6 ms·

Why I Hate Science

40 points by DanielBMarkham 15y ago

wccrawford 15y ago
He's got a good point. The layman doesn't know the difference at all. Heck, most of the 'experts' don't seem to be able to tell the difference. You constantly hear how X is bad for you according to a new study, and people repeat it like gospel, instead of the theory that it is. Often it hasn't even been reproduced yet.
- create_account 15y ago
  What point is that? Lumping unrelated fields together and disliking them all? What alternative does he offer?
  - JoachimSchipper 15y ago
    He does suggest a few things which are useful but not practiced in all academic disciplines (note "academic" instead of "scientific"): systematic ways of finding truth (specifically, Bayesian analysis), carefully specifying the exact experiment done, being open about your confidence (or lack thereof) in the results. To pick a random example, I've been told economists don't often look back to check the accuracy of the macro-scale predictions they made. (Un)succesful predictions are an excellent way to check for (un)truth.
    - archgoon 15y ago
      These methods should be incorporated. Incorporating these methods will not significantly impact the public perception of science. My reasoning is that there is a game of telephone between scientists and the public. Currently it looks like this: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd051809s.gif http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd051809s.gif However, even if we were to refine the news process, or try to cut them out entirely through blogging, games of telephone will still happen, as people will still try to communicate a simplified version of what was said. This will not be intentional, but every time some fact gets left out, the certainties change, making the statement less and less true.
    - jerf 15y ago
      And the last three or four years have been a bounteous cornucopia of false macro-scale economic predictions... with no apparent adjustment of the theories being considered necessary or desirable, at least from my outsider perspective.
  - jerf 15y ago
    I believe the basic answer to that is in the first paragraph. He should almost copy & paste that first paragraph and append it to the end.
JoachimSchipper 15y ago
Not entirely wrong, but some criticisms: - overconfidence: scientists are much better at saying "this is a hypothesis we are testing", "we are 80% confident" or "not all of my colleagues agree with this thesis" than science journalists are at reporting those things. - is anthropology a science now? This was just the field that was most clearly misclassified, but - I'd say - not the only one. - things can be true without resulting in new cell phones. Facts can be relevant even if they are too hard to properly explain to a layman in five minutes. People really can be stupid and uninterested. - it's possible to declare some fields completely broken/politicized without jettisoning all of "science". (For instance, the study of economic policy seems to produce really fervent advocates of rather different points of view.) [Full disclosure: I'm doing a PhD, and rather like science.]
- create_account 15y ago
  it's possible to declare some fields completely broken/politicized without jettisoning all of "science" Exactly.
a3camero 15y ago
Part of his rant is about things that are generally not considered to be "science". Economics is usually categorized separately as "social science" (look! Wikipedia agrees! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics). It's ironic that someone who "no beg[s], scientists to adopt much stricter standards of disseminating information" is so cavalier about lumping together very different fields of study. This appears to be written by someone that doesn't have a background in what I think most people would identify as "science". I don't think the authors in the current issue of Nature (http://www.nature.com/nature/current_issue.html http://www.nature.com/nature/current_issue.html) would understand the opening sentence of the closing paragraph: "If scientists want to be considered in the same boat as the guys who think aliens built the pyramids, then fine, they should keep going the way they are going.".
- create_account 15y ago
  This appears to be written by someone that doesn't have a background in what I think most people would identify as "science". I admit that the combination of the headline plus the photo he uses in his sidebar made me think derp even before I started reading.
  - JoachimSchipper 15y ago
    I don't follow DanielBMarkham closely, but I don't think his comments here on HN suggest a high level of "derp". Do try to be a bit nicer.
    - create_account 15y ago
      Perhaps that was a bit blunt. I don't know who he is or read many of his comments here, but on the basis of the article alone (long, incoherent, illogical) I didn't get a favorable impression. Perhaps he should have thought a bit more about what he wanted to say, and he would have a written a better piece (which reminds me about a quote from Twain: "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one").
  - 15y ago
owenmarshall 15y ago
This reminds me very much of Paul Lutus' essay "Is Psychology a Science" http://www.arachnoid.com/psychology/index.html http://www.arachnoid.com/psychology/index.html
deleted 15y ago
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deleted 15y ago
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thomson 15y ago
This is slightly related to the fact that most scientists today no longer consider themselves 'scientists' for the same reason mathematicians no longer consider themselves strictly 'mathematicians': they're logicians, group theorists, geometers, algebraists, etc. Maybe a hundred (or a couple hundred?) years ago, learned men and women could call themselves scientists and be educated in almost everything there is to know in the human corpus of science, but that's impossible today with the hyper-specialization we have in all branches of math, CS, physics, and biology. In any empirical science, it's simply because there is a lot lot more data to play with, and in mathematics it's simply because more rules to the game are being discovered/created.
scott_s 15y ago
Daniel, please stop using link-bait titles and openers. It makes it far more difficult for me to evaluate the actual ideas you're talking about, because I have to separate the link-bait stuff from your real points. (The "bait" from the "switch.") That takes more mental effort than I'm willing to afford an essay that starts off being disingenuous.
- gjm11 15y ago
  But without the link-bait, why would anyone ever post them to HN? [EDIT: typo fixed]
  - lutorm 15y ago
    He posted it himself, so that would hardly be affected.
VladRussian 15y ago
this is why you need to teach science in schools as early as possible and as much as possible, so the people wouldn't need BS guides on distinguishing good ... err... there is no such thing as a "bad science" so just science from anything else.
runningdogx 15y ago
"It's not unusual in school to hear this religion of science put another way, science is the beautiful application of reason and logic that slowly and inexorably moves from ignorance to truth. "Bullshit." At this point, I stopped taking you seriously. No. That is exactly what science is: an ongoing dialogue between scientists, using experiments to collect data to validate (improve certainty of) or disprove theories, theories which over time paint increasingly accurate pictures of how the thing we know as reality really works. The garbage claims you ascribe to scientists are usually not made by scientists; instead, the claims usually come from the media who either don't understand the underlying science, or who do understand it but are sensationalizing the scientific result in an effort to get more people interested. A problem only arises when Joe Sixpacks (who not only dominate society but Congress as well), who are completely ignorant of science, end up using media reporting of science to make decisions.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  I found that part annoying as well, he goes on with one of his main points: "What I'm concerned about is that the average scientific layman reader -- the person who assumes they are just as up-to-date on scientific matters as possible -- has no freaking idea where the real science leaves off and where the bullshit begins." Which I completely agree with. There is the scientific method which strives to discover truth though rigor and their is the use of 'science' in rhetoric which attempts to lend truthiness to speculation or wishful thinking. The blog post would have benefited greatly from taking this version of it, pulling out all of the actual things the author wanted to say, and then laying those out in a more cohesive fashion. For those interested in the abuse of numbers in rhetoric I can reccomend the book 'Proofiness' [1] which talks about ways people abuse mathematics as a rhetorical tool. Science is one of those things that also helps lay people feel better about believing in something. I agree with the original author's disappointment as to how it is being abused. But I also note that the author gets confused between how journalists report science vs what the science actually said. It is always a good idea to track down the original paper or study and read it to see what the journalist left out or simply missed. [1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0670022160/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0670022160/
- lutorm 15y ago
kenjackson 15y ago
This guy seems to not understand the difference between science, publishing in science, and science reporting for mainstream audiences. They're very different things. Publishing sources in newspapers would be one of the most beneficial things they can do.
- hasenj 15y ago
  I think he understands the difference. His point is that most people don't.
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    I don't think so. Take this statement for example: Science needs a new set of ethics. It needs to be clear when reporting medical studies what types of methods were used, what was brought into the study a priori, the sample size, and how it was reviewed. Scientists should be clear when they are speaking on matters of reproducible science -- such as the absorption spectrum of CO2, the Greenhouse principle, the fact that man changes his environment, and black-body physics -- and when they are totally speculating, like predicting the global temperature in 100 years. These are different types of information. (I hate to use global warming, but it's in vogue.) First, Isn't what he wants in medical studies completely standard practice? I regularly read NEJM and their standard format is: Background, Methods, Results, Conclusion. I feel like he's getting his medical science from the NYTimes, which is fine as a starting point, but those are articles written by reporters. Find the actual study to see what the scientist did. Second, if you actually read the "speculative" studies, rather than just watching Fox News you'll typically see how they come to the conclusion of the temperature in 100 years. They detail and construct a model, sometimes via simulation. It's not that anyone is saying, "This is what the temperature will be guaranteed", rather it's saying, "here's a model we constructed. We tested it on historical data and it's accurate to this extent. This is what we see looking forward. These are the factors that contribute most to this result." That's how science is done. That's how I can hypothesize the sun will come up tomorrow -- I have historical data, I create a model of the solar system, gravity, inertia, etc... and say based on that I think the sun will come up again tomorrow, and based on my models I think it will be colder in the winter than the summer. What he considers "speculative" science is just normal science, but where the models aren't as well understood, and part of science is strengthening the models. I just feel like he doesn't get science at all. When you don't really understand something, you're more likely to hate it.
zwieback 15y ago
After the third or fourth paragraph I started expecting an argument for creationism and against global warming. It's never explicitly made and it's not really clear what the point of the article is but there's something about this kind of scientific-strawman knocking that smacks of revisionism.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
tomlin 15y ago
...but at the end of the day you can make the argument that everything about personalities are evolutionary in nature. ADHD? Useful for surviving in the jungle. I've read about the "hunter vs. farmer" theory on ADD/ADHD. So far, from what I've read, no one has agreed that ADD/ADHD is an evolutionary response to/for hunting. Rather, it may have made the hunter quicker or more aware of surroundings, and thus made a better hunter overall. It seems like the author is dumping on people for not getting it right, when he is not really getting the context correct themselves.
merraksh 15y ago
Any field of science should be talked about by someone who has a deep knowledge of that field. Unless he knows Evolutionary Psychology, Anthropology, and Economics very well, making generic comments about all these fields isn't a good way to prove his very point on science.
uros643 15y ago
A fringe, but relevant, furthering of this line of thought from another direction: http://partialobjects.com/2011/04/is-science-just-a-matter-of-faith/ http://partialobjects.com/2011/04/is-science-just-a-matter-o... I think Daniel is angry not at science itself, but at the kind of story into which the 'clergy' is interpreting it.

He's got a good point. The layman doesn't know the difference at all. Heck, most of the 'experts' don't seem to be able to tell the difference. You constantly hear how X is bad for you according to a new study, and people repeat it like gospel, instead of the theory that it is. Often it hasn't even been reproduced yet.

create_account 15y ago
What point is that? Lumping unrelated fields together and disliking them all? What alternative does he offer?
- JoachimSchipper 15y ago
  He does suggest a few things which are useful but not practiced in all academic disciplines (note "academic" instead of "scientific"): systematic ways of finding truth (specifically, Bayesian analysis), carefully specifying the exact experiment done, being open about your confidence (or lack thereof) in the results. To pick a random example, I've been told economists don't often look back to check the accuracy of the macro-scale predictions they made. (Un)succesful predictions are an excellent way to check for (un)truth.
  - archgoon 15y ago
    These methods should be incorporated. Incorporating these methods will not significantly impact the public perception of science. My reasoning is that there is a game of telephone between scientists and the public. Currently it looks like this: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd051809s.gif http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd051809s.gif However, even if we were to refine the news process, or try to cut them out entirely through blogging, games of telephone will still happen, as people will still try to communicate a simplified version of what was said. This will not be intentional, but every time some fact gets left out, the certainties change, making the statement less and less true.
  - jerf 15y ago
    And the last three or four years have been a bounteous cornucopia of false macro-scale economic predictions... with no apparent adjustment of the theories being considered necessary or desirable, at least from my outsider perspective.
- jerf 15y ago
  I believe the basic answer to that is in the first paragraph. He should almost copy & paste that first paragraph and append it to the end.

JoachimSchipper 15y ago

Not entirely wrong, but some criticisms: - overconfidence: scientists are much better at saying "this is a hypothesis we are testing", "we are 80% confident" or "not all of my colleagues agree with this thesis" than science journalists are at reporting those things. - is anthropology a science now? This was just the field that was most clearly misclassified, but - I'd say - not the only one. - things can be true without resulting in new cell phones. Facts can be relevant even if they are too hard to properly explain to a layman in five minutes. People really can be stupid and uninterested. - it's possible to declare some fields completely broken/politicized without jettisoning all of "science". (For instance, the study of economic policy seems to produce really fervent advocates of rather different points of view.) [Full disclosure: I'm doing a PhD, and rather like science.]

create_account 15y ago
it's possible to declare some fields completely broken/politicized without jettisoning all of "science" Exactly.

a3camero 15y ago

Part of his rant is about things that are generally not considered to be "science". Economics is usually categorized separately as "social science" (look! Wikipedia agrees! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics). It's ironic that someone who "no beg[s], scientists to adopt much stricter standards of disseminating information" is so cavalier about lumping together very different fields of study. This appears to be written by someone that doesn't have a background in what I think most people would identify as "science". I don't think the authors in the current issue of Nature (http://www.nature.com/nature/current_issue.html http://www.nature.com/nature/current_issue.html) would understand the opening sentence of the closing paragraph: "If scientists want to be considered in the same boat as the guys who think aliens built the pyramids, then fine, they should keep going the way they are going.".

create_account 15y ago
This appears to be written by someone that doesn't have a background in what I think most people would identify as "science". I admit that the combination of the headline plus the photo he uses in his sidebar made me think derp even before I started reading.
- JoachimSchipper 15y ago
  I don't follow DanielBMarkham closely, but I don't think his comments here on HN suggest a high level of "derp". Do try to be a bit nicer.
  - create_account 15y ago
    Perhaps that was a bit blunt. I don't know who he is or read many of his comments here, but on the basis of the article alone (long, incoherent, illogical) I didn't get a favorable impression. Perhaps he should have thought a bit more about what he wanted to say, and he would have a written a better piece (which reminds me about a quote from Twain: "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one").
- 15y ago

owenmarshall 15y ago

This reminds me very much of Paul Lutus' essay "Is Psychology a Science" http://www.arachnoid.com/psychology/index.html http://www.arachnoid.com/psychology/index.html

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

thomson 15y ago

This is slightly related to the fact that most scientists today no longer consider themselves 'scientists' for the same reason mathematicians no longer consider themselves strictly 'mathematicians': they're logicians, group theorists, geometers, algebraists, etc. Maybe a hundred (or a couple hundred?) years ago, learned men and women could call themselves scientists and be educated in almost everything there is to know in the human corpus of science, but that's impossible today with the hyper-specialization we have in all branches of math, CS, physics, and biology. In any empirical science, it's simply because there is a lot lot more data to play with, and in mathematics it's simply because more rules to the game are being discovered/created.

scott_s 15y ago

Daniel, please stop using link-bait titles and openers. It makes it far more difficult for me to evaluate the actual ideas you're talking about, because I have to separate the link-bait stuff from your real points. (The "bait" from the "switch.") That takes more mental effort than I'm willing to afford an essay that starts off being disingenuous.

gjm11 15y ago
But without the link-bait, why would anyone ever post them to HN? [EDIT: typo fixed]
- lutorm 15y ago
  He posted it himself, so that would hardly be affected.

VladRussian 15y ago

this is why you need to teach science in schools as early as possible and as much as possible, so the people wouldn't need BS guides on distinguishing good ... err... there is no such thing as a "bad science" so just science from anything else.

runningdogx 15y ago

"It's not unusual in school to hear this religion of science put another way, science is the beautiful application of reason and logic that slowly and inexorably moves from ignorance to truth. "Bullshit." At this point, I stopped taking you seriously. No. That is exactly what science is: an ongoing dialogue between scientists, using experiments to collect data to validate (improve certainty of) or disprove theories, theories which over time paint increasingly accurate pictures of how the thing we know as reality really works. The garbage claims you ascribe to scientists are usually not made by scientists; instead, the claims usually come from the media who either don't understand the underlying science, or who do understand it but are sensationalizing the scientific result in an effort to get more people interested. A problem only arises when Joe Sixpacks (who not only dominate society but Congress as well), who are completely ignorant of science, end up using media reporting of science to make decisions.

ChuckMcM 15y ago
I found that part annoying as well, he goes on with one of his main points: "What I'm concerned about is that the average scientific layman reader -- the person who assumes they are just as up-to-date on scientific matters as possible -- has no freaking idea where the real science leaves off and where the bullshit begins." Which I completely agree with. There is the scientific method which strives to discover truth though rigor and their is the use of 'science' in rhetoric which attempts to lend truthiness to speculation or wishful thinking. The blog post would have benefited greatly from taking this version of it, pulling out all of the actual things the author wanted to say, and then laying those out in a more cohesive fashion. For those interested in the abuse of numbers in rhetoric I can reccomend the book 'Proofiness' [1] which talks about ways people abuse mathematics as a rhetorical tool. Science is one of those things that also helps lay people feel better about believing in something. I agree with the original author's disappointment as to how it is being abused. But I also note that the author gets confused between how journalists report science vs what the science actually said. It is always a good idea to track down the original paper or study and read it to see what the journalist left out or simply missed. [1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0670022160/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0670022160/
lutorm 15y ago

kenjackson 15y ago

This guy seems to not understand the difference between science, publishing in science, and science reporting for mainstream audiences. They're very different things. Publishing sources in newspapers would be one of the most beneficial things they can do.

hasenj 15y ago
I think he understands the difference. His point is that most people don't.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  I don't think so. Take this statement for example: Science needs a new set of ethics. It needs to be clear when reporting medical studies what types of methods were used, what was brought into the study a priori, the sample size, and how it was reviewed. Scientists should be clear when they are speaking on matters of reproducible science -- such as the absorption spectrum of CO2, the Greenhouse principle, the fact that man changes his environment, and black-body physics -- and when they are totally speculating, like predicting the global temperature in 100 years. These are different types of information. (I hate to use global warming, but it's in vogue.) First, Isn't what he wants in medical studies completely standard practice? I regularly read NEJM and their standard format is: Background, Methods, Results, Conclusion. I feel like he's getting his medical science from the NYTimes, which is fine as a starting point, but those are articles written by reporters. Find the actual study to see what the scientist did. Second, if you actually read the "speculative" studies, rather than just watching Fox News you'll typically see how they come to the conclusion of the temperature in 100 years. They detail and construct a model, sometimes via simulation. It's not that anyone is saying, "This is what the temperature will be guaranteed", rather it's saying, "here's a model we constructed. We tested it on historical data and it's accurate to this extent. This is what we see looking forward. These are the factors that contribute most to this result." That's how science is done. That's how I can hypothesize the sun will come up tomorrow -- I have historical data, I create a model of the solar system, gravity, inertia, etc... and say based on that I think the sun will come up again tomorrow, and based on my models I think it will be colder in the winter than the summer. What he considers "speculative" science is just normal science, but where the models aren't as well understood, and part of science is strengthening the models. I just feel like he doesn't get science at all. When you don't really understand something, you're more likely to hate it.

zwieback 15y ago

After the third or fourth paragraph I started expecting an argument for creationism and against global warming. It's never explicitly made and it's not really clear what the point of the article is but there's something about this kind of scientific-strawman knocking that smacks of revisionism.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

tomlin 15y ago

...but at the end of the day you can make the argument that everything about personalities are evolutionary in nature. ADHD? Useful for surviving in the jungle. I've read about the "hunter vs. farmer" theory on ADD/ADHD. So far, from what I've read, no one has agreed that ADD/ADHD is an evolutionary response to/for hunting. Rather, it may have made the hunter quicker or more aware of surroundings, and thus made a better hunter overall. It seems like the author is dumping on people for not getting it right, when he is not really getting the context correct themselves.

merraksh 15y ago

Any field of science should be talked about by someone who has a deep knowledge of that field. Unless he knows Evolutionary Psychology, Anthropology, and Economics very well, making generic comments about all these fields isn't a good way to prove his very point on science.

uros643 15y ago

A fringe, but relevant, furthering of this line of thought from another direction: http://partialobjects.com/2011/04/is-science-just-a-matter-of-faith/ http://partialobjects.com/2011/04/is-science-just-a-matter-o... I think Daniel is angry not at science itself, but at the kind of story into which the 'clergy' is interpreting it.