When do we have a scientific fact?
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When do we have a scientific fact?
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Re: When do we have a scientific fact?
#2I think that the mechanism of the universe is a black box. We can provide inputs and get outputs to build confidence of how we think it works, but we can’t ever know conclusively.
That is, unless we escape the simulation and evaluate the mechanism’s implementation.
I think anything else is just semantics.
Re: When do we have a scientific fact?
#3>The story is a long one, but for now let’s skip to the end: future-proof, established scientific facts can be identified via a solid (>95%) international scientific consensus, born of scientific labour, in a community that is large and diverse. In the entire history of science, no claim meeting these criteria has ever been overturned, despite enormous opportunity for that to happen (if it were ever going to happen).
Newtonian physics stood for hundreds of years, and we now understand it to be an approximation of quantum mechanics. It's still useful, but merely useful. Do not mistake "useful" for "true."
Re: When do we have a scientific fact?
#4>The story is a long one, but for now let’s skip to the end: future-proof, established scientific facts can be identified via a solid (>95%) international scientific consensus, born of scientific labour, in a community that is large and diverse. In the entire history of science, no claim meeting these criteria has ever been overturned, despite enormous opportunity for that to happen (if it were ever going to happen).…
Newtonian Physics is not a fact, but a whole theory. I think that the author is talking about facts within a theory.
Re: When do we have a scientific fact?
#5>The story is a long one, but for now let’s skip to the end: future-proof, established scientific facts can be identified via a solid (>95%) international scientific consensus, born of scientific labour, in a community that is large and diverse. In the entire history of science, no claim meeting these criteria has ever been overturned, despite enormous opportunity for that to happen (if it were ever going to happen).…
Your distinction is not useful for someone who needs help understanding what qualifies as "fact as we know it".
It could easily be misconstrued as a counter example to the quote in the article, which it is only in the strictest, most pedantic sense. In any reasonable interpretation, Newtonian Physics is still true.
Re: When do we have a scientific fact?
#6Since the article doesn't mention the word 'experiment' once I doubt it's even discussing science but rather 'scientific orthodoxy' which is something else entirely and should never be categorised as 'fact'.
Re: When do we have a scientific fact?
#7>The story is a long one, but for now let’s skip to the end: future-proof, established scientific facts can be identified via a solid (>95%) international scientific consensus, born of scientific labour, in a community that is large and diverse. In the entire history of science, no claim meeting these criteria has ever been overturned, despite enormous opportunity for that to happen (if it were ever going to happen).…
Your example isn't great because newtonian physics is still correct and used everywhere.
I agree with your point, reality is certainly not statistical, and e.g. there would have been circles in which heliocentricity or a flat earth or some pre-germ theory of disease would have been agreed upon fact. Arguing that those aren't science is hindsight, at the time they would have been learned consensus.
Re: When do we have a scientific fact?
#8>The story is a long one, but for now let’s skip to the end: future-proof, established scientific facts can be identified via a solid (>95%) international scientific consensus, born of scientific labour, in a community that is large and diverse. In the entire history of science, no claim meeting these criteria has ever been overturned, despite enormous opportunity for that to happen (if it were ever going to happen).…
If you can prove such a link between newtonian/relativity and quantum mechanics there are many many prizes in your future. The core problem is that both do not meet up. There is no link. They are both descriptions of observed phenomena, neither being any more or less an approximation the other.
Re: When do we have a scientific fact?
#9The article seems to be making it's definition of "fact" as a guide to policymakers on what should be accepted as fact.
I think this is all a bit of a red herring. The question is how do policymakers deal with politically charged topics. And I personally haven't seen cases where more research or "science" is the answer, it's just crutch that people use to try and make their political point.
The article mentions climate change, which is a great example of something that's been scienced to death. The future is unknowable, there will always be some "we can never know" component to it, but that doesn't necessitate more research to find a smoking gun that will shut down all sceptics, not does it require that since we can't prove it, we ignore it. Some mix of balance of probabilities plus public will easily passes the threshold for doing something. So do something. Sequester CO2, build dikes, if the whole thing comes to naught, it won't be the most wasteful thing government did.
A pragmatic approach is what's needed, not some philosophical search for how we define truth, which just offsets the problem one layer and doesn't change the politics at all
Re: When do we have a scientific fact?
#10>The story is a long one, but for now let’s skip to the end: future-proof, established scientific facts can be identified via a solid (>95%) international scientific consensus, born of scientific labour, in a community that is large and diverse. In the entire history of science, no claim meeting these criteria has ever been overturned, despite enormous opportunity for that to happen (if it were ever going to happen).…
> In the entire history of science, no claim meeting these criteria has ever been overturned, despite enormous opportunity for that to happen (if it were ever going to happen).
Yeah, that's just not true. It's an absurd claim. Medical science is loaded with examples of things that had wide consensus (but...95%? Probably? Feels like this is a loophole in the argument...) which were subsequently found to be false. Consider just a few examples:
* hormone replacement therapy
* aspirin for heart attacks
* mammograms for younger women (Just this year, a huge RCT called into doubt the usefulness of mass colonoscopy [1], which was absolutely "scientific consensus" until now (you can see this, because the study was met with rather vicious backlash).
For a more basic science example, consider "The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology" [2] which, of course, was so "consensus" that they named it "The Central Dogma": genetic information goes from DNA to RNA to proteins.
This was fact...until they discovered retroviruses. Then prions. Oops.
This stuff happens all the time. The authors are either not scientists, or they're so blinkered by ideology that they're unreliable.