Hacker News Reader

> So their theory is incomplete as of yet. That's not good.

I hard disagree. Your comment to me reads as if a paper should either prove a new theory or disprove an existing theory.

However, publishing new results without a clear understanding of how it works is just as valid and this seems to be that. In Phsyics and Astronomy, new observations are often published without a theory of how it works. This is not a bad thing, that is part of the collaborative nature of science. The same holds true for papers suggesting a new theory, but lacking either observational or theoretical proof.

These flaws aren't failings of the article, but univeral to science, knowledge, and human endeavor:

> Either it is correct; or it is not. Perhaps it is somewhat correct, but then it may not be fully correct, so it would contain wrong information.

This describes all science and all knowledge; if that's not good enough, nothing is good enough. Everything somewhat correct and somewhat incorrect; the best stuff is much more of the former. Newton's Laws are mostly correct, somewhat incorrect.

> science does not really work well when it is based on speculation

Speculation is the foundation of science: it leads to an hypothesis, which leads to research, which leads to more speculation.

> their theory is incomplete as of yet. That's not good.

That also is the nature of all science. For example, papers include analyses of their own blind spots and weaknesses, and end with suggestions for further research by others.

> There are examples of where theories were lateron shown to be wrong.

That's also part of science and all human endeavor. If you disallow that, we might as well go back to being illiterate - everything we read is flawed, and inevitably some is wrong.

There is plenty of room in science for research that is just to examine and collect data. I don't understand your argument that science should only be to demonstrate claims and "completing" theories. Is science not about experimenting to slowly form a more complete understanding about how our world works? Research that does little more than collect novel data and show probable correlations is still extremely valuable.

Detecting an effect is present is separate from effect power and mechanism. Showing an effect is present is usually the first step before the other two.

> Either it is correct; or it is not. Perhaps it is somewhat correct, but then it may not be fully correct, so it would contain wrong information.

I don't understand your criticism.

It makes complete sense that the researchers are worried about the research being oversold. It's routine for media to take a scientific finding and grossly exaggerate its impact, i.e. "New research proves you can exercise your way to a fit child" or whatever.

This is science, we don't know if anything is "correct." The more compelling the research, the more we can adjust our priors as to what is "correct."

> There are examples of where theories were lateron shown to be wrong.

There are also lots of examples where theories were later not shown to be wrong. What's your point?

Do you have an actual, concrete criticism of the methodology of the epigentic research in TFA, or are your just bloviating?