The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back • Hacker News Board

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#351

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 12:01 PM UTC

notyourday wrote: post #348

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's the fundamental problem: how difficult is it to say It's trivial, which is why that's exactly what scientists are saying? What was your point again?

No, the scientists get on TV and into news media and talk about nearly guaranteed outcomes. When those outcomes do not pan out the scientists are shocked to discover that to the population they look like buffoons.

> the scientists get on TV and into news media and talk about nearly guaranteed outcomes

No, "the scientists" don't get on TV. TV selects some scientists who are willing to dumb things down far enough to be compatible with their business model. If you want to know what "the scientists" say, you have to read their papers and reports, and you might be surprised to find that they are scientists.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#352

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 12:22 PM UTC

charliesharding wrote: post #5

The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo. Think of the way people are castigated for not believing in scientific "truths". I see signs in peoples yard saying that "in this house, we believe science is real". As someone who has studied biochemistry for years, this kind of reverence for science is truly troubling. The one…

> The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo.

No, it's not.

Heck, the way the public considers religion today is closer to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo than is the way the public considers science.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#353

Post by pvaldes » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 12:36 PM UTC

ardy42 wrote: post #289

pvaldes wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Aristotle is still studied. Nobody pray to Zeus.

> Well, Aristotle is still studied Didn't Aristotle basically say a projectile will move in a straight line until it basically "runs out of gas," even though everyone who's ever thrown something can see that's not true, just because he thought it ought to work that way?

Of course he was wrong sometimes, not one or two times. He was wrong thousands of times in the 150 books that wrote. Scientists are wrong and correcting themselves all the time when a better explanation arise.

Lets take in mind that we talk about a man, one single man with not much more than a deductive and logical brain. No fancy lab apparatus or computers here.

This man was hugely influential in logic. Created the sillogisms and developped one of the first logical syntaxes based in the concepts of true and false. "if A is P (is true) and P is C (is true); then A is C". relationships among true and false in double negatives, predicates, etc.

Lay the foundations of economy as a science and economic though. We call it "economy" because one of his disciples coined the term.

Hugely influencial in occidental medicine. Medicine must be evidence-based, deterring magical procedures.

So called the "father of biology". Wrote the first comprehensive treatise about zoology, covering and classifying more than 500 animals. Wrote a similar treatise about botany (mostly lost if i'm not wrong)

Hugely influencial in development of embryology and teratology. Described systematically the development of embryo in chicken and other animals. Developped laws about gestation time and clutch size related with size of animals that are still vigent.

(Most probably) the first cephalopologist or marine biologist. Described the hectocotylus in octopuses and explained his function.

Deducted correctly that all things in the space were moving in closed orbits. Was wrong about putting earth in the center of all universe, and though that orbits were circular; but to be fair the first telescope wouldn't be invented until, dunno, more than 1500 years later or so.

Introduced the phylosophical concept of first motor, "if there is movement in the universe and all that moves is pushed by another moving object, there must be a first cause for the movement of all the planets and things in the universe". The pale ghost of this concept can be still invoked if you repeat "Big bang" six times in front of a telescope's mirror.

Not to mention the thousands of his phylosofical quotes that are fondly repeated still today in lots of powerpoint presentations and motivational posters all around the world.

"It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light" Harvey Dent? not, Aristotle.

All in just a man's life. The man was wrong in many things, but was incredibly smart, influential and prolific.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#354

Post by nf05papsjfVbc » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 12:50 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #42

dymk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion and science derive understanding about the world in fundamentaly different and incompatible ways. To call it religion is just incorrect.

As a scientist here's my take: 1) in the ultimate abstraction, science is a religion. It depends on the precept that the rules are more or less or measurably the same from today to yesterday to tomorrow. You can't bootstrap empiricism without begging the question, so, there is at least one item of faith at the core. 2) excepting this, science in the ideal is indeed a wholly different beast. So you could say it is thi…

While I detest the notion of science being religion, often I too have thought about your first point (thus I did make it a point to vote your comment up in the hope that more people will see it). Ultimately science does rely on one core aspect of things being taken on faith: that what we observe today will also be so tomorrow. It is in theory possible that everything is random and it's just a coincidence that all the laws of nature that man has come up with seem to hold up so far. At any moment, the universe could go haywire and perhaps we were wrong all this time and it's just random? This is possible of course but not a useful model for man in his attempt to understand the world.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#355

Post by weberc2 » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 12:52 PM UTC

savingthrow wrote: post #343

weberc2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A definition of violence that doesn't distinguish between a completely non-injurious form of discipline and an abusive, injurious form is not very useful and its proponents are willfully obtuse.

It is injurious. It causes harm. We know it causes harm. But let's go with your incorrect assertion that it doesn't cause harm. Try slapping one of your co-workers, and then in court saying "but it was a completely non-injurious form of discipline" and see how far you get.

Citation needed and I’m not the legal nor moral guardian of my coworkers. What a terrible analogy.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#356

Post by roenxi » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 1:15 PM UTC

lutorm wrote: post #303

roenxi wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if someone understands nothing about science at all, and worships it like a religion, at least they had the good sense of picking a religion that puts food on their table, makes their planes stay in the sky and makes them healthy again when they fall sick. Religion has proven capable of welding large communities together, and that sort of shared belief system wins wars. If you ignore the fact that the doctrine i…

I think the last 200 years of history has demonstrated that science is a superior strategy, but it isn't obvious enough to be hand-waved. If you're talking about wars, you really think a hypothetical civilization with a technological development level of ca.1819 would have even a sliver of a chance against modern weapons?? I think history shows that not to be the case. But I think that misses the point. The real issu…

The 1819 society would obviously be flattened.

However there needs to be a stable society to host the researchers (using the term loosely to include people who invent stuff). That is possible with extreme ethnic homogeneity, possible with strong shared religion and culture and possible with conducive economic conditions where everyone benefits from pulling together.

It isn't obvious that 'science' can fill that role if it displaces religion and we go through 20 years of hard times. A cynic's read of science would support the idea that we stab the neighbor when the going gets tough. Eugenics, for example, was once considered the scientific option until WWII happened, there was a lot of interest in the early statistical community in that sort of thing. Some bits worked, some didn't, but the experience doesn't paint 'the scientific approach' as beyond moral question - there was lot of suffering and some very divisive ideas came to fruition.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#357

Post by tlear » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 1:25 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #307

XorNot wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What in the heck are you even referring to here? Seems like there's a lot of context missing from this comment.

I purposefully kept the comment vague to avoid a dumpster fire. Basically, there are certain mental health conditions whose classification/categorization/etc. seem especially vulnerable to politicking, and if you take a dissenting stance on those particular conditions, you'll be attacked by opponents who believe the DSM grants them scientific high ground. You would know if it's happened to you.

Try mentioning any of that and you summon a lynch mob. That area of science makes cargo culting in software development seem like math. Utter joke. That anyone takes it seriously or actually does anything based on it.. surgeons during Napoleonic wars had more clue as to what they were doing.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#358

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 1:29 PM UTC

dnbgfher wrote: post #322

kian wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d argue that this is, in fact, a failing of the language of description, and that going back and refactoring terms and systematizing the folk knowledge of a given field would go a long way towards fixing the public attitudes towards that field. We should give more respect to people who make existing concepts easier to understand, or simpler and cheaper to prove or demonstrate. Then maybe we wouldn’t have to spend s…

I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding the problem. We do have a problem with nomenclature being fractured, even within fields, never mind between them. But that's not the problem. The problem is that when you get deep enough into how things work, things just get really complex and they stop behaving in ways and patterns that humans experience the world. They end up being things that cannot be simplified down…

Yes, that's the problem exactly - at some point we can't just use common sense and spherical cows to express an idea.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#359

Post by matthewdgreen » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 1:31 PM UTC

logseman wrote: post #342

matthewdgreen wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. You use sci-hub. Or write the researchers. Scientists don’t want to keep their work secret nor do they want a “priestly caste”, they want it out there and read. They work like dogs so people on HN can read and actually understand their work and not write about their political feelings instead. 2. Even if you’re not qualified to do the science yourself, you try to reject implausible ideas like the notion that there…

Sci-Hub isn't exactly easy to use or recommended by the larger community a grad student is likely to encounter.

If you're smart enough to use HN's interface, you're smart enough to Google/copy/paste a DOI string into the sci-hub website. Not a criticism of you personally, but right now it's absurdly easy to bypass scientific paywalls if you're even slightly motivated.

PS Scientists almost uniformly hate the predatory scientific publishing system, want it destroyed, and aren't trying to prevent you from reading their work.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#360

Post by balabaster » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #150

balabaster wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is a public perception problem. The reason that a troubling number of people no longer believe in science isn't that scientific method is flawed or that people don't believe in scientific method. The bigger concern is the way that scientific studies are mounted, paid for by interested parties that have conflicts of interest to produce results favourable to a desired outcome and then they're presented a…

I would say that an even larger problem exists. Among the public, science has always had some portion of people who understood it's processes as those of a secular priesthood and those who understood it's processes as discovering the truth through skepticism and experimentation. Even among this working scientists, this division has existed (and given a society that never discarded religion, anti-science along with an…

There was an episode of CSI:Miami (I know, corny, hyperbolic, whatever, it raises a really salient point) I recall a line where Caine makes the point that we don't find evidence to support a narrative, we chase the evidence to find the truth.

Too many of the studies today are funded to look for evidence to support a narrative instead of chasing the evidence to find the truth. The former is propaganda. The latter is science.

When I say too many, I mean to say that there are enough that people are very very aware of this. This fact alone is a problem because it damages people's perception of what is going on in the scientific community. If people cannot trust scientists to deliver truth rather than deliver support for a narrative, we have a problem. Whether this perception is fair or not, it is so.

If perception is that we cannot trust the scientists delivering the test results, nor the providence of the testing, then how can we trust the information we're being shown?

People need to see integrity before they can trust anything else.