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It is a grave problem in science that humans generally insist on putting ideas in to one of two buckets. Those buckets being the almost-certainly-true and almo

It is a grave problem in science that humans generally insist on putting ideas in to one of two buckets. Those buckets being the almost-certainly-true and almost-certainly-false. We need to be comfortable with allowing some, if not most, ideas to remain in the we-dont-really-know bucket for extended periods of time. Only then can we reason effectively.

greglindahl 10y ago
Huh, the scientists that I know and studied with don't generally insist on putting ideas into one of two buckets. There are a bunch of buckets. Go ask an astronomer what a "two tooth fairy" theory is: a one tooth fairy theory is almost certainly false, but a two tooth fairy theory is that squared. And yes, this is how people theorize about what cold dark matter is.
- jcoffland 10y ago
  Doesn't the two tooth fairy theory fall neatly into the almost-certainly-false bucket?
  - easuter 10y ago
    What he is saying is that there aren't two buckets, more of a gradient of what's likely and unlikely.
  - dmichulke 10y ago
    I think he just wants to say that people still see the difference between a one-tooth-fairy and a two-tooth-fairy where the latter lies closer to false on the spectrum of "falsity" So, yes both fairies still fit in the bucket but now it's you who put them there and not them :P
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    The buckets are labeled "one tooth fairy" and "two tooth fairies". Two tooth fairies are much less likely than one. The way this works is that you've got some experimental result which appears to violate the laws of physics. After working hard to make sure that it's not experimental error and the measurement means what you think it means, then you consider a change in the laws of physics. This is a tooth fairy. Is your proposed change ruled out by other experiments? Is there a new experiment you can do which will have an unusual result thanks to the tooth fairy? And so on. If, during this process, you find yourself needing a SECOND change in the laws of physics in order to explain something, then that's a second tooth fairy. You don't want that, because that's even less likely to be real then the first one.
deleted 10y ago
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angli 10y ago
I think the problem here is more nuanced. The first, cold fusion claim that they made belongs in the almost-certainly-false bucket; the many critiques of the work were decisive and clear. I'm not qualified to assess the merits of this new claim, but putting it in the we-dont-really-know bucket seems appropriate. The issue wasn't a rush to bucket, but not realizing that there was a second claim that needed bucketing.
TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
Ideas don't need buckets, they need degrees of confidence - which are a tool that research uses internally, but which have never percolated outside of science to the general public. When crazies tell you that evolution or climate change are "Just a theory" science should be able to point to a confidence estimate and say "But we're really sure about the evidence for them." With something like CF, it would have been completely appropriate to assign a low confidence to the possibility of sustainable fusion while assigning a higher confidence to the presence of unexplained results that needed further research. Something similar could apply to a lot of fringe phenomena. "That's odd" gets a lot more traction when you can dissociate it from "That's theoretically impossible so let's pretend it's not happening."
- beevai142 10y ago
  Incidentally, for climate change, the IPCC reports do define the words they use to indicate degrees of confidence, similarly as RFCs use MUST, SHOULD to indicate degrees of requirement. https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-6.html https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-6...
- poelzi 10y ago
  But somehow we still believe in models that have 30+ free changeable constants. Big Bang Theory for example.

greglindahl 10y ago

Huh, the scientists that I know and studied with don't generally insist on putting ideas into one of two buckets. There are a bunch of buckets. Go ask an astronomer what a "two tooth fairy" theory is: a one tooth fairy theory is almost certainly false, but a two tooth fairy theory is that squared. And yes, this is how people theorize about what cold dark matter is.

jcoffland 10y ago
Doesn't the two tooth fairy theory fall neatly into the almost-certainly-false bucket?
- easuter 10y ago
  What he is saying is that there aren't two buckets, more of a gradient of what's likely and unlikely.
- dmichulke 10y ago
  I think he just wants to say that people still see the difference between a one-tooth-fairy and a two-tooth-fairy where the latter lies closer to false on the spectrum of "falsity" So, yes both fairies still fit in the bucket but now it's you who put them there and not them :P
- greglindahl 10y ago
  The buckets are labeled "one tooth fairy" and "two tooth fairies". Two tooth fairies are much less likely than one. The way this works is that you've got some experimental result which appears to violate the laws of physics. After working hard to make sure that it's not experimental error and the measurement means what you think it means, then you consider a change in the laws of physics. This is a tooth fairy. Is your proposed change ruled out by other experiments? Is there a new experiment you can do which will have an unusual result thanks to the tooth fairy? And so on. If, during this process, you find yourself needing a SECOND change in the laws of physics in order to explain something, then that's a second tooth fairy. You don't want that, because that's even less likely to be real then the first one.

deleted 10y ago

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angli 10y ago

I think the problem here is more nuanced. The first, cold fusion claim that they made belongs in the almost-certainly-false bucket; the many critiques of the work were decisive and clear. I'm not qualified to assess the merits of this new claim, but putting it in the we-dont-really-know bucket seems appropriate. The issue wasn't a rush to bucket, but not realizing that there was a second claim that needed bucketing.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago

Ideas don't need buckets, they need degrees of confidence - which are a tool that research uses internally, but which have never percolated outside of science to the general public. When crazies tell you that evolution or climate change are "Just a theory" science should be able to point to a confidence estimate and say "But we're really sure about the evidence for them." With something like CF, it would have been completely appropriate to assign a low confidence to the possibility of sustainable fusion while assigning a higher confidence to the presence of unexplained results that needed further research. Something similar could apply to a lot of fringe phenomena. "That's odd" gets a lot more traction when you can dissociate it from "That's theoretically impossible so let's pretend it's not happening."

beevai142 10y ago
Incidentally, for climate change, the IPCC reports do define the words they use to indicate degrees of confidence, similarly as RFCs use MUST, SHOULD to indicate degrees of requirement. https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-6.html https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-6...
poelzi 10y ago
But somehow we still believe in models that have 30+ free changeable constants. Big Bang Theory for example.