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Counterpoint: http://retractionwatch.com/ http://retractionwatch.com/ (Edit: now -- this, from the very bottom of the article, is disturbing: "If you don't un

Counterpoint: http://retractionwatch.com/ http://retractionwatch.com/ (Edit: now -- this, from the very bottom of the article, is disturbing: "If you don't understand why science has a valid claim to objective knowledge, and why undermining the belief in objective reality is dangerous not just to science but to society at large, don't disturb those of us who do.")

whorleater 10y ago
Retractions aren't an counterpoint against the article inasmuch as a result of the scientific process. Science is bound to get things wrong, and in a larger, grander scheme of scientific processes judging science by its retractions is akin to judging someone for their childhood actions. Science develops, learns, and moves forwards, and while that doesn't render it impervious to criticism, it should be impervious to those who aren't involved in it to a significant degree. Framed in that manner, I don't think the end of the article is disturbing.
- thanatropism 10y ago
  I will agree that retractions are a mark of honesty on some of the actors involved in "Science". What they are not is the "sign of contradiction" of catholic faith. Honesty is not enough to claim a priesthood of the fashion he wants. This becomes even more complicated as we leave the holy sciences of physics, chemistry and biology. We are told that the popperian method of posing falsifiable hypotheses is the only way "forward" and we attempt to apply it to the poorly defined questions of areas such as cognitive psychology -- and then become startled or blame p-values when we find ourselves in the middle of a replicability crisis where any given paper may as well be false. Because physics has such a hug on its unyielding realities, we assume homogeneous "Science" is able to claim an "objective", extra-social -- and ironically unverifiable, as we can't arrive at right answers from wrong questions -- command of "knowledge". But that's not a true view of the real world, unyielding as it is to our space-age dreams.
  - whorleater 10y ago
    You're completely right on that the generalization of science as an objective process onto itself is unfounded at best and dangerous as worst, but isn't that a sign of growing pains in science? As science progresses, both in the easily quantifiable and more abstract fields, we should expect an eventual progression towards a further, better measures for fields such as cognitive psychology. It took physics hundreds of years to be verifiable on a large degree, and we shouldn't hold relatively newer fields to the same standard, and scientist have to start somewhere. Unto that goal, isn't it more dangerous to stifle and stall newer fields because they're experiencing growing pains?
    - thanatropism 10y ago
      > isn't that a sign of growing pains in science? Could be that; or could be that scienticians are investigating the wrong questions altogether in these massively nonreplicable fields. Face it: science needs to learn to (1) be open to criticism (2) become well-acquainted with the critique of science (as it's expected to be well acquainted with statistical methods now) and (3) help the from-outside-science "science studies" fields grow rather than nipping them in their bud for their still-infant understanding of the meat (rather than the processes) of science. Much like no one should be allowed to go into research with the poor grasp of probability theory that "p-value imagineers" display, no one should go into research while imagining they're being inducted into a priesthood of objective thinking. Maybe Derrida is a confidence trickster, but it's not him who's "stifling" science. If anything, the Neil deGrasse Tysons of the world are stifling open societal discussion of where fundamental physics is actually going (which is -- nowhere for about 40 years now) and what "scientific studies" as portrayed by daytime TV really mean. Scientific idealism isn't doing society any favors and isn't doing science any favors. Maybe it's doing favors to cynical tenure-track professors who need to massively oversell the meaning and potential impact of their work, but that's neither here nor there: graft and rent-seeking are as old as humanity.
jcranmer 10y ago
There is a valid argument that the postmodernists bring up that the author of this article (and science in general) seems to be ignoring. This is certainly obfuscated by the postmodernist tendency to misuse terminology all over the place, so it's best to use a specific example to illustrate it. Recently, as I'm sure everyone here knows, the LHC found the Higgs boson. Imagine an exchange between EP, an ecstatic physicist, and SP, a skeptical postmodernist. EP: We did it, we found the Higgs boson! SP: Why should I care? EP: Well, knowing that the Higgs boson means that we finally know that the Standard Model is correct. SP: That's cool, I guess. So you saw the Higgs boson with your eyes? EP: No, that's impossible. SP: How do you know it exists? EP: Well, there's this cool thing in the LHC called ATLAS. We get beams of protons to collide in the middle of it, and the resulting products set off little signals inside the detector. By processing the results of these signals, we can figure out what byproducts must have been involved... SP: How can you find that out? EP: Embarks on particle physics that goes over SP's head SP: This is the Standard Model you've talked about? EP: Uh, yes... SP: So, what you're telling me is that you've just verified the Standard Model by assuming that it was true in the first place? EP: ... SP: Walks away in smug satisfaction What the postmodernist gets right in the argument is that our evaluation of the validity of scientific tools to make observation is based on a model of how science works, and that, without care, you risk creating a circular argument that boils down to proving models correct because you assumed them. What they get wrong is the assumption that this circular argument is unavoidable, and that thus the entire edifice of science is built on shaky ground in the first place (ultimately being simplified down to "there is no such thing as objective reality"). Ironically, what the Sokal exposed is that the postmodernists were just as guilty of the crime they accused scientists of committing: they didn't criticize that which would have proved them correct. The message for scientists should be that you should always strive to make sure that the tools are working properly. If there were a serious bug in the code used in ATLAS, do you think that the scientists on the project would have been equally diligent in finding and fixing that bug if it made a Higgs boson appear where it didn't actually occur than if it hid the appearance of the Higgs boson?
- Natsu 10y ago
  > If there were a serious bug in the code used in ATLAS, do you think that the scientists on the project would have been equally diligent in finding and fixing that bug if it made a Higgs boson appear where it didn't actually occur than if it hid the appearance of the Higgs boson? Actually, the scientists trick themselves by injecting fake signals to avoid bias on their part. So they have that covered. They're well aware at how badly one can goof up when looking for a really rare signal. The statistical standards they set are incredibly high. The more completely scientists are able to control the experimental conditions, the better science works. Things like psychology end up probing an extremely complex system (our brains) with a lot of constraints on what they can do for obvious, ethical reasons. Add in a side of politicization of certain results and you end up with a larger amount of replication problems than you would in particle physics where we can carefully isolate effects on significantly simpler systems.

whorleater 10y ago

Retractions aren't an counterpoint against the article inasmuch as a result of the scientific process. Science is bound to get things wrong, and in a larger, grander scheme of scientific processes judging science by its retractions is akin to judging someone for their childhood actions. Science develops, learns, and moves forwards, and while that doesn't render it impervious to criticism, it should be impervious to those who aren't involved in it to a significant degree. Framed in that manner, I don't think the end of the article is disturbing.

thanatropism 10y ago
I will agree that retractions are a mark of honesty on some of the actors involved in "Science". What they are not is the "sign of contradiction" of catholic faith. Honesty is not enough to claim a priesthood of the fashion he wants. This becomes even more complicated as we leave the holy sciences of physics, chemistry and biology. We are told that the popperian method of posing falsifiable hypotheses is the only way "forward" and we attempt to apply it to the poorly defined questions of areas such as cognitive psychology -- and then become startled or blame p-values when we find ourselves in the middle of a replicability crisis where any given paper may as well be false. Because physics has such a hug on its unyielding realities, we assume homogeneous "Science" is able to claim an "objective", extra-social -- and ironically unverifiable, as we can't arrive at right answers from wrong questions -- command of "knowledge". But that's not a true view of the real world, unyielding as it is to our space-age dreams.
- whorleater 10y ago
  You're completely right on that the generalization of science as an objective process onto itself is unfounded at best and dangerous as worst, but isn't that a sign of growing pains in science? As science progresses, both in the easily quantifiable and more abstract fields, we should expect an eventual progression towards a further, better measures for fields such as cognitive psychology. It took physics hundreds of years to be verifiable on a large degree, and we shouldn't hold relatively newer fields to the same standard, and scientist have to start somewhere. Unto that goal, isn't it more dangerous to stifle and stall newer fields because they're experiencing growing pains?
  - thanatropism 10y ago
    > isn't that a sign of growing pains in science? Could be that; or could be that scienticians are investigating the wrong questions altogether in these massively nonreplicable fields. Face it: science needs to learn to (1) be open to criticism (2) become well-acquainted with the critique of science (as it's expected to be well acquainted with statistical methods now) and (3) help the from-outside-science "science studies" fields grow rather than nipping them in their bud for their still-infant understanding of the meat (rather than the processes) of science. Much like no one should be allowed to go into research with the poor grasp of probability theory that "p-value imagineers" display, no one should go into research while imagining they're being inducted into a priesthood of objective thinking. Maybe Derrida is a confidence trickster, but it's not him who's "stifling" science. If anything, the Neil deGrasse Tysons of the world are stifling open societal discussion of where fundamental physics is actually going (which is -- nowhere for about 40 years now) and what "scientific studies" as portrayed by daytime TV really mean. Scientific idealism isn't doing society any favors and isn't doing science any favors. Maybe it's doing favors to cynical tenure-track professors who need to massively oversell the meaning and potential impact of their work, but that's neither here nor there: graft and rent-seeking are as old as humanity.

jcranmer 10y ago

There is a valid argument that the postmodernists bring up that the author of this article (and science in general) seems to be ignoring. This is certainly obfuscated by the postmodernist tendency to misuse terminology all over the place, so it's best to use a specific example to illustrate it. Recently, as I'm sure everyone here knows, the LHC found the Higgs boson. Imagine an exchange between EP, an ecstatic physicist, and SP, a skeptical postmodernist. EP: We did it, we found the Higgs boson! SP: Why should I care? EP: Well, knowing that the Higgs boson means that we finally know that the Standard Model is correct. SP: That's cool, I guess. So you saw the Higgs boson with your eyes? EP: No, that's impossible. SP: How do you know it exists? EP: Well, there's this cool thing in the LHC called ATLAS. We get beams of protons to collide in the middle of it, and the resulting products set off little signals inside the detector. By processing the results of these signals, we can figure out what byproducts must have been involved... SP: How can you find that out? EP: Embarks on particle physics that goes over SP's head SP: This is the Standard Model you've talked about? EP: Uh, yes... SP: So, what you're telling me is that you've just verified the Standard Model by assuming that it was true in the first place? EP: ... SP: Walks away in smug satisfaction What the postmodernist gets right in the argument is that our evaluation of the validity of scientific tools to make observation is based on a model of how science works, and that, without care, you risk creating a circular argument that boils down to proving models correct because you assumed them. What they get wrong is the assumption that this circular argument is unavoidable, and that thus the entire edifice of science is built on shaky ground in the first place (ultimately being simplified down to "there is no such thing as objective reality"). Ironically, what the Sokal exposed is that the postmodernists were just as guilty of the crime they accused scientists of committing: they didn't criticize that which would have proved them correct. The message for scientists should be that you should always strive to make sure that the tools are working properly. If there were a serious bug in the code used in ATLAS, do you think that the scientists on the project would have been equally diligent in finding and fixing that bug if it made a Higgs boson appear where it didn't actually occur than if it hid the appearance of the Higgs boson?

Natsu 10y ago
> If there were a serious bug in the code used in ATLAS, do you think that the scientists on the project would have been equally diligent in finding and fixing that bug if it made a Higgs boson appear where it didn't actually occur than if it hid the appearance of the Higgs boson? Actually, the scientists trick themselves by injecting fake signals to avoid bias on their part. So they have that covered. They're well aware at how badly one can goof up when looking for a really rare signal. The statistical standards they set are incredibly high. The more completely scientists are able to control the experimental conditions, the better science works. Things like psychology end up probing an extremely complex system (our brains) with a lot of constraints on what they can do for obvious, ethical reasons. Add in a side of politicization of certain results and you end up with a larger amount of replication problems than you would in particle physics where we can carefully isolate effects on significantly simpler systems.