6 ms·

> The downstream effects of a post-truth post-trust era. All this era has shown us, is that we should never have been relying on trust in anything even close t

by Kamq 3y ago

> The downstream effects of a post-truth post-trust era. All this era has shown us, is that we should never have been relying on trust in anything even close to science. Trusting people to put the truth their own career advancement is how we got into this mess with the replication crisis.

wredue 3y ago
[flagged]
- edgyquant 3y ago
  Nope this is false and a gaslight perpetuated by vested interest. I thought the same btw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36790301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36790301
  - indigochill 3y ago
    Ultimately I believe people are conflating terms: 1. Science as an institution of academics, some of whom have demonstrably prioritized their career over doing their job (and even when that's not the case, has been shown to be wrong if you go back far enough to various scientific theories that were disproved by later discoveries), and... 2. Science as a process of inquiry that begins with an observation which leads to a hypothesis which is then put to the test through experimentation. This needn't be a process limited to academic science, either, but can be exercised in many areas of life. I suspect we all generally agree that Science #1 should usually be taken with some salt (even in the best scenario, once you take science at its word, you've stopped doing science, though there are times, like gravity, when for practical purposes you can accept a high degree of technically-non-perfect certainty is close enough), and Science #2 is generally good for either reinforcing or correcting our understanding of the world.
  - wredue 3y ago
    You didn’t ever think the same. You’re an anti-science, anti-intellectual because it helps prop up your fascist desires.
- agentgumshoe 3y ago
  This is disingenuous. Glorifying 'science' (which can be entirely shoddy to 'gold standard' and cover the whole gamut of garbage to spot on, which can change weekly) and dismissing cultural knowledge (i.e. how certain plants remedy ailments), generational knowledge (i.e. what weather changes mean), lived experience and non-accredited research because 'it's not science.' You have to be critical of everything (reasonably), do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Or you can just believe that everything not 'published science' is wild internet crackpot theory if that makes life easier for you.
- Kamq 3y ago
  I think you misread my comment. I'm not anti-science. I'm saying we screwed up bigtime trusting people within the institutions we put up to manage science. Especially in the soft sciences. We let things go without serious peer review or replication far too long, and allowed far too dodgy statistics, resulting in the replication crisis we see today. Science is amazing, but we haven't been doing science in certain areas for a number of years. We're going to be sorting this out for at least the next decade. We should start again at some point, and that starts with clearing out all the crank theories that have made their way into journals that either don't replicate or have no predictive power. We shouldn't have been relying on trust in the beginning. We should have been doing replications.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    So if I’m understanding correctly: no structured sharing of scientific ideas until they’re replicated? By what mechanism do you propose people find novel studies that seem interesting enough to replicate?
    - Kamq 3y ago
      > So if I’m understanding correctly: no structured sharing of scientific ideas until they’re replicated? No, you don't. I'm actually struggling to think of a more extreme interpretation of my words. Trying something novel is fine. But trying something out, getting a single result, treating it as gospel, and not even trying to find the flaws in it isn't doing science. A lot of federal grant money has gone into institutions that do just that, and I think it should be re-directed elsewhere. To, y'know, institutions that are actually going to do science.
      - ethanbond 3y ago
        Putting something in a journal is literally just publishing a result. It explicitly does not intrinsically carry notions of validity for the exact reasons you point out. How are scientists supposed to share results in a way that doesn’t run the risk of someone else taking it as gospel, or even more likely: of someone on the internet thinking that the scientific community is taking it as gospel (which they’re generally not… again for the exact reasons you mention).
stephen_g 3y ago
All science is based on some kind of trust unless everybody personally replicates every single study and experiment...
- Kamq 3y ago
  On some level, sure. But there's a difference between trusting two rival institutions that come to the same conclusion, and trusting a single research team that stands to advance quite significantly from a particular publishing.

by Kamq 3y ago

wredue 3y ago

[flagged]

edgyquant 3y ago
Nope this is false and a gaslight perpetuated by vested interest. I thought the same btw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36790301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36790301
- indigochill 3y ago
  Ultimately I believe people are conflating terms: 1. Science as an institution of academics, some of whom have demonstrably prioritized their career over doing their job (and even when that's not the case, has been shown to be wrong if you go back far enough to various scientific theories that were disproved by later discoveries), and... 2. Science as a process of inquiry that begins with an observation which leads to a hypothesis which is then put to the test through experimentation. This needn't be a process limited to academic science, either, but can be exercised in many areas of life. I suspect we all generally agree that Science #1 should usually be taken with some salt (even in the best scenario, once you take science at its word, you've stopped doing science, though there are times, like gravity, when for practical purposes you can accept a high degree of technically-non-perfect certainty is close enough), and Science #2 is generally good for either reinforcing or correcting our understanding of the world.
- wredue 3y ago
  You didn’t ever think the same. You’re an anti-science, anti-intellectual because it helps prop up your fascist desires.
agentgumshoe 3y ago
This is disingenuous. Glorifying 'science' (which can be entirely shoddy to 'gold standard' and cover the whole gamut of garbage to spot on, which can change weekly) and dismissing cultural knowledge (i.e. how certain plants remedy ailments), generational knowledge (i.e. what weather changes mean), lived experience and non-accredited research because 'it's not science.' You have to be critical of everything (reasonably), do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Or you can just believe that everything not 'published science' is wild internet crackpot theory if that makes life easier for you.
Kamq 3y ago
I think you misread my comment. I'm not anti-science. I'm saying we screwed up bigtime trusting people within the institutions we put up to manage science. Especially in the soft sciences. We let things go without serious peer review or replication far too long, and allowed far too dodgy statistics, resulting in the replication crisis we see today. Science is amazing, but we haven't been doing science in certain areas for a number of years. We're going to be sorting this out for at least the next decade. We should start again at some point, and that starts with clearing out all the crank theories that have made their way into journals that either don't replicate or have no predictive power. We shouldn't have been relying on trust in the beginning. We should have been doing replications.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  So if I’m understanding correctly: no structured sharing of scientific ideas until they’re replicated? By what mechanism do you propose people find novel studies that seem interesting enough to replicate?
  - Kamq 3y ago
    > So if I’m understanding correctly: no structured sharing of scientific ideas until they’re replicated? No, you don't. I'm actually struggling to think of a more extreme interpretation of my words. Trying something novel is fine. But trying something out, getting a single result, treating it as gospel, and not even trying to find the flaws in it isn't doing science. A lot of federal grant money has gone into institutions that do just that, and I think it should be re-directed elsewhere. To, y'know, institutions that are actually going to do science.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      Putting something in a journal is literally just publishing a result. It explicitly does not intrinsically carry notions of validity for the exact reasons you point out. How are scientists supposed to share results in a way that doesn’t run the risk of someone else taking it as gospel, or even more likely: of someone on the internet thinking that the scientific community is taking it as gospel (which they’re generally not… again for the exact reasons you mention).

stephen_g 3y ago

All science is based on some kind of trust unless everybody personally replicates every single study and experiment...

Kamq 3y ago
On some level, sure. But there's a difference between trusting two rival institutions that come to the same conclusion, and trusting a single research team that stands to advance quite significantly from a particular publishing.