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This is unnecessarily cynical. > The core problem is people conflating science with Science™. You fell into the same trap by criticizing scientific institutio

This is unnecessarily cynical. > The core problem is people conflating science with Science™. You fell into the same trap by criticizing scientific institutions and the human spirit in an attempt to criticize the scientific method. > What exactly is the scientific method? What a ridiculous argument. What exactly is a hamburger? Just ask around and you will find that nobody agrees if a veggie burger should be considered a hamburger, or if you can replace the bun with lettuce and still call it a hamburger. And even if you get people to agree what a hamburger is, nobody is checking that the recipe is followed to the letter. Therefore, real hamburgers do not exist, and nobody can claim in good faith that they are making a hamburger. In fact, why don't we sue McDonalds for their fraud hamburgers? > Science isn't self correcting. The very fact that fraud is identified is clear evidence that is is not true. You are going to need to sharpen your rethorical devices if you want to argue against hundreds of years of scientific progress, including for example everything that enabled us to argue about this in front of our devices while barely 150 years ago people had to use candles to see each other after dinner. Mind you, not all of this was developed by industrial research labs, in fact the origins of very many modern technologies lie in academic research labs pursuing ideas that are too risky for a commercial entity to bet on. And of course there are plenty of examples of industrial fraud happening despite "managerial intervention" (lol). Reality is more complex. Not many things, if at all, exist in this world under their platonic ideal form. That does not make them any less real. Yes, we all know that humans are not perfect, sometimes are selfish and chase money and power, not only in academia but also in business, politics, and so on. Wherever humans are involved this sometimes happens. But saying that nothing good ever happens because of this goes against everything one can see when looking out of the window. Scientific progress is real, and needs both industrial and academic labs.

deleted 15d ago
[deleted]
mike_hearn 15d ago
You're right that we don't need a universal definition of hamburger. That's because the government stays out of it, so private individuals can use things like Google Maps reviews to police a common sense definition of hamburger along with quality and other nuance. If governments were forcing everyone to buy anything advertised as a hamburger no questions asked, then the definition of hamburger would matter a lot. The devices on my desk are 99.9% the product of the private sector and owe nearly nothing to academia. If people can't define it, then that seems to me like a valid criticism of the scientific method. You can't have institutions that claim to be doing science if they don't use the same definition of science as other people do.
- blackbear_ 15d ago
  Yup, that is also how it works with scientific research: Once an article is published, anybody is free to read it, criticize it, reproduce it. That's because the government stays out of it: private individuals can use things like Google Scholar and Google Search to find other people's reviews and follow-up studies to better understand the quality and nuances of the original research. Consensus is an important part of science just as it is for reviews on Google Maps. Is consensus sometimes wrong? Yes, no doubt. Is it useless? Nope. > If people can't define it, then that seems to me like a valid criticism of the scientific method. Please read the hamburger example once more.
  - mike_hearn 15d ago
    Peer reviews don't appear in Google Scholar. The involvement of governments is when they force the public to pay for the studies via tax funded grants, without caring about the quality.
    - blackbear_ 15d ago
      As we all know, oeer review is not a very reliable signal about the veridicity of the claims, it is merely an approximate quality gate indicating that a study was done following appropriate standards. There needs to be more awareness of this. Nonetheless, in some fields peer review have been public for a long time, and more and more journals are making peer reviews publicly visible. This is a good trend that we should all encourage. I also think that it sounds like a good idea to hold scientists accountable for the quality of their research, but moving away from fraud (which should unquestionably be punished) towards merely "low quality" is a very slippery slope. Who determines when the quality is good enough and under which criteria? Citations and follow-up research already are an approximate signal, why is that not enough? Proving a study false does not automatically make it low quality. How much money and resources would these additional measures cost? Would the savings from fewer "bad quality studies" offset these costs? How many fewer "good quality studies" would be prevented by redirecting these resources.
- qmmmur 15d ago
randusername 15d ago
Science as a monolithic institution is a trap. We ought to be able to trust the public with complex realities and contradictions. The scientific method and dogged researchers have brought us many wonderful things, but at the same time fraud happens and the layman might reasonably question to what extent the academy attracts fraudsters and to what extent it creates them. If we can get over the absolutes then we can discuss policy changes. Graduate student collective bargaining is one experiment; how can anyone blow a whistle on malfeasance with such an extraordinary and widening power imbalance?
- blackbear_ 15d ago
  Totally agree with this framing: trust in public institutions (scientific, governmental, etc.) is a common good that needs to be promoted and safeguarded. Identifying and punishing fraud is a part of it, whistleblower protection another, modernizing the system so that graduate students are not so dependent on individual advisors yet another idea. More and more personal contact between the public and scientists could be useful too, for example via science fairs, meet & greets and so on.
cucumber3732842 15d ago
>This is unnecessarily cynical. Are you living in the same reality as the rest of us? Now, if he'd laid out the financial incentives of all of it and said "everyone is only in it for the money" I'd say that's a a little too cynical. But he stopped short of doing that.
BoingBoomTschak 15d ago
> The very fact that fraud is identified is clear evidence that is is not true That's not merely enough, you need a clear trend that the rate of fraud discovery is greater than the rate of fraud production, not just that "some cases are found out". Good luck with that, since it's by definition not measurable.
superxpro12 15d ago
Science is very simply a commitment towards objectivity. That's it. You see data, you conclude x,y, or z. and thats it. No external subjective influences changes the conclusions. If the data trends towards "vaccines saves millions of lives", thats it.

deleted 15d ago

[deleted]

mike_hearn 15d ago

You're right that we don't need a universal definition of hamburger. That's because the government stays out of it, so private individuals can use things like Google Maps reviews to police a common sense definition of hamburger along with quality and other nuance. If governments were forcing everyone to buy anything advertised as a hamburger no questions asked, then the definition of hamburger would matter a lot. The devices on my desk are 99.9% the product of the private sector and owe nearly nothing to academia. If people can't define it, then that seems to me like a valid criticism of the scientific method. You can't have institutions that claim to be doing science if they don't use the same definition of science as other people do.

blackbear_ 15d ago
Yup, that is also how it works with scientific research: Once an article is published, anybody is free to read it, criticize it, reproduce it. That's because the government stays out of it: private individuals can use things like Google Scholar and Google Search to find other people's reviews and follow-up studies to better understand the quality and nuances of the original research. Consensus is an important part of science just as it is for reviews on Google Maps. Is consensus sometimes wrong? Yes, no doubt. Is it useless? Nope. > If people can't define it, then that seems to me like a valid criticism of the scientific method. Please read the hamburger example once more.
- mike_hearn 15d ago
  Peer reviews don't appear in Google Scholar. The involvement of governments is when they force the public to pay for the studies via tax funded grants, without caring about the quality.
  - blackbear_ 15d ago
    As we all know, oeer review is not a very reliable signal about the veridicity of the claims, it is merely an approximate quality gate indicating that a study was done following appropriate standards. There needs to be more awareness of this. Nonetheless, in some fields peer review have been public for a long time, and more and more journals are making peer reviews publicly visible. This is a good trend that we should all encourage. I also think that it sounds like a good idea to hold scientists accountable for the quality of their research, but moving away from fraud (which should unquestionably be punished) towards merely "low quality" is a very slippery slope. Who determines when the quality is good enough and under which criteria? Citations and follow-up research already are an approximate signal, why is that not enough? Proving a study false does not automatically make it low quality. How much money and resources would these additional measures cost? Would the savings from fewer "bad quality studies" offset these costs? How many fewer "good quality studies" would be prevented by redirecting these resources.
qmmmur 15d ago

randusername 15d ago

Science as a monolithic institution is a trap. We ought to be able to trust the public with complex realities and contradictions. The scientific method and dogged researchers have brought us many wonderful things, but at the same time fraud happens and the layman might reasonably question to what extent the academy attracts fraudsters and to what extent it creates them. If we can get over the absolutes then we can discuss policy changes. Graduate student collective bargaining is one experiment; how can anyone blow a whistle on malfeasance with such an extraordinary and widening power imbalance?

blackbear_ 15d ago
Totally agree with this framing: trust in public institutions (scientific, governmental, etc.) is a common good that needs to be promoted and safeguarded. Identifying and punishing fraud is a part of it, whistleblower protection another, modernizing the system so that graduate students are not so dependent on individual advisors yet another idea. More and more personal contact between the public and scientists could be useful too, for example via science fairs, meet & greets and so on.

cucumber3732842 15d ago

>This is unnecessarily cynical. Are you living in the same reality as the rest of us? Now, if he'd laid out the financial incentives of all of it and said "everyone is only in it for the money" I'd say that's a a little too cynical. But he stopped short of doing that.

BoingBoomTschak 15d ago

> The very fact that fraud is identified is clear evidence that is is not true That's not merely enough, you need a clear trend that the rate of fraud discovery is greater than the rate of fraud production, not just that "some cases are found out". Good luck with that, since it's by definition not measurable.

superxpro12 15d ago

Science is very simply a commitment towards objectivity. That's it. You see data, you conclude x,y, or z. and thats it. No external subjective influences changes the conclusions. If the data trends towards "vaccines saves millions of lives", thats it.