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> This is antithetical to science. If you're promising a breakthrough discovery, you're approaching the experiment with bias. You're mixing two uses of the wor
by IanCal 9y ago
> This is antithetical to science. If you're promising a breakthrough discovery, you're approaching the experiment with bias.
You're mixing two uses of the word promise here.
One is like a guarantee. I promise to deliver a breakthrough.
Another is an expectation. There is the promise of a breakthrough.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/promise https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/promise
The statement here means simply that there could be a breakthrough discovery and that the chances are at least relatively high.
- kerkeslager 9y agoI'm not sure that matters: either use of the word is a form of bias.
- IanCal 9y agoIt is absolutely not a form of bias in the experiments (it is of course technically a bias in which experiments are funded, but this does not affect the integrity of the results). Promising a breakthrough means I must either be lucky or force my results towards something that sounds good. That is bias. Having an experiment where there is promise of a breakthrough simply means my experiment could deliver something huge. I could fling Fabergé eggs at a wall and it'd be expensive but exceptionally unlikely to reveal anything big. Testing the warmth of fires lit with Rembrandts would be similarly unenlightening but expensive. Firing particles at each other at energies we've never tested before with newly designed detectors has a chance of a breakthrough (however you choose to define a breakthrough). Picking the latter over the former because it can give a breakthrough does not mean the experiments done with it are biased.