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> The standards of intellectual and academic rigor in physics and aerospace engineering is far higher than nutrition science or whatever. I'm not sure that's

by edanm 3y ago

> The standards of intellectual and academic rigor in physics and aerospace engineering is far higher than nutrition science or whatever. I'm not sure that's justified, at all. The domains are harder to experiment in - so the standards are more fitting for their domain. That doesn't make them better or worse, just different. > All things being equal, I would probably trust the judgement of someone that went deep in the hard sciences and engineering, and then educated themselves on the literature of some soft science specialty on the side, than the average person whose entire education was in the much less rigorous and more shallow soft sciences. You are, IMO, too dismissive in your language about entire professions. "Shallow, soft sciences". I get where you're coming from - I'm more of a CS/Math/Physics person myself. But I think "our" side of hard sciences is far more dismissive than it should be - leading to implicitly trusting people who wave the right "hard science" credentials around instead of people working on the field for many years.

digdugdirk 3y ago
^ This. CS/Math/Physics people tend to have a massive blind spot in the awareness of just how much complexity exists in the biological sciences. Couple that with a background that makes these people have full confidence in their ability to understand complex systems, and you tend to have a larger issue than if the background and subject matter were reversed.
ssivark 3y ago
> I'm not sure that's justified, at all. The domains are harder to experiment in - so the standards are more fitting for their domain. Not taking sides here, but I want to point out that there is a distinction between rigor in reasoning and diligence in testing (given feasibility constraints). The true answer need not be in the space of hypotheses that's feasible to test [1]. It's crucial that scientists appreciate that; sloppy reasoning tends to make strong conclusions from weak tests because there's a desire (bias) to emphatically drive outcomes even from weak conclusions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect

by edanm 3y ago

digdugdirk 3y ago

^ This. CS/Math/Physics people tend to have a massive blind spot in the awareness of just how much complexity exists in the biological sciences. Couple that with a background that makes these people have full confidence in their ability to understand complex systems, and you tend to have a larger issue than if the background and subject matter were reversed.

ssivark 3y ago

> I'm not sure that's justified, at all. The domains are harder to experiment in - so the standards are more fitting for their domain. Not taking sides here, but I want to point out that there is a distinction between rigor in reasoning and diligence in testing (given feasibility constraints). The true answer need not be in the space of hypotheses that's feasible to test [1]. It's crucial that scientists appreciate that; sloppy reasoning tends to make strong conclusions from weak tests because there's a desire (bias) to emphatically drive outcomes even from weak conclusions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect