to think of absolute and clear as an anathema to the practice of science.
But, tentative and not fully certain doesn’t tend to win likes, shares, and friends on social media. It also can give some the impression that if science is tentative and uncertain, then the door is open for alternative explanations, even if there are not data supporting an alternative explanation.
A great example is the relationship between autism and vaccines. There is a great deal of evidence that there is no relationship between vaccines and autism1,2,3. There is almost no scientific evidence suggesting that vaccines cause autism1,2,3. But, since science can’t be absolute and clear that vaccines never cause autism, then some believe that opens the door where any other explanation, even with no data, should be equally considered, perhaps based on correlations.
For example, a new CDC memo suggests that there is a correlation between the number of vaccines and increase in the diagnosis as autism suggesting that vaccines must play a role in causing autism despite the vast amount of data to the contrary. One might also interpret this relationship to mean that more vaccines are needed because there is a higher rate of autism. There is also quite a strong correlation between the sales of smartphones and the increase in autism diagnoses. Do smartphones cause autism? Did the increase in autism cause an increase in sales of smartphones? The reality that anything that has grown or declined significantly over the last 50 years probably correlates with changes in autism diagnoses.
The war between an assured sense of absolute and clear vs humbleness in the face of complex problems hit me as I was writing about my experience as an autistic person who stutters and had a funny affinity for vending machines.
I always do a short search of the primary scientific/peer reviewed literature before I write a post to make sure that when I say something about autism, that my biases didn’t lead me to write something that was inconsistent with the science and outright stupid. That also allows me to point readers to at least some primary research and document that I just didn’t make shit up for the sake of argument.
I assumed that given stuttering and autism affect the wellbeing of children (and adults) that there would have been a lot of research on the subject. When looking for scientific research on autism and stuttering, the most recent peer reviewed paper I found from October 2025 wrote that there is “almost nothing” documented about autistic people who stutter4. I was surprised. That paper then used a relatively small data set and found there were statistical differences in wellbeing surveys between people with autism who stutter, people who only have autism, and people who stutter. Those were small differences, and the paper definitely did not make strong conclusions or suggest that the results explained the entire difference in wellbeing between autistic people who stutter and others.
But, when I asked Google AI, it produced a very strong conclusion about the relationship between autism and stuttering (consistent with what I thought) but only cited one web page that cited no scientific research. I am not quoting its answer here because I don’t want to promulgate an absolute and clear answer about stuttering and autism when there is so little research on the issue.
The same was true of autism and vending machines. I found almost nothing about that-- the first paper that came up was in 1961 that used vending machines in a study of coinage and autism5. Nothing else in my cursory search came up. But, once again, when I asked AI, it produced a very strong statement about why autistic people might like vending machines (consistent with what I thought), but again only citing web sites.
I know this is old news. But it is a scary time. Websites are created with information that feels like it is out of thin air or was created by AI. The information on those website becomes “fact” and reproduced in all kinds of non-peer reviewed information. And, then gets promulgated on websites and LinkedIn posts. It is even more concerning to me because this is all happening as AI is still working out how to get past paywalls to use primary scientific literature.
Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow” 5 was an influential read for me. In essence, he argues that the human brain is wired to put pieces of information quickly into a story (what he calls cognitive system 1). And, once that story is in place, it takes a lot of information and energy for a narrative to change in the face of new data (what he calls cognitive system 2). I think of system 2 as critical thinking. I worry about the growing culture of absolute and clear, particularly in the face of complex issues like autism, because system 1 loves absolute and clear. And there is always a lot of “fiction in between” the data of any narrative created by system1. And the stronger the narrative, the harder it is for system 2 to do its thing.
References:
1Catli NE, Ozyurt G. 2025. The relationship between autism and autism spectrum disorders and vaccination: review of the current literature. Trends in Pediatrics 6: 76-81. DOI: 10.59213/TP.2025.222
2Gulati S, Sharawat IK, Panda PK, Kothare SV. 2025. The vaccine–autism connection: No link, still debate, and we are failing to learn the lessons. Autism 29: 1639-1645. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613251345281
3Taylor LE, Swerdfeger AL, Eslick GD. 2014. Vaccines are not associated with autism: An evidence-based meta-analysis of case-control and cohort studies. Vaccine, 32(29), 3623–3629. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2014.04.085
4Rollins KN, Pak NS, Hite M, Maxfield ND. 2025. Well-Being of Children with Stuttering and Autism: A First Glance. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders b60: e70146. https://doi.org/10.1111/1460-6984.70146
5Ferster CB, DeMyer MK. 1961. The development of performances in autistic children in an automatically controlled environment. Journal of Chronic Diseases 13:312-345. https://doi.org/10.1016/0021-9681(61)90059-5.
6Kahneman D. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
Jim Coleman’s reflection is a tender meditation on the fragility of truth in a noisy world.
He reminds us that science breathes through doubt, where every conclusion is provisional, never final.
Yet social media rewards loud certainty, leaving nuance and hesitation unheard.
His students struggle to separate peer‑reviewed research from AI’s confident illusions, showing how fragile literacy has become.
Examples of autism, stuttering, even vending machines reveal how little research exists, yet how boldly misinformation speaks.
Coleman insists that genuine inquiry means resisting the seduction of easy answers and honouring complexity.
Drawing on Kahneman, he warns that our minds crave simple stories, but wisdom lives in hesitation.
The essay becomes deeply personal: an autistic professor urging us to see humility as strength.
Ultimately, it is a call to protect uncertainty as the most human form of knowledge, a sanctuary of truth.
If this space offered you something meaningful, you may support me with a symbolic coffee, warm, of course, and full of heart.
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