Comment by throwawayjava | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwawayjava | Hacker News Reader

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> I find it incredibly disrespectful and lacking in basic scientific integrity to go into a paper with the assumption that it is a false belief

In this context, the belief is that a spell and magical powder/paste, combined with ritual, can protect from gunfire.

Science isn't free. Also, how on earth does one go about such an experiment humanely and in a financially prudent manner? I'd love to see the reviews on the grant proposal and IRB request to shoot 10 goats in order to test the effectiveness of gri gri...

> "duh...because they are superstitious barbarians"

The authors specifically discuss monotheistic religions and miracles in the introduction.

It's possible the authors believe all religious people are "superstitious barbarians", but that seems like an awfully uncharitable assumption to make about the authors. Even if all the authors are atheists, there's still a huge gap between "person who believes in unfalsifiable religious claims" and "superstitious barbarians".

> Whether the belief is false or not seems to be totally irrelevant in trying to show that the authors' conclusions are valid. Clearly, the members of the village believed that it was true. Because of their belief in the effectiveness of the "treatment" the results were x, y, and z.

The authors come to exactly the same conclusion -- at base, gri gri is effective; its efficacy is explained by its effect on communal behavior rather than magical powers.

> Why should I automatically assume it is invalid? That strikes me as the opposite of scientific enquiry.

Tea pots in space and all that.

> The cultural hubris contained in this paper overshadows the conclusion.

You and the author seem to have come to approximately the same conclusion...

> Science isn't free. Also, how on earth does one go about such an experiment humanely and in a financially prudent manner?

I think it is outside the scope of this paper. But that is part of the thing that struck me as being so bizarre. This isn't a paper about the efficacy of the spell on an individual level. It seems to be a paper that is discussing how a belief in X may have high potential risk to the holder of belief X and, yet, be beneficial to a group of believers in X. That is an interesting but counterintuitive idea. I could see the same model being applied to experimental cancer treatments on a purely conceptual level.

> "duh...because they are superstitious barbarians"

This is admittedly 100% rhetoric on my part and may be "too much". However, there is really the way that authors' view of these villagers came across to me. I'm sure that is partly due to spending time in Africa and the very positive impression of the people that I came away with.

As you said the authors start by mentioning: "unfalsifiable religious claims". So, they seem to start the paper by classifying this a one of those "unfalsifiable religious claims". But, they then immediately classify it as a "false belief" without any evidence for such being the case AND the "false" modifier being irrelevant within the context of the paper.

> The authors come to exactly the same conclusion

Once again, that is what I find so bizarre about the article. I guess it is just me. But, it doesn't sound like a scientist conducting a study; it sounds like one part cultural commentary and one part science. The conclusion doesn't seem to require the cultural inferences about belief systems and their falsifiability or lack thereof. Hence, it struck the wrong chord with me.

I guess I would like to believe that we (i.e. all science lovers) are really looking for a better understanding of the world and that we can do so without pre-conceived judgements of something that is foreign to us.

Bullets cannot be stopped by culture. They're the same everywhere.

The closest explanation I'd allow of how this bullet-proofing is supposed to work is that the smell is so bad the attackers get confused. Really, that would be my first hypothesis if it could be shown that the ingredients matter.

> As you said the authors start by mentioning: "unfalsifiable religious claims". So, they seem to start the paper by classifying this a one of those "unfalsifiable religious claims". But, they then immediately classify it as a "false belief"...

I noticed that, too. The first sentence says that many people hold unfalsifiable beliefs. The second says that many of these unfalsifiable beliefs are false. Which is it?

One of the great things about the practice of magic is that disbelievers never know when magic has been worked upon them.

None-the-less, I don't want my tax money funding studies on the efficacy of gri gri...

Fuck that, I do, and it'd be pretty goddamn cheap. Likely benefits are training / practice, unlikely benefits are deeper anthropological and jungle-life (why those plants?) understanding, and the Pascal's Mugger benefit is "huh magic...?". And then there's the weird side-benefit of encouraging scientific investigation of all things.

Seriously, the biggest expense is going to be shipping the researchers.

Would it be cheaper to send soldiers out with vests or gri-gri? Probably in the west at least, vests are more cost effective. If a soldier is worth a million, one in hundred soldiers is saved by a vest during their career and a vest costs a thousand dollars, it's a ten to one return. But somewhere else, the inputs might be quite different.

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