Comment by jvanderbot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jvanderbot | Hacker News Reader

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We've gotten into the territory of just repeating ourselves, so I don't want to do that.

I will say that

> Again, you and the original poster seem to have this understanding that scientists and engineers from the mid 1800s to early 1900s are not to be trusted.

Is not correct as far as I believe. Instead, we're saying that there's no reason to believe any study until it has stood the test of time. The longer it remains impactful the better.

I am building from this statement:

> The scientific method works over a long period of time, but to blindly trust a peer review study that just came out, any study, is almost as much faith as religion, specially if you're not a high level researcher in the same field and have spent a good amount of time reading their methodology yourself.

Saying that textbooks from Maxwell's era had misunderstandings and bad information is not saying they are inept, it's saying that that is how it works, it always has and always will be that way. That's it, really. The fact that good science came from it is to be expected, and the fact that bad science existed is also not to be suprising.

I think you interpreted the statement about the 1900s textbooks being wrong as a slander against the entire era, which is not how I read it, and certainly not what I meant to imply by any of my comments.

>Is not correct as far as I believe. Instead, we're saying that there's no reason to believe any study until it has stood the test of time. The longer it remains impactful the better.

Upon rereading I agree, I apologize to you and OP for my misunderstanding. However, ultimately in general I still have to disagree at least semantically with "standing the test of time". I am not really familiar with the processes in biological or social sciences, but from a physical science background, any result of interest will need to be built upon quite quickly. Either some kind of design will be reproduced to improve it or use it, or in the case of a theoretical result it will be awaiting some kind of experiment to validate it.

>> The scientific method works over a long period of time, but to blindly trust a peer review study that just came out, any study, is almost as much faith as religion, specially if you're not a high level researcher in the same field and have spent a good amount of time reading their methodology yourself.

I don't necessarily disagree with this statement (besides the 'long period of time'). Though I would also say that simply mistrusting the result has the same issue, so the only correct way forward seems to me to be to act as if it does not exist until you gain the expertise.

>Saying that textbooks from Maxwell's era had misunderstandings and bad information is not saying they are inept, it's saying that that is how it works, it always has and always will be that way. That's it, really. The fact that good science came from it is to be expected, and the fact that bad science existed is also not to be suprising.

I'm not familiar with textbooks of that era as through personal curiosity I've only read a few. I would still like to see an example of such an occurrence to understand the context under which these treatments are discussed. If these fallacious techniques were widespread enough to be popular in textbooks there must be some kind of literature supporting them?

>I think you interpreted the statement about the 1900s textbooks being wrong as a slander against the entire era, which is not how I read it, and certainly not what I meant to imply by any of my comments.

I will admit to being a bit hotheaded in the initial response, which I apologize for.

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