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"People talk glibly about science. What is science? People coming out of a university with a master's degree or a PhD, you take them into the field and they lit

"People talk glibly about science. What is science? People coming out of a university with a master's degree or a PhD, you take them into the field and they literally don't believe anything unless it's a peer-reviewed paper. It's the only thing they accept and you say to them 'But let's observe. Let's think. Let's discuss.' They don't do it. It's just, 'Is it in a peer-reviewed paper or not?' That's their view of science. I think it's pathetic. Gone into universities as bright young people. They come out of them brain dead, not even knowing what science means. They think it means peer-reviewed papers etc. No, that's academia. And if a paper is peer-reviewed it means everybody thought the same therefore they approved it. An unintended consequence is that when new knowledge emerges, new scientific insights, they can never ever be peer-reviewed. So we're blocking all new advances in science that are big advances. If you look at the breakthroughs in science almost always they don't come from the center of that profession, they come from the fringe. The finest candle makers in the world couldn't even think of electric lights. They don't come from within they often come from outside the bricks. We're going to kill ourselves because of stupidity." — Allan Savory, Zimbabwean ecologist, research biologist, livestock farmer, and president and co-founder of the Savory Institute. He originated the Holistic management of agriculture to fight desertification. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkXZ3_ZmKzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkXZ3_ZmKzw

kickout 4y ago
Yea, sadly I can relate to this quote. Modern science has lost it voice and purpose it seems and it nothing more than a glorified printing press of poor research and glad-handing consortiums.
dekhn 4y ago
While I appreciate the sentiment, nearly all new knowledge goes through peer review because for every important problem in academia, there's a competitor who is the best person to point out problems with the theory. "Holistic management of agriculture to fight desertification" is a non-quantitative science and falls under a very different regime from, say, people working at the state of the art in particle physics or biology.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- scifibestfi 4y ago
  Most scientific breakthroughs in history did not go through peer review. That's a new consensus mechanism that was introduced not that long ago. Einstein was only subject to it once and didn't pass. Newton, Galileo and the rest were not subject to it at all.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    I'm not defending peer review; I never enjoyed it when I published. It certainly never made my papers any better. Newton and others all published and then discussed the details in person, a lot of the peer review was "off-paper" and "post-publication". Also, the vast majority of scientific breakthroughs, by count, occurred after peer review- mainly due to the unbelievable pace of breakthroughs due to technological advancement.
  - cma 4y ago
    That sounded interesting so I looked into it. It seems to instead support peer review. According to this [1], Einstein's paper that didn't pass peer review turned out to be wrong (it said gravitational waves didn't exist), and was later published elsewhere with different conclusions and fixing problems that the referee's report had already pointed out. > The irony, of course, is that Einstein could have found that escape route months earlier, simply by reading the referee’s report that he had dismissed so hastily. The referee had also observed that casting the Einstein–Rosen metric (as we now call this solution of the Einstein equations) in cylindrical coordinates removes the apparent difficulty. [1] https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.2117822 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.2117822
- mistermann 4y ago
  > While I appreciate the sentiment, nearly all new knowledge goes through peer review... Only knowledge that originates in academia, and even then only a portion of it. > because for every important problem in academia, there's a competitor who is the best person to point out problems with the theory. While this may be generally true, it is not absolutely true. > "Holistic management of agriculture to fight desertification" is a non-quantitative science... Partially non-quantitative. Also: it'a (partially) true, but so what? > ...and falls under a very different regime from, say, people working at the state of the art in particle physics or biology. Right: one is known to be important, and the others are (at this point in time) hoped to be important (as they have been in the past).

kickout 4y ago

Yea, sadly I can relate to this quote. Modern science has lost it voice and purpose it seems and it nothing more than a glorified printing press of poor research and glad-handing consortiums.

dekhn 4y ago

While I appreciate the sentiment, nearly all new knowledge goes through peer review because for every important problem in academia, there's a competitor who is the best person to point out problems with the theory. "Holistic management of agriculture to fight desertification" is a non-quantitative science and falls under a very different regime from, say, people working at the state of the art in particle physics or biology.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
scifibestfi 4y ago
Most scientific breakthroughs in history did not go through peer review. That's a new consensus mechanism that was introduced not that long ago. Einstein was only subject to it once and didn't pass. Newton, Galileo and the rest were not subject to it at all.
- dekhn 4y ago
  I'm not defending peer review; I never enjoyed it when I published. It certainly never made my papers any better. Newton and others all published and then discussed the details in person, a lot of the peer review was "off-paper" and "post-publication". Also, the vast majority of scientific breakthroughs, by count, occurred after peer review- mainly due to the unbelievable pace of breakthroughs due to technological advancement.
- cma 4y ago
  That sounded interesting so I looked into it. It seems to instead support peer review. According to this [1], Einstein's paper that didn't pass peer review turned out to be wrong (it said gravitational waves didn't exist), and was later published elsewhere with different conclusions and fixing problems that the referee's report had already pointed out. > The irony, of course, is that Einstein could have found that escape route months earlier, simply by reading the referee’s report that he had dismissed so hastily. The referee had also observed that casting the Einstein–Rosen metric (as we now call this solution of the Einstein equations) in cylindrical coordinates removes the apparent difficulty. [1] https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.2117822 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.2117822
mistermann 4y ago
> While I appreciate the sentiment, nearly all new knowledge goes through peer review... Only knowledge that originates in academia, and even then only a portion of it. > because for every important problem in academia, there's a competitor who is the best person to point out problems with the theory. While this may be generally true, it is not absolutely true. > "Holistic management of agriculture to fight desertification" is a non-quantitative science... Partially non-quantitative. Also: it'a (partially) true, but so what? > ...and falls under a very different regime from, say, people working at the state of the art in particle physics or biology. Right: one is known to be important, and the others are (at this point in time) hoped to be important (as they have been in the past).