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People treat science like it's a religious text, or a set of unalterable truths, and it's not. Science is a method; period. Science is a method humans use in

People treat science like it's a religious text, or a set of unalterable truths, and it's not. Science is a method; period. Science is a method humans use in order to produce a reproducible experiment -or sets of experiments- in order to collect data. The collected data is only as good as the tools we utilize to do our measuring. As such, when our tools improve, so does accuracy of the data we collect. There are a number of issues with this. The data can be incorrect, or incorrectly attributed as a causation instead of a correlation. The data can be manipulated in order to prove a bad theory. The tools can be flawed or not precise enough. The peers reviewing the data can be manipulated into consensus. The theory itself may be fundamentally flawed, but the inaccuracies of the tools used can seem to prove the theory (see: electron shells and superposition). Science -at its most basic- is a checklist. That checklist ensures that an experiment is both reproducible and as accurate as our data gathering tools allow -at the time. When our tools improve, change, or become obsolete our understanding must also. That's why to some people science always seems to have two heads and is double-tongued. As with most other things, education is the key to solving this bad-perception of science, scientists, and the data collected from experimentation and observation.

tzs 10y ago
By the definition of science you are using, wouldn't much of climate science, oceanography, geology, astronomy, cosmology, paleontology, and archaeology not be science? In all of those fields we have limited if any ability to conduct experiments.
- carsongross 10y ago
  It's a matter of degree, but to some extent, yes. The conflation of experimentally verifiable science and observational science (and, even more so, social sciences) is the crux of the issue. This is not to say that observational or social sciences are useless, but that they are less authoritative and more open to confounding variables than experimental science. People use the results of the later as if they have the authority of the former. It is quite useful rhetorically and, unfortunately, as is so often the case, good rhetoric wins. What, do you hate science?
  - jmde 10y ago
    Whole fields have been devoted to defining science; I don't think experiment is necessary to the scientific endeavor. Experiments in many fields, for example, often suffer from problems related to generalizability or applicability to real-world scenarios. It's a major reason for observational science, although not the only one. Problems with replicability have also been shown to be just as endemic to fields dominated by experiments as those more influenced by observation, if not more so, across different scales of analysis from the molecular to the societal. I think a better definition of what science is is broader, something like "logical argument based on empirical observations," although that too isn't right. I think the appeal of experiments is in line with that, to the extent that you accept that the experimental rationale involves a logical argument pertaining to randomization over potential confounds. The underlying problem being discussed in the article, to me, is the denial by scientists that science is fundamentally a human endeavor, subject to all the problems of humans: things like greed, deceit, ideology, and so forth. Scientists like to pretend that they are somehow above all that, which means they pretend it doesn't exist, which makes the effects of human weaknesses in science all the more insidious. We see this play out with the problems in academics, financial conflicts of interest, and so forth. What happens is that a certain cultural subgroup, already primed to be skeptical of science through their social context, recognizes the human weaknesses of science. They then make the mistake of rejecting science wholesale because of this. Scientists, in turn, often make the mistake of rejecting the notion of human influences on science, thereby placing undue confidence in their conclusions, leading to a lack of accountability or explanation when failures occur. Some degree of evolution in scientific theory is due to random variation, or lack of appropriate data, but some of it is due to human factors.
    - carsongross 10y ago
      I think a better definition of what science is is broader See how easy it is? Why do you hate a broad, inclusive definition of science?
      - BrandoElFollito 10y ago
        Why do you think that another point of view is "hate"? You used this word twice when faced with a different opinion.

tzs 10y ago

By the definition of science you are using, wouldn't much of climate science, oceanography, geology, astronomy, cosmology, paleontology, and archaeology not be science? In all of those fields we have limited if any ability to conduct experiments.

carsongross 10y ago
It's a matter of degree, but to some extent, yes. The conflation of experimentally verifiable science and observational science (and, even more so, social sciences) is the crux of the issue. This is not to say that observational or social sciences are useless, but that they are less authoritative and more open to confounding variables than experimental science. People use the results of the later as if they have the authority of the former. It is quite useful rhetorically and, unfortunately, as is so often the case, good rhetoric wins. What, do you hate science?
- jmde 10y ago
  Whole fields have been devoted to defining science; I don't think experiment is necessary to the scientific endeavor. Experiments in many fields, for example, often suffer from problems related to generalizability or applicability to real-world scenarios. It's a major reason for observational science, although not the only one. Problems with replicability have also been shown to be just as endemic to fields dominated by experiments as those more influenced by observation, if not more so, across different scales of analysis from the molecular to the societal. I think a better definition of what science is is broader, something like "logical argument based on empirical observations," although that too isn't right. I think the appeal of experiments is in line with that, to the extent that you accept that the experimental rationale involves a logical argument pertaining to randomization over potential confounds. The underlying problem being discussed in the article, to me, is the denial by scientists that science is fundamentally a human endeavor, subject to all the problems of humans: things like greed, deceit, ideology, and so forth. Scientists like to pretend that they are somehow above all that, which means they pretend it doesn't exist, which makes the effects of human weaknesses in science all the more insidious. We see this play out with the problems in academics, financial conflicts of interest, and so forth. What happens is that a certain cultural subgroup, already primed to be skeptical of science through their social context, recognizes the human weaknesses of science. They then make the mistake of rejecting science wholesale because of this. Scientists, in turn, often make the mistake of rejecting the notion of human influences on science, thereby placing undue confidence in their conclusions, leading to a lack of accountability or explanation when failures occur. Some degree of evolution in scientific theory is due to random variation, or lack of appropriate data, but some of it is due to human factors.
  - carsongross 10y ago
    I think a better definition of what science is is broader See how easy it is? Why do you hate a broad, inclusive definition of science?
    - BrandoElFollito 10y ago
      Why do you think that another point of view is "hate"? You used this word twice when faced with a different opinion.