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Against Method

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Re: Against Method

#41

Post by didericis »

hammock wrote: post #39
stdbrouw wrote: post #13

To understand Feyerabend, you have to understand the project of 20th-century philosophy of science, which was to figure out the secret sauce, the one true scientific method, so that it could then be more rigorously applied and policed in various sciences and well-maybe-sort-of-sciences, and serve to separate science from pseudoscience such as psychoanalysis. In that context, Feyerabend was perceived as a total loon f…

It’s funny because those with a mindset - probably mostly unconscious and deeply engrained - that science (or scientism) is the one true method will feel “trolled” by these ideas and that feeling is apparent in the comments… When really the intention comes from a different place and requires a slightly more open mind to grok

There’s a more practical and tragic reason to desire a “one true method”.

Imagine spending your whole life working under method X. You study its precepts, gain practical knowledge, go out into the field and test your assumptions. Your desire is to end human suffering using method X, and build a better world where good triumphs over evil and everyone can pursue their bliss.

But you must sacrifice in order for method X to work. The precepts demand you honor the gods. If you are an Aztec, you end up with pyramids covered in blood and tens of thousands dead, but are still woefully unprepared for disease and Europeans, your people suffer immensely and are virtually extinguished, and you die realizing your method was wrong and your sacrifices were in vain.

You can avoid that with a meta method that helps you select proper methods.

The amount of human suffering that can be avoided if people are able to distinguish the effectiveness of method X from method Y is extreme. That is where the hard earned victories of modernity come from. Science is the preeminent comparative meta method that identifies which methods are most effective at alleviating human suffering and people are right to uphold it (and to distinguish it from scientism/confusion with scientific bureaucracy)

There is no universal, rule based, propositional method of betterment, but to give up on the idea of any method being objectively better than another is to give up on the idea of meta negotiation and the pursuit of universal peace and prosperity. The pursuit is worthwhile, even if it may not be fully achieved in billions or trillions of years and may be more of an art than a system of computation.

Re: Against Method

#42

Post by redavni »

gumby wrote: post #33
PaulHoule wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of it there is the awful truth that the ‘scientific method’ is not really practiced. In junior high school I remember getting taught about the scientific method, particularly the use of controls. I wrote 5 papers and didn’t use a control in any of them (it wouldn’t have been appropriate.). Even in cases where people obviously should use controls, such as clinical trials, they frequently don’t. There was that p…

> Even in cases where people obviously should use controls, such as clinical trials, they frequently don’t. This is not true in my experience (I have designed and run pharmaceutical clinical trials in humans). Can you give some examples? Some treatment trials do compare the existing standard of care vs the new one rather than placebo against proposed treatment, but those are certainly controlled studies too. I do kno…

It is endemic in statistical studies based on medical data. They reach a conclusion that is statistically supported but never do the work to verify it.

Re: Against Method

#43

Post by culi »

PaulHoule wrote: post #17
stdbrouw wrote: post #13

To understand Feyerabend, you have to understand the project of 20th-century philosophy of science, which was to figure out the secret sauce, the one true scientific method, so that it could then be more rigorously applied and policed in various sciences and well-maybe-sort-of-sciences, and serve to separate science from pseudoscience such as psychoanalysis. In that context, Feyerabend was perceived as a total loon f…

On top of it there is the awful truth that the ‘scientific method’ is not really practiced. In junior high school I remember getting taught about the scientific method, particularly the use of controls. I wrote 5 papers and didn’t use a control in any of them (it wouldn’t have been appropriate.). Even in cases where people obviously should use controls, such as clinical trials, they frequently don’t. There was that p…

Right or the replication crisis. Which people often forget affected far more than just the field of Psychology. It's a problem throughout most of western science in general. And a big problem imo. Because studies are expensive and replicating those studies is nearly just as expensive. What happens when our idealized scientific process is literally just unachievable because we don't have the resources to carry it out

Re: Against Method

#44

Post by culi »

stdbrouw wrote: post #13

To understand Feyerabend, you have to understand the project of 20th-century philosophy of science, which was to figure out the secret sauce, the one true scientific method, so that it could then be more rigorously applied and policed in various sciences and well-maybe-sort-of-sciences, and serve to separate science from pseudoscience such as psychoanalysis. In that context, Feyerabend was perceived as a total loon f…

I would also highly recommend The Tyranny of Science by him

See this review for a decent overview of it:

https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-tyranny-of-science/

Re: Against Method

#45

Post by analog31 »

stdbrouw wrote: post #13

To understand Feyerabend, you have to understand the project of 20th-century philosophy of science, which was to figure out the secret sauce, the one true scientific method, so that it could then be more rigorously applied and policed in various sciences and well-maybe-sort-of-sciences, and serve to separate science from pseudoscience such as psychoanalysis. In that context, Feyerabend was perceived as a total loon f…

I'm a physicist, and read AM. It didn't overturn my own thinking about how to do science, but helped me understand my discomfort when non-scientists try to assert "the scientific method." Imposing a rigid methodology on science, that doesn't reflect the reality of how science is done, can be used as a weapon against science.

Over the years I grew uncomfortable with the fact that I could not track down any of his references, e.g., to Aristotle. I don't remember the specific cases any more, but still it was a bit unnerving.

Re: Against Method

#46

Post by cryptonector »

PaulHoule wrote: post #17
stdbrouw wrote: post #13

To understand Feyerabend, you have to understand the project of 20th-century philosophy of science, which was to figure out the secret sauce, the one true scientific method, so that it could then be more rigorously applied and policed in various sciences and well-maybe-sort-of-sciences, and serve to separate science from pseudoscience such as psychoanalysis. In that context, Feyerabend was perceived as a total loon f…

On top of it there is the awful truth that the ‘scientific method’ is not really practiced. In junior high school I remember getting taught about the scientific method, particularly the use of controls. I wrote 5 papers and didn’t use a control in any of them (it wouldn’t have been appropriate.). Even in cases where people obviously should use controls, such as clinical trials, they frequently don’t. There was that p…

- Incorrect use of statistics tools.

- Cherry-picking of data.

- Flawed or missing controls.

- Lack of replication, and in the few cases where it's attempted, failure to replicate.

- Non-publication of failures.

- Publish-or-perish providing huge incentives to publish junk.

- Peer review being an old boys club that enforces the party line.

- All funding coming from few sources that tacitly use their funding power to fund only those that toe the party line.

- So much basic science having been done by now that the remaining science to do is generally expensive to do, thus inviting the above funding / control problem.

- Dogmatism.

- Media attention.

These are the problems that plague science today. Some of these have been there for a long time, like dogmatism. There are people alive today who were taught that the continents don't move, and that noticing that South America and Africa fit together and concluding that they must have moved is nonsense of the highest order. There are people alive today whose treatment for Polio was not physical therapy but immobilization. The list of dogma, old and new, is long. The malign ways in which some lords of science fiefdoms defend their dogmas have not gone away in spite of Popper's method.

Re: Against Method

#47

Post by analog31 »

culi wrote: post #43
PaulHoule wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of it there is the awful truth that the ‘scientific method’ is not really practiced. In junior high school I remember getting taught about the scientific method, particularly the use of controls. I wrote 5 papers and didn’t use a control in any of them (it wouldn’t have been appropriate.). Even in cases where people obviously should use controls, such as clinical trials, they frequently don’t. There was that p…

Right or the replication crisis. Which people often forget affected far more than just the field of Psychology. It's a problem throughout most of western science in general. And a big problem imo. Because studies are expensive and replicating those studies is nearly just as expensive. What happens when our idealized scientific process is literally just unachievable because we don't have the resources to carry it out

A puzzle seems to be why some scientific fields fare better than others, in the face of the replication crisis. Why do we take Maxwell's Equations seriously? It means that replication, while important, is not the be-all and end-all of science research. There must be something else.

Re: Against Method

#48

Post by libraryofbabel »

stdbrouw wrote: post #13

To understand Feyerabend, you have to understand the project of 20th-century philosophy of science, which was to figure out the secret sauce, the one true scientific method, so that it could then be more rigorously applied and policed in various sciences and well-maybe-sort-of-sciences, and serve to separate science from pseudoscience such as psychoanalysis. In that context, Feyerabend was perceived as a total loon f…

The book’s great value is in dissolving rigid views of “the” scientific method. Feyerabend‘s simple challenge is: if you claim you have a model of the scientific method, I can always find a historical example of someone (Galileo, Einstein, etc.) needing to break the rules of that method to make scientific progress. That’s it.

I think it could have been written in a less provocative and eccentric way. Feyerabend had a certain rhetorical style that tends to get some folks unnecessarily riled up. Rewrite the core argument in a plain and simple way and I agree most working scientists wouldn’t have a whole lot to object to (remember Feyerabend was writing against other Philosophers). Some working scientists have been inspired by the book, though. Here’s a great quote from physicist Lee Smolin:

> What Feyerabend's book said to me was: Look, kid, stop dreaming! Science is not philosophers sitting in clouds. It is a human activity, as complex and problematic as any other. There is no single method to science and no single criterion for who is a good scientist. Good science is whatever works at a particular moment of history to advance our knowledge. And don't bother me with how to define progress — define it any way you like and this is still true.

> From Feyerabend, I learned that progress sometimes requires deep philosophical thinking, but most often it does not. It is mostly furthered by opportunistic people who cut corners, exaggerating what they know and have accomplished. Galileo was one of these; many of his arguments were wrong, and his opponents — the well-educated, philosophically reflective Jesuit astronomers of the time — easily punched holes in his thinking. Nevertheless, he was right and they were wrong.

> What I also learned from Feyerabend is that no a priori argument can tell us what will work in all circumstances. What works to advance science at one moment will be wrong at another. And I learned one more thing from his stories of Galileo: You have to fight for what you believe.

Re: Against Method

#49

Post by culi »

I think ultimately the biggest problem science has is the type of thinking that fuel's things like "Occam's razor". It's the same reason why things like Euclid's 5th Postulate (the Parallel postulate) puzzled so many mathematicians for so many years. It wasn't till the 19th century that non-Euclidean geometries were finally considered, but it seems pretty obvious in hindsight given how rare flat 2d planes actually are in nature

The common metaphor given for Occam's razor is a field with some random dots plotted. Those points are "evidence" and drawing a shape around them is a "theory" or hypothesis. Then a shape that encapsulates those dots is said to be the most preferred theory when compared to something like a rabbit or some other arbitrary shape

But there is an inherent assumption there about what the plane looks like. It's entirely possible that the geometry on which those points of evidence lie actually lends itself to where drawing a rabbit around all those points actually IS the "simplest" assumption

The are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. But there's a fourth category: ideology. The unknown knowns

In my view, it's this 4th category that ultimately dooms science. Science is ultimately cultural and there's no way around that. Our institutional science is always looking at analyzing outwardly: gathering more and more data; but just as important is analyzing inwardly. Being self-critical about our invisible assumptions.

We can never fully absolve ourselves of unknown knowns, but I do believe in a "more perfect" mission. One in which we always accept we're imperfect but working towards a closer vision. But to work towards this, we need to not only analyze the dots, but also the geometries on which we place those dots

Re: Against Method

#50

Post by PaulHoule »

gumby wrote: post #33
PaulHoule wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of it there is the awful truth that the ‘scientific method’ is not really practiced. In junior high school I remember getting taught about the scientific method, particularly the use of controls. I wrote 5 papers and didn’t use a control in any of them (it wouldn’t have been appropriate.). Even in cases where people obviously should use controls, such as clinical trials, they frequently don’t. There was that p…

> Even in cases where people obviously should use controls, such as clinical trials, they frequently don’t. This is not true in my experience (I have designed and run pharmaceutical clinical trials in humans). Can you give some examples? Some treatment trials do compare the existing standard of care vs the new one rather than placebo against proposed treatment, but those are certainly controlled studies too. I do kno…

Definitely you want to use controls if you want regulators to take your work seriously. A lot of stuff gets found on pubmed that isn't meant for regulators and it doesn't.
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