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Let me continue the example... We found that students participating in the "2hr active recess program" have meaningfully better health outcomes, psychological

Let me continue the example... We found that students participating in the "2hr active recess program" have meaningfully better health outcomes, psychological health outcomes, and better grades. It was tested faithfully in 25 schools over 10 years. It expands to other places. Different countries. Different decades. Different people run it in different ways. The kids are different. In some cases, the kids are already so active that the extra activity is detrimental. In some places, it's really hot. Kids tend to read, or do more organized indoor activities. Basically, the world is not a laboratory. You're not predicting the trajectory of a projectile, where unknowables can be quantified as a function. It's all 3 body problems all the time. Yet, we as humans do manage to make sense of the world. We run schools, companies. We learn more about how to do those things. Formal studies are an important part of learning about how to do those things. Scientific mindset and methodologies are useful to this. It's a lot better than just philosophizing the whole thing. The type of knowledge we gain, OTOH, isn't like F=MA. It never will be. The value of the above study does relate/imply to it containing knowledge. It's a partial knowledge of a general problem. It is not complete knowledge of a particular problem, like you would get in a lab. Neither lab experiments or wild studies tend to replicate in one another's world. No matter how good the study, how many times it replicated, or how well it worked throughout the 80s and 90s... there's no guarantee that your program is working well or a guaranteed explanation for why it isn't.

kortilla 5y ago
> Different countries. Different decades. Different people run it in different ways. The kids are different. In some cases, the kids are already so active that the extra activity is detrimental. In some places, it's really hot. Kids tend to read, or do more organized indoor activities. Elucidating confounding variables and controlling for them is the entire fucking job of a scientist. To your example, if they publish a paper that explicitly highlights that it worked well for sedentary kids with typical diets of X, Y, and Z in region Q, then it failing to be a found in other environments isn’t a problem. It’s a problem when these clowns do a test on one specific group of 20 people and then generalize to, “doing X leads to Y in humans”. The answer is absolutely not loosening up the constraints. It’s to keep lambasting people who generalize before anything has been reproduced widely. Popper’s science is fine. Morons who don’t realize what they measured are the problem.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I suspect it’s the journalism step that introduces the error you’re objecting to. Proper scientists* will report their findings and methods. Journalists will tend to write the “Doing X leads to Y in humans” headlines. Many times the first or first few teams won’t know what the confounding variables are and subsequent research is needed to find them. They should still report their initial “hmm, that’s novel” findings even if it later turns out that it’s explained by confounding variables. *-No true Scotsman
- dalbasal 5y ago
  >> Elucidating confounding variables and controlling for them is the entire fucking job of a scientist. No. This is methodology. The job of a scientist is to advance scientific knowledge. This is as vague as it needs to be. Popper didn't do science. He did philosophy. He also did a fine job of formalising methods, and abstracting the methods scientists were using into a Scientific Method. This scientific method is a great achievement and a wonderful, multipurpose probe. That does not mean it fits in all orifices. The job of a scientist is not to continue hammering until the probe fits.
  - keutoi 5y ago
    How do you advance scientific knowledge without using a Scientific Method?
    - dalbasal 5y ago
      I suppose any method used to advance scientific knowledge without is a scientific method, by definition. That's besides the point though.
analog31 5y ago
>>>> Yet, we as humans do manage to make sense of the world. We run schools, companies. We learn more about how to do those things. Formal studies are an important part of learning about how to do those things. Scientific mindset and methodologies are useful to this. It's a lot better than just philosophizing the whole thing. The type of knowledge we gain, OTOH, isn't like F=MA. It never will be. I think it has to to be held out as a possibility that there is actually no science behind how we run schools and companies. One way this could happen is if non-scientific ideas simply overwhelm the ones that are grounded in good science. The fact that it isn't like F=MA also means it will never advance beyond producing collections of amusing factoids that are unrelated to one another and potentially false.

kortilla 5y ago

> Different countries. Different decades. Different people run it in different ways. The kids are different. In some cases, the kids are already so active that the extra activity is detrimental. In some places, it's really hot. Kids tend to read, or do more organized indoor activities. Elucidating confounding variables and controlling for them is the entire fucking job of a scientist. To your example, if they publish a paper that explicitly highlights that it worked well for sedentary kids with typical diets of X, Y, and Z in region Q, then it failing to be a found in other environments isn’t a problem. It’s a problem when these clowns do a test on one specific group of 20 people and then generalize to, “doing X leads to Y in humans”. The answer is absolutely not loosening up the constraints. It’s to keep lambasting people who generalize before anything has been reproduced widely. Popper’s science is fine. Morons who don’t realize what they measured are the problem.

sokoloff 5y ago
I suspect it’s the journalism step that introduces the error you’re objecting to. Proper scientists* will report their findings and methods. Journalists will tend to write the “Doing X leads to Y in humans” headlines. Many times the first or first few teams won’t know what the confounding variables are and subsequent research is needed to find them. They should still report their initial “hmm, that’s novel” findings even if it later turns out that it’s explained by confounding variables. *-No true Scotsman
dalbasal 5y ago
>> Elucidating confounding variables and controlling for them is the entire fucking job of a scientist. No. This is methodology. The job of a scientist is to advance scientific knowledge. This is as vague as it needs to be. Popper didn't do science. He did philosophy. He also did a fine job of formalising methods, and abstracting the methods scientists were using into a Scientific Method. This scientific method is a great achievement and a wonderful, multipurpose probe. That does not mean it fits in all orifices. The job of a scientist is not to continue hammering until the probe fits.
- keutoi 5y ago
  How do you advance scientific knowledge without using a Scientific Method?
  - dalbasal 5y ago
    I suppose any method used to advance scientific knowledge without is a scientific method, by definition. That's besides the point though.

analog31 5y ago

>>>> Yet, we as humans do manage to make sense of the world. We run schools, companies. We learn more about how to do those things. Formal studies are an important part of learning about how to do those things. Scientific mindset and methodologies are useful to this. It's a lot better than just philosophizing the whole thing. The type of knowledge we gain, OTOH, isn't like F=MA. It never will be. I think it has to to be held out as a possibility that there is actually no science behind how we run schools and companies. One way this could happen is if non-scientific ideas simply overwhelm the ones that are grounded in good science. The fact that it isn't like F=MA also means it will never advance beyond producing collections of amusing factoids that are unrelated to one another and potentially false.