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> I say this because I think non-scientists regularly say that science is biased because scientists are biased. As any other field, the science is as good as t
by reliabilityguy 8mo ago
> I say this because I think non-scientists regularly say that science is biased because scientists are biased.
As any other field, the science is as good as the scientist that produced it. For example, there is a serious reproducibility crisis in multiple fields, like psychology, and social sciences. In the latter it is hard to say of its due to systemic educational failure of the PhD students in those fields, or that the field and personal politics are merging too tightly.
Unfortunately, all it takes is one bad scientist to discredit the rest, e.g., Wakefield.
- biophysboy 8mo agoI know what you are saying, but I'm arguing that science is great because it produces better output than the people that make it as long as they stick to good methods. As for reproducibility, its my opinion that it has more to do with incentives and constraints than the ethics or intellectual capacity of the researcher (although those are real components too)
- reliabilityguy 8mo ago> I'm arguing that science is great because it produces better output than the people that make it as long as they stick to good methods. I don’t think we have a contradiction here. What I am saying is that science is made by people, and we as scientists have to be extremely vigilant today not to let “ends justify the means” crowd to use the name of science for their own agenda.
- biophysboy 8mo agoYeah I might be nitpicking. I agree with you. I get frustrated when people conflate a neutral scientific method with a neutral scientist: that a scientist cannot explore political/ideological topics with robust methods because its biased. Do you see the sleight of hand I'm talking about? I've noticed it a lot in the reproducibility discourse.
- reliabilityguy 8mo ago> Do you see the sleight of hand I'm talking about? Yes. I have sociologists in my extended friends group, and we had a couple of heated discussions on why interviewing 20 subjects is not sufficient for the conclusions they have. But, turns out, it’s the norm in their specific field. Go figure