7 ms·

When was the last time 98% of scientists got something important wrong?

39 points by RickJWagner 5y ago

humanistbot 5y ago
This question isn't even wrong. It needs a serious dose of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Science goes through huge upturns and there are intense debates, followed by periods of slow and steady progress, then another upheaval. This is normal and good. We stand on the shoulders of giants, while looking down at all of the wacky things they also believed (Newton believed in alchemy, astrology was all the rage for way too long, all the greats had some messed up beliefs about race). The whole point of science is that you keep doing science and you keep updating your beliefs based on the results of the method, not that you believe eternally in the findings that come out of a single article in a scientific journal.
- 1_player 5y ago
  The idea that science is always right, dogmatic and scientists are a uniform group that stands apart from the laymen is the reason there is so much distrust in scientists and "experts" and there's conspiracy everywhere. "What they don't want you to know." or using the time a theory was proven wrong as proof that "science" is untrustworthy. While reality like you say it's much simpler. Science is not about absolute truth that requires blind faith, it is about proving a theory or disproving an established one, with a simple logic process established since the Middle Ages. What we know today is just a pile of theories ready to be disproven and replaced by something better like we did with blood letting, ether filling up outer space and geocentric astronomy. It's incredibly sad the majority of the people hasn't learned this fact either in life or even in middle school.
freedomben 5y ago
Obviously climate change is an important question, but sadly I think this issue suffers from the same problems of binary thinking that so many other things do in our society right now. It's nearly impossible to have a nuanced conversation without getting shut down as "bothsidesism" or risking offending some sacred cow. Climate change is a very real problem, and one that we need to address. I won't beat on this, but if you want to understand the science behind it, as well as one of the greatest stories ever told, I highly recommend Robert Hazen's "The Origin and Evolution of Earth" Great Course or the book version of the material, "The Story of Earth." Now that said, there is a real problem of incentives in academia. The way funding is procured, and the way peer review currently works, is causing serious issues. Any sort of dissent has also become toxic to one's career, creating a heavy incentive not to challenge any established "knowledge."
- 0x20cowboy 5y ago
  It would be cool if Hackernews did some kind of debate / in-depth discussion / podcast / video cast thing where some of these topics could be discussed. I would love to hear a nuanced, technical / economic discussion about this and other topics. Heck, I would even pay to hear it. I have no real experience with academia, but the fact that I (as a layperson) can’t even get access to published papers is a pretty clear indication that they have little interest in making information available. If only there was a website where entrepreneurs…
- wittycardio 5y ago
  Do you have any proof that dissent is toxic to one's career in science today ? Any more so than it ever was ?
  - freedomben 5y ago
    Nope, just anecdotal stuff. I could definitely be wrong, but it sure seems like it's a lot more common. It's possible that it's just more visible to me now. It would be fascinating to see some data on this, although I can't think of how you could quantify it when "dissent" is such an ambiguous and subjective term.
causality0 5y ago
Well they did just recently discover another muscle in the human knee and most physicians would've sworn we knew about them all.
- unsupp0rted 5y ago
  Fascinating! Dumb question, but is there a dye we could inject that goes only to muscle fibres, so we can image all the muscles in the human body in one go? I'm surprised by 2022 we're still discovering new ones.
  - causality0 5y ago
    I mean it's not like it was invisible in the first place. We just kind of collectively missed it.
throwaway984393 5y ago
I like the answer "right now". We have to assume that we're already, at this moment, wrong about something important. We always find out in the future that our past selves were wrong; hence, we are presently wrong. It's science's mission to figure out what we're wrong about. It's also dangerous to get angry at people who question science, as if we can't question science, we can't really do science. When someone asks for proof or says something isn't real or true, it's science's job to provide the proof.
- mc32 5y ago
  Sure, but we don't know the 'whats' and that is the rub. But you're right that not many things should be taken as gospel given historically our understanding of fundamentals keep changing or augmenting.
kayamon 5y ago
Bitcoin is the current one. Bitcoin is the most important piece of engineering since the Manhattan Project. It's an iterative solver that runs through the world economy, forcing each power station to decide whether to use their energy for local purposes or a shared goal, creating a shared stock market for energy thereby forcing the world into a new economy like in Star Trek by finally yielding a shared consensus on the true cost of energy as an asset. It really annoys me people aren't as excited by it as I am. edit: the number of downvotes on this will act as a record of whether people here are interested in the scientific method of discussing things they disagree with, or the nazi method of banning things they dislike editedit: in this thread, please remember you were looking for the thing everyone else said was wrong
- rubatuga 5y ago
  It’s a cancer. Of course cancer only thinks of itself.
  - kayamon 5y ago
    wut
- naikrovek 5y ago
  it's a scam and has value only to those who have been tricked into believing it has value. > the most important piece of engineering since the Manhattan Project that says it all doesn't it? if you think that a Blockchain is as important as the Manhattan project, you have been "converted" and are almost certainly so far away that logic cannot reach you.
  - kayamon 5y ago
    You haven't actually engaged with any of the points I made. This is not science.
    - anon9384929 5y ago
      “The true cost of energy of an asset” I work in the energy industry and I think people haven’t engaged your points because they’re completely incoherent without you significantly expanding upon them. Respectfully, the way you’ve phrased your points makes it clear you aren’t an expert in energy markets, which makes someone like me unwilling to engage in a debate without you making your case much more clearly up front. (If this seems arrogant, consider debating somebody who has a rudimentary understanding of Python making declarations about the next revolution in distributed systems, or something like that…)
throwaway5Am1k 5y ago
Regarding climate change, please read how the number was calculated https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2016/12/14/fact-checking-the-97-consensus-on-anthropogenic-climate-change/?sh=2cebb8b21157 https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2016/12/14/fact-checki... Scientists agree that there's man-made climate change. There's no nuance of what the implications will be (e.g. rising sea levels, failing crops, mass migration), or what the solution should be (e.g. carbon tax). It feels insanely difficult to say "climate change is real, but it's not something we should [overly] worry about; humans are getting better at combating natural disasters, our food yields are getting better, and the best we can do for the 3rd world is [for them] to continue to use gas [for the time being]"
- freedomben 5y ago
  > or what the solution should be (e.g. carbon tax). There's a ton of nuance around what the solution should be. a carbon tax is one, but far from the only one, and it has a lot of downsides. It's difficult to measure and enforce, and creates ripe breeding ground for corruption. It's harmful to the economy, harmful (in some ways) to the development of alternative energies, and it's mainly the developing nations that are the biggest problem, but the carbon tax either doesn't apply to them or it would stifle their development, which is bad for humanitarian reasons (and pretty damn unfair given that the US was allowed to develop restriction free).. I'm not saying we shouldn't consider a carbon tax, because it might be one of the better options. But there's definitely nuance around it and plenty of important ideas to debate and discuss.
erichocean 5y ago
I think when "science" has been infused with power, so that it is no longer the truth of an idea that gives it legs (the "marketplace of ideas") but an idea's ability to produce power, then "science" will get all sorts of weird results. Power corrupts even "science." We began infusing science with power in the early 1900s. Over time, the ideas that win are those that are powerful (politically), even if untrue (or only weakly true, relative to what is being claimed). There's every reason to believe that "climate science"[0] is weakly true, but that its ability to attain scientific consensus is primarily that it is much more powerful than competing theories that explain the same evidence. Climate science gives you control over multi-trillion dollar economies. Other theories do not.[1] One way to gauge the trustworthiness of "climate science" purely as an idea is to imagine an alternative: suddenly, the Sun starts putting out less energy and the Earth cools. In fact, enough less energy that we are expecting a 1.5 deg Celsius decline in global temperature in ten years. Ask yourself: what is your confidence level that additional man-made CO2 emissions will be able to counteract this so that the average temperature doesn't actually drop? If I'm honest, it's extremely low. I don't trust "climate scientists" to be able to warm the Earth on demand by injecting more CO2 into the air. [0] "Climate science" is basically the idea that CO2 (functionally) acts like a thermostat for the Earth's climate at the extremely low concentration levels we see today (due to hypothesized "positive feedback loops" interacting badly with man-made CO2-induced warming). Man is a significant cause of the increased CO2 we see today. [1] A (powerless) competing theory (because it gives no control over multi-trillion dollar economies) is that the Sun functionally acts like a thermostat for the Earth, that CO2 is incapable of heating the Earth at the extremely low concentration levels we see today—or levels 20x as high we've seen in the past 100,000 years—and that we see more CO2 in the past during warm periods (again: caused by the Sun heating the Earth) because the CO2 capacity of the oceans is lower when the temperature is higher, meaning CO2 is released into the atmosphere as the Earth warms, and moves back into the oceans as it cools. Also, there are no "positive feedback loops" in the Earth that would cause is to uncontrollably heat up due to tiny changes in CO2 levels. The only thing that actually heats or cools the Earth at the level of "climate" is the Sun. Man is a significant cause of the increased CO2 we see today, but that increased CO2 is too insignificant to cause warming by itself. If the Earth is warming (or cooling), it's because of the Sun.
- 5y ago
aaron695 5y ago
jiggawatts 5y ago
We know for a fact that both the theory of General Relativity and the Standard Model are both "wrong" in the sense that they model reality piecewise with no overlapping scope, and no clear way to arrive at a unified theory that covers that gap. It's like approximating a single function with two wildly different methods, and just ignoring the bit in the middle where the two methods clearly don't agree. Similarly, there is no consensus agreement for much of what quantum mechanics covers, despite the theory being over 100 years old and used in practical applications.
- pitsnatch 5y ago
  Yes and before Einstein, > 98% of scientists believed in an even more wrong model.
musicale 5y ago
A few things that come to mind... - Fourier theory (turned out to be right) - ATM (small packets turned out to be bad) - ulcers (most common cause turned out to be bacteria) - covid (turned out to be aerosol transmission) - radium, lead, asbestos... (turned out to be very dangerous) - some cancers (turned out to be virally caused) - malthusian equilibrium (largely overcome by technology) Some heavily funded things: - ML/deep learning (not actually a panacea) - blockchain (also not a panacea; probably mostly harmful) Some heavily used things: - Wi-Fi and cellular (non-ionizing radiation can actually damage DNA) - SMTP for email (largely ruined by spam) - the internet (turns out security is important?) - C language, current microprocessors, OS, browsers (endless security flaws)
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  The lead one at least is untrue, assuming you are talking about adding it to gasoline. They knew it was dangerous at the time, just business reasons overrode the scientists who complained, and other scientists were on the payroll and so lied. Another interesting parallel is that they actually had a better alternative to addihg lead at the time, but the industry vetoed it because it was also a fuel in its own right and threatened their monopoly.
- freemint 5y ago
  > covid (turned out to be aerosol transmission) Do you have a source that ever 98% of scientist/doctors believed that, the WHO did but that is not 0.01% of doctors/scientists
YaBomm 5y ago
mFixman 5y ago
As a meta-comment, I'm surprised at how good the answers in these kinds of Quora questions, specially when compared to most other internet forums. Even comments in this HN thread (including this one, sorry) are uninteresting and confrontative. Why is it that Quora is so different from most other social media?
- jfengel 5y ago
  There's a few things going on with Quora: 0. For that answer in particular, it's several years old. The best answers have bubbled to the top, rather than consisting of a bunch of hot takes, which is all you get on HN. 1. They started with a strong focus on Silicon Valley, which attracted a bunch of well-educated people early on. It got a reputation as a place for good, intelligent writing, which spawned a virtuous circle as other good writers came to each other. 2. For a while they continued to attract that with rewards for good writers. It was more about appreciation than paying them, so what they got was enthusiastic volunteers. 3. Their rating system is a deliberate black box but it does do a decent job of finding the better content. Poor quality content gets downvoted and hidden. Not always, and it's far from perfect, but there is another virtuous cycle where the good writers get more votes. The further down you go on the page, the worse the answers get, and the collapsed ones are pretty bad. 4. The moderation is also deeply imperfect, but they've done an OK job of pushing down some of the silliness. They used all of that to get themselves good SEO, and for the past few years they've been capitalizing on that to better monetize the site. A lot of people feel that the site has gone downhill, as seems to be the way of all flesh/bits. But it has a large number of really great writers who continue to produce good, interesting things.

39 points by RickJWagner 5y ago

This question isn't even wrong. It needs a serious dose of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Science goes through huge upturns and there are intense debates, followed by periods of slow and steady progress, then another upheaval. This is normal and good. We stand on the shoulders of giants, while looking down at all of the wacky things they also believed (Newton believed in alchemy, astrology was all the rage for way too long, all the greats had some messed up beliefs about race). The whole point of science is that you keep doing science and you keep updating your beliefs based on the results of the method, not that you believe eternally in the findings that come out of a single article in a scientific journal.

1_player 5y ago
The idea that science is always right, dogmatic and scientists are a uniform group that stands apart from the laymen is the reason there is so much distrust in scientists and "experts" and there's conspiracy everywhere. "What they don't want you to know." or using the time a theory was proven wrong as proof that "science" is untrustworthy. While reality like you say it's much simpler. Science is not about absolute truth that requires blind faith, it is about proving a theory or disproving an established one, with a simple logic process established since the Middle Ages. What we know today is just a pile of theories ready to be disproven and replaced by something better like we did with blood letting, ether filling up outer space and geocentric astronomy. It's incredibly sad the majority of the people hasn't learned this fact either in life or even in middle school.

freedomben 5y ago

Obviously climate change is an important question, but sadly I think this issue suffers from the same problems of binary thinking that so many other things do in our society right now. It's nearly impossible to have a nuanced conversation without getting shut down as "bothsidesism" or risking offending some sacred cow. Climate change is a very real problem, and one that we need to address. I won't beat on this, but if you want to understand the science behind it, as well as one of the greatest stories ever told, I highly recommend Robert Hazen's "The Origin and Evolution of Earth" Great Course or the book version of the material, "The Story of Earth." Now that said, there is a real problem of incentives in academia. The way funding is procured, and the way peer review currently works, is causing serious issues. Any sort of dissent has also become toxic to one's career, creating a heavy incentive not to challenge any established "knowledge."

0x20cowboy 5y ago
It would be cool if Hackernews did some kind of debate / in-depth discussion / podcast / video cast thing where some of these topics could be discussed. I would love to hear a nuanced, technical / economic discussion about this and other topics. Heck, I would even pay to hear it. I have no real experience with academia, but the fact that I (as a layperson) can’t even get access to published papers is a pretty clear indication that they have little interest in making information available. If only there was a website where entrepreneurs…
wittycardio 5y ago
Do you have any proof that dissent is toxic to one's career in science today ? Any more so than it ever was ?
- freedomben 5y ago
  Nope, just anecdotal stuff. I could definitely be wrong, but it sure seems like it's a lot more common. It's possible that it's just more visible to me now. It would be fascinating to see some data on this, although I can't think of how you could quantify it when "dissent" is such an ambiguous and subjective term.

causality0 5y ago

Well they did just recently discover another muscle in the human knee and most physicians would've sworn we knew about them all.

unsupp0rted 5y ago
Fascinating! Dumb question, but is there a dye we could inject that goes only to muscle fibres, so we can image all the muscles in the human body in one go? I'm surprised by 2022 we're still discovering new ones.
- causality0 5y ago
  I mean it's not like it was invisible in the first place. We just kind of collectively missed it.

throwaway984393 5y ago

I like the answer "right now". We have to assume that we're already, at this moment, wrong about something important. We always find out in the future that our past selves were wrong; hence, we are presently wrong. It's science's mission to figure out what we're wrong about. It's also dangerous to get angry at people who question science, as if we can't question science, we can't really do science. When someone asks for proof or says something isn't real or true, it's science's job to provide the proof.

mc32 5y ago
Sure, but we don't know the 'whats' and that is the rub. But you're right that not many things should be taken as gospel given historically our understanding of fundamentals keep changing or augmenting.

kayamon 5y ago

Bitcoin is the current one. Bitcoin is the most important piece of engineering since the Manhattan Project. It's an iterative solver that runs through the world economy, forcing each power station to decide whether to use their energy for local purposes or a shared goal, creating a shared stock market for energy thereby forcing the world into a new economy like in Star Trek by finally yielding a shared consensus on the true cost of energy as an asset. It really annoys me people aren't as excited by it as I am. edit: the number of downvotes on this will act as a record of whether people here are interested in the scientific method of discussing things they disagree with, or the nazi method of banning things they dislike editedit: in this thread, please remember you were looking for the thing everyone else said was wrong

rubatuga 5y ago
It’s a cancer. Of course cancer only thinks of itself.
- kayamon 5y ago
  wut
naikrovek 5y ago
it's a scam and has value only to those who have been tricked into believing it has value. > the most important piece of engineering since the Manhattan Project that says it all doesn't it? if you think that a Blockchain is as important as the Manhattan project, you have been "converted" and are almost certainly so far away that logic cannot reach you.
- kayamon 5y ago
  You haven't actually engaged with any of the points I made. This is not science.
  - anon9384929 5y ago
    “The true cost of energy of an asset” I work in the energy industry and I think people haven’t engaged your points because they’re completely incoherent without you significantly expanding upon them. Respectfully, the way you’ve phrased your points makes it clear you aren’t an expert in energy markets, which makes someone like me unwilling to engage in a debate without you making your case much more clearly up front. (If this seems arrogant, consider debating somebody who has a rudimentary understanding of Python making declarations about the next revolution in distributed systems, or something like that…)

throwaway5Am1k 5y ago

Regarding climate change, please read how the number was calculated https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2016/12/14/fact-checking-the-97-consensus-on-anthropogenic-climate-change/?sh=2cebb8b21157 https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2016/12/14/fact-checki... Scientists agree that there's man-made climate change. There's no nuance of what the implications will be (e.g. rising sea levels, failing crops, mass migration), or what the solution should be (e.g. carbon tax). It feels insanely difficult to say "climate change is real, but it's not something we should [overly] worry about; humans are getting better at combating natural disasters, our food yields are getting better, and the best we can do for the 3rd world is [for them] to continue to use gas [for the time being]"

freedomben 5y ago
> or what the solution should be (e.g. carbon tax). There's a ton of nuance around what the solution should be. a carbon tax is one, but far from the only one, and it has a lot of downsides. It's difficult to measure and enforce, and creates ripe breeding ground for corruption. It's harmful to the economy, harmful (in some ways) to the development of alternative energies, and it's mainly the developing nations that are the biggest problem, but the carbon tax either doesn't apply to them or it would stifle their development, which is bad for humanitarian reasons (and pretty damn unfair given that the US was allowed to develop restriction free).. I'm not saying we shouldn't consider a carbon tax, because it might be one of the better options. But there's definitely nuance around it and plenty of important ideas to debate and discuss.

erichocean 5y ago

I think when "science" has been infused with power, so that it is no longer the truth of an idea that gives it legs (the "marketplace of ideas") but an idea's ability to produce power, then "science" will get all sorts of weird results. Power corrupts even "science." We began infusing science with power in the early 1900s. Over time, the ideas that win are those that are powerful (politically), even if untrue (or only weakly true, relative to what is being claimed). There's every reason to believe that "climate science"[0] is weakly true, but that its ability to attain scientific consensus is primarily that it is much more powerful than competing theories that explain the same evidence. Climate science gives you control over multi-trillion dollar economies. Other theories do not.[1] One way to gauge the trustworthiness of "climate science" purely as an idea is to imagine an alternative: suddenly, the Sun starts putting out less energy and the Earth cools. In fact, enough less energy that we are expecting a 1.5 deg Celsius decline in global temperature in ten years. Ask yourself: what is your confidence level that additional man-made CO2 emissions will be able to counteract this so that the average temperature doesn't actually drop? If I'm honest, it's extremely low. I don't trust "climate scientists" to be able to warm the Earth on demand by injecting more CO2 into the air. [0] "Climate science" is basically the idea that CO2 (functionally) acts like a thermostat for the Earth's climate at the extremely low concentration levels we see today (due to hypothesized "positive feedback loops" interacting badly with man-made CO2-induced warming). Man is a significant cause of the increased CO2 we see today. [1] A (powerless) competing theory (because it gives no control over multi-trillion dollar economies) is that the Sun functionally acts like a thermostat for the Earth, that CO2 is incapable of heating the Earth at the extremely low concentration levels we see today—or levels 20x as high we've seen in the past 100,000 years—and that we see more CO2 in the past during warm periods (again: caused by the Sun heating the Earth) because the CO2 capacity of the oceans is lower when the temperature is higher, meaning CO2 is released into the atmosphere as the Earth warms, and moves back into the oceans as it cools. Also, there are no "positive feedback loops" in the Earth that would cause is to uncontrollably heat up due to tiny changes in CO2 levels. The only thing that actually heats or cools the Earth at the level of "climate" is the Sun. Man is a significant cause of the increased CO2 we see today, but that increased CO2 is too insignificant to cause warming by itself. If the Earth is warming (or cooling), it's because of the Sun.

5y ago

aaron695 5y ago

jiggawatts 5y ago

We know for a fact that both the theory of General Relativity and the Standard Model are both "wrong" in the sense that they model reality piecewise with no overlapping scope, and no clear way to arrive at a unified theory that covers that gap. It's like approximating a single function with two wildly different methods, and just ignoring the bit in the middle where the two methods clearly don't agree. Similarly, there is no consensus agreement for much of what quantum mechanics covers, despite the theory being over 100 years old and used in practical applications.

pitsnatch 5y ago
Yes and before Einstein, > 98% of scientists believed in an even more wrong model.

musicale 5y ago

A few things that come to mind... - Fourier theory (turned out to be right) - ATM (small packets turned out to be bad) - ulcers (most common cause turned out to be bacteria) - covid (turned out to be aerosol transmission) - radium, lead, asbestos... (turned out to be very dangerous) - some cancers (turned out to be virally caused) - malthusian equilibrium (largely overcome by technology) Some heavily funded things: - ML/deep learning (not actually a panacea) - blockchain (also not a panacea; probably mostly harmful) Some heavily used things: - Wi-Fi and cellular (non-ionizing radiation can actually damage DNA) - SMTP for email (largely ruined by spam) - the internet (turns out security is important?) - C language, current microprocessors, OS, browsers (endless security flaws)

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
The lead one at least is untrue, assuming you are talking about adding it to gasoline. They knew it was dangerous at the time, just business reasons overrode the scientists who complained, and other scientists were on the payroll and so lied. Another interesting parallel is that they actually had a better alternative to addihg lead at the time, but the industry vetoed it because it was also a fuel in its own right and threatened their monopoly.
freemint 5y ago
> covid (turned out to be aerosol transmission) Do you have a source that ever 98% of scientist/doctors believed that, the WHO did but that is not 0.01% of doctors/scientists

YaBomm 5y ago

mFixman 5y ago

As a meta-comment, I'm surprised at how good the answers in these kinds of Quora questions, specially when compared to most other internet forums. Even comments in this HN thread (including this one, sorry) are uninteresting and confrontative. Why is it that Quora is so different from most other social media?

jfengel 5y ago
There's a few things going on with Quora: 0. For that answer in particular, it's several years old. The best answers have bubbled to the top, rather than consisting of a bunch of hot takes, which is all you get on HN. 1. They started with a strong focus on Silicon Valley, which attracted a bunch of well-educated people early on. It got a reputation as a place for good, intelligent writing, which spawned a virtuous circle as other good writers came to each other. 2. For a while they continued to attract that with rewards for good writers. It was more about appreciation than paying them, so what they got was enthusiastic volunteers. 3. Their rating system is a deliberate black box but it does do a decent job of finding the better content. Poor quality content gets downvoted and hidden. Not always, and it's far from perfect, but there is another virtuous cycle where the good writers get more votes. The further down you go on the page, the worse the answers get, and the collapsed ones are pretty bad. 4. The moderation is also deeply imperfect, but they've done an OK job of pushing down some of the silliness. They used all of that to get themselves good SEO, and for the past few years they've been capitalizing on that to better monetize the site. A lot of people feel that the site has gone downhill, as seems to be the way of all flesh/bits. But it has a large number of really great writers who continue to produce good, interesting things.