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Can you name one source of pollution suspected of causing health issues, that meets the criterion of falsifiability from evidence? It seems to me that as soon a

• lutusp 10y ago
  > Can you name one source of pollution suspected of causing health issues, that meets the criterion of falsifiability from evidence? Certainly -- I can name a dozen, each of them demonstrated using scientific methods. Asbestos. Ionizing radiation. Sunlight. Tobacco. And so forth. Each of these can be shown to cause health issues in vitro as well as in vivo -- using properly designed, scientific animal studies. > So we're always at the mercy of spurious correlations. Not for a scientifically educated population, which -- if it existed -- would reject this sort of pseudoscience. A recent example of a shaky correlation that will doubtless shape public policy is this one: Link: https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2017/01/shootings-us-schools-link-unemployment/ https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2017/01/shootings-us-s... Title: "Shootings in U.S. schools are linked to increased unemployment" Quote: "A rigorous Northwestern University study of a quarter-century of data has found that economic insecurity is related to the rate of gun violence at K-12 and postsecondary schools in the United States. When it becomes more difficult for people coming out of school to find jobs, the rate of gun violence at schools increases." (Emphasis added.) Note the terms/phrases "linked", "is related to" and the tendentious final sentence that tries to nail a nonexistent cause-effect relationship. Obviously the original study cannot support this conclusion -- it reports a correlation, not a link, not a cause followed by an effect. This is a practice called "data mining" -- underemployed researchers look for correlations between things, then publish papers describing the correlations, usually but not always with appropriate disclaimers ("Correlation is not causation, much more research is needed"), but irresponsible journalists then turn correlations into cause-effect relationships, as in this case. In popular articles like this one, the word "linked" is often used to magically turn a correlation into a cause-effect relationship, because it means two things are bound together and move as one. Coincidences become pseudoscience. > Consider cigarettes ... Not a good example for your viewpoint. Rigorous, double-blind falsifiable animal studies demonstrate the carcinogenic properties of cigarettes. > Yet, at some point, the observational evidence starts to pile up and one has to make decisions based on that. Are you arguing that we should do without science? Without the benefit of science, the U.S. concluded that Eastern Europeans were less intelligent than others, and a resulting changed immigration policy condemned a huge number of Jews and others to death during the Nazi era. Later, more objective intelligence tests came to the opposite conclusion, and Mr. Yerkes, the responsible psychologist, wrote a confessional mea culpa that nearly no one read. This is just one example, there are many. When we do without science, we should at least acknowledge that we're doing without science, and show an appropriate amount of skepticism about the conclusions we draw.
  • ced 10y ago
    Certainly -- I can name a dozen, each of them demonstrated using scientific methods. Asbestos. Ionizing radiation. Sunlight. Tobacco. And so forth. Each of these can be shown to cause health issues in vitro as well as in vivo -- using properly designed, scientific animal studies. Right, but then you're still assuming that whatever you've demonstrated on animals will hold on a human population. If that were always true, we would never bother doing studies on humans at all. Science isn't based on hand-waving -- falsifiable empirical evidence is required. Any number of assumptions like this have fallen by the wayside over the decades, undermined by overlooked correlations that weren't included in the original analysis. You have to make assumptions to reach a conclusion. "Humans are similar to animals" is one, and "There is no other cause that can reasonably explain this observational evidence" is another. I fully agree that observational data is often abused to reach sensational conclusions, but IMO when it is done correctly, it is a vital ingredient of modern science. Pearl's book on causality is basically devoted to this topic.
    • lutusp 10y ago
      > You have to make assumptions to reach a conclusion. Science isn't about assumptions, it's about evidence. People make assumptions every day, that's unavoidable, but we should be alert to the fact that it's not science, and be appropriately skeptical. We need to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. That's all I'm saying. Apropos: https://youtu.be/b240PGCMwV0?t=37 https://youtu.be/b240PGCMwV0?t=37