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In my view, it does. When geneticists are studying eg., single-gene-to-single-disease relationships then this is science. When they're studying possible trajec
by mjburgess 2y ago
In my view, it does.
When geneticists are studying eg., single-gene-to-single-disease relationships then this is science. When they're studying possible trajectories of 1000s of genes on down-stream phenomneon with an amazing number of uncontrollable causes.. then i'd be inclined to call this pseduoscience.
The line isn't arbitrary at all, but based on hard facts about the nature of reality and our ability to measure it.
Modelling the weather is a science if it is done based on extremely recent history, and the models are explanatory and accurate to within a relevant time horizon. If you use the same models to predict the weather next year, that's pseduoscience.
Pseudoscience is often deeply apparently scientific -- resuing all the same statsitical formulae, etc. -- this is a charade. It is reality which decides that these techniques are broken, not the techniques themselves.
- RandomLensman 2y agoIf it is reality that decides what works and what doesn't then: If the 1000s of gene study "works" then it isn't pseudoscience, no?
- mjburgess 2y agoCorrect. But the problem for these areas is that they cannot operationalise "works", because there's no causal theory. There's literally just "measure this, measure that, assume some unknown mechainms with extremely strong properties that we have no evidence for ..." So we're in a very very bad situation in these cases. It isnt that mere speculation is invovled as an input, its that mere speculation is the output.
- RandomLensman 2y agoNot really my experience when helping on, for example, gene array data analyses: there's often a lot of causal theory (or at least hardened hypotheses) developed going into the experiments. People don't just randomly measure things.
- mjburgess 2y agoThere's a wide range of activities called "genetics". I've said that many cases are science, and as you say, that would be one such case.
- acdha 2y ago> In my view, it does Sure, and you’re welcome to have personal preferences. My point is just that “hard science” sounds like an objective term but it’s neither well-defined nor objective. Calling it “specialties which mjburgess likes” would be just meaningful.