The Decline Effect and the Scientific Method : The New Yorker | Hacker News Reader

The Decline Effect and the Scientific Method : The New Yorker

newyorker.com

25 pointsedo15 comments

I sense some vaguely spiritual concepts (often disguised as pop philosophy) that are being introduced into public conversations about science of late, probably this is a result of the growing mistrust and desire to return to "a simpler, more wholesome world" I've been hearing about. What the article cites as "cosmic habituation" is nothing more than thinly veiled anthropocentrism, an attempt to explain the behavior of complex systems with simple delusions of how human semantics supposedly influence cosmic reality.

The specific meme discussed in the article has been popping up all over the place in the last two weeks, and to give the New Yorker's editors minimal credit, they strain to eventually reach a balanced view in an effort not to offend anyone. However, some viewpoints just don't deserve equal consideration, and it doesn't matter how many supposed authorities are dragged into the debate to infuse it with credibility.

I worry about statements like "Such anomalies demonstrate the slipperiness of empiricism.", because while factually true, they serve as pretexts to mislead the public into thinking that scientific results are just opinions and open to a debate based on spiritual worldviews. Yes, models are almost always faulty, yes there are tons of results that turned out to be spotty or in dire need of adjustment. Science welcomes these faults, because they serve to point out errors that need to be corrected.

So some researchers discovered their assumptions turned out to be false, I get that frustration. But it's not a cosmic conspiracy. Articles like this one often play with the sentiment that "the truth wears off", it doesn't. It is really hard to define models that stand the test of time. If you're a scientist your goal is to find models that best explain your data. You accept your models will be incomplete at best, and have a decent chance of turning out as totally wrong later. No matter the outcome, finding new data contradicting the old model is always a good thing, because it's a chance to update it, to make it stronger, or to throw it out in favor of something better.

We're dealing with a number of complex systems that have complex interactions. It's hard to isolate factors. And even if you do, many researchers fail miserably at basic statistical reasoning when it comes to determine the relevance of variables. It happens even to renowned physicists. It's hard. But it's not the mysterious work of an anthropocentric cosmos. The universe really doesn't care what we believe or not.

> I worry about statements like "Such anomalies demonstrate the slipperiness of empiricism."

I found the end of the article very honest and open, except the two last paragraphs, which are indeed a little sensationalist and relativist (the sentence you quote is the first of the last paragraph).

The article should have stopped at "the decline effect is actually a decline of illusion" (perfect conclusion).

I take from this article that the decline effect is merely an illusion. What initially appears to be a scientific breakthrough is found out to be nothing more than (i) random noise or (ii) hype resulting from publication bias (publish only the positive results and ignore the negative).

I can't seem to find the link at the moment, but someone wrote up a parody patent on something like, Method and Apparatus for Converting Random Data to Publishably Significant Results. Basically involves taking an infinite stream of random data, sampling N points at a time, checking for statistical significance at the p < whatever level, and repeat until you get it. Obviously an unsound statistical procedure, but many corners of science follow something not that dissimilar from it: collect data, analyze it to see if it's interesting, and if not, collect different data and repeat.

This is not really the kind of problem it seems to be made to be in the article.

Science is model building, nothing more, nothing less.

Models to predict outcomes with. As long as the outcomes are predictable it's established as a fact.

But these predictions are always temporary that is the very basic principle of the scientific method as put forward by Popper. In other words you can never do enough testing to establish something to be universally true.

The problem with Poppers method is his tendency to see the scientific method as something with a direction. I.e. we build knowledge to gain better and better and increasingly more true understanding of our world.

The article shows exactly the limits of testing. You can even for a very long time and repeatedly have the same outcomes just until you don't have them anymore. We have no way of knowing whether our observations of various phenomena are universal or simply just some patterns that happen to be true for a limited time (even if we talk millions of years)

And that is ok. Just as we make assumptions in our personal lives that are true for some time until they fall apart. (housing market, pension funds, that death sure job, marriage)

Life's complicated and we never know what it will turn up with. I find that part of why it's great to live.

I don't think this is what the article is about. At least for physical and biological phenomena, there is some objective truth. For example, Seroquel does or does not reduce schizophrenic symptoms---the reason an original finding is "temporary" and wears off is not because the efficacy has changed over time---it's because it was never efficacious in the first place (and we were mistaken because of bad research practices).

But that is my point. Whether we call it objective or not is solely based on our practices, our observations. And these can never be completely satisfactory. The scientific method no matter how rigor is not telling us whether something is objectively true but rather that as far as we have tested something to be true it is.

More specifically I was commenting on this:

...For many scientists, the effect is especially troubling because of what it exposes about the scientific process. If replication is what separates the rigor of science from the squishiness of pseudoscience, where do we put all these rigorously validated findings that can no longer be proved?...

I see your point---my point is that this article is not a good jumping off point for discussions about philosophy of science or epistemology (bold title notwithstanding). It's about bad statistical practice. More importantly, it's about a bad practice that is well-known (at least among statisticians) and has remedies.

Fair enough.

Andrew Gelman has a great blot post on this:

http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2010...

In a nutshell, the problem arises from trying to estimate small effects and then screening results on statistical significance.

> Joseph Banks Rhine, a psychologist at Duke, had developed an interest in the possibility of extrasensory perception, or E.S.P. Rhine devised an experiment featuring (...) cards printed with one of five different symbols: a card was drawn from the deck and the subject was asked to guess the symbol. A [test subject] averaged nearly 50% during his initial sessions, and pulled off several uncanny streaks, such as guessing nine cards in a row. The odds of this happening by chance are about one in two million.

I think this is what happened: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn7-JZq0Yxs#t=1m24s (opening scene from Ghostbusters).

The point of "replicability" is to eliminate bias; but it assumes bias affects each person independently.

In fact, bias is also a cultural phenomenon and is subject to fashion. Some results are expected at a certain point in time; replicating an experiment with different experimenters ("scientists") at the same time doesn't eliminate the "fashion bias".

Repeating the experiment ten years later does.

There have been several articles of this ilk on HN of late. It seems to me that science and engineering education needs to focus more on the philosophy of science, the techniques of experimental design, and statistics. The scientific method as taught in junior high school is only part of the story.

The decrease could be caused by aliens or time-traveler coming from the future (or the distant past) ;-)

That could be the starting point for a nice sci-fi series...

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

I'm not sure what this makes me - but I'm always quite excited when I read something which confirms Hamlet's claim. I really want the universe to escape us - and I'm glad when it consistently does.

Having said that - does anyone understand the research on this issue? I'm going to remain dubious until I hear about it more than just from the New Yorker...

The only problem with Hamlets statement is that he assumes that this "more" is metaphysical.

The answer of course is. Of course there is more things that can be dreamt of in our philosophies. But you don't need to go meta for that to be true.

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