Is a picture of a scientific idea evidence?

An illustration can explain a scientific idea without showing that it is true. An image made from observations can carry evidence, but its source, the way it was made and the claim it supports still matter.

A drawing of a bridge can help us imagine its shape. A photograph can show a bridge that someone built. Measurements can tell us how that bridge behaved under a particular load. Each answers a different question. None automatically answers every question about the bridge.

What kind of picture am I looking at?

Start with the caption. Is this a photograph, a diagram, an image made from measurements, a computer model or an artist’s illustration? Those labels tell us where to begin. They do not settle whether the explanation attached to the image is right.

A diagram might leave out details to make one relationship easier to see. A model might show what follows from chosen assumptions. An image made from measurements needs an explanation of what was measured and how those measurements became the image we see.

Ask what the colors and shapes represent. Are they measured quantities, a choice made to help us see something, or an artistic choice? If there is a graph, look for its labels, units and source. If those are missing, ask for them before treating the picture as evidence.

What does this mean for HD-Blast?

HD-Blast is my unproved cosmic-origin hypothesis: could our Big Bang have been the aftermath of a higher-dimensional blast? An appealing picture of that proposal cannot establish that the event happened.

A conceptual illustration can help introduce the question. It does not supply a measured signal, explain the physical mechanism or rule out other explanations. Calling it an illustration keeps the invitation to imagine separate from the evidence we would need to judge the idea.

Four questions to keep beside an image

• What is this image showing?
• Where did its information come from?
• What choices or assumptions went into making it?
• Which claim does it support, and what remains open?

Pictures can be useful companions to an explanation. A clear caption helps us enjoy the picture and understand its limits at the same time.

Continue with fitting data versus making a prediction, or what repeating a calculation can establish. Explore GOD PLAYS DICE, Volume One, and the free preview.