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.
Science is not about today, it's optimizing over longer than human lifespans.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 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.
"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.
Read the wikipedia article on Argument from authority before making such comments.
Nice try on confusing the meaning of argument from authority though.
The article's agenda is being fairly receptive to the themes of the books.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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...