8 ms·

I think the opposite - hold the highest standards for the quality of the data and it's interpretation, but we need to allow the wildest of hypotheses to be test

I think the opposite - hold the highest standards for the quality of the data and it's interpretation, but we need to allow the wildest of hypotheses to be tested without judgement. Conservatism at the hypothesis step is the biggest reason science today sucks if you ask me. I'll say the job of being conservative belongs to engineers, and is one of the main differentiators between science and engineering. The most amazing discoveries even in the recent times often come from scientists testing some of the wildest hypothesis - a rotation student in Andrew Fire's lab thinking he's injecting RNA into the gonad of a worm when he was stupidly injecting them into its mouth, or when a young Yamanaka had no clue basically and did a random experiment in his new lab adding a bunch of genes to cells to see if they do something. I've sat through sessions seeing scientists laughed at for their wild hypotheses, by what I can only call as old, over-congratulated high school valedictorians who are only actually good at playing politics and writing grants, with a self professed love of science and discovering things that's as genuine as a Republican saying he is all for facts. Let the crazies risk their lives on the wildest hypotheses. Fund them as long as they are systematic and methodical in their efforts to prove them. That's how you make science take the leaps it needs to be truly transformative for civilization. That's how I intend to do science and I learned clearly that I don't belong in academia. I have no intention of even swinging the science bat if I'm not at least trying to shoot for the moon!

throwawayboise 6y ago
At the same time, labs and researchers and equipment cost real money. There are opportunity costs. There some good reasons to not spend money on wild conjectures.
- ramraj07 6y ago
  Sure let's spend it on what, MOD-ENCODE version two? That's super useful and curing cancer and tuberculosis left and right eh!
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Eh, you can allocate a percentage of resources on wild conjectures, since many of our biggest discoveries have been made that way. No need to shut them down and ridicule them.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    So do you pick the wildest conjecture to test, or one of the somewhat more plausible ones? And how much money should go into one before you move on?
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      > So do you pick the wildest conjecture to test, or one of the somewhat more plausible ones? 20% of the former, 80% of the latter. > And how much money should go into one before you move on? 3% of the available funds each year. Hope this helps!
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - boomboomsubban 6y ago
        >3% of the available funds each year So after years without results you'll continue propping up the one long shot you picked? My larger point is that you're treating this like there are just a couple wild conjectures that need just a bit of money. There are vast amounts of alternative ideas, and often the necessary experiments will not be cheap. While ridiculing them isn't right, the idea that obviously we should fund them is ridiculous.
        StavrosK 6y ago
        > the idea that obviously we should fund them is ridiculous. Ridiculous like feeding people mold to see if they get sick less, or injecting people with the pus of other people to inoculate them? The discovery of antibiotics alone has paid for all the moonshots you can fund, even if none of them work out.
- f6v 6y ago
  Yet the venture funds are absolutely fine with spending money on wildest moonshots that have one in a million chance of becoming the next Facebook
rramadass 6y ago
Exactly Right! I think this mindset is fundamental to advancing Science. One of the reasons i feel that "doing" Science has fallen out of favour with the public is because the "Researchers" are not being daring and brave enough to "dream up" far fetched hypotheses and in general not pushing the envelope. Most are just regular "salaried employees" with no great dreams/ambitions.
- sitkack 6y ago
  /s I know, most of the people I know came for the money but stayed for the science. Those "salaried employees" started life as curious people, yeah some of them might be looking at the world with a blurrier lens. But they were constructed, the system made those people. While they make the problem worse, they are symptom not a cause.
senderista 6y ago
How much effort do you think we should put into testing homeopathy?
- Kliment 6y ago
  Given the extremely wide evidence basis from existing data (there's millions of worldwide users) I'd argue no more than has been, and that the current data is sufficient to show its lack of effectiveness without any additional effort. But had the obviously-silly hypothesis (adding a tiny bit of something bad can have a good effect) been rejected from the start in a different context we'd never have gotten vaccines (which originate from a similar hypothesis in a different context). The problem with homeopathy is not that it's a crazy idea. It's that it's been extensively shown not to work and is still being pushed as a good idea.
  - Shacklz 6y ago
    > It's that it's been extensively shown not to work This is going off-topic, but I really think it depends on your definition of "not to work". If people essentially throw in low-cost placebos to cure themselves of headaches and other minor ailments, while believing that this is exactly what they need, I consider this a net-positive for society compared to giving them actual medication that costs more with potential side-effects/harms. Obviously, the fun ends when quacks prescribe homeopathy for serious stuff that needs actual treatment (in Germany, there was a case a few years ago where such a quack tried to treat his wife's breast cancer - obviously, this is beyond what should be legal). But for minor things that aren't too big of an issue even if left untreated, letting people use homeopathy if they're into that - why not.
    - hutzlibu 6y ago
      But it is known, that placebos work. It is also known, that placebos work better, if people believe; they are medicine. Thats why Homeopathy "works" "in Germany, there was a case a few years ago where such a quack tried to treat his wife's breast cancer - obviously, this is beyond what should be legal). " But this, I see actually different. People of clear mind, should have any right to choose their treatment of choice. So informing them on the best options, yes! Telling them of the mechanism of fraudsters who prey on peoples hopes, yes! But in the end maybe not forbidding them if they choose - for whatever reason - less standard methods. Maybe the placebo works in their case. Maybe the alternative treatment with the roots of plant X had by chance an actual unknown effective drug in it. Who knows. But I know that telling people to follow standards is not allways the best way. Btw. because if a recent case I know there are homeophatic cancer clinics in germany. So it seems to be legal? I know of other alternative cancer treatment by the very weird "Dr. Hamer" who cannot be practised in germany if the patient actually has cancer. And I think this is not helping to disprove scams. (because I know people who are into it)
hyperpallium2 6y ago
UBI can free scientists from grants, but democratization of hypotheses will become populistization. Also, engineering leads science at time: this works but we don't know why.
- mjfl 6y ago
  > UBI can free scientists from grants No it would not. The money necessary to find a lab is orders of magnitude higher than any reasonable UBI.
  - hyperpallium2 6y ago
    Some do, but not all scientists need expensive labs. Some equipment is getting cheaper too.
    - shakow 6y ago
      Bio lab equipment is getting cheaper as in $100K's instead of $1M's, not as in “can be bought with UBI”.
      - f6v 6y ago
        With the amount of computations you needs to do this days, no UBI is going to cover that.
        ajdegol 6y ago
        How about a co-op of scientists pooling money to rent the kinds of AI chips the big players are starting to put out? I’m sure there are holes in that argument too; but c’mon, this is hacker news. If we don’t try to overcome the hard challenges then what’s the point of this community? ;)
        shakow 6y ago
        > How about a co-op of scientists pooling money to rent the kinds of AI chips the big players are starting to put out? What is really expensive and complicated for now is “wet” data collections: it is a finicky process stuffed to the brim with very expensive machinery, consumables, lab space and manual workers. Computing power is not really a limitation nowadays, you can comparably get a whole lot of bangs for your bucks. Concerning the sharing part, equipment pooling is definitely already happening, at least at the local scale. And what is getting more and more developed is the “platform” concept, where some labs/teams slowly transition from doing research to producing data according to a standardized protocol (genome sequencing, genotyping, ChIP-seq, etc.) for other teams doing the research.
cycomanic 6y ago
The large problem is the limited funding. If there is only funding for 10% of applications and a large portion of the success hinges on previous success and your experience on this topic, then you automatically breed conservatism.
- bsenftner 6y ago
  This problem of limited funding is due to the unnatural influence of Capitalism and unnatural existence of too many billionaires absorbing the majority of what would be disposable income and tax revenues that would otherwise fund any nation's infrastructure, including federal science initiates. We're learning now the entire Texas power grid failure dates back to G.W. Bush's state government dismantling Texas power upon the council of Enron's financial advisers. The majority of our problems in society is due to overt greed and it's influence on key infrastructure - power, education, law, law enforcement, food safety... it goes on and on. This is the reason we have regulations, because without them the greedy would have us eating Plutonium Pops for breakfast, and washing it down with Petro-plastic Orange Drink.
refurb 6y ago
If someone wanted to test the ability to shrink tumors through prayer that shouldn’t be judged?
- f6v 6y ago
  If they could build a mathematical model and simulations...Why not? Seems like a low-effort experiment.
  - refurb 6y ago
    You’d need to run a double blinded randomizes controlled trial with enough patients to test the effect. And it would be wildly unethical to use prayer which by any reasonable understanding of cancer biology would not work.
    - ramraj07 6y ago
      Why does it have to replace therapy? One arm can be prayer + therapy and another can just be therapy
      - refurb 6y ago
        Ok, that would address the unethical part, but still, does that sound like a good use of limit research dollars? This is one of those instances where judgement is a good thing. Don’t run such a silly trial. Spend the money on something that actually has a chance to work.
- ramraj07 6y ago
  If it can truly be tested, then it should be tested! But how do you truly test it? Even if God isn't real, acts like prayer give you emotional support and that can have a very real effect! So if you merely want to test whether an act like prayer is effective, then that's simple and probably already done and also probably shows some effect. However if you want to prove that prayer in a particular method to a particular God is effective, that's tricky. If someone can design an elegant enough study then it should be tested!
sitkack 6y ago
The same exact process you painted has a direct analog in tech businesses right now. I think the problem is the hierarchy. A development organization is an amplifier that brings a new capability into existence. Currently, organizations have to get big to amplify what their qualities. But to get big to achieve its goals it needs to be hierarchical, and because the hierarchy and the practitioners are the same folks, the org structure becomes the product. The goal of the organization is to maintain its structure. Innovation happens when you have less structure. How do we scale, and maximize the organizational power while enabling create autonomy?

throwawayboise 6y ago

At the same time, labs and researchers and equipment cost real money. There are opportunity costs. There some good reasons to not spend money on wild conjectures.

ramraj07 6y ago
Sure let's spend it on what, MOD-ENCODE version two? That's super useful and curing cancer and tuberculosis left and right eh!
StavrosK 6y ago
Eh, you can allocate a percentage of resources on wild conjectures, since many of our biggest discoveries have been made that way. No need to shut them down and ridicule them.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  So do you pick the wildest conjecture to test, or one of the somewhat more plausible ones? And how much money should go into one before you move on?
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    > So do you pick the wildest conjecture to test, or one of the somewhat more plausible ones? 20% of the former, 80% of the latter. > And how much money should go into one before you move on? 3% of the available funds each year. Hope this helps!
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      >3% of the available funds each year So after years without results you'll continue propping up the one long shot you picked? My larger point is that you're treating this like there are just a couple wild conjectures that need just a bit of money. There are vast amounts of alternative ideas, and often the necessary experiments will not be cheap. While ridiculing them isn't right, the idea that obviously we should fund them is ridiculous.
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        > the idea that obviously we should fund them is ridiculous. Ridiculous like feeding people mold to see if they get sick less, or injecting people with the pus of other people to inoculate them? The discovery of antibiotics alone has paid for all the moonshots you can fund, even if none of them work out.
f6v 6y ago
Yet the venture funds are absolutely fine with spending money on wildest moonshots that have one in a million chance of becoming the next Facebook

rramadass 6y ago

Exactly Right! I think this mindset is fundamental to advancing Science. One of the reasons i feel that "doing" Science has fallen out of favour with the public is because the "Researchers" are not being daring and brave enough to "dream up" far fetched hypotheses and in general not pushing the envelope. Most are just regular "salaried employees" with no great dreams/ambitions.

sitkack 6y ago
/s I know, most of the people I know came for the money but stayed for the science. Those "salaried employees" started life as curious people, yeah some of them might be looking at the world with a blurrier lens. But they were constructed, the system made those people. While they make the problem worse, they are symptom not a cause.

senderista 6y ago

How much effort do you think we should put into testing homeopathy?

Kliment 6y ago
Given the extremely wide evidence basis from existing data (there's millions of worldwide users) I'd argue no more than has been, and that the current data is sufficient to show its lack of effectiveness without any additional effort. But had the obviously-silly hypothesis (adding a tiny bit of something bad can have a good effect) been rejected from the start in a different context we'd never have gotten vaccines (which originate from a similar hypothesis in a different context). The problem with homeopathy is not that it's a crazy idea. It's that it's been extensively shown not to work and is still being pushed as a good idea.
- Shacklz 6y ago
  > It's that it's been extensively shown not to work This is going off-topic, but I really think it depends on your definition of "not to work". If people essentially throw in low-cost placebos to cure themselves of headaches and other minor ailments, while believing that this is exactly what they need, I consider this a net-positive for society compared to giving them actual medication that costs more with potential side-effects/harms. Obviously, the fun ends when quacks prescribe homeopathy for serious stuff that needs actual treatment (in Germany, there was a case a few years ago where such a quack tried to treat his wife's breast cancer - obviously, this is beyond what should be legal). But for minor things that aren't too big of an issue even if left untreated, letting people use homeopathy if they're into that - why not.
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    But it is known, that placebos work. It is also known, that placebos work better, if people believe; they are medicine. Thats why Homeopathy "works" "in Germany, there was a case a few years ago where such a quack tried to treat his wife's breast cancer - obviously, this is beyond what should be legal). " But this, I see actually different. People of clear mind, should have any right to choose their treatment of choice. So informing them on the best options, yes! Telling them of the mechanism of fraudsters who prey on peoples hopes, yes! But in the end maybe not forbidding them if they choose - for whatever reason - less standard methods. Maybe the placebo works in their case. Maybe the alternative treatment with the roots of plant X had by chance an actual unknown effective drug in it. Who knows. But I know that telling people to follow standards is not allways the best way. Btw. because if a recent case I know there are homeophatic cancer clinics in germany. So it seems to be legal? I know of other alternative cancer treatment by the very weird "Dr. Hamer" who cannot be practised in germany if the patient actually has cancer. And I think this is not helping to disprove scams. (because I know people who are into it)

hyperpallium2 6y ago

UBI can free scientists from grants, but democratization of hypotheses will become populistization. Also, engineering leads science at time: this works but we don't know why.

mjfl 6y ago
> UBI can free scientists from grants No it would not. The money necessary to find a lab is orders of magnitude higher than any reasonable UBI.
- hyperpallium2 6y ago
  Some do, but not all scientists need expensive labs. Some equipment is getting cheaper too.
  - shakow 6y ago
    Bio lab equipment is getting cheaper as in $100K's instead of $1M's, not as in “can be bought with UBI”.
    - f6v 6y ago
      With the amount of computations you needs to do this days, no UBI is going to cover that.
      - ajdegol 6y ago
        How about a co-op of scientists pooling money to rent the kinds of AI chips the big players are starting to put out? I’m sure there are holes in that argument too; but c’mon, this is hacker news. If we don’t try to overcome the hard challenges then what’s the point of this community? ;)
        shakow 6y ago
        > How about a co-op of scientists pooling money to rent the kinds of AI chips the big players are starting to put out? What is really expensive and complicated for now is “wet” data collections: it is a finicky process stuffed to the brim with very expensive machinery, consumables, lab space and manual workers. Computing power is not really a limitation nowadays, you can comparably get a whole lot of bangs for your bucks. Concerning the sharing part, equipment pooling is definitely already happening, at least at the local scale. And what is getting more and more developed is the “platform” concept, where some labs/teams slowly transition from doing research to producing data according to a standardized protocol (genome sequencing, genotyping, ChIP-seq, etc.) for other teams doing the research.

cycomanic 6y ago

The large problem is the limited funding. If there is only funding for 10% of applications and a large portion of the success hinges on previous success and your experience on this topic, then you automatically breed conservatism.

bsenftner 6y ago
This problem of limited funding is due to the unnatural influence of Capitalism and unnatural existence of too many billionaires absorbing the majority of what would be disposable income and tax revenues that would otherwise fund any nation's infrastructure, including federal science initiates. We're learning now the entire Texas power grid failure dates back to G.W. Bush's state government dismantling Texas power upon the council of Enron's financial advisers. The majority of our problems in society is due to overt greed and it's influence on key infrastructure - power, education, law, law enforcement, food safety... it goes on and on. This is the reason we have regulations, because without them the greedy would have us eating Plutonium Pops for breakfast, and washing it down with Petro-plastic Orange Drink.

refurb 6y ago

If someone wanted to test the ability to shrink tumors through prayer that shouldn’t be judged?

f6v 6y ago
If they could build a mathematical model and simulations...Why not? Seems like a low-effort experiment.
- refurb 6y ago
  You’d need to run a double blinded randomizes controlled trial with enough patients to test the effect. And it would be wildly unethical to use prayer which by any reasonable understanding of cancer biology would not work.
  - ramraj07 6y ago
    Why does it have to replace therapy? One arm can be prayer + therapy and another can just be therapy
    - refurb 6y ago
      Ok, that would address the unethical part, but still, does that sound like a good use of limit research dollars? This is one of those instances where judgement is a good thing. Don’t run such a silly trial. Spend the money on something that actually has a chance to work.
ramraj07 6y ago
If it can truly be tested, then it should be tested! But how do you truly test it? Even if God isn't real, acts like prayer give you emotional support and that can have a very real effect! So if you merely want to test whether an act like prayer is effective, then that's simple and probably already done and also probably shows some effect. However if you want to prove that prayer in a particular method to a particular God is effective, that's tricky. If someone can design an elegant enough study then it should be tested!

sitkack 6y ago

The same exact process you painted has a direct analog in tech businesses right now. I think the problem is the hierarchy. A development organization is an amplifier that brings a new capability into existence. Currently, organizations have to get big to amplify what their qualities. But to get big to achieve its goals it needs to be hierarchical, and because the hierarchy and the practitioners are the same folks, the org structure becomes the product. The goal of the organization is to maintain its structure. Innovation happens when you have less structure. How do we scale, and maximize the organizational power while enabling create autonomy?