[extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence

[Jef Allbright]

I think it's interesting and worth pointing out that superstition,
post-modernism, decontructionalism, and other forms of anti-science fit
*perfectly* into the scientific worldview.  All parts fit perfectly into the
whole.  Even if the whole keeps getting bigger.  Even if in the Godellian
sense we can never grasp it in its entirety.  It's fun to arrange and
re-arrange the pieces of the puzzle as we try to map it onto the greater
reality that we experience in bits and chunks.

- Jef


Chris Phoenix wrote:
> Rick wrote:
>> One should only believe according to evidence. And by evidence I mean
>> verifiable evidence as would be accepted by those most schooled and
>> respected in the ways of science.
>
> Is science really a good arbiter of evidence?  Until recently, I
> thought it was.  It appears to be ideal: a distributed-intelligence
> process, backed up by experiment every step of the way.  But I've run
> across a few things that have made me question whether it actually
> works very well in practice.
>
> A major source of discomfort is an excellent book, _Discovering_ by
> Robert Scott Root-Bernstein.  I think this book is to the American
> scientific establishment what Atlas Shrugged is to socialism, except
> that _Discovering_ also contains practical advice.
>
> Scientific theories, even the most elegant ones, are simply
> approximations that are good enough until something better comes
> along. It's easy to think that this implies continuous improvement
> and means we must be getting really close to the truth now--and
> perhaps in a few areas we are.  But a look at the variety of atomic
> theories (one of many things explored in the book) shows that
> scientists spent decades working with theories that wouldn't satisfy
> a high school chemistry student today--not noticing how inadequate
> they were, because the theories spent decades being quite adequate
> for what the scientists were doing with them.  But this isn't the
> worst of it.
>
> Scientific answers are decided by consensus.  In theory this means
> that every answer is carefully checked--yeah, and in theory,
> communism is a fair system.  One of the strongest lessons of the book
> is that scientists usually see what they look for.  Especially in the
> centers of scientific endeavor.  Scientists who are good at finding
> what they expect to find produce fewer controversial results.  And
> predictable results are easier to write grants for.  And long careers
> in one field are a good way to stop innovating.  So, the way to
> maximize funding (and minimize exploration) is to reach a consensus
> as soon as possible--doesn't matter if it's right, as long as it's
> good enough to run predictable experiments--and stick to it as long
> as possible. (Actually, I don't think this last is directly stated in
> the book, but it's pretty obvious.)
>
> I've seen this at work in the way the "most respected" scientists (and
> the bureaucrats they're symbiotic with) have closed ranks against
> molecular nanotechnology.  No one comes up with a serious argument
> against it--they just do a bit of handwaving and pretend that they've
> debunked it.  The scary thing is that this works.
>
> The final straw came a few nights ago, when I remembered something I'd
> been trying for a year to forget.  One evening last summer, my wife
> suddenly got a pain in her lower ribs, in a place she'd never had pain
> before, bad enough that we canceled our plans to go for a walk so I
> could rub her back (and this had never happened before either).  When
> I started the massage, she said, "How come the more you touch me
> there, the more I want to cry?"  A few minutes later, the pain went
> away.  And a few hours after that, we learned that her brother had
> been killed in a motorcycle accident within a few minutes of that
> time, and his lower ribs had been run over.
>
> Obviously this is not scientific evidence, it's not a repeatable
> phenomenon, and it leads to no useful theory.  I don't ask anyone else
> to accept it or act on it; that's not the point.  The point is: Is it
> more "scientific" for me to ignore it, or to accept that it happened
> and I can't explain it and it might be significant?  Any scientist
> worth their salt would tell me that, since there's no such thing as
> ESP, there must be some mundane explanation.  I told myself that for
> a year.  But I'm becoming convinced that this is the wrong answer.
> It's the answer that makes scientists see only what they expect to
> see, every time. Science cannot progress if it can't deal with the
> unexpected, and science without progress is dead.  But modern
> science, it seems, has only two categories: Things that can be
> studied with the scientific method, and things that cannot be
> addressed.  There is no category anymore for observations that cannot
> be categorized, but only catalogued.  If there is such a thing as a
> mundane theory that makes ESP possible, science will find it only by
> chance.  It's heresy even to look.
>
> Not long before I read _Discovering_, I participated in a discussion
> on another list in which a philosopher/chemist made statements like
> "Science is not about truth."  My defense of science was energetic and
> often verged on scornful.  But now I'm wondering whether I owe that
> guy an apology.  Where is the truth in "Since your observation is
> impossible, it must be meaningless"?  How is truth advanced by funding
> mostly research based on well-established theory?  Why is it that the
> phrase "peer reviewed grant proposal" is not universally horrifying to
> scientists?
>
> Now, to get back to the quote that started this screed: "...evidence
> as would be accepted by those most schooled and respected in the ways
> of science."  Would this be Richard Smalley, who won the Nobel Prize
> for chemistry?  And who recently wrote that an ordinary chemical
> reaction involves five to fifteen atoms?  I guess he's never heard of
> flame chemistry, or the formation of ozone in the upper atmosphere?
> Well, maybe he wasn't thinking too hard.  He wrote this--and
> Scientific American printed it--in an attempt to discredit molecular
> nanotechnology.
>
> We must hope that individual scientists are less reliable than science
> as a whole--otherwise the entire institution is bankrupt!  But your
> criterion requires asking the opinion of individuals, applying methods
> designed for groups, to insufficient data, outside their field.  I
> really think you'd do better to ask a lawyer; they're trained to deal
> with unfamiliar information and find weaknesses in strange arguments.
>
> Personally, I'd most rather have Richard Feynman evaluate my evidence;
> but I think he would've been too humble to give the kind of official
> scientific opinion you're looking for.  A Google search for "Feynman
> religion" found some reviews of _The Meaning of It All_.  Amazon
> quotes him thus:
>   "In case you are beginning to believe that some of the things I said
> before are true because I am a scientist and according to the brochure
> that you get I won some awards and so forth, instead of your looking
> at the ideas themselves and judging them directly...I will get rid of
> that tonight. I dedicate this lecture to showing what ridiculous
> conclusions and rare statements such a man as myself can make."
>
> And according to a review on ePinions,
>   "His recurrent theme is freedom of thought: the freedom to doubt, to
> investigate, and to believe. For example, when noting the two
> legacies of western civilization - the "scientific spirit of
> adventure" and "Christian ethics" - Feynman concludes that these two
> legacies are "logically, thoroughly, consistent." We must be free to
> doubt and question to find new answers, and we must be free to believe
> and base our actions in a morality larger than ourselves."
>
>
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0738201669/102-2708461-0320925?v=glance
> http://www.epinions.com/book-review-60F8-58F600-3905B39B-prod5
>
> Note: I'm not saying that science should study religion, or should
> subordinate itself to religion--I'm not talking about religion or
> anything mystical at all.  What I am saying is that even in areas
> where science could make a contribution, it is usually unwilling to
> stretch itself far enough to follow up the interesting clues.  And the
> scientific establishment is responsible for an unforgivable waste of
> potential talent, because people who could have been creative
> investigators are instead turned into grant-grubbing conformists.
> (Some scientists escape, but many do not; and those who remain
> creative often have to resort to lying or stealing to pursue their
> interesting research.)  I'd almost go so far as to say that modern
> science can't claim credit for its successes, because they happened
> as much despite the institution as because of it.
>
> I'll end with a quote from Isaac Newton.  "I don't know what I may
> seem to the world, but as to myself, I seem to have been only like a
> boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then
> finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst
> the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered all before me."  How many
> scientists today would be willing to admit that their work is not
> even wading into the "ocean of truth"?  Are they greater scientists
> than Newton, or are they completely missing the point?
>
> Chris