Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science

nas.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 265 posts

Re: The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science

#21

Post by scblock »

genericone wrote: post #14
lmm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we don't use science to make decisions, what are we supposed to use? Gut instinct? Of course science is imperfect, but it tends towards truth over time, whereas dogma and populism have no way of correcting mistakes that isn't just as likely to introduce new ones.

Racial 'science' was used by the Nazi's to justify antisemitism, eugenics, and everything they did beyond that. The scientific method is important to be used, but don't trust something just because another person believes it to be science. You need the hypothesis and the verification method. Others (all of us) have the obligation to challenge both the hypothesis as well as the verification methods.

So, 'science' not science? Got it. That was a pretty quick Godwining, by the way.

Re: The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science

#22

Post by [deleted] »

genericone wrote: post #14
lmm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we don't use science to make decisions, what are we supposed to use? Gut instinct? Of course science is imperfect, but it tends towards truth over time, whereas dogma and populism have no way of correcting mistakes that isn't just as likely to introduce new ones.

Racial 'science' was used by the Nazi's to justify antisemitism, eugenics, and everything they did beyond that. The scientific method is important to be used, but don't trust something just because another person believes it to be science. You need the hypothesis and the verification method. Others (all of us) have the obligation to challenge both the hypothesis as well as the verification methods.

[deleted]

Re: The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science

#23

Post by lev99 »

ptero wrote: post #15
rplst8 wrote: post #4

This is the exact reason I don't believe science should be used blindly to affect government policy. It flies in the face of democracy and is subject to falsehoods just like any other human endeavor.

The problem with this approach is that once you toss science there is not much left to inform policy decisions (religion? profit? personal views?). One less drastic solution may be to require a full disclosure of the process for all experimental results (to allow reproduction) and place much higher value in funding decisions on reproducibility. One particularly egregious approach reproducibility requirement can addre…

> doing enough "independent" studies until you like the result, then report that one study only

This happens not only in which studies get submitted to the public, but also which submitted studies get chosen for publication. Journals are proving to be a poor way to handle the amount of science humanity is doing.

Re: The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science

#24

Post by unknown_apostle »

ptero wrote: post #15
rplst8 wrote: post #4

This is the exact reason I don't believe science should be used blindly to affect government policy. It flies in the face of democracy and is subject to falsehoods just like any other human endeavor.

The problem with this approach is that once you toss science there is not much left to inform policy decisions (religion? profit? personal views?). One less drastic solution may be to require a full disclosure of the process for all experimental results (to allow reproduction) and place much higher value in funding decisions on reproducibility. One particularly egregious approach reproducibility requirement can addre…

Heuristics: use what has worked in the past and keeps working well enough today? You don't need to fully understand why it works. Aka "conservatism" in the broadest sense.

Re: The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science

#25

Post by emodendroket »

lmm wrote: post #12
rplst8 wrote: post #4

This is the exact reason I don't believe science should be used blindly to affect government policy. It flies in the face of democracy and is subject to falsehoods just like any other human endeavor.

If we don't use science to make decisions, what are we supposed to use? Gut instinct? Of course science is imperfect, but it tends towards truth over time, whereas dogma and populism have no way of correcting mistakes that isn't just as likely to introduce new ones.

Even if science were perfect it couldn't tell us about moral axioms or value judgments.

Additionally, using science and other expert judgments can easily tend toward simply choosing experts and studies that align with whatever policy you want to push for unrelated reasons, or outright seeking to manipulate research for political ends.

Re: The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science

#26

Post by mistrial9 »

Some of the comments miss an important distinction.. Science in the popular press, often refers to science versus completely non-science ways of forming an opinion or deciding policy. Meanwhile, science within a technical community, is subject to human error and manipulation, and relies on a reproducible result, as well as peer-review, to find answers to conflicting claims.

There are certainly non-Science ways of forming an opinion and deciding policy, in many cases totally legitimate. But once science is claimed, then of course it has to be subject to science rigors.

Re: The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science

#27

Post by peatmoss »

rplst8 wrote: post #4

This is the exact reason I don't believe science should be used blindly to affect government policy. It flies in the face of democracy and is subject to falsehoods just like any other human endeavor.

Absolutely. Science is the best mechanism we have for differentiating truth from falsehood when considering what is.

But science tells us nothing about what should be. That’s the realm of morals, ethics, and its applied (mis)application: politics.

Re: The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science

#28

Post by Afforess »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #10
Afforess wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The report (not a paper) is actually written for a lay audience and very readable: https://www.nas.org/images/documents/irreproducibility_repor...

It's a position paper from a conservative think tank and needs to be treated as such.

Ad hominem has never been a valid reason to disbelieve something. I quite enjoyed reading the report - it includes XKCD references and everything.

Re: The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science

#29

Post by marcosdumay »

jboggan wrote: post #8
rplst8 wrote: post #4

This is the exact reason I don't believe science should be used blindly to affect government policy. It flies in the face of democracy and is subject to falsehoods just like any other human endeavor.

Lysenkoism happens in the American and European scientific establishments as well. As an example I would suggest Ancel Keys and the cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease.

That's a bad example. It's a much more complex scenario, where the drugs that fight the expected cause of the disease does in fact help protecting against it. Confusing causality is very hard to solve.

Re: The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science

#30

Post by emodendroket »

scblock wrote: post #21
genericone wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Racial 'science' was used by the Nazi's to justify antisemitism, eugenics, and everything they did beyond that. The scientific method is important to be used, but don't trust something just because another person believes it to be science. You need the hypothesis and the verification method. Others (all of us) have the obligation to challenge both the hypothesis as well as the verification methods.

So, 'science' not science? Got it. That was a pretty quick Godwining, by the way.

Those views really were thought to be rational and scientific at the time they were promulgated, though, and Nazism was only their most extreme expression.
Post reply on HN