4 ms·

NO! I absolutely resent that idea that "science" should only be something for the experts, and everybody without a PhD should shut up about it. As long as it i

by stfu 14y ago

NO! I absolutely resent that idea that "science" should only be something for the experts, and everybody without a PhD should shut up about it. As long as it is just random ranting without any data, it is more than welcoming that "regular" people try to understand expert opinion and in fact challenge it. If "facts" are so clear and indisputable, than those amateur research should easily be shown as wrong. If not, amateur researcher make a highly valuable contribution. They highlight the fact, that social science, especially on social phenomenons, is (often) based on consensus. In this case here, the author makes an excellent contribution just by highlighting how easy correlation and causation can be (mis)interpreted. For example the other day I read and article published in a well regarded management journal, by authors who claim having found out that the willingness of users clicking on ads is based on the hours of sunshine per day in that region. The correlation equals causation phenomenon is quite common among social scientists who try to show how scientific their contributions are.

eksith 14y ago
You're right, science shouldn't just be reserved for the PhDs. But the PhD is likely to have insight and experience that will make a lot of assertions false, avenues of research redundant and generally be able to tell the different between science and not science. There's no restriction on laymen studying, researching and trying to understand new frontiers of science, however just as the PhDs don't have a monopoly on science (and as you point out, they're far from perfect), neither do lay people have a monopoly on reinterpreting reality through the misinterpretation of facts. tl;dr: You're entitled to examination of facts and to be examined for your own research. You're, however, not entitled to your own reality. Which is what happened in the article.
zzzeek 14y ago
> I absolutely resent that idea that "science" should only be something for the experts, and everybody without a PhD should shut up about it. making some off the cuff, armchair observations within a particular field of study (and blogging and serially promoting them to hacker news) without even making casual efforts to familiarize oneself with at least portions the vast amounts of knowledge publicly available on that field is, generously, pretty bad "science". And less generously, it's just hubris. This is not an "amateur researcher", this is someone who apparently based on posting history has a really high blogging-to-value ratio. Of course, we all have the right to be clueless. I only requested that perhaps Hacker News doesn't want to encourage a culture of armchair cluelessness and particularly someone who appears to be a serial armchair blogger/HN promoter (see https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=techdog https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=techdog).

by stfu 14y ago

eksith 14y ago

You're right, science shouldn't just be reserved for the PhDs. But the PhD is likely to have insight and experience that will make a lot of assertions false, avenues of research redundant and generally be able to tell the different between science and not science. There's no restriction on laymen studying, researching and trying to understand new frontiers of science, however just as the PhDs don't have a monopoly on science (and as you point out, they're far from perfect), neither do lay people have a monopoly on reinterpreting reality through the misinterpretation of facts. tl;dr: You're entitled to examination of facts and to be examined for your own research. You're, however, not entitled to your own reality. Which is what happened in the article.

zzzeek 14y ago

> I absolutely resent that idea that "science" should only be something for the experts, and everybody without a PhD should shut up about it. making some off the cuff, armchair observations within a particular field of study (and blogging and serially promoting them to hacker news) without even making casual efforts to familiarize oneself with at least portions the vast amounts of knowledge publicly available on that field is, generously, pretty bad "science". And less generously, it's just hubris. This is not an "amateur researcher", this is someone who apparently based on posting history has a really high blogging-to-value ratio. Of course, we all have the right to be clueless. I only requested that perhaps Hacker News doesn't want to encourage a culture of armchair cluelessness and particularly someone who appears to be a serial armchair blogger/HN promoter (see https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=techdog https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=techdog).