How Does Science Work?

[Ydars]

To go back to your original question where your friend was insisting that science tries to disprove its own hypotheses, this sounds like a misunderstanding of the way that Karl Popper suggested that science be done.

His idea was simply that in order to find scientific truth, the easiest way is create a hypothesis, make a prediction based on that hypothesis and then design an experiment that will disprove the hypothesis by showing the prediction is false. The idea is not that you are trying to disprove the hypothesis for its own sake; the idea is that this is the fastest way of finding out if your idea is sound or not. It is sort of like playing devils advocate if you like or what you might call an 'acid test'. This 'Popperian method' was extremely influential in the early part of the 20th century, though I suspect many younger scientists won't have heard of Mr Popper.

As for people's mistrust of science, this arises because the media portrays science as highly contradictory. This is because news is now more about entertainment and not education or truth. The media want a good fight. So if they are debating climate change, they will find some fringe guy who believes that man-made C02 is not responsible for increases in global temperature and then pit him against a main-stream scientist who represents the views of 95% of the scientific community who do believe in the evidence for climate change. The problem is, the media will not give the audience this context and it appears contradictory to them because both arguments are given equal weight on screen.

The other reason for people's mistrust of science is because politicians use science in bad ways. For example, the UK Government at the height of the BSE crises was giving out 'scientific assurances' that infected beef was safe for humans to eat. The public took this to mean that science could not be trusted but in fact, all the prion biologists were shouting very loudly that what the government said was flat wrong but no-one listened.

The problem is science is complicated but because of its power everyone wants use it to prove their point of view. People over here are now openly questioning the idea of climate change because of one cold winter.

You also have to remember that old old adage; anything's possible when you don't know what you are talking about.

 

[Croesus]

The problem is science is complicated but because of its power everyone wants use it to prove their point of view.

I would suggest another reason why science never seems to fulfill people's expectations is that most people strongly dislike ambiguity. I'm not referring to complexity - human beings can be quite comfortable with very complex ideas. One need only look at the various religions, philosophies, economic theories, and so on.

But we seem to have an incredibly low tolerance to rules that only apply some of the time, or in certain circumstances, or may not apply at all, depending...

Science is fundamentally about ambiguity, because you never, ever reach a point where you can say "This is how things are." You can only say "Based on current evidence, this is how things appear to be."

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

I could not disagree more about complexity. People flatter themselves that they are comfortable with complex ideas, but they believe things are simple.

Economic theory? It all reduces to relative worth, which economists think is simple, but psychologists know is a minefield. But if people actually behaved the way economists thought we did, the world would be a blessedly simple place.

Most compelling philosophies can actually be summed up in 1 sentence, and the rest of it is corollaries to that sentence. Complexity also comes from finding loopholes to get you out of fully applying that 1 sentence.

You are dead right about ambiguity, though. Gives most people the heebie jeebies.

 

[Croesus]

I could not disagree more about complexity. People flatter themselves that they are comfortable with complex ideas, but they believe things are simple.

Economic theory? It all reduces to relative worth, which economists think is simple, but psychologists know is a minefield. But if people actually behaved the way economists thought we did, the world would be a blessedly simple place.

Most compelling philosophies can actually be summed up in 1 sentence, and the rest of it is corollaries to that sentence. Complexity also comes from finding loopholes to get you out of fully applying that 1 sentence.

You are dead right about ambiguity, though. Gives most people the heebie jeebies.

I'm not sure how much we differ. I agree people like things simple, hence our aversion to ambiguity. But I believe you can have very complex systems and ideas, each piece of which is quite simple.

The example I have in mind is training someone at work. I can show them a step sheet with fully 50+ steps. So long as each step is followed exactly, without deviation, they're fine. As soon as I say, "Ok, here you need to think about it and make a decision on how to proceed...", I lose them.

For novices, a hard and fast rule, even a whole lot of hard and fast rules, is always easier to use than a single flexible rule that requires judgement. And all of us are novices in most areas, so our preference for inflexible rules is understandable, if problematic.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Let me elaborate.

We claim we can handle complexity, and point to things that are allegedly complex, like economic theory. But the entire thing can, in fact, be summed up very, very simply. The complexity is window-dressing. A fiction we tell ourselves to feel good about what we're doing.

But, when things are actually, really and truly, complex... even most scientists run screaming, IME. This is why people who actually study the brain (for real) can't get the time of day but people like Pinker are everywhere, spreading absolute nonsense.

(It helps that in that case the nonsense is something we want to hear: Humans are special snowflakes; the brain is compartmentalized for our convenience; etc. Note that both of these statements also make it a simpler world for everyone.)

 

[Plane Sailing]

I'm not familiar with whatever particular case or cases you're talking about. But, a journal is supposed to have an editorial review board and/or process. It is not generally possible for a quality journal to print everything that's submitted to them, so they must pick and choose.

Now, it is possible that some decisions were being made by people who weren't supposed to be part of the process, or that they were using really crappy criteria. But the fact that someone was making decisions about publication isn't at all strange.

Sure, that's the expected process. In the case I'm thinking of though, the editorial board effectively colluded to exclude work they didn't agree with - not the expected process for scientific work!

Cheers

 

[Quantum]

To the OP: Buy or borrow a copy of Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World. (At Amazon.com: buy it here.)

Read it cover to cover. Sagan frequently discusses "how science works" with regard to various pseudoscience topics like aliens, psychic powers, and more.

I have it bookmstked, thanks. However, I've come to believe that he'll never understand or change his mind. I will still try one last time with this book and if not then I'm done discussing this subject with him and will never be able to take him seriously.

And a correction to my original post, it is not Doplodocus, it is Brontosaurus.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Good discussion; I'll highlight the scientific keys of predictability (scientific hypotheses should predict outcomes that can then be confirmed/denied via scientific method) and repeatability (others must be able to duplicate the work onder similar conditions and obtain similar results). Work lacking both isn't science.

There's also a major pitfall for scientists (and their anti-science non-scientist opponents): confirmation bias. That's the tendency to accept data that agree with one's hypothesis while ignoring data that would dispute the hypothesis, in order to confirm the hypothesis. Even the best of scientists can fall victim to it, which is one of the reasons why peer review is such a critical part of the publishing process.

 

[Janx]

You can't change somebody's mind. At best, you can make sure they see evidence that contradicts their current belief, and they come to their own conclusion.

When you're facing somebody who has an odd belief that belies any evidence or commonly accepted fact, it's even harder. Those people are not relying on anybody else for their belief, even if they cite 'wrong" sources, they're only doing so to play your game of "I can cite a source that agrees with me, too." These kind of people do not have a rational train of thought as to what they believe. They just believe it, and nothing you can do can shake that.

Now to counter that, all of us ultimately take somethings for granted, a belief that something is true, without being able to fully prove it ourselves

Take for instance the Lunar Landing Is a Hoax train of thought

I could cite the astronauts who landed on the moon, and that a mirror was installed to bounce a laser to measure the distance. But I don't know those astronauts personally. I wouldn't know a true moon rock if I saw it and a fake next to it. I can't confirm the existance of the mirror and laser, let alone try it myself. But I accept that these things happened and exist.

For me, it comes down to the nation saw Neil Armstrong step onto the moon, and I assumed it was true. The rest is simply evidence I cite to reinforce that.

For a doubter, they had some reason to doubt that, and come to the conclusion it was faked, and everything else is a big conspiracy.

Another aspect to the problem are facts that matter and are front and center in our lives, and facts that are pretty much academic to everyday living. Some people place more value on the academic facts than others.

This in turn becomes a problem when a fact is revealed to be wrong, or worse a deception.

Take the mis-classification of a dinosaur. For me, it matters not one whit that a dinosaur was called one thing, and grouped in one bucket, and there was an error, and it was renamed and reclassified. It doesn't change in the big scheme of things how the universe works, or the mechanism of evolution or creationism. It simply refines the model.

For the OP's friend, apparently this kind of mistake is justification that the whole topic of science is wrong or a bad idea.

Now let's take a different fact. I have not been sleeping with Quantum's wife. Odds are good Quantum already believes that, and has no reason to question it. Now it turns out, I have been decieving him, and making regular conjugal visits. That's not just a matter of a fact being wrong, it is a matter of deception. In truth, the "fact" was not a fact, it was believed to be one. And the damage done by that deception is complex.

There are people who have their own model of facts about the world. They can't handle those facts being challenged or proven wrong. Quantum's friend sounds like such a person. Such a person is going to always find themselves at odds with reality and others, because life is about discovery, and the constant revelation that what we knew to be true is both changing and incomplete.

 

[WayneLigon]

And example of this is he gets extremely angry when he is talking about science says there was a dinosaur called a Diploducus, then they somehow magically changed their mind and said there was no Diplodocus that they made an error that those bones were actually parts of other Dinosaurs that were jumbled up.

To me, this is the best thing about science: it can admit it was wrong, and take steps to correct it. I saw a show on Hawking last week; possibly the most pre-eminent scientist of our day, and after 30 years of defending a theory of information loss in black holes, he decided he was wrong after all.

To a certain mindset, this is insane because that mindset cannot admit it was wrong about things. If they do, that means the very foundations of their lives are wrong or could be shown to be wrong at some point in the future.

I have it bookmstked, thanks. However, I've come to believe that he'll never understand or change his mind. I will still try one last time with this book and if not then I'm done discussing this subject with him and will never be able to take him seriously.

And a correction to my original post, it is not Doplodocus, it is Brontosaurus.

That's probably the best tact to take. Just stop engaging him in conversation about Topic X, or whatever.