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Comment by qsera | Hacker News Reader

I am a bit sick of this narrative. That science can make mistakes is in no shape or form, one of its strengths. It is a weakness of the process.

The lipstick putting can be exposed by simply asking if you would not prefer a version of the scientific method that is never wrong.

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It isn't making mistakes that's a strength, it's the commitment to acknowledging and addressing mistakes.

Mathematicians proof theorems so they are always correct. Physicists don't have that privilege.

>Physicists don't have that privilege.

Then don't claim it as a strength!

Celebrating the mistakes is, as you're saying, perhaps a bit too far. But mistakes will happen, it's just the nature of the world. That makes developing a robust error correction mentality something that genuinely is worth celebrating.

No one celebrates the mistakes ... what an absurd strawman (qsera's). Rather we celebrate the scientific method that finds and corrects mistakes, as you say.

Your "scientific method" can only correct the "mistakes" as long as economics allows it. A wrong belief held "scientifically" will go on and on if there is sufficient economic incentives to make it go on....And it is the "true believers" of science that provides such economic incentives..!

So much for celebration!

Sure this "Muon mystery" that no one cares about financially could be corrected without much effort. May be you should praise the gods of economics to make changes that are in the best interests of humanity possible..

I don't understand this argument. Even ancient Greek philosophers could do their time's science because their economy allowed them to have time to think and food to eat and didn't have to go working in the fields. And they passed on their fair share of wrong beliefs that have been debunked only in the last few centuries.

It's in the nature of being humans. Or God created the universe and one is God and knows exactly how everything works. No wrong beliefs but please teach us.

>Greek philosophers could do their time's science because their economy allowed them to have time to think and food to eat and didn't have to go working in the fields. And they passed on their fair share of wrong beliefs that have been debunked only in the last few centuries.

Sure, it would have been much worse if only a select few had the privilege. Like if the king "funded" only those who said/stamped the things the king wanted as "scientific"...

No human process is perfect. Every human makes mistakes. If more people were able to admit being wrong the whole world would be a better place.

This is a ridiculous strawman argument that misconstrues what people are saying is good about science--that it constantly reexamines and improves upon its models. You're saying that it would be preferable to have an oracle that flawlessly tells us the truth, and therefore the fallibility of science is "a weakness of the process", but that's completely absurd, a radical failure of reasoning, as of course no such oracle is possible. Given the inherent limitations of finding empirical facts, and empirical generalizations that only hold because we live in a lawful universe (so far, and everywhere we've looked--it is of course logically possible for it to be otherwise, as Hume noted), science is a very effective and powerful method, the best method conceived.

I won't engage further with such bad reasoning and arguments that verge on bad faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49120855

Summary:

1. "Science" can only correct when economics allows it to do so. 2. True believers of science who are ever apologetic to the problems with contemporary scientific method provides economic incentives, and prevent real science to happen.

Hence my irritation with the "Celebration" when ever science makes a mistakes (an apologetic gesture to stop the loss of "faith" in science), because that is the unmistaken mark of a "True believer".

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