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If the scientific method is so perfect why does it fail when used by imperfect operators

thephyber 5y ago
Does it? You are making an assertion without any facts. The method itself is simple. It is agnostic to bad faith implementations, to bad measurements, to completely fallacious conclusions, etc. It is intended to be iterative; individual errors wash out in time with enough new experiments. What non-scientists learn from secondary or tertiary sources is irrelevant — those misunderstandings do not mean the Method “failed”.
- cogman10 5y ago
  Meh, the scientific method is akin to "agile" in software development. It's good principles but really is less a method and more guiding principles. That is the good and the bad of the scientific method. Implementing any one of the steps poorly and you've got crap studies which technically followed the scientific method but are ultimately "unscientific". You get into the same sorts of arguments as a result. "Agile is pefect, but scrum sucks" "The scientific method is perfect, but nutrition survey studies suck". The part that the scientific method lacks is determining what a good implementation looks like.
  - thephyber 5y ago
    > The part that the scientific method lacks is determining what a good implementation looks like. That seems like a feature, not a bug, to me. Descriptions of good implementations are likely subjective and vary based on what is being tested. It may even change over time as human knowledge improves.
- drbojingle 5y ago
  Context man, I'm referring the the parents comment that the scientific method is perfect and operated by infallible humans leads to bad results and I would contend that if process is truly perfect it can't be corrupted. The scientific method is useful not perfect. Nothing is perfect.
  - thephyber 5y ago
    Agree. Context is important. > Nothing is perfect. Meh. You are being unnecessarily pedantic here. If nothing is perfect then we wouldn’t have a word for it. It is so close to perfect for anything that humans have made that it is almost indistinguishable. In fact, language evolves with how people use it. The word perfect has another definition which very well applies here. Fact is that The Method is resilient to the infallibility or maliciousness of scientists or charlatans. It has survived hundreds of years of charlatans running bad experiments, faked data, lots of oversimplified press coverage, etc and The Method itself is every bit as accurate and useful as it was when first formulated.
    - drbojingle 5y ago
      That's like saying cthulu is real because we have a word for him. Your picking precise word definitions and expecting me to guess which ones your using and yet calling me pedantic. The irony.
q-big 5y ago
> If the scientific method is so perfect why does it fail when used by imperfect operators The scientific method is not perfect, but the best method that we currently have.
- drbojingle 5y ago
  I agree.

Does it? You are making an assertion without any facts. The method itself is simple. It is agnostic to bad faith implementations, to bad measurements, to completely fallacious conclusions, etc. It is intended to be iterative; individual errors wash out in time with enough new experiments. What non-scientists learn from secondary or tertiary sources is irrelevant — those misunderstandings do not mean the Method “failed”.

cogman10 5y ago
Meh, the scientific method is akin to "agile" in software development. It's good principles but really is less a method and more guiding principles. That is the good and the bad of the scientific method. Implementing any one of the steps poorly and you've got crap studies which technically followed the scientific method but are ultimately "unscientific". You get into the same sorts of arguments as a result. "Agile is pefect, but scrum sucks" "The scientific method is perfect, but nutrition survey studies suck". The part that the scientific method lacks is determining what a good implementation looks like.
- thephyber 5y ago
  > The part that the scientific method lacks is determining what a good implementation looks like. That seems like a feature, not a bug, to me. Descriptions of good implementations are likely subjective and vary based on what is being tested. It may even change over time as human knowledge improves.
drbojingle 5y ago
Context man, I'm referring the the parents comment that the scientific method is perfect and operated by infallible humans leads to bad results and I would contend that if process is truly perfect it can't be corrupted. The scientific method is useful not perfect. Nothing is perfect.
- thephyber 5y ago
  Agree. Context is important. > Nothing is perfect. Meh. You are being unnecessarily pedantic here. If nothing is perfect then we wouldn’t have a word for it. It is so close to perfect for anything that humans have made that it is almost indistinguishable. In fact, language evolves with how people use it. The word perfect has another definition which very well applies here. Fact is that The Method is resilient to the infallibility or maliciousness of scientists or charlatans. It has survived hundreds of years of charlatans running bad experiments, faked data, lots of oversimplified press coverage, etc and The Method itself is every bit as accurate and useful as it was when first formulated.
  - drbojingle 5y ago
    That's like saying cthulu is real because we have a word for him. Your picking precise word definitions and expecting me to guess which ones your using and yet calling me pedantic. The irony.

q-big 5y ago

> If the scientific method is so perfect why does it fail when used by imperfect operators The scientific method is not perfect, but the best method that we currently have.

drbojingle 5y ago
I agree.