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I agree with the author that the public perception of science today is in a sorry state, but I don't think that a heightened reverence for authority (of any sor

I agree with the author that the public perception of science today is in a sorry state, but I don't think that a heightened reverence for authority (of any sort) is the way out. We design our scientific curriculum based on the philosophy of Popper, who was all about the scientific method. We teach that there are rules which lead to progress. There are counterpoints to Popper that don't appear in the modern curriculum. There was Lakatos, who said that scientific "progress" was more about regime change, and Feyerabend who thought that science was a fundamentally anarchic activity. If there were a little more Feyerabend in our curriculum, and a little less Popper, I think we'd be in a much better state. It's a scary step to take--to admit that all facts are alternative facts--but once you take it you find you're faced with the same old problem, just without the authority: which facts to use? Well, that depends on theories are available for the combination and utilization of these facts, and as it turns out, the theories that the "authorities" champion happen to still be the better ones. But we don't teach people to evaluate competing theories, we teach them to settle down and apply the right theories, because we have the authority to do so. It is that very attachment to authority that is undermining our ability to educate people about science.

pdonis 8y ago
> which facts to use? That's easy: the ones that are confirmed by experiments. Feyerabend was correct in calling science "anarchic" in that there is not one "scientific method" that will always point you at the right facts. Scientists do whatever works. But Feyerabend was wrong in thinking that, because of that, "all facts are alternative facts". It is possible to establish facts. You do that by experiments. It's just that there's no rule that will tell you in every case which experiments to do. You have to figure it out each time.
- __MatrixMan__ 8y ago
  It's easy if you're deciding between two masses for an electron. In that case you've already decided that some theory which describes electrons is the one for you--so in that context one is a fact that the other is just plain false. But it gets tricky in cases where you're deciding between facts whose enclosing theories are incompatible. Is gravity a force, or is it an acceleration? Each is a fact in its own theory--the more relevant question has to do with your situation: which theory is more useful? Your epistemology appears to allow for the absoluteness of facts to be itself an absolute fact. Mine doesn't. From your perspective I must appear to be out of touch with reality, and from my perspective you appear to be resting an awful lot on circularity. People have been having this debate for millennia, I don't think we're going to resolve it this year. I think that a more fruitful question would be this: If one highschool uses textbooks that acknowledge that the philosophy of science is not itself a science--and presents the various competing views, and another highschool uses textbooks that assert the absolute truth of scientific facts without justification--which highschool produces more parents that opt their children out of vaccinations? The nature of facts meta-epistemic, and therefore can't be a matter of knowable truth--in that domain, utility is all we have. The vaccination debate, however (I just picked an example from a hat, feel free to substitute your favorite pseudoscience) is a clash between two theories, one with great justification, and one with hardly any. It only persists because we don't educate people to evaluate competing theories, so low-effort alternatives appear to wide audiences as viable contenders.
  - pdonis 8y ago
    > it gets tricky in cases where you're deciding between facts whose enclosing theories are incompatible. Is gravity a force, or is it an acceleration? This isn't deciding between facts. It's deciding between different theoretical interpretations of the same facts. The facts of gravity didn't change when Einstein discovered General Relativity. All that changed was the theoretical model. > Your epistemology appears to allow for the absoluteness of facts to be itself an absolute fact. I don't know what you mean by "facts" if facts aren't absolute. Once you do an experiment and record certain results, those results don't change. That's why we call them facts. If you are claiming that those facts can change when we change theoretical models, I have no idea why you believe that. If you're agreeing that those facts don't change when we change theoretical models, then at least we agree on that, and then it's just a matter of me thinking your use of language is highly idiosyncratic. > If one highschool uses textbooks that acknowledge that the philosophy of science is not itself a science--and presents the various competing views, and another highschool uses textbooks that assert the absolute truth of scientific facts without justification--which highschool produces more parents that opt their children out of vaccinations? You're assuming that opting children out of vaccinations is necessarily a bad thing. But it might not be. Consider: when you vaccinate someone, there is a balance between two risks. If the person is vaccinated, there is some probability that they will suffer harm due to the vaccination. If the person is not vaccinated, there is some probability that they will suffer harm from catching the disease the vaccine protects against. In the world of half a century ago, when I was getting all the usual shots as a child, the second risk was demonstrably much higher than the first, because all of those diseases were common enough that the probability of catching them if you weren't vacccinated was significant, while the probability of suffering harm due to the vaccine was small (but not zero). But in the world of today, where all of those diseases are extremely rare--precisely because of such a huge fraction of the population getting vaccinated in the past--the probability of catching the disease if you aren't vaccinated is much lower. So now even a much lower probability of some kind of harm from the vaccine itself can justify not getting vaccinated. And since probabilities that low are very hard to assess anyway, it is by no means unreasonable for some parents to be unwilling to vaccinate their children without having to have any wacky beliefs. For example, if a parent has a concern about the mercury in thimerosal (a common preservative used in vaccines), even if the risk of that harm is low, it might still be enough for a reasonable parent not to take the risk. Note that this logic also allows parents to adjust to further changes, such as the recent increase in incidence of a number of diseases like measles. Such an increase pushes the tradeoff back towards vaccination even if there are low probability risks from the vaccine that haven't been fully quantified.

pdonis 8y ago

> which facts to use? That's easy: the ones that are confirmed by experiments. Feyerabend was correct in calling science "anarchic" in that there is not one "scientific method" that will always point you at the right facts. Scientists do whatever works. But Feyerabend was wrong in thinking that, because of that, "all facts are alternative facts". It is possible to establish facts. You do that by experiments. It's just that there's no rule that will tell you in every case which experiments to do. You have to figure it out each time.

__MatrixMan__ 8y ago
It's easy if you're deciding between two masses for an electron. In that case you've already decided that some theory which describes electrons is the one for you--so in that context one is a fact that the other is just plain false. But it gets tricky in cases where you're deciding between facts whose enclosing theories are incompatible. Is gravity a force, or is it an acceleration? Each is a fact in its own theory--the more relevant question has to do with your situation: which theory is more useful? Your epistemology appears to allow for the absoluteness of facts to be itself an absolute fact. Mine doesn't. From your perspective I must appear to be out of touch with reality, and from my perspective you appear to be resting an awful lot on circularity. People have been having this debate for millennia, I don't think we're going to resolve it this year. I think that a more fruitful question would be this: If one highschool uses textbooks that acknowledge that the philosophy of science is not itself a science--and presents the various competing views, and another highschool uses textbooks that assert the absolute truth of scientific facts without justification--which highschool produces more parents that opt their children out of vaccinations? The nature of facts meta-epistemic, and therefore can't be a matter of knowable truth--in that domain, utility is all we have. The vaccination debate, however (I just picked an example from a hat, feel free to substitute your favorite pseudoscience) is a clash between two theories, one with great justification, and one with hardly any. It only persists because we don't educate people to evaluate competing theories, so low-effort alternatives appear to wide audiences as viable contenders.
- pdonis 8y ago
  > it gets tricky in cases where you're deciding between facts whose enclosing theories are incompatible. Is gravity a force, or is it an acceleration? This isn't deciding between facts. It's deciding between different theoretical interpretations of the same facts. The facts of gravity didn't change when Einstein discovered General Relativity. All that changed was the theoretical model. > Your epistemology appears to allow for the absoluteness of facts to be itself an absolute fact. I don't know what you mean by "facts" if facts aren't absolute. Once you do an experiment and record certain results, those results don't change. That's why we call them facts. If you are claiming that those facts can change when we change theoretical models, I have no idea why you believe that. If you're agreeing that those facts don't change when we change theoretical models, then at least we agree on that, and then it's just a matter of me thinking your use of language is highly idiosyncratic. > If one highschool uses textbooks that acknowledge that the philosophy of science is not itself a science--and presents the various competing views, and another highschool uses textbooks that assert the absolute truth of scientific facts without justification--which highschool produces more parents that opt their children out of vaccinations? You're assuming that opting children out of vaccinations is necessarily a bad thing. But it might not be. Consider: when you vaccinate someone, there is a balance between two risks. If the person is vaccinated, there is some probability that they will suffer harm due to the vaccination. If the person is not vaccinated, there is some probability that they will suffer harm from catching the disease the vaccine protects against. In the world of half a century ago, when I was getting all the usual shots as a child, the second risk was demonstrably much higher than the first, because all of those diseases were common enough that the probability of catching them if you weren't vacccinated was significant, while the probability of suffering harm due to the vaccine was small (but not zero). But in the world of today, where all of those diseases are extremely rare--precisely because of such a huge fraction of the population getting vaccinated in the past--the probability of catching the disease if you aren't vaccinated is much lower. So now even a much lower probability of some kind of harm from the vaccine itself can justify not getting vaccinated. And since probabilities that low are very hard to assess anyway, it is by no means unreasonable for some parents to be unwilling to vaccinate their children without having to have any wacky beliefs. For example, if a parent has a concern about the mercury in thimerosal (a common preservative used in vaccines), even if the risk of that harm is low, it might still be enough for a reasonable parent not to take the risk. Note that this logic also allows parents to adjust to further changes, such as the recent increase in incidence of a number of diseases like measles. Such an increase pushes the tradeoff back towards vaccination even if there are low probability risks from the vaccine that haven't been fully quantified.