Desert wrote:
moda0306 wrote:
Desert wrote:
I think the author is correct that most people don't understand what science is. Wild speculation, like that of DeGrasse Tyson, is not science. He's the Cable News of science; lots of talk and little substance.
But I'm not surprised you found it annoying. How dare anyone question our culture's self-appointed voices of reason? So-called science (and I love real science) is our age's religion dujour. It's served up by pompous, self-important, lettered fools, for the consumption by the undereducated and uncritical.
Wild speculation? That's quite the accusation to throw at people, even if they're not practicing the degree of scientific method you'd prefer.
You're right, it is. But from what I've seen from DeGrasse Tyson (can I call him DT?), I stand by that description. Honestly, Moda, I see him as a force of evil on this planet. I know that sounds crazy to an agnostic, but that's my view of the man. You may not even believe in evil, but I do. And when I listen to DT assert ideas that are NOT scientific, and ridicule the very God that created him, these are the only words I'm left with. Again, I know that's nonsense to an agnostic, because I walked that road for 25 fucking years. But that's how I see things today. This little life we have here on this rock isn't a game, or a thought experiment, in my view. I'm not posting here because I love my own text. I see a battle raging around me, and to stay quiet is not responsible on my part.
Really, the reason I was annoyed with the article had little reason to do with the comments on NDT. The entire article wishy washes around with the author trying to claim he knows what science is, and that other people don't. So I'll go down my list point by point of why it was a garbage article.
First off, though, what he got right... The author rightly points out that certain areas of "study" (to avoid calling it (gasp) science), are inherantly difficult to do controlled experiments on. He points out a few.... economics... psychology... climatology... education.
To this I say "YES!" Somethings are inherantly much more difficult to do controlled experiments on, or the moral ramifications of doing so are distasteful. He claims controlled experimentation is the backbone of science, essentially. The scientific method, however, is a lot more than people trying to test something that can be done in a well-controlled lab environment. Beyond that, he loses it in a sea of his own partisan "truths" that he's developed in his mind.
1) He mis-defines science. Science is "the process through which we derive reliable predictive rules through controlled experimentation," he says. He also calls it a form of "engineering."
Nope.
The ability to predict an outcome is a trait of good science (think Haley's comet, something he probably wouldn't consider science because controlled experiments on comets in labs can't be performed), but not what we are trying to derive. Experimentation is one aspect of it...
control is a preference and a matter of degree, but sometimes we have to rely on natural experiments... We can't build a Jupiter in a lab!!
He claims that society is mis-defining it as the pursuit of "truth." Well, the most simple definitions of science
are just that, while the more detailed ones read more like... "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment," or "a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe."
These defintions contain the words "testable" and "experiment," but nowhere do they define science as engineering. Nowhere do they dictate that the scientific method has to rely on intricately controlled experiments.
2) He babbles about capital S Science and capital T Truth, vs science and truth in amazingly nonsensical and condescending ways.
So he thinks he knows exactly where the line between science and Science are? Please, enlighten me. Astronomy? Astrophysics? Quantum Physics? Any aspect of evolution (micro-evolution?)?
Is everyone who doesn't believe in the same science/non-science line that you do part of some wacked out religion that believes in "magic," as you say?
3) He gives too much credit to Bacon, and too much weight to the "experiment" aspect of the scientific method.
Bacon was obsessed with controlled expermentation. He advanced the scientific method, but wasn't the father of it. Bad experimental proceedures can be weeded out by the MOST IMPORTANT aspect of the scientific method.... Publishing and Peer Review. This is really where things get hashed out. Even if an experiment isn't as controlled as we might like (such as observing a comet in space, and reviewing historical data as to how it appeared to others in the past), the important part isn't the perfection of the control of the experiment, but the method of having your hypothesis, data, observations, methods and conclusions posted for all to see.
If your experimental proceedures are bunk, this latter process will be the best chance of revealing that, whether controlled or natural.
4) He's essentially laying out a poorly-veiled blame piece against liberals using bad information to affect public policy.
The underlying problem
is not whether something that's technically not science is called science and then acted upon. There are Austrian economists and Keynesian/MR economists coming up with different conclusions about policy preferences (and guess who's winning the prediction part of the game)... To the degree that someone is incorrect about which set of policies will perform better for us, THAT is the problem. Not whether people consider their side "science" or not. People are simply too confident in the assertions that they deem to be true. This has little-to-no coordination with those who use the word "science" to back up their assertions.
If economics isn't a science, then NEITHER side gets to claim it as a science. Some liberal economist advocating for a minimum wage hike might be full of it with his economic analysis. So might his laissez-faire counterpart. Whether economics is a science or not, due to having to rely on natural experiments rather than controlled experiments, is almost irrelevent. What's relevent is that even though the answers may not be as reliably verifiable by a group of thier peers, one of the guys is right, and the other is wrong, and FAR too many people have picked their teams because they think they understand "The Truth" with a capital T
.
To me, all science is is a very systematic form of inductive reasoning. It's all a bunch of observations & likelihoods, very systematically put together and published for all to see, that lead to some likely, but never 100% proven, conclusion. Controlled experiments put a very organized set of inputs into this equation to help lend inductive validity to a conclusion. Non-controlled experiments don't have that luxury, but we can measure other variables and ether try to account for them, or eliminate them as variables by collecting more statistical data. They have to build a longer inductive path to a conclusion. They have a higher likelihood of being incorrect. But this is not a binary trait. An experiment is NOT either controlled or natural. It's always a mix of both. It is a matter of degree. And this pompous author thinks he knows exactly where the line between science and non-science is, but doesn't really tell us, because he's too busy trashing liberal assertions (whether we want to call them "science" or not).
But as long as these people are publishing their hypotheses, experimental processes, data, observations, and conclusions for all to see, you have the ingredients for having bull$hit called. The problem is NOT believing one of these conclusions as "scientific" or "unscientific," overtly, it's simply beliving poorly-laid-out arguments as being true. Whether it is "science" is just semantics.
I see $hitty policy prescription conclusions from conservatives (and liberals) all the time. Methinks this author just wants to silence the evolution & global warming crowd with intelligent design and laissez-fair capitalism that HIS "unscientific" analysis has Concluded is True. Rather than giving us shitty definitions of science, poor historical perspective, and a few hit-pieces on public policy items he disagrees with, I would have loved for the author to actually lay out how to tell the difference between science and non-science, and some examples of things NOT existing in public policy that would help us understand the difference. Because if he'd take his logic far enough, a lot of astronomy is not science, because Isaac Newton couldn't build Jupiter in his lab.
To me, someone who uses every possible aspect of the scientific method to study something that can't have super-controlled experiments done on it (say, economics), and publishes that information, is 100x the scientist that the person who is a chemist testing polyurethane for his day-job, then goes home to brow-beat his made-up religion (assuming they just believe what they do out of social/familial convenience) and laissez-faire economics into his kid like they are Truths (or truths... or TRUTHS... however that works). Your ability to do controlled experiments in a lab does NOT all of a sudden put you above people that can't do so for their field of study, IMO. There's FAR more to the scientific method than perfect control over an experiment (which is impossible anyway).
"Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds."
- Thomas Paine
