When do we have a scientific fact? • Hacker News Board

Re: When do we have a scientific fact?

#51

Post by becquerel » Fri, Dec 30, 2022, 7:42 AM UTC

version_five wrote: post #9

The 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 clima…

What if climate change turns out to be a hoax and we made the world better for nothing?

Re: When do we have a scientific fact?

#52

Post by BlackFly » Fri, Dec 30, 2022, 7:46 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #36

timr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Cons…

> Just this year, a huge RCT called into doubt the usefulness of mass colonoscopy [1] This reference seems to be saying that mass colonoscopy reduces the 10 year risk of colorectal cancer by a statistically significant amount. How is this calling into doubt its usefulness?

An ongoing theme in cancer research with regards to diagnostics is that a lot of the cancers caught by the diagnostic techniques would not be fatal. Hence, there is not a statistically significant reduction in mortality but rather a reduction in cancer. It is basically just saying: not all cancers kill you, maybe you are better off not knowing about the non-fatal ones.

Part of the backlash points out that cancer can affect quality of life in other ways and no one measured that. But either way, it throws the consensus into doubt.

Re: When do we have a scientific fact?

#53

Post by SllX » Fri, Dec 30, 2022, 7:50 AM UTC

version_five wrote: post #9

The 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 clima…

> 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.

They bring their professional and political judgment to a competitive information environment and use the fractional share of power vested in them to inform the consensus to make or not make a particular policy. That or they beat the snot out of each other, but either way what gets done in a given legislative session is the product of whatever consensus they were able to make, however they were able to make it, with whatever information was in the room with them at the time.

Re: When do we have a scientific fact?

#54

Post by timr » Fri, Dec 30, 2022, 7:51 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #36

timr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Cons…

> Just this year, a huge RCT called into doubt the usefulness of mass colonoscopy [1] This reference seems to be saying that mass colonoscopy reduces the 10 year risk of colorectal cancer by a statistically significant amount. How is this calling into doubt its usefulness?

There was no significant survival benefit. Just because you find and treat cancer doesn't mean you've made someone's life better or longer.

> The risk of death from colorectal cancer was 0.28% in the invited group and 0.31% in the usual-care group (risk ratio, 0.90; 95% CI, 0.64 to 1.16). The number needed to invite to undergo screening to prevent one case of colorectal cancer was 455 (95% CI, 270 to 1429). The risk of death from any cause was 11.03% in the invited group and 11.04% in the usual-care group (risk ratio, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.96 to 1.04).

This isn't the final word on the subject, but it overturns the conventional wisdom that colonoscopy is an obvious win and worth all of the money, time, effort and pain we spend on it.

Re: When do we have a scientific fact?

#55

Post by someonewhocar3s » Fri, Dec 30, 2022, 8:36 AM UTC

[dead]

Re: When do we have a scientific fact?

#56

Post by tgv » Fri, Dec 30, 2022, 8:57 AM UTC

timr wrote: post #10

Jack_Hacker wrote: post #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).…

> 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. Cons…

If you want another one: Alzheimer. The amyloid plaque theory was utterly dominant for 30 years. But the research led to nothing, the medicines that were developed don't work. This article was linked here recently: https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-causes-alzheimers-scient...

I'm sure there are theories in history, political science or sociology which once met the criteria, but are wrong. One of the things that (IMO!) is extremely important for something to be accepted as a fact is whether we can explain it through a causal model. The assumptions of such a model should at least meet the same criteria, but probably even stricter ones. A simple hand-waving explanation, no matter how widely accepted, should ever be accepted as fact.

Re: When do we have a scientific fact?

#57

Post by tgv » Fri, Dec 30, 2022, 8:59 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #2

I 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.

That's quite a common thought (well, since Kant anyway), but self-defeating in this context. We want to know as much as we can. Sure, there will be errors and omissions, but why should that stop us?

Re: When do we have a scientific fact?

#58

Post by 8bitsrule » Fri, Dec 30, 2022, 9:01 AM UTC

A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong.

⇐ Francis Crick

Re: When do we have a scientific fact?

#59

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Dec 30, 2022, 9:06 AM UTC

jll29 wrote: post #28

The article portrays Popperian falsifiability as a negative thing, when in fact it is exactly the kind of defining criterion that the author is hunting for. Except it is a criterion of a scientific _theory_ , not a fact derived from it; because the natural sciences are entirely empirical disciplines (today), theories can only be _disproved_ , not proved, by experiments. Progress - in the form of convergence towards t…

> I propose someone collect a list of facts

Didn't Cyc have a whole bunch of those?

Re: When do we have a scientific fact?

#60

Post by nathias » Fri, Dec 30, 2022, 9:25 AM UTC

The author doesn't really get epistemology, it isn't that philosophers are out there mocking geologists and think that such ice ages probably didn’t exist and are just “nice ideas”. We are trying to establish frameworks of justification with explicit and rigorous criteria that we can use to determine when something is knowledge, and so far the double negative (non-falsifiable) is the closest we can get to an affirmation of scientific fact. This isn't some whim of epistemologists, this is because the task is very hard and simple 'its the current year' rhetoric does not resolve the problems with knowledge justification.