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Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
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"if you reject any research which is based on incomplete knowledge then your are rejecting all of science"
Based on the above, that statement is clearly false. The reason it is false is the absolutism in it. I reject the research that kitty kat farts smell like popsicles on any February 29th. I do so because there is incomplete knowledge. That does not mean I reject all of science.
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It would have been less ambiguous if he had written, "if you reject ALL research (rather than any particular research) which is based on incomplete knowledge, then you're rejecting all of science.
But I don't think Dirt Grinder was rejecting all scientific research or anything extreme like that, he was simply grumbling about how often scientists jump to conclusions based on too little evidence.
"If you're opposed to calling science absolute truth I would agree, but if you reject any research which is based on incomplete knowledge then your are rejecting all of science."
That has to be one of the more interesting classical debate points I've seen in a couple of years. At the heart of it, it is self-contradictory. It rejects absolutism, then implies a requirement of negative absolutism.
science does not equal absolute truth
scientific research does not equal complete knowledge
rejection of research is derived from complete knowledge (which is unobtainable)
Broken down
Complete knowledge is essentially unachievable (there is a paradox involved in the concept of complete knowledge, because the descriptions of it add to the knowledge and then they have to be described, ad nausium)
Therefore: absolute truth based upon complete knowledge is also unattainable.
Further
Since science is now by definition only an approximation full of reasonable guesses, all of science is suspect
That's why I'm a Bayesian. All of science is suspect. Some of it less suspect than others. The comment I was responding to was essentially, "we don't know, so why bother saying anything" to which my response was "they're just saying 'here is some evidence in support of an idea', which is better than just not ever saying anything."
Quote:
Originally Posted by harry chickpea
Then comes the other interjection of an absolutist concept, that if you reject a part of science, you reject it all.
Picking and choosing among theories and science is in itself a requirement of good science. Theories that are posited and then examined, only to find they work less than 50% of the time are rejected. Theories that appear to work 99% of the time are generally accepted, but with the understanding that they may be supplanted by one that works 99.9% of the time.
"if you reject any research which is based on incomplete knowledge then your are rejecting all of science"
Based on the above, that statement is clearly false. The reason it is false is the absolutism in it. I reject the research that kitty kat farts smell like popsicles on any February 29th. I do so because there is incomplete knowledge. That does not mean I reject all of science.
Words matter. Usage of words matter. This is why I think that learning the old "basic" computer language is as much about learning how to use the English language lucidly as it is about programming a computer. Once you become fluent, errors of statement or thought become as quickly obvious as errors in declension.
As you've mentioned, language is imprecise and you've parsed my sentence in a way I did not intend. The point of "If you reject any research which is based on incomplete knowledge then you are rejecting all of science" is meant to mean that if you use the lack of certainty as a rule rejecting research then you would naturally reject all of science.
i.e.:
"if one basis you choose for rejecting research is that the research is based on incomplete knowledge, you would end up rejecting all research because all research is based on incomplete knowledge"
rather than
"if you reject this particular research for being based on incomplete knowledge, you are not allowed to accept any other conclusion from science"
Which would be a silly. This being the internet there are no shortage of people making silly statements, so I understand why you might think I was saying this, but I did not intend it that way. I see that the word "any" is the stumbling block and omitting it might have made my statement clearer. If I proofread my posts I might have caught that someone could be confused by my statement, but I didn't. If it were something important, like a manuscript or a work document, I might have pored over the sentences more carefully. Words do matter, but the words on this forum matter very little, so maybe give me a break.
...But I don't think Dirt Grinder was rejecting all scientific research or anything extreme like that, he was simply grumbling about how often scientists jump to conclusions based on too little evidence.
Case in point: "Eggs are bad for you." How many times have scientists redefined the health benefits of the simple egg?
It would have been less ambiguous if he had written, "if you reject ALL research (rather than any particular research) which is based on incomplete knowledge, then you're rejecting all of science.
But I don't think Dirt Grinder was rejecting all scientific research or anything extreme like that, he was simply grumbling about how often scientists jump to conclusions based on too little evidence.
It's not the scientists. It's not even the writers. It's the editor that writes the headline based on skimming the article that the writer wrote based on his or her skimming of the paper that the scientists wrote. The actual journal article is likely very modest in its conclusions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dirt Grinder
Case in point: "Eggs are bad for you." How many times have scientists redefined the health benefits of the simple egg?
Again, it's not the scientists. It's the media. You'd never see words like that in a journal. Unfortunately almost everything worth reading is behind a pay wall, so people think scientists make huge declarative conclusions all the time.
Scientists can be at fault for publishing questionable research data to maintain their funding or due to simple peer competition. Do a web search for "scientist discredited" .
Scientists can be at fault for publishing questionable research data to maintain their funding or due to simple peer competition. Do a web search for "scientist discredited" .
Agreed. There's bad science out there. Too much. The work referenced here seems legitimate, though, and even a little bit clever. I totally agree that the headline is sensationalized.
In the time of Copernicus or Galileo, their only test for life beyond our planet would have been seeing signs of civilization like lights or colors. Their instrumentation didn't have the resolution to see details, and they had no concept of non physical communication. That, was only about 600 years ago, now we have satellites still flying around Mars, Saturn, Ceres, comets, and we're about to get close ups of Pluto. As advanced as we believe we are about extraterrestrial signals and signs of them, maybe we are only slightly more advanced than our Medieval forefathers.
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