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To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

economist.com

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Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#41

Post by pdonis »

timr wrote: post #24

What a weird article. I agree with nearly every individual fact within it, but after reading it, I still don't know the point of the piece. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but given that this piece is mostly criticism of science the part of me that associates "conservatives" with "anti-intellectual reactionaries" suspects a hidden agenda to undermine science or give climate change "skeptics" something to point a…

the usual HN climate-change critics are in this thread, pointing at and yelling about how science is "broken".

I don't think the current situation in climate science shows that "science is broken". I think it shows that climate scientists have been too quick to claim the credibility of Science when their work does not measure up to that standard. (Climate science is certainly not the only field that does this: much of what passes for "scientific research" in the social sciences doesn't meet the standard either.) That's not to say we shouldn't be trying to figure out how the climate works; it's saying that you don't claim the mantle of Science until you can back it up.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#42

Post by crassus »

saraid216 wrote: post #37
timr wrote: post #24

What a weird article. I agree with nearly every individual fact within it, but after reading it, I still don't know the point of the piece. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but given that this piece is mostly criticism of science the part of me that associates "conservatives" with "anti-intellectual reactionaries" suspects a hidden agenda to undermine science or give climate change "skeptics" something to point a…

It sort of amuses me that there are HN climate change denialists, but there aren't really any HN creationists.

Hacker News has climate change "denialists" because climate models are terrible at predicting global temperature[1][2]. Once scientists gain the ability to make accurate predictions, more logic-minded hackers will go along. Hackers like predictive models with a good track record, a la Nate Silver. They dislike emotional bullying.

[1] http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/14/90-climate-model-proje...

[2] http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2157446...

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#43

Post by TillE »

saraid216 wrote: post #37
timr wrote: post #24

What a weird article. I agree with nearly every individual fact within it, but after reading it, I still don't know the point of the piece. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but given that this piece is mostly criticism of science the part of me that associates "conservatives" with "anti-intellectual reactionaries" suspects a hidden agenda to undermine science or give climate change "skeptics" something to point a…

It sort of amuses me that there are HN climate change denialists, but there aren't really any HN creationists.

It makes sense, though. AGW denialism is very much a part of "pro-business" ideology, because it's uncomfortable to accept things that don't align with your worldview, even when there's a mountain of evidence behind it.

HN has no particular attraction for fundamentalist Christians.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#44

Post by Mikeb85 »

saraid216 wrote: post #37
timr wrote: post #24

What a weird article. I agree with nearly every individual fact within it, but after reading it, I still don't know the point of the piece. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but given that this piece is mostly criticism of science the part of me that associates "conservatives" with "anti-intellectual reactionaries" suspects a hidden agenda to undermine science or give climate change "skeptics" something to point a…

It sort of amuses me that there are HN climate change denialists, but there aren't really any HN creationists.

Well, it's hard to set up an legitimate scientific experiment to prove/disprove something like climate change. The best we can hope for is observations over time.

Another issue that's problematic is that when you look at the archaeological evidence, the earth has actually been through several heating/cooling cycles. I mean, the last glacial period was fairly recent, we know the earth is warmer now, and we strongly suspect it was warmer before the glacial period.

Furthermore, no proper experiment is possible to explain why the earth is warming at the current rate, if the rate is natural or caused by humans, etc...

Questioning the human causes of climate change doesn't automatically lead to creationism, it's simply a rational question to ask.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#45

Post by capnrefsmmat »

I am sometimes amused to read failed replication studies which do not calculate their own statistical power -- so they do not know whether, assuming the original study was correct, they will have the sample size to reliably detect an effect. A failed replication then says nothing about the original conclusions.

Statistical error is a hobby of mine. The Economist mentions a few pervasive errors, but there are many more. I've been writing a guide:

http://www.refsmmat.com/statistics/

One amusing example is the oft-quoted statistic that 3 million Americans use a gun in self-defense each year. The true figure is several orders of magnitude smaller. Follow the link for more details:

http://www.refsmmat.com/statistics/p-value.html#taking-up-ar...

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#46

Post by aharrison »

pnathan wrote: post #26
aharrison wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, when most engineering-oriented people use the word truth, they (wittingly or unwittling) mean the pragmatic definition of "allows us to make stronger-than-previous predictive models about something". Most of the argument in philosophy of science circles strikes me as meta-interesting, not eminently relevant to the practice of science. Especially when dealing with psychology, a lot of those "what, ex…

That's a reasonable approach when talking with people who have sort of day to day experience with data and systems. Unfortunately, this doesn't per se hold true when talking with people from other disciplines. Some people hold truth as a platonic thing: it's either true or not true, and new research disproving old things implies falsehood , not a less accurate model. Tackling the elephant in that room, I'm not even t…

I agree and have run into that problem myself. Unfortunately, fixing that impression takes time and to my knowledge there isn't any real way to explain the problem with "Platonic truth" as a tangent off of a discussion around research journals, for instance. It requires a full step back and a couple hours of discussion to explain it at all, if you haven't been exposed to it before.

If anyone has any recommendations on that front, I am all ears.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#49

Post by NAFV_P »

vortmeester wrote: post #32
pnathan wrote: post #13

In my experience at the university performing graduate research - * Newness is prized * Replicating old science is not prized * Funding and papers happens for breakthroughs In software engineering - * many bugs in code creep through exacting peer reviews. Recapping the short list: new things make you money, reviewing things is error prone, replicating old things doesn't make you money until someone wants to rely on t…

As an experimental physicist, I want to point out that negative results do get published -- for example, much of the experimental work on gravity amounts to the showing of no measurable difference from theoretical expectation, to a high degree of accuracy [1] -- but writing the papers for them is much harder than writing up positive results. The reason is simple: you have to convincingly show that your failure to sho…

Nobody has yet mentioned a very well known negative result... the Michelson-Morley experiment, a complicated and time consuming endeavour.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#50

Post by timr »

crassus wrote: post #42
saraid216 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sort of amuses me that there are HN climate change denialists, but there aren't really any HN creationists.

Hacker News has climate change "denialists" because climate models are terrible at predicting global temperature[1][2]. Once scientists gain the ability to make accurate predictions, more logic-minded hackers will go along. Hackers like predictive models with a good track record, a la Nate Silver. They dislike emotional bullying. [1] http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/14/90-climate-model-proje... [2] http://www.econo…

It's quite clear that "hackers" don't understand enough about the research to make informed criticisms.

Cherry picking two measurements of temperature data does not make for a convincing rebuttal against the overwhelming independent lines of evidence summarized in (among other places), the IPCC reports.

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