The impossibility—and the necessity—of distinguishing science from nonscience | Hacker News Reader

The impossibility—and the necessity—of distinguishing science from nonscience

weeklystandard.com

80 pointshowsilly83 comments

On Hossenfelder's book, but not so much on the (IMO doomed) philosophical project of logically demarcating some ideal notion of scientific practice, see also mathematical physicist and long-time String skeptic Peter Woit's review[1] which goes into some interesting details of her conversations and comes with a copious and interesting comments section.

1: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=10314

Here is a link to an excellent discussion between Sabine Hossenfelder and Julia Galef about this issue: http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs-211-sabine-hoss...

a few interesting points here, but the author misunderstands one critical idea: science is always wrong by design. this is why the author claims that popper is irrelevant.

he doesn't understand what popper understood: each scientific experiment is an asymptotic step towards a 100% accurate understanding of reality. that's it.

it doesn't matter if the experiment "failed" or succeeded, so long as it was methodologically sound. you don't even need to understand that you're making an asymptotic step at all! every element of a hypothesis built this way is falsifiable by another such asymptotic step. note: falsifiable does not mean that the entire hypothesis is discarded -- just one element.

is this process inherently self correcting? not on the timescale we'd like, but ultimately, yes.

the current institutional problems with science are severe, but largely inconsequential in the very long run of human knowledge. institutional science as it is currently practiced is not the only "science" nor is it so flawed as to be unworkable. simply put, problems of scientists and people performing science can slow down the march of science, but it can't stop the production of new knowledge.

the same goes for editorialization of findings, misuse of descriptive language by scientists, misuse of quantitative models, etc. these are problems which MIGHT cause a smaller number of asymptotic steps, but only on the scale of a hundred years at the worst. we're in the game for thousands or maybe millions of years. we have the time to make these mistakes and get over them. and often, when we realize our mistakes, we make a ton of progress immediately after.

so, then, what is science? an intentional use of objective methodology to improve knowledge of reality.

The topic itself is important, but I thought a few statements were subtle attacks on the scientific community. Perhaps I'm too suspicious. But here are the statements, with my italics emphasizing the key parts:

"In a time when expertise and science are supposedly under attack, some convincing way to make this distinction would seem to be of value."

It seems to me that science and rationality are under heavy attack in this country, and the author is attempting to undermine that view.

"According to the New York Times, the Higgs discovery confirms “a grand view of a universe described by simple and elegant and symmetrical laws—but one in which everything interesting, like ourselves, results from flaws or breaks in that symmetry.” Whatever that means—but I’ll come back to the question of meaning later."

I take whatever that means as a dig at those highfalutin egghead scientists and their mouthpiece, the New York Times, who are trying to put something over on us. It's unbecoming of an author who is himself a research scientist.

"But if all this activity is just self-correction in action, then why not call alchemy, astrology, phrenology, eugenics, and scientific socialism science as well, because in their time, each was pursued with sincere conviction by scientists who believed they were advancing reliable knowledge about the world? On what basis should we say that the findings of science at any given time really do bear a useful correspondence to reality? When is it okay to trust what scientists say?"

I see this as more undermining of science.

"What we nonexperts choose to believe about such matters will depend much more on whom we trust and what we find to be helpful than on what can be known to be true."

Don't trust liberal scientists.

As I say, maybe I'm too suspicious, and this author has no agenda.

It's from the Weekly Standard (a conservative opinion magazine). It certainly has an agenda, but that doesn't mean it can't make valid points. And I think it does.

Just a quick observation: this

> "According to the New York Times, the Higgs discovery confirms “a grand view of a universe described by simple and elegant and symmetrical laws—but one in which everything interesting, like ourselves, results from flaws or breaks in that symmetry.” Whatever that means—but I’ll come back to the question of meaning later."

is mostly quoting the NYT's piece (https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/science/cern-physicists-m...). 'Whatever that means', as I read it, is a dig to the second part of the quote, which comes after the 'but'. Now, if you understand what that sentence means, I would like you to help me with it. Or, more precisely, I would like to know how that sentence can be true. If physical laws describe the universe, they should also describe those things which are described as 'interesting', and if these laws are elegant and symmetrical, there should be, in some sense, elegance and symmetry in the description of those 'interesting' phenomena (I'm skipping over the issue of reductionism, but that only makes things more complicated). The suggestion that things like ourselves require 'flaws or breaks' in the symmetry comes from nowhere in the NYT piece. The idea only tangentially comes back at the end, when (without context) a professor is quoted as saying: 'I personally do not want it to be standard model anything — I don’t want it to be simple or symmetric or as predicted. I want us all to have been dealt a complex hand that will send me (and all of us) in a (good) loop for a long time'. I guess this is an expression of the reasonable opinion that the fact that the standard model was vindicated would be the 'boring' case. However, the original claim is a faux pas, if not a non sequitur.

OK, maybe that was a bit longer than I anticipated, so perhaps I should jump into the discussion of the larger picture here.

I think the piece illustrates something interesting about the whole science/anti-science debate. Personally, I think one can read the piece as having no anti-science bias whatsoever, although that requires one to pass over the context of the debate. One can take the writer to be saying: 'OK, so there's this discussion about an attack on expertise, and science, and it seems to matter a great deal. What is science, though? What is, actually, being attacked?' And the point they make is: well, there is no solid (unshakeably true) answer to that question. Perhaps their analysis is too simple (the stuff on ad hoc hypotheses, or about alchemy and the rest, is sloppy), but at the level of the layman that is as far as the discussion ever goes. I think the article captures this quite well. So, for example, that quote

> What we nonexperts choose to believe about such matters will depend much more on whom we trust and what we find to be helpful than on what can be known to be true.

is actually a description of the situation, not a prescriptive judgment about what the nonexperts are entitled to do or believe. It goes both ways for both conservative or liberal nonexperts when evaluating knowledge claims (either scientific or of other kinds). That question, about what should be believed, is philosophical. I'm not sure people appreciate the scope it has, how it is that hasn't yet been fully answered, and why it matters, so I appreciate that pieces like this bring it to the foreground. The point is not to doubt science and jettison it, but to get a better grasp of it. The task of knowledge is like repairing a boat while on it (Neurath). To give up is death.

On the other hand, I see how something like this could be brought to the fore by people who, seeing these questions, jump to the conclusion that science is not to be trusted, and using the veil of the reasonableness of the questions, push forth that as a goal. One often sees the critics of reason to deploy the language of reason to undermine it. There's no easy solution for that. Again, I don't think that is the goal of this article.

What makes something a science is actually a good question, and most practicing scientists don't have a good answer for that because they have only seen their own field, which is shaped by the peculiarities of its topic of study. I didn't have a clear view until I had been through three or four fields and spent several years resolving my mental dissonance.

I [wrote a book](http://madhadron.com/into_the_sciences-sample.html) on the structures I found. Sadly, I don't think it's an effective teaching tool. It's made most people's eyes glaze over except for other people who have also worked across different scientific fields who breezed through and say, "Yeah, that's it exactly."

>Popper’s idea that scientific theories must be falsifiable has long been an outdated philosophy. I am glad to hear this, as it’s a philosophy that nobody in science ever could have used . . . since ideas can always be modified or extended to match incoming evidence.

I don't know what is the context of this quote, but this sounds like a deep misrepresentation of Popper's position. As far as I know, he explicitly addresses the issue of ad hoc and auxiliary hypotheses. Unless this is part of a bigger point about some the "fine-tuning" of theories i.e. just how much the main proposition can be off the mark given the additional hypotheses.

> ecology, epidemiology, cultural anthropology, cognitive > psychology, biochemistry, macroeconomics, computer science, > and geology? Why do they all get to be called science?

They do?! Well, then the term "science" clearly means nothing anymore.

On the contrary, it does mean something. It just doesn't mean "looks like physics," which is actually a really strange science. Add musicology and history to that list, too.

So, what does it mean?

As far as I understand, science means to have at least one theory with some explanatory power, to test that theory by experiment, and, crucially, to discard the theory if it is invalidated by experiment. That quite obviously does not apply to many of those listed.

> Add musicology and history to that list, too.

History?! Well... nope, it isn't. I might change my mind if you (or anyone) can come with a definition of "science" that includes history and doesn't also include astrology, though.

I wrote a book about it. :) See elsewhere in the comments.

The framework is a little more than a theory. The basic unit is some kind of trial (experiment, observation), which is an attempt to adequately approximate an idealized trial. Whether that approximation is adequate is a matter of reasonable practice in a given time and setting. Trials produce values of some kind of primitive notion: a velocity, a drawing of a typical dandelion. Then you construct a formal system (a theory) that recapitulates the values of primitive notions that emerge from trials.

History and musicology certainly fit this.

So do astrology and bioinformatics.

Let's look at (a particular application of) bioinformatics. I sequence the DNA of a bunch of humans and a neanderthal. I apply some statistics and proclaim that humans and neanderthals admixed. Later, I sequence more humans and another neanderthal. Applying the same statistics, things look a bit messy now. So I proclaim that there were two admixture events, but I also change the estimated amount of admixture and pretend that this is still consistent with the first claim. Years later, another genome, another admixture event, more hand waving excuses for the numbers that don't seem to fit the big picture.

Is that science? Some kind of trial is there. It is appropriate given time and setting. Some kind of value (a p-value) is produced. Even the theory is there, even though calling it "formal" is a stretch. So this is science? I don't think so.

Yes, there's more to it, otherwise I would have written a blog post and not a book.

'Based on this map that i found in the tomb, I pose the theory, that the holy grail was burried on the spot marked with x' 'Let us test your theory by digging there' 'We found it! Yeah! Science bitch!'

Seriously how is history not a scientific field for you?

Fictional archaeology isn't history, is it?

Anyway, there are no experiments in history, therefore any "theory" is untestable. History is... I'm missing a word here, but historians are scholars, not scientists.

Note that the best evidence for many things comes from naturally occurring cases that look like experiments. The link between smoking and lung cancer is most definitively shown by twin studies, for example, which are purely observational.

There are no experiments in astronomy either.

Thank you for making my point.

"It’s one thing for theoretical physicists to chase the wrong theory about fundamental particles for 25 years with nothing to show for it but high-prestige publications. That’s fun."

Nothing to show for it? Nothing?

Supersymmetry is a very successful theory. Alzheimer's research had actually learned a lot. Sure, there are a lot of problems with how science is done, but there are a lot of problems work how anything is done.

If you go into science expecting that your theory is the perfect answer and that anything else is failure, you are going to be disappointed.

Those examples seriously undermined the article.

If you want to be annoyed that an MRI of a dead fish gets publishable results, go ahead. I am too. But this very quickly took a detour into "sometimes hypotheses are wrong, therefore science is stupid".

We haven't had 25 years of a wrong belief about Alzheimers, just 25 years of "shit, this is hard to understand". And given the history of non-scientific-theory medicine (we cured scurvy ~5 times before word got out), it still seems like a winning score.

I know it's fair to criticize something without having a better solution, but it's still jarring to see science attacked on topics where it has a better track record than anything else ever devised.

I agree, but I won’t not disagree. We are due a resurgence in responsible Hegelian dialectics, but it’s easier said than done. I think both arguments fail the test in this case.

I’m sorry, but why is the neo-con anti science article on HN?

The article is attempting to say that modern particle physics is not science because there are a ton of failed experiments to find exotic particles and test theories.

This is how science works!! Your doing science correctly if you fail a lot. Yes it costs money to set up an experiment that fails to prove a hypothesis. That’s just science.

Read more about “The Weekly Standard” here..

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weekly_Standard

Edit: Here’s an excerpt

“Of course the standard explanation of the difficulties with theoretical physics would simply be that science advances by failing, that it is self-correcting over time, and that all this flailing about is just what has to happen when you’re trying to understand something hard. Some version of this sort of failing-forward story is what Hossenfelder hears from many of her colleagues. But if all this activity is just self-correction in action, then why not call alchemy, astrology, phrenology, eugenics, and scientific socialism science as well...”

Umm... seriously?

>I’m sorry, but why is the neo-con anti science article on HN?

Knee-jerk labelling much? What exactly do you disagree with the article with and why?

Reading things outside of one's echo chamber and comfort zone is not something to be avoided. Even if it's something "anti-science" and "neo-con" -- you get to learn the ACTUAL points of anti-science people and neo-cons (as opposed to just second-hand reading your favorite writers disparaging their claims)

Because the underpinning theories are bullshit and been abandoned for almost 20 years in serious sociological circles. I gave more arguments lower in the comments.

Okay, shall we upvote articles about how the earth is flat, or how evolution is false? Those are outside the echo chamber.

How about considering if an article has points that are valid rather than nut case propaganda.

>Okay, shall we upvote articles about how the earth is flat, or how evolution is false?

Why not? The scientific method doesn't preclude anything a priori.

>How about considering if an article has points that are valid rather than nut case propaganda.

Where is this consideration though? And where are the counter arguments? I only see a quick labelling?

> Why not? The scientific method doesn't preclude anything a priori.

You're right it doesn't. But my criteria for an interesting and worthwhile article isn't one about crazy ideas that have been beaten to death 1000s of times already. If HN front page had tons of those types of stories, no one would come here!

This is maybe an unfortunate approach if someone opens a restaurant called "Dog Shit".

You'd be surprised.

Many good restaurants have unfortunate names. And many very bad restaurants have pleasant names.

Even when it comes to "dog shit" it pays to do one's research...

It's hard to think of a publication that has done more to degrade science over the entirety of its lifetime. The Weekly Standard is how we wound up with Darwin deniers serving on Congressional science & technology committees.

Links?

I'm a very strong science supporter and found the article to have some interesting (yet debatable) points. I'd like to know if that publication isn't reputable. I haven't seen it before.

Calling climate change a religion: https://www.weeklystandard.com/irwin-m-stelzer/the-sacred-sc...

Some Hawking bashing about climate change: https://www.weeklystandard.com/nathan-cofnas/dadaist-science

Or how about some Bill Nye smashing: https://www.weeklystandard.com/the-scrapbook/bill-nye-the-qu...

An attempt to show that Democrats are astrologers: https://www.weeklystandard.com/the-scrapbook/anti-science-li...

This list goes on...

Thanks for finding those links. Good to know more about the publication.

Disclosure: Even though I'm a centre-left neo-liberal, I've written an article that appeared in The Weekly Standard. I wanted to make sure that the GOP controlled US government saw it.

It is true that the Weekly Standard is right wing—they make no qualms about it—but it is not true that they mis-report facts. Bill Kristol (editor at large) is a vocal supporter of the Never Trump movement and he is against fake news of all types.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/weekly-standard/

The core point at the centre of this article is interesting (the boundaries of what is and isn't science aren't well demarked), but I agree that the author makes his point in a way that isn't how I would have written it.

It is interesting that you chose to elide the last part of that sentence, which completes the thought.

Immediately downvoted without comment. Clearly someone here is attempting to push these neo-con anti-science pieces as news.

Could you please stop with these off-topic insinuations? They're rather unscientific. If you have concerns, the guidelines ask you to email hn@ycombinator.com so we can look at the data.

An actually question for HN readers. Why do we think this article is worth discussing? Why shouldn’t we be discussing things like how maybe 2+2=4 might not be correct?

This article is attempting to refute the value of the scientific method. Why is science alone worthy of “debate” about if it’s useful or worthwhile or not?

Is it perhaps because science often makes statements about the world that cause problems for those with an agenda?

If we discuss articles like this seriously (who’s “philosophy” has been debunked 1000s of times already) then we’re giving voice and allowing doubt to sow about science.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Carl Sagan...

“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...”

Edit: Just because it's hidden in a comment below, I'm adding it here. Some more examples of articles from The Weekly Standard to gauge whether they have a political agenda or not:

Calling climate change a religion: https://www.weeklystandard.com/irwin-m-stelzer/the-sacred-sc...

Some Hawking bashing about climate change: https://www.weeklystandard.com/nathan-cofnas/dadaist-science

Or how about some Bill Nye bashing: https://www.weeklystandard.com/the-scrapbook/bill-nye-the-qu...

An attempt to show that Democrats are astrologers: https://www.weeklystandard.com/the-scrapbook/anti-science-li...

This list goes on...

> This article is attempting to refute the value of the scientific method.

I don't think so. I think it's questioning the assumption that the scientific process is infallible, or is necessarily always correct, or should always be trusted completely.

That doesn't mean it's not almost always the best way to learn and understand our world (it is), but it does mean that it's not necessarily the case that anything found using the scientific method is as true / correct as other things.

> Why is science alone worthy of “debate” about if it’s useful or worthwhile or not?

The debate here is in acknowledging that its usefulness varies. I don't think anyone's arguing it's not useful.

> Is it perhaps because science often makes statements about the world that cause problems for those with an agenda?

Sometimes it causes problems because "what we think scientifically, today" is equivocated with "what is true." We should be able to acknowledge that, through science, we can get pretty close to what is true in some areas. And that's great! But we should also acknowledge that while science in other areas is still useful, sometimes our "best guess as of today" based on the science still isn't good enough to justify overhauling society.

> If we discuss articles like this seriously (who’s “philosophy” has been debunked 1000s of times already) then we’re giving voice and allowing doubt to sow about science.

Seeing any article like this as trying to refute science completely is being closed-minded. What would be more helpful would be to acknowledge how far science goes toward understanding the truth and be careful not to overstate how correct we think we are.

Keep in mind that supposedly scientific movements were also behind eugenics, lobotomies, and other things that, in retrospect, look like obvious mistakes.

Mistakes on their own don't discount the approach. Kids learning to walk fall down constantly, that does not mean learning to walk is a bad idea.

Science is not about today, it's optimizing over longer than human lifespans.

I don't recall saying that, but it does give us reason to not have a talismanic faith in whatever scientists recommend.

Not really, that comes down to false positive rates vs everyone else. AKA it's not that science is always correct, it's that their are zero more accurate options available.

It's the same reason people take bomb threats seriously. Such threats are very often fake, but getting a bomb threat pushes the odds of a bomb vastly above the odds without that threat.

Well, I'm going to have to disagree with this view, which would suggest scientists alone should direct public policy with no counterbalance or role for the rest of us.

Again no.

Science is only saying what the outcomes will most likely be. That's not the same thing as saying the tradeoffs are worth it.

That said, many things are like useing seatbelts in that the downside risk is vastly more than the upside. Thus, ignorance simply results in worse outcomes.

I think your giving the article too much credit. If it were saying what you are saying that’d be fine. But it continually, throughout the article attempts to discredit science all together.

Look, science doesn’t make everything clear cut 100% if the time. Science is the act of making theories, and looking for evidence to dispute those theories. Sometimes, in some areas we have to be OK with not understanding things. That’s part of science, it’s not it’s limitation. By admitting ignorance in some areas, we open the doors to the pursuit of knowledge.

Here are some choice quotes...

“What we nonexperts choose to believe about such matters will depend much more on whom we trust and what we find to be helpful than on what can be known to be true”

How about instead we suspend our beliefs and wait for data, rather than trusting someone just because? It’s okay to say, we don’t know!

“But if all this activity is just self-correction in action, then why not call alchemy, astrology, phrenology, eugenics, and scientific socialism science as well”

Because none of those other fields embraced abandoning beliefs in the face of evidence and data. How one could even compare them with science clearly demonstrates an attempt to misconstrue facts.

> Look, science doesn’t make everything clear cut 100% if the time. Science is the act of making theories, and looking for evidence to dispute those theories. Sometimes, in some areas we have to be OK with not understanding things. That’s part of science, it’s not it’s limitation. By admitting ignorance in some areas, we open the doors to the pursuit of knowledge.

I think that's the key takeaway of the article, to be honest.

> How about instead we suspend our beliefs and what for data, rather than trusting someone just because? It’s okay to say, we don’t know!

This is what I think the author is saying, though. It's a political piece--we can't universally suspend our beliefs for the purpose of making policy. But we can try to evaluate what science is a closer approximation to "true" than others.

> Because none of those other fields embraced abandoning beliefs in the face of evidence and data. How one could even compare them with science clearly demonstrates and attempt to misconstrue facts.

You can say this with the benefit of hindsight. If you were, say, an American social scientist in the 1920s, you might be supporting eugenics, as it was quite common at the time. If you dogmatically defended eugenics as being "science," called people who questioned the value of it deniers, and equated it with truth... well, you would be wrong.

And if you can acknowledge that it happened in the 1920s (and numerous other times), then it can be happening today. It's about being open-minded to the possibility that science (and its process in practice) has varying levels of value, and being able to rationally assess that is important.

This is misleading because it assumes that scientific views on all "science" topics are held uniformly. Eugenicists (who were not social scientists), held views that genuine geneticists knew were spectacularly wrong. But eugenicists had public visibility and political power. I think this is the main problem with the article -- it assumes that NYTimes science reporting provides some genuine insight into how scientists think. The public view of science, and perhaps that of some people who study the scientific process, seems confusing and contradictory. The scientists doing the work, in general, embrace or refute the contradictions in with the goal of trying to improve scientific knowledge.

>> Look, science doesn’t make everything clear cut 100% if the time. Science is the act of making theories, and looking for evidence to dispute those theories. Sometimes, in some areas we have to be OK with not understanding things. That’s part of science, it’s not it’s limitation. By admitting ignorance in some areas, we open the doors to the pursuit of knowledge.

> I think that's the key takeaway of the article, to be honest.

If that's the key takeaway, why write an article about it? That's how science is supposed to function. It's not controversial.

>> How about instead we suspend our beliefs and wait for data, rather than trusting someone just because? It’s okay to say, we don’t know!

> This is what I think the author is saying, though. It's a political piece--we can't universally suspend our beliefs for the purpose of making policy. But we can try to evaluate what science is a closer approximation to "true" than others.

It would be REALLY helpful if more politicians suspended their beliefs for the purpose of making policy. And if there's an area where scientific consensus has been made, work your policies around that instead.

>> Because none of those other fields embraced abandoning beliefs in the face of evidence and data. How one could even compare them with science clearly demonstrates and attempt to misconstrue facts.

> You can say this with the benefit of hindsight. If you were, say, an American social scientist in the 1920s, you might be supporting eugenics, as it was quite common at the time. If you dogmatically defended eugenics as being "science," called people who questioned the value of it deniers, and equated it with truth... well, you would be wrong. And if you can acknowledge that it happened in the 1920s (and numerous other times), then it can be happening today. It's about being open-minded to the possibility that science (and its process in practice) has varying levels of value, and being able to rationally assess that is important.

Eugenics wasn't science... it was an attempt to use artificial selection as a way to mold human society. The artificial selection is the science part. It's use and justification for eugenics was just abhorrent. As for things like phrenology, etc, those were never accepted as science... just touted as so by the pseudo scientists.

The data send to be in on gravitational waves, relativity, and big whooping chunks of quantum mechanics, but I'm in no way qualified to interpret that data. I have to trust someone else's interpretation. Unfortunately, they are likely wrong about some of it.

Well just trusting someone is not scientific, and liable to get you in hot water. You can examine the data for yourself, or if it's an important enough topic find a tutor or teacher to help parse it.

For instance, climate change is an important topic to all of us. No one is required to believe it. If you want to act on it, make policy about it, or vote on it, I really do recommend you educate yourself instead of just trusting one side or the other.

No, thanks; I already have a PhD. I've got no time to tool up enough to follow raw climate change data.

Instead, I'll buy the general consensus of those who should be able to evaluate it, say the AAAS, along with a sniff test to try to weed out complete crazys. Not because I think general scientists are right (they are certainly wrong on at least some details even if they get the big picture right) and certainly not because I think there infallible, but because in the past I've seen their stuff work. Often.

That’s a valid approach for everyday life... I do the same as well for the most part. But I have looked at the raw science data for climate change and understood why it’s so pressing (I love coral reefs, and keep a reef tank, and they are having serious problems).

If you ever get into a position to make policy though, definitely read the data. It’ll light a fire under you like no other.

The data about desertification is even more damning and scary... Though it is not as clearly directly linked to climate change itself, it is definitely anthropic.

I completely agreed with you. And in fact, I think this statement from the article's conclusion makes it quite difficult not to! "Science cannot be cleanly demarcated from nonscience, and much of what we are hoping that scientists can tell us these days—about nutrition and health, about economics, the environment, education, aging, and the origins of the universe—will emerge from the vast fuzzy area between the two."

And so I went to find something else from the author that might more clearly illustrate this point. I ended up finding the opposite. This [1] article from him is far more coherent and on point. His focus is much more about the institutions of science than science itself. And in particular how the modern institution of science is creating a 'product' that is often quite distanced from not only what we think science 'ought' be, but indeed what it genuinely was at one time.

[1] - https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/saving-science

>This article is attempting to refute the value of the scientific method.

And what exactly is wrong with a person attempting to challenge the value of science?

>If we discuss articles like this seriously (who’s “philosophy” has been debunked 1000s of times already) then we’re giving voice and allowing doubt to sow about science.

The average person sees science as a tool that humans have developed for our own benefit, and it is useful at the moment, because its applications improve our lives. It can, and will be thrown away when it stops being useful. If people start demanding an instant return on "investment" from science and stop caring about long term "science for the sake of science" type stuff, then thats it. Should you or I have an agenda to shape their thinking so that they always "believe" that science should be funded?

>Edit: Just because it's hidden in a comment below, I'm adding it here. Some more examples of articles from The Weekly Standard to gauge whether they have a political agenda or not:

Do you only read articles by people whose politics you agree with?

> This article is attempting to refute the value of the scientific method.

This is such an astonishingly poor take on this article, I can only hope you didn't read it.

Please go back and read the article and give a good faith effort to understand the author's point.

I really did.. please see comment attached to other reply here. I can only assume you didn’t read the article. It’s disguised as philosophy, but it’s filled with tons of logical fallacies. It’s anti-science propaganda in disguise as philosophy to make it palatable. The Weekley Standard has a history of anti-science agenda articles.

It's rather remarkable, then, that anti-science propaganda is being churned out by a "professor of science and society at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation and Society and the co-director of the university’s Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes."

Honestly, I don't think it is.

"Science and Society", "Science and Technology Studies", and several similar fields are basically devoted to writing this sort of article. If this came from a chemistry professor, I'd be stunned; from a 'professor of science and society', it's almost exactly what I'd expect; that's a humanities field that studies science, often from a postmodern viewpoint.

I don't even say that as criticism; it's worth reminding people that you can follow the scientific method with real rigor and still get a completely wrong result. My biggest gripe about this article is that it missed opportunities to make its point more strongly and clearly. For instance, it could have benefitted hugely from discussing Daryl Bem. (The professor who 'proved' ESP exists with more rigor than most published psych results.)

But yes, it's pretty much the origin I would have expected.

edit: Just looked up the CSPO, and all of the same reactions apply. It's explicitly not a scientific consortium, it's devoted to analyzing the societal impacts of science and technology.

Argument from authority

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

argument from relevant authority. A professor of "science and society" at an accredited university would be a relevant authority for the topic of the scientific method and its impact on society...

The relevance of the authority does not matter. If a well respected zoologist claims there are 24 chromosomes instead of 23, we shouldn't believe him.

Read the wikipedia article on Argument from authority before making such comments.

If I am presented with two contradictory statements, one by an expert and one not, and have no particular reason to believe one or the other, then I'm going to guess the expert is correct. Wouldn't you?

If someone posted an editorial called "Amazon is great for society and we should do nothing to trammel its growth," would you think it was irrelevant if it were written by Jeff Bezos?

e.g. using a Carl Sagan quote, rather than addressing the authors argument.

The quote was an aside.. not used to refute the article. Just a pertinent thought. Carl Sagan wasn’t being used as an athority against the argument.

Nice try on confusing the meaning of argument from authority though.

I wouldn't normally say this, but since you appealed to authority first... are you aware of how absolutely dismal ASU's reputation is in academia in general?

It's a book review of two new books, "Lost in Math" and "The Secret Life of Science".

The article's agenda is being fairly receptive to the themes of the books.

Although you present it as ridiculous, whether or not 2+2=4 is actually a serious topic among mathematicians. The search term you are looking for is "alternative axiomatic set theories". The alternatives may or may not be useful, but a lot of math we use today was not originally useful and it's a good thing people worked on it.

I understand that you are concerned about a general distrust of science that stands in the way of human progress. I am too. But this distrust is only partly caused by "those with an agenda". The other part is that science is sometimes oversold by zealous adherents. Then, when the results are more moderate, people feel lied to and they grow distrust. Being more critical about science, far from being the problem, is actually the solution to the problem you are concerned about.

Elsewhere in the thread the question of eugenics etc have been raised. And I understand you know they are psuedo-science etc., but without you personally labeling all the pseudoscientists how is someone supposed to tell the difference? (And if there's an oracle who can tell us what is true or false we can just use that, we don't need science.)

A more modern example might be this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26834996. tl;dr it is a quite well-designed, peer-reviewed meta-analysis published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology from a credible researcher who concludes that precognition exists (which is ESP, basically). Now obviously that is bullshit, but A) isn't it a little backwards to say something is obviously bullshit when it has strong evidence behind it, B) if obvious bullshit can make it through the scientific process what does that say about the usefulness of that process?

The scientific method as it is practiced is deeply flawed. It is operated by fallible humans, funded (or not) to advance an agenda, and so on. At various times it has been the scientific view that the sun revolves around the earth, that electricity exists in two fluids, that flies are spontaneously generated from rotting meat, and on and on. Modern times are actually the golden era for scientific acceptance and its influence on human lives, and yet it is those same scientific discoveries – the combustion engine, atomic bomb, antibiotics and mass communication technology – that threaten our civilization.

Being critical of the scientific method is not only important, it is necessary. The temptation throughout human history is to find some "holy grail" that will lift humanity beyond its current vantage point. Once upon a time this was actually a holy grail, but in modern times science – perhaps due to its effectiveness – has often captured this slot in human psychology. But a grail science is not; it's a human system with human triumphs and human weaknesses and the sooner we get a realistic picture of that, the better for learning how to use it to achieve our objectives effectively.

> credible researcher who concludes that precognition exists

See, that's exactly what Popper referred to when he said that theories cannot be confirmed, only rejected. Simplified to that extent, it's not nearly correct, but apparently we need to simplify it even more to get through the thick skulls of people like Bem.

The theory Bem et.al. refuted is "ESP doesn't exist and if ESP does not exist, there is no effect in these experiments." That's a much bigger theory than "ESP doesn't exist". And indeed, every single time somebody purported to have evidence for ESP, it turned that the typically tiny effect was a flaw in the experimental design, be that due to fraud or incompetence.

> obviously that is bullshit

No, not at all. Nothing is obvious. It's bullshit by sound reasoning.

There aren't just two theories that are competing here ("ESP" and "no ESP"). There's also "this researcher is incompetent", "this researcher is a fraud", "these statistical methods are useless", "I'm high on crack and none of this real", etc. A priori, "ESP" and "no ESP" might be the most believable among those, but all the past evidence points strongly towards a combination of "this researcher is incompetent" and "these statistical methods are useless". That's why we can say that this is bullshit and not feel bad about it.

> if obvious bullshit can make it through the scientific process

A pay-to-play journal like F1000Research is part of the scientific process? That may be where your confusion comes from.

> but all the past evidence points strongly towards a combination of "this researcher is incompetent" and "these statistical methods are useless".

Your arguments seem to be based in unfamiliarity with the paper. Bem is an extremely well-regarded researcher in social psychology, he has hundreds of papers, several of which are seminal in the field and boast thousands of citations (this paper in particular has a citation score of 700+). Moreover this is a meta-analysis, not his own study.

While there has been some chatter about the statistical methods in those 700 citations, the fact is the methods are a lot better than the average social psychology paper (and this paper has attracted extraordinary scrutiny for the obvious reason). So if there is a problem in the paper (and of course there must be) there is a much larger problem in the standard practices in the field.

> pay-to-play journal like F1000Research

The original paper was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vd-Z7x...) but their website is down

> every single time somebody purported to have evidence for ESP, it turned that the typically tiny effect was a flaw in the experimental design, be that due to fraud or incompetence.

This is incorrect for the simple reason that it is much easier to make claims than it is to investigate them, and therefore, not all claims can be investigated. Perhaps you meant to say that of the proper subset of things we investigated turned out to be methodologically flawed, but then we have situations like the present paper, which somehow got through peer review. Of course we can continue to poke at it until we find what is wrong since we "know" it "has to to be there", but if science only produces the correct answer when we make it match the answer in the back of the textbook, it doesn't seem a good method for finding anything out.

I agree completely with what you wrote, but wanted to add something, which is a comparison between reactions to the Bem ESP study and work on the EM Drive (https://www.space.com/40682-em-drive-impossible-space-thrust...).

At some level, both of these are ostensibly bullshit. The ESP study results fly in the face of all known physical laws, but so do the EM Drive results. In the former case, you might say that the scientific method is obviously flawed, or that psychology isn't a science; in the latter case, though, you say "someone presented anomalous results that need to be explained," but we don't question the scientific process or physics as a science. This is even though in both cases, anomalous results were presented, people expressed disbelief in the results, and a lot of time and energy were spent trying to explain the anomalies. I think of both of them as akin to scientific illusions or magic tricks, where an anomalous result is observed, that is so astonishing, but in which a lot of explanations that immediately come to mind can be ruled out initially, and people spend a lot of time coming up with more satisfying explanations.

The Bem study has not really ever been accepted as evidence of ESP in psychology. What it led to were a lot of sophisticated discussions about Bayesian versus frequentist inference, and study design. If the response were to just dismiss things with handwaving as not being "real science" I think none of that discussion about Bayesian inference would have been gained. In the same way, I think it's safe to say that something has been learned about engineering phenomena, even if relatively minor, by studying the EM Drive.

Science as it is practice is deeply flawed, because, as you say, humans are flawed. But another issue I think is that science, even when it isn't flawed, is very unpredictable and often harder than it seems. It's not just that a lot of flawed theories were once accepted scientific positions, it's also the case that a lot of currently accepted positions were once seen as lacking in evidence or even preposterous. The hubris and gatekeeping that accompanies a lot of modern science is counterproductive not only because it's naive and disingenuous, but also because in many ways it shuts down systematic discussion, which constitutes the scientific process itself.

> The scientific method as it is practiced is deeply flawed.

That's a controversial statement, and I'd have to disagree with that.

> Being critical of the scientific method is not only important, it is necessary. The temptation throughout human history is to find some "holy grail" that will lift humanity beyond its current vantage point.

That's a true and important point. However, it's also important that the critique be logical and well constructed. This article makes a number of logical fallacies, and is political in nature. It's using age old science denial tricks to sow doubt, rather than improve the scientific method in any actionable way.

This article is literal nonsense from start to finish without a single compelling or novel point.

The question at hand makes sense: it is rather hard (impossible?) to distinguish clearly and with a perfect model what is pure science and what is not. Like everything in life, separating the whole world in a single dichotomic variable (science/not science) will yield disappointing results.

But the whole article is built on failed sociological theories brought back from the dead. The science wars are over[1] and the realists won, because studying (real) science with cultural studies tools is impotent. That guy just didn't get the memo or is playing deaf because it is pleasing the conservative agenda.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars "Writing about these developments in the context of global warming, Bruno Latour noted that "dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives. Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies? Is it enough to say that we did not really mean what we said?"

You get that this is basically a book review of "Lost in Math" and "The Secret Life of Science", right?

I’m actually starting to worry about how much of this type of anti science stuff is getting pushed. It really feels like a campaign of some sort.

I'm more worried about the science zealots who try to push some faux purity test on legitimate scientific pursuits

Can you give me an example? Is intelligent design your example of legitimate scientific pursuits?

You're way overposting in this thread and turning it into a mediocre flamewar. Please stop. We don't need bickering about 'intelligent design' or 'Bill Nye'. Those topics are extremely well covered elsewhere, and HN is for things that haven't been repeated a million times. Let me put it this way: if it would sound repetitive on Reddit, it's definitely off topic for HN.

It's clear you didn't like the article, and that was clear a dozen or two comments ago.

You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ve spoken with the moderators and won’t continue. I did flag the article now, not because I didn’t like it, but because I genuinely think it’s off topic and meant to insight political flame wars. I also genuinely want HN users to be aware of subtle disinformation campaigns that seem to be growing in social media from the alt-right.

Sorry for exacerbating it. Won’t happen again.

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