4 ms·

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts" - Richard Feynman

lisper 4y ago
You do realize that was intended to be humorous, yes? It's true that one should not defer blindly to authority, but experts nonetheless know some things that non-experts don't. That's what makes them experts.
- jhbadger 4y ago
  Exactly. And it was about experts questioning the beliefs of other experts, particularly experts in the past. Galileo questioning Aristotle. Einstein questioning Newton. Not about random quacks thinking they have opinions equal to the experts.
  - caddemon 4y ago
    There's a huge set of potentially politically fraught middle grounds that exist between Einstein -> Newton and random quack -> some modern distinguished scientist. And by politically fraught I mean career politics that directly impact the scientific landscape, not "politics". It is my impression that back in the day it was more common for academics with differing opinions to banter or at times straight up disrespect each other semi-publicly. This could be historical survivorship bias, but it is a fact that aspiring scientists had a much greater likelihood of becoming a tenured PI in previous generations, and usually reached that status much earlier in their lives. I fear that with the state of the academic job market along with present cultural norms, it is less common now for an early career investigator to question the quality of an established PI's work, or even for PIs to meaningfully criticize each other in scientifically accessible formats. Besides, questioning the work of past scientists is implicitly questioning the research of many modern scientists, at least if that questioning is to be considered remotely novel. There are socially acceptable avenues to question past science, but there are also cases where modern PIs of influence have built so much on an assumption from prior results, such that the impact of their work would indeed be threatened by questions of the foundation. It is important that the latter situation is handled in a manner consistent with scientific ideals. I don't know what Feynman was exactly referring to with his quote, but I'd be surprised if he was focused on the behavior of random lay people. Someone immersed in science is probably going to be most concerned with the behavior of fellow scientists and emerging trainees.
    - lisper 4y ago
      I think you are missing an important bit of the contemporary political landscape: Feynman's quote is used by today's quacks -- particularly young-earth creationists and climate-change denialists -- to discredit the entire scientific enterprise.
      - caddemon 4y ago
        I assumed that was the intention of the comment but I don't think HN is really a board for young earth creationists or climate change denialists. Maybe I'm wrong about that but I think there are legitimate questions to be debated on this topic and it's annoying to see critical discussions of science regularly side tracked by concerns about how someone's random crazy uncle might misinterpret the criticisms. It's not like the OP posted the quote on a climate research thread, so I don't see why it's especially relevant.
        lisper 4y ago
        There are a surprising number of YECs (many of whom are also climate-change denialists -- it's all part of the same ideology) lurking here. I suspect it's part of an organized covert effort to spread the doctrine. Part of the strategy is to discredit science and scientists in general.
        caddemon 4y ago
        I'd think YEC is a small subset of climate deniers even if most YEC are climate deniers. I can image a climate denier contingency here but I have a hard time believing that YECs bother with HN. I'm not up to date on conspiracy theorists though. Are there any threads you can point to about YEC here? Regardless, this is also a great way to stifle important scientific discourse. Nobody wants scientific commentary to happen hidden from public view, so more and more happens on preprint servers and social media. But then nobody wants to make even good faith criticisms because they don't want the general public to misinterpret, aided by bad faith spinning by other parties. Of course you will see criticisms related to e.g. labor conditions, but when it comes to criticism of scientific practice or even in some cases specific results, there are always a bunch of people ready to comment about how most critics are quacks and we need to be careful about extremism. This is awfully convenient for the scientists that are doing subpar work.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  > but experts nonetheless know some things that non-experts don't Oh, yeah, engineering and all the other practices are rooted on this. Science is not.
  - lisper 4y ago
    Science may not be "rooted" in this, but it is nonetheless still a pretty good bet that a scientific expert knows things that non-experts don't.
    - marcosdumay 4y ago
      Well, if he works assuming he knows those things, he will fail in doing science. (Unless by those things you mean the scientific method, because scientists usually practice that one.)
      - NegativeK 4y ago
        That sounds like you're claiming that scientists must be ignorant in all things. That can't be productive. A scientist must be incredibly knowledgeable in some things so that they can advance the world's understanding in things that they're ignorant about. They also must be willing to uproot their assumptions, if the evidence points that way. But they still must be experts in their assumptions.
  - caddemon 4y ago
    I think the problem is that two different notions of expert have been widely confounded within the present scientific training structure, let alone within public perception. There is a huge amount of prior literature on many topics, so to be an expert in something like immunology you're almost definitely a PhD, or maybe a very academically inclined MD. However this notion of expert simply means you have learned intricate details about many of the important previous results, most of which are probably true. It does not mean you actually have the ability to do good science in the field of immunology. But for any technical question in your niche that isn't uncharted territory you can serve as an expert. Such expertise has obvious uses in many other domains, and as there isn't really a great term for it, it gets called scientific expertise. Perhaps the person may be called a biologist, but that also has scientific undertones which may or may not be warranted. I'm sure you are aware of this, but I don't often see it explicitly stated, and so it feels like people talk past each other in a sense. It is wholly possible to approach e.g. chemistry in a non-scientific way, just as something like business can be approached in a scientific way. I don't think the double language will be resolved any time soon, since I don't see much effort to make this distinction in the actual design of PhD training - forget about random internet forums.
poszlem 4y ago
A related quote that I always loved: "Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously."
- learnedSloth 4y ago
  Learning would work at least as well IMO. One can be educated to taking educated people seriously.
analog31 4y ago
I've been in roomfuls of people who believed in the ignorance of experts, and they were not scientists.

You do realize that was intended to be humorous, yes? It's true that one should not defer blindly to authority, but experts nonetheless know some things that non-experts don't. That's what makes them experts.

jhbadger 4y ago
Exactly. And it was about experts questioning the beliefs of other experts, particularly experts in the past. Galileo questioning Aristotle. Einstein questioning Newton. Not about random quacks thinking they have opinions equal to the experts.
- caddemon 4y ago
  There's a huge set of potentially politically fraught middle grounds that exist between Einstein -> Newton and random quack -> some modern distinguished scientist. And by politically fraught I mean career politics that directly impact the scientific landscape, not "politics". It is my impression that back in the day it was more common for academics with differing opinions to banter or at times straight up disrespect each other semi-publicly. This could be historical survivorship bias, but it is a fact that aspiring scientists had a much greater likelihood of becoming a tenured PI in previous generations, and usually reached that status much earlier in their lives. I fear that with the state of the academic job market along with present cultural norms, it is less common now for an early career investigator to question the quality of an established PI's work, or even for PIs to meaningfully criticize each other in scientifically accessible formats. Besides, questioning the work of past scientists is implicitly questioning the research of many modern scientists, at least if that questioning is to be considered remotely novel. There are socially acceptable avenues to question past science, but there are also cases where modern PIs of influence have built so much on an assumption from prior results, such that the impact of their work would indeed be threatened by questions of the foundation. It is important that the latter situation is handled in a manner consistent with scientific ideals. I don't know what Feynman was exactly referring to with his quote, but I'd be surprised if he was focused on the behavior of random lay people. Someone immersed in science is probably going to be most concerned with the behavior of fellow scientists and emerging trainees.
  - lisper 4y ago
    I think you are missing an important bit of the contemporary political landscape: Feynman's quote is used by today's quacks -- particularly young-earth creationists and climate-change denialists -- to discredit the entire scientific enterprise.
    - caddemon 4y ago
      I assumed that was the intention of the comment but I don't think HN is really a board for young earth creationists or climate change denialists. Maybe I'm wrong about that but I think there are legitimate questions to be debated on this topic and it's annoying to see critical discussions of science regularly side tracked by concerns about how someone's random crazy uncle might misinterpret the criticisms. It's not like the OP posted the quote on a climate research thread, so I don't see why it's especially relevant.
      - lisper 4y ago
        There are a surprising number of YECs (many of whom are also climate-change denialists -- it's all part of the same ideology) lurking here. I suspect it's part of an organized covert effort to spread the doctrine. Part of the strategy is to discredit science and scientists in general.
        caddemon 4y ago
        I'd think YEC is a small subset of climate deniers even if most YEC are climate deniers. I can image a climate denier contingency here but I have a hard time believing that YECs bother with HN. I'm not up to date on conspiracy theorists though. Are there any threads you can point to about YEC here? Regardless, this is also a great way to stifle important scientific discourse. Nobody wants scientific commentary to happen hidden from public view, so more and more happens on preprint servers and social media. But then nobody wants to make even good faith criticisms because they don't want the general public to misinterpret, aided by bad faith spinning by other parties. Of course you will see criticisms related to e.g. labor conditions, but when it comes to criticism of scientific practice or even in some cases specific results, there are always a bunch of people ready to comment about how most critics are quacks and we need to be careful about extremism. This is awfully convenient for the scientists that are doing subpar work.
marcosdumay 4y ago
> but experts nonetheless know some things that non-experts don't Oh, yeah, engineering and all the other practices are rooted on this. Science is not.
- lisper 4y ago
  Science may not be "rooted" in this, but it is nonetheless still a pretty good bet that a scientific expert knows things that non-experts don't.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    Well, if he works assuming he knows those things, he will fail in doing science. (Unless by those things you mean the scientific method, because scientists usually practice that one.)
    - NegativeK 4y ago
      That sounds like you're claiming that scientists must be ignorant in all things. That can't be productive. A scientist must be incredibly knowledgeable in some things so that they can advance the world's understanding in things that they're ignorant about. They also must be willing to uproot their assumptions, if the evidence points that way. But they still must be experts in their assumptions.
- caddemon 4y ago
  I think the problem is that two different notions of expert have been widely confounded within the present scientific training structure, let alone within public perception. There is a huge amount of prior literature on many topics, so to be an expert in something like immunology you're almost definitely a PhD, or maybe a very academically inclined MD. However this notion of expert simply means you have learned intricate details about many of the important previous results, most of which are probably true. It does not mean you actually have the ability to do good science in the field of immunology. But for any technical question in your niche that isn't uncharted territory you can serve as an expert. Such expertise has obvious uses in many other domains, and as there isn't really a great term for it, it gets called scientific expertise. Perhaps the person may be called a biologist, but that also has scientific undertones which may or may not be warranted. I'm sure you are aware of this, but I don't often see it explicitly stated, and so it feels like people talk past each other in a sense. It is wholly possible to approach e.g. chemistry in a non-scientific way, just as something like business can be approached in a scientific way. I don't think the double language will be resolved any time soon, since I don't see much effort to make this distinction in the actual design of PhD training - forget about random internet forums.

poszlem 4y ago

A related quote that I always loved: "Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously."

learnedSloth 4y ago
Learning would work at least as well IMO. One can be educated to taking educated people seriously.

analog31 4y ago

I've been in roomfuls of people who believed in the ignorance of experts, and they were not scientists.