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... and, of course, the rebuttals to this were mostly of the "no true Scotsman" flavor. "It's not the fault of scientists, it's the bad media". Let's ignore htt

... and, of course, the rebuttals to this were mostly of the "no true Scotsman" flavor. "It's not the fault of scientists, it's the bad media". Let's ignore http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/ (Why Most Published Research Findings Are False) and many other similar results - we have to defend scientists because! Look - I'm an engineer. I use a sort-of Bayesian reasoning: I started from what I learned as a child and then kept adjusting probabilities. You (plural "you") wouldn't be surprised if I told you I believe most politicians are liars. Well, I got to "most scientists are wrong" the same way. Sure, I didn't actually talk to most scientists, or even heard about them; those I did hear about, though, are at best misguided. In any case, my original argument wasn't about the scientists; my argument was: most people treat science as a religion. They feel very superior to the religious people who are accepting everything they are told uncritically and then turn around and accept everything that is prefixed with "science says". Ten years ago, I used to make fun of people for believing the Earth revolves around the Sun - I have yet to find a single one who could do better than "that's what scientists say". That is arguably worse than those who accepted the Ptolemaic model - for one thing, they could at least see that the Sun was rising and setting. (I can rant on this subject for hours but I don't think this is the proper forum.)

cinquemb 11y ago
> In any case, my original argument wasn't about the scientists; my argument was: most people treat science as a religion. They feel very superior to the religious people who are accepting everything they are told uncritically and then turn around and accept everything that is prefixed with "science says". We had a subject in my lab yesterday that after the experiment had a "heated" debate where he put physics vs religion with one of the volunteers who was religious. While I was in the control room tinkering with the software, I listened in on their conversation and could hear the smugness of the subject as he used science as a tool to try and "convert" the volunteer. I thought the volunteer handled the conversation quite well, but it seemed like quite the inquisition from the "scientist"…
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Its easy to be smug about science; its so often right. If you don't have time to research the subject yourself, I'd always advise taking the side of the scientist.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    That's foolish. Scientists have to work hard to avoid bias. A lot of them don't manage it. Most science isn't as rigorous as eg ATLAS at CERN at avoiding biases. There are plenty of scientists who are fucking idiots.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      There are a vast majority doing good work. Your cell phone is a towering testament to this. To be fair, try making the converse argument: how many religious zealots avoid bias? Zero. Lets not condemn science on the basis of a strawman ("some scientists somewhere are not very good")
      - cinquemb 11y ago
        > There are a vast majority doing good work. Your cell phone is a towering testament to this. To be fair, try making the converse argument: how many religious zealots avoid bias? Zero. Lets not condemn science on the basis of a strawman ("some scientists somewhere are not very good") Yet to uphold what people consider science today, you use one example. As if the vast majority of scientists had anything to do with the development of the cell phone (and use the word testament which has a non zero religious connotations), and give no lip service to how many religious people throughout the times have supported scientific endeavors…
        JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        I leave other examples to the reader. Hint: point at anything near you. It was the result of science. As for honoring the religious who supported science. I say, to the degree they pursued religion, they shortchanged their scientific accomplishments. Consider what else Newton might have done, had he abandoned his alchemy and astrology.
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
So we think that is a dangerous thing? Believing the best, tested results of experiments (science) is not superior to random religious tracts written thousands of years ago? The critical difference between treating science as a religion, and treating religion as a religion, is that the science people have a good chance of being right. Its rational and reasonable to be uncritical of scientific results - the scientist has already been critical for you. That's kind of the whole point.
- gizi 11y ago
  The essence of science is its method: Setting up experiments in order to look for counterexamples for a scientific statement. Therefore, anybody who is uncritical of scientific results and does not desire to find counterexamples, is not engaging in science but in anti-science, which in turn is a dangerous and counterproductive ideology. The science-as-religion people do not have a good chance of being right. They are always completely wrong.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Advocating positions shown likely true by science does not require a scientist at all. We don't all have to be in the lab, testing every conclusion. We have people for that. The rest of us will do very, very well to believe the results of science. Because its the only game in town that's actually trying to get it right.
- mdpopescu 11y ago
  Just look at this statement: _Its [sic] rational and reasonable to be uncritical of scientific results_ I do not believe that this person is sarcastic; I say that because I have talked to hundreds of people with the same opinion. People actually believe this. My authority is better than yours so you uncritically accepting your authority is wrong, me uncritically accepting mine is not only right but obviously so. Ignoring the absurdity of the statement, and the mind-numbing appeal to authority - this also shows a lack of knowledge of history. When people used Aristotle as an authority 500 years ago, they did it using this same rationale: Aristotle had already done all the thinking, who are you to claim to know better? This is just painful.
RodericDay 11y ago
I'm an engineer too, and I fully agree with you. My particular peeve is engineers who kowtow to economics, putting it in a much higher pedestal than sociology or anthropology, because it is "mathy". The implicit assumptions are usually along the lines of "the assumptions seem obvious enough, and look at all those formulae in the transformations thereof!"
- gizi 11y ago
  Science id defined by its method: to set up experiments in order to look for counterexamples for a theorem. It is pretty much impossible to set up experiments in economics. While I agree that sociology and anthropology do not satisfy the definition of science, economics does not either. Where are the experiments? Without experiments, no science.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    That's an antique notion. There are plenty of rigorous experiments being done in all of those fields.
    - gizi 11y ago
      For every theorem in sociology, for example, can you show us what experiment they set up, and what results they obtained and how we can repeat their experiment in order to find counterexamples for their theorem? From there, I will acknowledge the scientific status of that one, single theorem. I will still consider every other statement in sociology to be non-science. Seriously, they must produce such data for every single one of their theorems. Physics does that. Chemistry does that. Why would sociology be entitled to the same scientific status without putting in the same effort?
      - darkmighty 11y ago
        You're confusing science with mathematics. There are no theorems in science, it's all experimental. We have certainty on a few basic principles or models and make inferences based on those models. I'm not going to defend sociology specifically because I don't know the field or it's state, but in every science (e.g. chemistry), you make a model for some restricted case to fit some data and you make assumptions on the scope of the model. Otherwise you couldn't say pretty much anything about anything: "We tested that proton and that one has a mass of X units. We can't say anything about this proton, thogh." -- the evidence piles up that the model has widespread vality. In the same sense, we can make assumptions on the scope of models. Of course, I imagine we have no hope for the time being of uniting the basic physical laws to that of sociology, simply because we don't have the power to understand the human brain just yet. I don't think refraining from modelling behavior is useful, and it will probably even help us better model the brain and generalize it's behavior towards "better" intelligence (AI).
megaman22 11y ago
> ... and, of course, the rebuttals to this were mostly of the "no true Scotsman" flavor. "It's not the fault of scientists, it's the bad media". Let's ignore http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/ (Why Most Published Research Findings Are False) and many other similar results - we have to defend scientists because! It seems like the worst offenders are in biology/pharmacology/genetics/biochemistry. I'm not trained in any of those fields, but it seems pretty obvious that organic life should be orders of magnitudes more complex than mechanics, materials science, aeronautics, or any of the other man-made scientific fields. They are also comparatively young subjects. We don't really understand enough about how all the pieces fit together, or even what all the pieces are, in biological processes to make much in the way of definitive statements. But seriously, if I hear another nightly news story about how food X prevents cancer based on a study of a dozen people or the current consensus on whether eggs are good or bad for you...
- jleyank 11y ago
  Careful. Human biological response is sufficiently well understood to permit the design of antibodies (which are grown in fermenters) that treat the symptoms of disease (RA, for example). There are decades of successful pharmacological research based on receptor targets, signaling pathways, etc. However, your point is valid in that knowledge of, say, digital engineering is easier to understand and investigate as the systems are simpler. Those who are successful in the tech field should keep this in mind when they talk of disrupting fields involving wet-ware.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
>Ten years ago, I used to make fun of people for believing the Earth revolves around the Sun - I have yet to find a single one who could do better than "that's what scientists say". Wait... what? If the Earth didn't go around the Sun, why would we have seasons based on the angle of the Sun to the ground? Why would that angle continually cycle throughout the year? And what about the movements of the planets in the night sky, relative to Earth? Sure, you could have a god who designed perversely complex features into the world for no causally sensible reason, but really, the simplest explanation for our available geological and astronomical data is that the Earth orbits the Sun.

cinquemb 11y ago

> In any case, my original argument wasn't about the scientists; my argument was: most people treat science as a religion. They feel very superior to the religious people who are accepting everything they are told uncritically and then turn around and accept everything that is prefixed with "science says". We had a subject in my lab yesterday that after the experiment had a "heated" debate where he put physics vs religion with one of the volunteers who was religious. While I was in the control room tinkering with the software, I listened in on their conversation and could hear the smugness of the subject as he used science as a tool to try and "convert" the volunteer. I thought the volunteer handled the conversation quite well, but it seemed like quite the inquisition from the "scientist"…

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Its easy to be smug about science; its so often right. If you don't have time to research the subject yourself, I'd always advise taking the side of the scientist.
- DanBC 11y ago
  That's foolish. Scientists have to work hard to avoid bias. A lot of them don't manage it. Most science isn't as rigorous as eg ATLAS at CERN at avoiding biases. There are plenty of scientists who are fucking idiots.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    There are a vast majority doing good work. Your cell phone is a towering testament to this. To be fair, try making the converse argument: how many religious zealots avoid bias? Zero. Lets not condemn science on the basis of a strawman ("some scientists somewhere are not very good")
    - cinquemb 11y ago
      > There are a vast majority doing good work. Your cell phone is a towering testament to this. To be fair, try making the converse argument: how many religious zealots avoid bias? Zero. Lets not condemn science on the basis of a strawman ("some scientists somewhere are not very good") Yet to uphold what people consider science today, you use one example. As if the vast majority of scientists had anything to do with the development of the cell phone (and use the word testament which has a non zero religious connotations), and give no lip service to how many religious people throughout the times have supported scientific endeavors…
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        I leave other examples to the reader. Hint: point at anything near you. It was the result of science. As for honoring the religious who supported science. I say, to the degree they pursued religion, they shortchanged their scientific accomplishments. Consider what else Newton might have done, had he abandoned his alchemy and astrology.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

So we think that is a dangerous thing? Believing the best, tested results of experiments (science) is not superior to random religious tracts written thousands of years ago? The critical difference between treating science as a religion, and treating religion as a religion, is that the science people have a good chance of being right. Its rational and reasonable to be uncritical of scientific results - the scientist has already been critical for you. That's kind of the whole point.

gizi 11y ago
The essence of science is its method: Setting up experiments in order to look for counterexamples for a scientific statement. Therefore, anybody who is uncritical of scientific results and does not desire to find counterexamples, is not engaging in science but in anti-science, which in turn is a dangerous and counterproductive ideology. The science-as-religion people do not have a good chance of being right. They are always completely wrong.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Advocating positions shown likely true by science does not require a scientist at all. We don't all have to be in the lab, testing every conclusion. We have people for that. The rest of us will do very, very well to believe the results of science. Because its the only game in town that's actually trying to get it right.
mdpopescu 11y ago
Just look at this statement: _Its [sic] rational and reasonable to be uncritical of scientific results_ I do not believe that this person is sarcastic; I say that because I have talked to hundreds of people with the same opinion. People actually believe this. My authority is better than yours so you uncritically accepting your authority is wrong, me uncritically accepting mine is not only right but obviously so. Ignoring the absurdity of the statement, and the mind-numbing appeal to authority - this also shows a lack of knowledge of history. When people used Aristotle as an authority 500 years ago, they did it using this same rationale: Aristotle had already done all the thinking, who are you to claim to know better? This is just painful.

RodericDay 11y ago

I'm an engineer too, and I fully agree with you. My particular peeve is engineers who kowtow to economics, putting it in a much higher pedestal than sociology or anthropology, because it is "mathy". The implicit assumptions are usually along the lines of "the assumptions seem obvious enough, and look at all those formulae in the transformations thereof!"

gizi 11y ago
Science id defined by its method: to set up experiments in order to look for counterexamples for a theorem. It is pretty much impossible to set up experiments in economics. While I agree that sociology and anthropology do not satisfy the definition of science, economics does not either. Where are the experiments? Without experiments, no science.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  That's an antique notion. There are plenty of rigorous experiments being done in all of those fields.
  - gizi 11y ago
    For every theorem in sociology, for example, can you show us what experiment they set up, and what results they obtained and how we can repeat their experiment in order to find counterexamples for their theorem? From there, I will acknowledge the scientific status of that one, single theorem. I will still consider every other statement in sociology to be non-science. Seriously, they must produce such data for every single one of their theorems. Physics does that. Chemistry does that. Why would sociology be entitled to the same scientific status without putting in the same effort?
    - darkmighty 11y ago
      You're confusing science with mathematics. There are no theorems in science, it's all experimental. We have certainty on a few basic principles or models and make inferences based on those models. I'm not going to defend sociology specifically because I don't know the field or it's state, but in every science (e.g. chemistry), you make a model for some restricted case to fit some data and you make assumptions on the scope of the model. Otherwise you couldn't say pretty much anything about anything: "We tested that proton and that one has a mass of X units. We can't say anything about this proton, thogh." -- the evidence piles up that the model has widespread vality. In the same sense, we can make assumptions on the scope of models. Of course, I imagine we have no hope for the time being of uniting the basic physical laws to that of sociology, simply because we don't have the power to understand the human brain just yet. I don't think refraining from modelling behavior is useful, and it will probably even help us better model the brain and generalize it's behavior towards "better" intelligence (AI).

megaman22 11y ago

> ... and, of course, the rebuttals to this were mostly of the "no true Scotsman" flavor. "It's not the fault of scientists, it's the bad media". Let's ignore http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/ (Why Most Published Research Findings Are False) and many other similar results - we have to defend scientists because! It seems like the worst offenders are in biology/pharmacology/genetics/biochemistry. I'm not trained in any of those fields, but it seems pretty obvious that organic life should be orders of magnitudes more complex than mechanics, materials science, aeronautics, or any of the other man-made scientific fields. They are also comparatively young subjects. We don't really understand enough about how all the pieces fit together, or even what all the pieces are, in biological processes to make much in the way of definitive statements. But seriously, if I hear another nightly news story about how food X prevents cancer based on a study of a dozen people or the current consensus on whether eggs are good or bad for you...

jleyank 11y ago
Careful. Human biological response is sufficiently well understood to permit the design of antibodies (which are grown in fermenters) that treat the symptoms of disease (RA, for example). There are decades of successful pharmacological research based on receptor targets, signaling pathways, etc. However, your point is valid in that knowledge of, say, digital engineering is easier to understand and investigate as the systems are simpler. Those who are successful in the tech field should keep this in mind when they talk of disrupting fields involving wet-ware.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

eli_gottlieb 11y ago

>Ten years ago, I used to make fun of people for believing the Earth revolves around the Sun - I have yet to find a single one who could do better than "that's what scientists say". Wait... what? If the Earth didn't go around the Sun, why would we have seasons based on the angle of the Sun to the ground? Why would that angle continually cycle throughout the year? And what about the movements of the planets in the night sky, relative to Earth? Sure, you could have a god who designed perversely complex features into the world for no causally sensible reason, but really, the simplest explanation for our available geological and astronomical data is that the Earth orbits the Sun.