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Trials and Errors: Why Science Is Failing Us
Lanxon writes "An in-depth feature in Wired explores the reason science may be failing us. Quoting: 'For too long, we've pretended that the old problem of causality can be cured by our shiny new knowledge. If only we devote more resources to research or dissect the system at a more fundamental level or search for ever more subtle correlations, we can discover how it all works. But a cause is not a fact, and it never will be; the things we can see will always be bracketed by what we cannot. And this is why, even when we know everything about everything, we'll still be telling stories about why it happened. It's mystery all the way down.'"
As knowledge expands, it becomes harder and harder to see the big picture. Everyone becomes a specialist, focusing on narrower and narrower specialties.
But that's not a bad sign. It's just an inevitable wall. There are only so many years in a human life and only so much any one person can learn and retain in that time. We just have to work a little more at stepping back from our tiny cages and saying "So what does this really mean in the larger scheme of things?" and recognizing there is larger world beyond our narrowly-focused field of view.
Well, either that or we could just ask Jesus to tell us what to do.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
that science is failing us? Define success...?
Science is not about explaining everything, it's about explaining stuff that what we know in a way that is consistent with other stuff that we know.
The title has nothing to do with the summary, in fact the summary doesn't even comment on the title's conclusion, so what's the point of this article? The only thing I've learned from the article is that science does what it does and nothing has failed anything.
So exactly is being able to fly, go into space (well ok not _right_ now), new treatments for cancer I just saw on a ted talk, and countless ways our lives are being improved every day constitute a failiour?
Are they basing this only on the fact that we don't have a easy to understand formulae for every single function of the smallest particle in the universe? yet...?
Oh weit...
It's a direction.
But the summary is rubbish. Ignore the summary and just read the article.
I had this debate with a friend recently; he was convinced that science will one day figure everything out, solve all problems. I wasn't able to convince him that even if we have millions of years of straight scientific development we will never figure out everything.
Anyone see the massive irony in this being posted on the internet, run by computers, powered by electricity, declaring that science is "failing us?"
First example in the story: a drug that doctors thought was going to work... didn't... The scientists mixed up what was causing what.
They had a hypothesis and tested it. We can say that the hypothesis was wrong because of what? That's right, because of science.
To imply that science is failing, or we need to reconceptualize "causality," simply because it's difficult... that's idiotic.
Finally, this article falls into a common mistake with science writing: confusing clinical trials with ALL SCIENCE RESEARCH. I do basic biological research. Don't lump me in with clinical researchers, critique their methods, and then say that all science research is messed up.
... is why "science" (sic) is failing us.
Discuss.
There have been many "worst /. articles ever" comments recently, and rightfully so.
But this submission safely takes a dive underneath any lows explored so far.
all the remaining methods fail us even more. So even if the mumbo jumbo you are saying is really true, I will stick with science. You ponder about whether or not science is giving right answers, next time when you are at cruise altitude inside a shiny aluminum bubble with less than 0.1 mm of aluminum between you and a -40 degree (F or C does not matter) atmosphere with pressure so low your blood will boil instantly at that temperature. Happy thoughts.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Science needs to make it a top priority figure out a way to keep our consciousnesses around forever, or at least a very long time. Mortality is a cruel reset button.
Stop trying to cure diseases and work toward getting rid of the flesh, perhaps.
...does not mean other disciplines are doing it too. Lets face is: Medicine is still in a relatively early phase and it is doubtful whether many of its areas even deserve to be called "science". There is a saying: "In medicine, new ideas can only be tested when the proponents of the old ones are dead." Really quite pathetic, although it has gotten a bit better.
Now to take the failing of medicine and generalize it to other sciences is just an invalid argument of somebody with a limited (and unaware of it) viewpoint.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The article doesn't remind me of Cause and Effect, but something more like Bull and Shit.
Trolling is a art,
I shall have a read of the article, but the summary is a mess; it reads like someone talking about something they don't understand.
Last time I checked science isn't failing anyone. The vast majority of problems we have are of our own doing (climate change, obesity, poor health, poverty and deprivation, conflict). Perhaps the editors of slashdot should start editing submissions rather than letting junk summaries get to the front page.
From TFA: "And yet, we must never forget that our causal beliefs are defined by their limitations. For too long, we've pretended that the old problem of causality can be cured by our shiny new knowledge. If only we devote more resources to research or dissect the system at a more fundamental level or search for ever more subtle correlations, we can discover how it all works. But a cause is not a fact, and it never will be; the things we can see will always be bracketed by what we cannot. And this is why, even when we know everything about everything, we'll still be telling stories about why it happened. It's mystery all the way down."
Rationality has provided us a magnificent method to explain many, many things, but one might sardonically note that the rest of it is pretty much a description of the reason for religion.
Like Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, rationality is magnificent for everything until it reaches its limits*...for everything else there's faith.
*Lest I be declared some glassy-eyed evangelical luddite, like the universe, these limits can expand infinitely - which also never means that there isn't something on the other side.
-Styopa
I (very) briefly looked at TFA and saw something about how some drug trial didn't go the way some pharmaceutical company thought it would.
Then I saw something about how people looking at the relative positions of a red and blue ball couldn't reliably put them into a casual relationship.
For the WIRED editors who allowed the story to be published (and slashdot editors who allowed this story to be posted) to see this as a repudiation of Science (and Causality) is ludicrous. Why didn't they say that maybe the reason why their drug didn't work out is because Science doesn't claim to understand completely the biochemistry of the human body (yet). Why didn't they say that the human proclivity to create a narrative where none exists (like with the red and blue balls) is an interesting and not (yet) wholly understood psychological phenomenon?
Science has given us so much (flight, health, food, cities, mobility, global communications, etc.) and has proven itself on every scale from the cosmic to the nano-scopic that I can only ask:
Is WIRED a Fox subsidiary?
Science is not failing us. Apparently, the pharmaceutical companies and their correlational studies are. Science - whether behavioral, biological, or physical - does not necessarily depend on correlations. Manipulating an independent variable and comparing it to other conditions (a control group, for example) is what makes an experiment more than just a correlational study. This is what allows us to make causal relationships clearer, even if we don't perfectly understand the pathways that lead A to cause B. By failing to make this distinction, the article makes it sound as if scientists are merely fumbling around in the dark without a clue as to how anything works. Really this article just provides many fine examples of how correlational information used by medical doctors is failing us - not scientists doing actual experiments.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
...isn't that one of the exact flaws the article is accusing some modern research of? Plus I'm glad there are scientists there to conclude a drug is not safe and to show that MRIs are not useful in determining causes of chronic back pain; how is that a failure of science?
Nah, this guy is on the up-and-up, neuroscience degree from Columbia. Studying that hard to understand neurotransmitters, synapses etc using the same neurotransmitters and synapses could leave one with ideas in his brain that can not be communicated to other brains using words. That could explain the similarities of his essay to that of addled philosophers.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's like this article was written by a villain dreamed up by Ayn Rand.
The author's claim that you can't link cause and effect is utter hogwash. He claims you can't say that an apple falls to the Earth because of gravity, which is stupid because gravity is DEFINED by that action. What we don't KNOW is what causes the phenomena we have labelled as gravity. It is a very poor example. He then proceeds to talk about people assuming causation in an ANIMATED MOVIE. Well, of course one ball hitting the other ball on a screen didn't cause it to move. They are just light and shadow in patterns that change with time! Claiming that the people have faulty perception is like claiming that people who read superhero comics really believe in people with superpowers, and can't tell that they are looking at a piece of paper with ink on it. He ignores the suspension of disbelief that the original experimenters introduced when they chose to use a medium that wasn't based on physical objects.
This guy just presents fallacy after fallacy and expects us to accept his dumb conclusion that science is somehow "over". Fuck that, and fuck him.
It's just a very generalized process of getting more reliable information than we would otherwise. It works differently than the genetic algorithm method of multiple simultaneous train and error. Both have their good and bad points, but if you're looking for "Truth" with a capital "T" here, you might as well be waiting for Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Your odds on seen any of them are about as good as finding "Truth" and for the same reason. All are fantasy - a byproduct of non-self reflective human cognition. None exist in the external world.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Science isn't failing the public, rather the public is failing science - especially in the US. The American public expects great things from science for almost no money invested, and simultaneously refuses to make any effort to understand any results that are more complicated than "we just cured cancer!" (nevemind that such a thing is, inherently, massively complicated).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Those who do not read Karl Jaspers are fated to rewrite Karl Jaspers, poorly.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Science isn't failing us. We live in an amazing world full of things that would have passed as magic just 50 years ago, and we do so thanks to science. To say "why is science failing us" is begging the question: Presupposing what can't be presupposed.
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance. - Hippocrates (c.460-c.377 BCE)
What is America's level of reading and writing versus the world?
NUFF SAID
Several years ago when Lipitor ads started playing on TV, they would say near the end of the ad, "Lipitor has been shown to lower blood cholesterol. High cholesterol has been shown to be an indicator for increased risk of heart disease."
They made it quite clear that Lipitor does not lower your risk of heart disease. Basically the marketing was saying, "Our skin lotion reduces the appearance of wrinkles. Wrinkles are a sign of aging", which definitely does not claim "Our skin lotion actually prevents aging". The lotion just hides the symptoms.
So, the problem is not with science, but with pharma marketing.
The article's true content is REALLY about how humans interpret the rules and roles of science. The examples were in fact improperly applied scientific method.
Making assumptions when correlations were present, which is bad science but often happens with us humans, and if you're lucky it works.
The example of the MRI's and back pain was just plain assumptions: "Hmm! I see herniated discs in his spine, that MUST be the source of the pain!".
Anyway, very little of it is an indictment of science per se.
Erich Boleyn
A process of knowing about the natural universe. When done properly, it is extremely reliable. However it never claims to be able to explain everything. The scientific method is purely about the testable, and more particularly the falsifiable. There can be things that are true, but don't fall in that category.
None of that is a failing of science. All of our cool modern technology is a proof of how well science works. We discover something, test it to see if it is true, and then it gets applied. That it works, means we got it at least basically right.
No, we may never know everything about everything. None of that means science is failing us.
here's my (dubious) translation: It is not the goal of Science to open a door to endless knowledge, but rather to place limits upon endless error.
this quote, i believe, it both filled with truthiness, and also reveals notable false-iness in the referenced article.
WTF is this gibberish in the summary? WTF with this misleading headline? WTF Slashdot? My mind is full of f*ck now.
2019 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
They all still believe the law of thermodynamics are absolute and unbreakable. And nobody's trying to see past Einstein's theories. This is typical human arrogance that reflects 19th Century Victorian beliefs. But, I've already been through this. Everybody thinks there's this brick wall we'll never pass. If that's the case, why bother with science if we've already learned everything there is to learn.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Exactly. Complex living systems are ... complex ... and living.
Science is not "failing" anything. Science is continually expanding our knowledge.
The problem is when people don't apply the correct scientific rigour to the problem at hand. As with the medical examples in TFA. Humans are complex, living systems. They change as their environment changes. Including drugs taken.
And different people are different. How one person's body responds is NOT a guarantee of how someone else's body will respond to the exact same drug.
What is old is new again. Yada Yada - the more we know the more there is to know. Can we say Quantum mechanics.
Greed, substandard methodology and the rush to market is failing us, that's what I get from the article.
Is /. becoming the geek equivalent of Drudge report? Inflammatory, hyperbolic links to articles that are not?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Of course IDNRTFA, but the summary sounds like someone who buys into the the "first mover" proof of God's existence but doesn't quite have the guts to admit it.
Relevant fortune: We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts. -- Patrick Moynihan
The title of the article is: "Trials and Errors: Why Science Is Failing Us". It fits the story well.
The story describes how the use of our usual scientific methods leads, very often, to failure. Such failures are measured in billions of dollars. The original article cites cases and offers possible explanations of why this situation came to exist.
Bottom line: As we try to understand very complicated systems, we find that our old trusted techniques of reductionism and correlation don't do a very good job.
It is the US that is failing science.
The difference between faith and science is simple, faith only has stories, science you can keep drilling down to facts if the story is not enough.
I once wrote a story about a mouse in a factory we had visited at school, presenting the factory as an old mouse explaining it to a young. It wasn't a hundred percent scientific but it did not lie. I got a perfect score both for writing and from the subject class itself. The teacher explained to another student who complained that my story did not go as deep as their dry report by stating that anyone who read my story and wanted to do dig deeper could.
Religion is a story that tells you to stop digging further. No why's or but's. This is it, believe!
Just because you cannot dig further in the story science tells doesn't make it the end. You CAN research as far as you want in science papers and learn everything you want about string theory or quantum mechanics or micro-biology or nanotech or whatever else you can think of.
If you go to a science museum it might only tell the story to a certain level but they would be happy to refer you to places where you can find out the rest. If you go to that creationist exhibit (stop calling it a museum) they do NOT do the same. They don't answer questions, just tell you, these are the facts as we tell you, swallow them whole and stop asking.
An example? The liver... how does it actually work? I know what it does but not how it does it. You could say I take its functioning on faith but I am pretty confident doctors know how it works and I that if I wanted I could go to the icky bits section of a library and research it... that is a LOT different then the religous view that "it is magic" end of story.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The universe would be boring. Next question?
This article is good. It is not anti-science. Those who dismiss it as stupid and laugh about the psychological test example don't get the correlation (pun intended) between our brain's inclination to simplify and the errors we make by using the scientific method.
The fact that our understanding of complex systems isn't getting better by trial and error can mean two things: we need another approach to understand them, or we need to do trial and error much faster in order to have more statistical data. The latter will be possible in some areas of science with computing power and AI. Hopefully medicine is one of those areas.
Oh joy. Take an article that's making one point about complexity and spin it into another point about claiming science is not working for us.
Add a goodly dose of the hoary old saw I've been hearing ever since the first time I went to college about "Reductionism is failing us! And science has no answer to emergent behavior." Presumably implying that other methods (Perhaps creative linguistic criticism, experimental interpretive dance, or maybe abstract sculpture? You laugh, I've heard it seriously suggested. Though I suspect it involved heavily chemically altered states.) will work better?
No, it's just that complex systems are, well, complex. And we've picked a lot of the low hanging fruit.
The slope to knowledge has gotten steeper, but it hasn't gone vertical yet.
I see all those serious comments. Really, can't you see?
"For too long, we've pretended that the old problem of causality can be cured by our shiny new knowledge." I know several guys who have chosen to stay as ignorant as possible. None of them have solved the problem of causality. "If only we devote more resources to research or dissect the system at a more fundamental level or search for ever more subtle correlations, we can discover how it all works." no shit, how could somebody get the idea that observing a phenomenon can help you gain insights on it, sooo flawed "But a cause is not a fact, and it never will be; the things we can see will always be bracketed by what we cannot." combines a well known phylosophical problem with a nice tautology, which always contributes a lot of meaning "And this is why, even when we know everything about everything, we'll still be telling stories about why it happened. It's mystery all the way down." what the fuck does that even mean, that is one real mistery to me
Newton had gravity, Einstein corrected it with general relativity.
In cryptography, many protocols were shown to be "secure" that had severe flaws in their security.
This forced cryptographers to redefine their notions of security.
In quantum cryptography, unconditionally secure bit commitment was first thought possible then later shown impossible.
If you look closely enough, you will see hundreds or thousands of incorrect hypothesis that were proven and then later refuted.
Some people would call this failure, I call this success.
Science isn't failing us. That is is is the first claim that needs to be proven, long, long before you can get to any "why"s.
And the article hasn't. In fact, the very introduction shows science well at work, not failing. Only if you have such a limited definition of science that blackboards and notebooks are science, but trials and studies are not, then you could come to that conclusion. And nobody outside Hogwash University holds that view.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Wired Magazine has an article espousing epistemiological nihilism, demonstrating ever more clearly how pointless it has become.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So theories change with new information. Sounds like science behaving correctly to me. Only an idiot thinks you always get perfect and correct information the first time around. All you get are higher and higher probabilities of accuracy. It's just not a boolean universe.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I call flamebait.
... please be moderated right off the site?
Most of those have nothing to do with science, they're "American culture reversals"
I've followed Wired since its launch in the 90's. Sometimes they've had good articles, but mostly they publish SHOCK science articles. Contrarian articles. Anything to attract attention. Except that when you read the frakking article, you see the scientists/engineer/expert they are talking to is a fringe player that most of his peers thought was wrong and the writer blowing up something that really had no bearing. How many of these great SHOCK and CONTRARIAN articles have panned out over the last 20 years? Precious few. Pop Sci does a much better job.
Wired's writers are so desperate for an attention grabbing story that they will glom on to anything that can be spun into an article that goes against the grain or seems to rebel. They won't do a good job of checking basic facts, they don't investigate if the claims stand up. Hell, they don't even check to see if the logic in their article makes sense -- as per this article. As others pointed out, the article is mostly about pharma and medical science. All the examples I read in that article was about pharma and medical science. The writer ignored things like the mathematics of quantum physics being proved ever more correct, and relativity. The only "science" failing to deliver more results is medicine.
The whole reason medical "science" is failing has been a topic for the last 10 years. Basically it comes down to the industrialization of medical research where university profs spend their days hoping to make a discovery which can be turned into a billion dollar idea for a company. Because of that pressure, other researchers have noticed that a lot of lab results never pan out in production. The current thinking is that over-wishful thinking and too much pressure makes medical researchers take shortcuts with their data to make a discovery seem real or more relevant than it is.
THAT would have been a good article, and the late Omni magazine would have had a good article or two on that. Instead we have Wired: Omni without the good taste.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
You can prove the possiblity of something.
Like, is it possible for rocks to fall to the ground when free to move? I can prove that it is, in fact, possible for this to happen by dropping a rock.
You can prove that a substance can burn by lighting it on fire.
Or, more practically, introducing a substance into a pregnant woman's body and then testing for and discovering it in the child's body can prove that it is possible for that substance to be transmitted from mother to child.
You can prove things like that.
The folks at Wired clearly want to believe in science, not use it as a tool to obtain knowledge. They don't want to use philosophy at all, much less for the purposes it fulfills better than science, because they don't understand it. In this, they join most of Slashdot's readership.
It's also not just theories that change with new information (or if you want to call it that: over time). No matter how often someone tries to tell you that they are being "objective", science is subject to a whole array of influences that can also all change and thus either change the outcome or the methodology. Amongst these influences are agendas, ideology, economics, technology and also philosophy.
Confusing facts and theories. In science you start with facts, as in things observed. They aren't up for debate unless you want to claim our perception of them is incorrect. In the case of gravity, it is the fact that objects attract or on a more human scale: that shit falls down.
Once you have some facts about the universe, you can then come up with theories to explain the relation of those facts. The theories are more up for debate and may end up being falsified, revised, expanded, and so on as more facts come to light, more tests are done, and so on.
Also theories may not be complete. They might only explain part of something, or only be a more basic explanation. They also might only quantify what happens, not truly explain.
So with gravity an example of a quantification type theory would be that objects fall to Earth at 9.8m/s/s. It quantifies the attraction of objects on the scale we deal with, but doesn't explain anything, just says "Shit falls at this rate."
Now in terms of explanatory theories, just look at Newton and Einstein. They explain how gravity acts in general. However Newton's are more basic, it fails to adequately explain a number of things. It is a useful simplification, but clearly a simplification. Einstein's theory is much more complete, though there are still potential issues with it.
So no, we don't understand gravity, but we understand more than we did.
Also gravity is a force we have a particularly bad understanding of. There are other areas of physics we have a much better understanding of. Trying to pick out things that are not well understood (speaking relatively here) as examples of science failing overall is stupid.
The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concetrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power.My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible.
(Nikola Tesla Quote)
The Zeitgeist Movement solved these issues long ago. All our remaining problems are technical, in nature, and when they aren't technical, the issues are related to over consumption and greed. The solution is the Resource Based Economy, the end of currency, and the Earth as the common heritage of every human for all time.
Just in case you haven't noticed, human conciousness is what's failing, not science. Nature found a way for life to evolve and last, perhaps indefinitely. But humans have found newer and creative ways to screw things up. It's as if neo-Newtonian laws are at work; for every advantage, there's an equal and opposite disadvantage. At least that's the way we seem to have orchestrated our current push toward "improvement."
The commentary on systems is astute. We need to be aware of the general nature of world in which we live and start acknowledging that we are a part of and not separate from it. Our worldview has been skewed for so long by those that seek individual and subgroup advantage wherever they may find it, using whatever means are expedient in the short term, is failing us.
If we choose to ignore the inevitable consequences of the actived fouling of our "nest," it won't matter much what we choose to blame. Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Religious Fundamentalists, Free Market Capitalists... take your pick it just doesn't matter what ideology you follow blindly. Oh, and since when has there ever been a single "We" to take the credit or the blame for the human condition? Jared Diamond, et al, point out the myriad means by which civilizations cyclely rise and fall. And one thing seems common to every failing civilization, hubris.
The freedom to fail benefits a small subset, and always has. And there's lots of conjecture in the discussion of various societies regarding the acceptability of inequality of wealth, but now that we've manage to blanket the globe with people, the collective issue will soon become whether or not we respect the limits of our environment, and so far it's scientists who have raised the red flag while politicians and their handlers remain on the quest for fiat wealth.
Don't blame the means... blame the ends.
IMHO as a statistician, I can assure you, that as the knowledge expands it is easiet to see the big picture. The problem is tha all low hanging fruits are gone and new discoveries are not cheap and easy now. Most of current progress is made because new machines/methods/reagents allow to do experiments that were beyond any budget in the past. I believe that most research will move to Asia, becouse big corporations kills american science. For example: Illumina sells sequencing reagents to China 10x (ten times) cheaper than to customers in the USA.
I have made two realizations
1. Science does not know "why" in the way religions answers the question. It is a human need to answer the "why".
Science comes up with a theory that can be used to predict events in a causal manner. That is it's job. The why predicates a motive/reason and nature from sciences perspective does not have motives. We should not mix the "how" something happens with the "why" something happens. It is a delicate difference.
2. Until a decade or so ago religion was picking a fight with science and science was not responding. In the last decade a small group in "science" has been fighting back and answering the attacks using logic and the scientific method as tools. It seems to be more and more effective with the rise of skepticism and rationality. Its a long way, but I think there's no stopping. I would say that the church is getting uncomfortable. If it doesn't fight it does not stand up to it's doctrine, if it does fight it stirs up a response it is not equipped to fight.
Maybe we should pray instead...
Hah!
We have the technology necessary for a peaceful and prosperous world, yet everywhere you look, greed reigns supreme. Special interests drive policy in an attempt to maintain an unsustainable status quo. If humanity is to prosper, we must break our dependance on fossil fuels, and focus on workable solutions to the looming energy crisis.
Intellectual Property protectionism must also cease, so that technologies can thrive on their own merit, and not by government mandated monopolies. This fundamentally broken concept helps drive the insanity which is outsourcing. As cheap as Chinese labor is today, technology and automation will undercut them tomorrow; the only question is, who will own the machines that produce the wealth, and have the energy to run them. Pushing all of the manufacturing overseas is substituting slave labor for technological investment; throwing away the future of the nation for next quarters profits.
America is pouring its own wealth down the drain, and litigating over the scraps, instead of focusing on the creation of new wealth. Not only do we spend countless billions on foreign oil, but further trillions on endless wars to secure that supply. Wars which inevitably invite terrorism, which has itself become a massive drain on the economy. With dwindling fossil fuel resources, this is guaranteed to end very badly.
The countries which have turned away from nuclear energy should carefully reconsider, otherwise they will soon follow. The way toward prosperity lies with cheap energy and production, and the Chinese have figured that out. As they invest heavily in nuclear energy, production, and research, I wish them the best. If we can't follow their example though, it will be impossible to compete. Ceding energy and production to foreign nations, and basing the economy on the delusion that ideas can be owned will incur a painful reckoning.
And here I thought it was turtles all the way down. Not even Dr Seuss is safe.
Sigh. What a load of crap.
1) Wrong. Never was claimed outside of magazines picking up some hypothetical and highly qualified (i.e. full of could be's and needs more info) journal studies.
2) Wrong. Mammograms are determined to not be required at 35. Different from self-inspection
3) Wrong. Alcohol-based sanitizers are recommended, triclosan ones aren't.
4) I can't even find a reference to that nonsense. Not to mention that it is incredibly unlikely that the reversal happened in 2012
5) The only ones who put SIDS research into such absolute terms are glossy magazines trying to be bought by anxious parents.
6) Wrong. The reason they're not recommended at the level they used to be is the number of false positives.
7) Hyperbole to make a point that didn't exist. Try again.
8) See 7)
9) Wrong year for initial prediction (both author and target) and non sequitur.
10) Hyperbole, non sequitur.
11) Wrong.
12) Hyperbole, and purposeful incorrect attribution of statements.
For someone who is bitching about science, you sure don't have a fucking clue what is going on.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
In an election year, unconsciously, science is conning conscious construction workers, working conscientiously, collectively, towards making a god damned bridge-to-nowhere abutment.
Medicine is still mostly trial and error because the human body is very complex. That doesn't mean it's failing, in fact it had developed a lot. There are also many other areas of science which the author conveniently fails to mention.
Let's take to to heart. We may never find out what light moves in, whether it be ether or not. Why does it even matter if we know how light moves? Let alone what these "atoms" are made of. Does it really benefit us to know that atoms are made of things? Does it improve chemistry at all? We live on Earth in this Universe called the Milky Way. Funds are wasted on such heretics that think the Andromeda gas blob could actually be another universe. A multi-verse? Ye gods.
-Signed, some random person from some year I'm too lazy to look-up where all these views were mutual.
Science can't be all knowing because of finite resources, finite time, and we live in an era of science denial-ism with paradoxical unrealistic optimism for Science.
By the last one all I need to do is point to diseases. For denial, just look at Anti-vaxers. For the optimism, how many would have thought AIDS or "cancer" (often spoken of as a singular disease) would be cured by now?
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
I'm wondering why so many here seem angry about that article. Sure, the headline is over-simplified and flamebaity - but that's just current style. Sure, it's only about medicine - but it's a deep and complex issue. I was glad to see something different than another boring article about piracy or smart phones.
Science IS stagnating. While technology advances, most is based on science which has been done 50 or more years ago. Here are a few things which current science is unable to achieve, but trying for decades:
- elimination of viruses
- cure of cancer
- batteries and solar panels good enough for collecting during the day and running a city during the night
- interplanetary travel
Science itself is not the problem though, the modern way of science is: short term ROI as the main motivation.
I really like how the timeline is presented out-of-order (over half this stuff is from the 60's and 70's), how items with varying levels of scientific consensus are presented as equivalents (global cooling/warming), and how unrelated issues are juxtaposed (sustainability vs obesity). Throwing in non-scientific issues (employment, sexual promiscuity) was a bit over the top though, at least for a troll of your caliber.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
Reality is just the story our brains tell us. News at 11.>/p>
We must embrace MAGIC and SUPERSTITION! I'll get my lucky charms ready.
Geez... looks like a typical writing challenge. Turn something on its head for no reason and write about it.
The entire point of science as it pertains to society's understanding is learning incrementally.
Plenty of people saw the forest for the trees... Galileo, Plato, Archimedes, Euclid, Kepler, Newton, Leibniz
The day your average 8th grader completely understands even in the most basic elements of all these people's contributions, I'll agree we as a society need to start looking at the big picture again.
So we're going to declare all of science a "failure" because it is difficult to describe highly complex systems as a sum of their parts? That it would be somehow better to take a look at the whole and just jump to intuitive conclusions? That is just ridiculous. Yes, breaking down highly complex systems into their component parts and pieces ACCURATELY is difficult. If we get some of those parts and pieces wrong, it will indeed skew our expected results. So? Then we address that issue by looking for the reasons our results did not match our expectations. You know what happens then? WE LEARN THINGS. Science isn't about getting the correct answer on the first go. Or the 10th. Or the 100th. It is a process for learning and continuing refinement of that learning. This goes back to the old (I think it was Asimov) the earth is flat (wrong). The earth is a sphere (not as wrong, but still wrong). The earth is an oblate spheroid (more accurate, but still not 100% precision). Should we have thrown out science because it turned out that the earth was not a perfect sphere? Same holds true for much of medicine and other highly complex systems.
Just because we're still fiddling around for HOW to properly account for some of the complex interactions in the body, that doesn't mean that we should abandon advances in bacterial and viral science and go back to purging bad humors and witchcraft.
Human physiology is an extremely complex system. A new drug must hit a tiny target in a sea of very similar targets. If the author has a better system to understand the world than the scientific method, let him propose it.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
A few of those are orthogonal to each other, and one isn't even a scientific reversal:
- Breast Exams: The issue of the exam itself is orthogonal to the issue of who. Do average people get too many false positives, too few real positives? How do you even examine that without telling people to self-examine?
- Sun Lamp vs No Sunlight: Ignores the specific component of sunlight that is a problem (UV). Full spectrum lighting for example, which doesn't produce a ton of UV is still recommended for some folks in the winter (i.e. a sun lamp).
- Food Shortages vs Obesity: The amount of food is actually disconnected from the obesity caused by food. Engineered food that was partly developed to fight hunger is being fed back to non-starving populations. This creates a feedback loop that wasn't present, and thus couldn't be analyzed in earlier decades. Lifestyle changes also change how food affects the body.
- Free Love vs Family Values: Social thinking going in different directions. About all science has contributed is how family structures can affect children, and even that is more observation of correlation.
A lot of the reversals you mention are really just feedback loops. We see that something can/will happen, or can/will benefit us. We don't have complete data on side-effects or unknowns when we start trying it. Changes in social thinking, other areas of engineering/science and other things feedback and change the base conditions, or reveal more data to incorporate. By cutting out a lot of the context like you did, it doesn't help reveal anything useful other than "things changed!"
While it isn't any area for reductionist analysis. I've long suspected that people who are surprisingly successful have some internal model which accounts for critical systems effects, though they would most likely rationalise it away if pressed. Mostly they will by like N.N. Taleb (Black Swan) in convincing themselves this is a theory-free zone. What it really is, like specialised examples from plate tectonics to biological evolution, is theory that makes sense of the world we find ourselves in with only the broadest statistical predictive capacity.
Systems are not about efficiency. They are about resilience. Cancer is efficient.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
Therefore, let's dispense with CAUSALITY.
Seastead this.
- 1990s: every woman should examine their breasts in the shower. 2012: leave it to doctors.
There's a joke in there somewhere...
iPad lights up, mortality goes down. You can't explain that
Science is failing us by... not being omnipotent and not being right about everything all the time? Whiny post-modernist idiotic clap-trap.
Science needs religion and religion needs science.
Science is really good at how, but can never tell us why.
Religion is really good at why, but its explanation of how is lacking.
There has to be some deep unexplainable mystery or everybody goes crazy. We can't know everything.
1) Global cooling theory was claimed by serious scientists in the 1970s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
2) I never said mammograms, I said self-inspections. And I was there in the 1990s when college campuses had public health representatives giving detailed instructions on how to perform breast self-exams. Since then, doctor's offices have been flooded with hysterical women convinced that they have breast cancer, so they have done away with this recommendation.
3) Many recent studies say that alcohol-based sanitizers are useless, as the alcohol evaporates in a few seconds and does not kill very many germs anyway. The alcohol has to be at a high concentration for it to be effective, but people do not like higher concentrations because it irritates the skin. I work in public health.
4 and 5: check "Dr. Spock's Baby & Child Care". At the time, the medical establishment treated this as the bible of child rearing. Anybody who did not follow Dr. Spock's guidelines was considered a retrograde idiot.
6) Does not contradict anything I said. The recommendation reversal stands.
7) I was at seminars by dermatologists recently who said this stuff. The American Academy of Dermatology today says to avoid sunlight and to get vitamin D only through artificial supplements: "Get vitamin D safely through a healthy diet that may include vitamin supplements. Don't seek the sun."
Source: http://www.aad.org/skin-care-and-safety/skin-cancer-prevention/be-sun-smart/be-sun-smart
8) My dad was part of the studies that promoted hormone replacement therapy in the 90s. Today, it is a dirty word.
9) NASA scientists predicted this. See: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/09/19/nasa-scientists-predicted-new-ice-age-1971
10) Check http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/ecocenter/air/EcoCenter-Air-Acid-Rain-and-Our-Ecosystem.html?c=y&page=2
"In the late 1970s, researchers surveyed 217 lakes above 2,000 feet in the Adirondacks and found that 51 percent were highly acidic. The news was so grim that scientists began attempting to breed more acid-tolerant strains of trout. One New York State employee compared the area to Death Valley. A decade later, a larger study that included 849 lakes higher than 1,000 feet found that 55 percent were either completely devoid of life or on the brink of collapse."
11) If you can find a source today that argues high-carb, low-protein diets are good, let me know. They would be far outside the mainstream establishment today. My specialty is obesity and diabetes research.
12) Psychologists used to promote sex therapy until the mid-1980s, but you won't find anyone advocating it today.
"For someone who is bitching about science, you sure don't have a fucking clue what is going on."
Actually, I am a scientific insider with a PhD. Having insider access has shown me how arbitrary the scientific reasoning process is. People have their agendas, and getting grants is all about putting on a provocative sales pitch. A typical grant identifies a threat to society, and how this research will be the salvation. I have been to more than one seminar where a scientist debunked some opposing theory, then repeated all the exact same mistakes to promote their own, and the room gave a standing ovation. I thought it was done in parody, but they were serious. It made me realize that the scientific establishment can be no smarter than fundamentalists in trailer parks.
Science failed us?
Nope.
It's us, the human beings, who have failed science.
Science stays the way it is. Scientific principles stay the way they are.
It's us, the human, who have failed to put enough effort to get to know Science and now we blame Science for failing us.
Ridiculous !!!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I've recently been reading Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin, a world-renowned animal sciences expert, and I came upon one of the several places in this book wherein she lambasts short-sighted, "single-trait" breeding programs. (She lambasts programs that breed for only a handful of traits nearly as much.) These programs have sought such worthy goals as producing animals that eat less, grow faster/larger, breed more rapidly, etc. The problem is that every time these companies/industries have sought to enhance one or a few positive traits, they've ended-up "breaking" several others, unexpectedly.
For example: in the process of breeding chickens for faster/larger growth and lower food consumption, they've managed to produce something that nature would never allow: roosters that rape/murder chickens. Since this happened over the course of years-long breeding programs, the chicken farmers of companies participating in this program began to see roosters that rape and kill chickens (because they don't do the mating rituals necessary for the chickens to co-operate) began to see this behavior as "normal." Likewise, the large, white chickens that we all love for their large production of breast meat just happened to become neurotic--ramming themselves against their cages; pulling out feathers, etc.--and unable to stand or walk--even over to their food to eat. The neurosis, as it turns out, is a result of a lack of melatonin in the brain, which happens because white chickens (for unknown reasons) require less food to grow larger and/or produce more eggs. The legs had become genetically broken because they had grown too large (probably among other reasons).
My point is that the more we attempt to use the "scientific method" in the way of isolating variables, the more we find out--often tragically--that we simply CAN'T account for all the variables, and utterly screw things up by trying. We do, in essence, what nature is far to smart to do: we break evolutionary process, etc., with our hubristic idea that we somehow "know better."
Don't get me wrong; we should, of course, keep trying to "get it right," but we probably never will if we continue thinking that we know so much more than we do. Having been raised by a world-renowned scientist, myself, and having read and heard about the scientific community, as a whole (along with the all the money/politics that so often ruins it), I can't help but notice that many so-called scientists make vastly baseless assumptions about what they know, and then go on to "prove" that they have all the answers about something or other--only to have it shown later that they got it all wrong, but were too proud to admit it.
If we really want to move forward, scientifically, we need to dramatically shift the paradigm of what is considered "science," away from this "controlled environment"/"isolating variables" model, and toward something a little more open-minded, and less hubristic.
For further reading: look up the "behaviorism" research performed in the psychology field, circa 1950-1979. While we've (largely) stopped performing such brutish and unproductive experiments in that field, science has kept the model of controlling all the variables and denying that things would work differently in nature.
Agreed.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Why is this tripe on slashdot? What the hell is the matter with the editor? I am genuinely offended that someone stupid enough to post this has a job screening submissions.
Similar point in a different form:
Hacker koan: Uncarved block
I think curing all diseases is a much closer goal than unlocking the key to consciousness and replicating the mind as an eternal machine. Besides, disease is the reason many of us die at all. I remember reading a story about a 500 year old clam. Why do we even die at all?
Take a look at this ranking of causes of death. Turns out, by eradicating cardiovascular diseases, infectious and parasitic diseases, cancer, and respiratory diseases we eliminate 71.36% of the reasons people die. Next up on the list are unintentional injuries (getting hit by a car) and intentional injuries (jumping off a building). So as long as you avoid those two things you're going to live a long damn time.
http://www.jellyfishfacts.net/turritopsis-nutricula-immortal-jellyfish.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks
I wish I had mod points, parent post is actually a pretty interesting list of topics that the scientific consensus has reversed course on. He's not saying that all science is garbage or even saying that this list should make you doubt science (maybe it should instill faith in science that it catches its mistakes). Anyway it's an interesting list.
But because he's on the wrong end of the mob on this topic he get's modded to 0 and a couple replies that basically say "Wrong, you're an idiot" get +5.
There's no way that the parent post is a Troll. He might be wrong, but he's stating a valid opinion.
Then the reply which has "wrong" to everything and is quite comparable to the OP is modded insightful.
Finally the counterpoint from dorpus which of the three posts is the only one with actual references sits at 1.
This is why the /. moderation system sucks so much.
The fundamental problem is we can't (and never will be able to) measure the universe with infinite precision. All we can do is struggle for slightly better precision and we can correlate.
The universe is ultimately one big equation. We can never even pose the equation let alone solve for it; there simply isn't enough matter. And the more matter there is to pose and solve the equation the more matter is required. It's by definition unsolvable. All we can do is approximate.
The Greeks had it right when they concluded that all "knowledge" is belief and nothing (as in something physical) can be proved. We can conclude, we can't prove.
It's not the failure of science, personal flying vehicles have been around for quite a while. The problems are the costs and government regulations.
Not only that...it is bad enough to have to dodge the room-temperature IQs blasting along the road in 2d. Imagine the joys of having to watch for burning debris falling from the sky too! There is a reason that it is not easy to get a pilot's license...and it is not just because the government gets a chunk of funds from the fees.
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
Where did you get your PhD - in a box of crackers? You link to Wikipedia (which contradicts you in the third sentence), pop-medical advice books, engage in hyperbole at every turn, and try to expand your authority from your field to areas you have absolutely no clue about. The most damning part really is that every time you link to any source, the actual source at best has a single person advocating your position, but in general states the exact opposite of what you're arguing.
Not to mention that not a single PhD student, post-doc or professor I have ever studied with or worked with referred to themselves as a "scientific insider." While I won't discount the fact that there's an outside chance you actually have a PhD and work in obesity and diabetes research, your citations are so sloppy and your argumentation so full of holes that I'd like to know where you work so I can avoid that place like the plague.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
because physicians don't really use the scientific method. This starts with the clumsy and mostly inaccurate way they measure blood pressure and continues with all their blood labs and other measurements, which are not done continuously and are mostly very dependant on the situation. The labs are probably done in a scientific way, but that is only ever for that one probe they take. Since you are working on a human being and every human being is different you never have the chance to test a medication in a scientific way with repeatable results. You just hope that your statistics hold for most people. People that are different are just out of luck. In the end every disease has to be cured by your own immune system, drugs just try to help your system along, by weakening or helping to identify the bacteria, virus or even cancer cell.
Unless you know exactly how an individual human body works and are able to somehow measure its exact state at the time, you can never say how exactly a treatment will work and you can never get to cure everyone in every situation.
"You link to Wikipedia (which contradicts you in the third sentence),"
According to my reading, the third sentence says "In contrast to the global cooling conjecture, the current scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth has not durably cooled, but undergone global warming throughout the twentieth century."
So yes, it supports what I said that there has been a reversal of opinion. I'm not sure what you are trying to assert.
"I'd like to know where you work so I can avoid that place like the plague."
My institution prefers people who can argue with reason, rather than ad hominem attacks. What is your specialty, and what do you claim has not happened? I doubt it would surprise any scientist that policy recommendations have changed over time.
i am scared that every idiot who obviously has not read any fundamental philosophy of science works and obviously has not done research declares his own opinion, untouched by having seen a lab from the inside, on how science works only to complain afterwards about his picture of science.
One of the repetitive aspects of this discussion is "causality", which seems, in the mind of the general population, a scientific principle. Let me remark that in the modern science we usually replace causality by the ability to create an underlying - possibly complex - model, the predictions of which depend on a parameter. That is the test which scientists would use such a model to determine causality, since it enables hopefully tests independent of the specific result.
"This assumption -- that understanding a system's constituent parts means we also understand the causes within the system -- is not limited to the pharmaceutical industry or even to biology. It defines modern science."
Well, it seems as if "explainable system" complexity has an upper, human, limit.
Interestingly people like Joe Tainter think that societies hit their limits by increasing energy requirements through increasing complexity. We may actually be testing our own limits as well.
Here is one more snippet from Wired:
"...they are much less effective at making sense of systems in which the variables cannot be isolated. Such situations require that we understand every interaction before we can reliably understand any of them. Given the byzantine nature of biology, this can often be a daunting hurdle, requiring that researchers map not only the complete cholesterol pathway but also the ways in which it is plugged into other pathways."
An energy efficient tool to help us think, i.e. not other humans, would be nice. Also notice that this limitation might also limit our engineering capabilities.
Je me souviens.
Isn't that why we invented writing? I regularly take lessons from dead people in that temple to collective conciousness we call the library.
If you don't do reductionist science, it is hard (but possible) to receive funding
This is not really true - look at condensed matter physicists - they study the bulk properties of matter and this probably the largest area of physics. Even in particle physics we have ion collisions which study the bulk properties of the early universe and are leading to insights such as a new Quark-Gluon-Plasma state.
I found it very telling that the article was entirely about medicine which is not science but a combination of science and art. Medicine's primary goal is to heal people NOT to understand how the human body works. While this is certainly a very worthy goal the understanding is just a means to that end and so intuition is used ("art") to study the mechanisms (using science) which doctors believe they need to understand in order to cure a patient. If you guess wrong that is not science's fault.
Mods really need to exercise more care, especially with things they don't know much about. There was a recent article on Pac-Man being NP-Hard which included a discussion of the definition of NP-Hard. There were some early replies which got modded up only to crash down a little later because they had major errors anyone actually familiar with the material would have noticed immediately. Those replies apparently sounded good and authoritative. I guess the corrective replies sounded even better and more authoritative; some of them really were correct, even.
There really is a definition of NP-Hard, so there wasn't much debate, and after a little bit the good answers were modded up and the bad ones modded down. Here, it's much harder to determine who's right. In the "wrong" reply, NeutronCowboy is much more entertaining to read ("Where did you get your PhD - in a box of crackers?") than dorpus, so he has an advantage in getting careless mod points.
In another recent incident, I was modded down to 0 Troll for pointing out that I wasn't inclined to believe an international conspiracy theory presented without evidence by someone who made a major mistake in reading the article. The post I replied to was later modded up to +5 Funny, even though the bulk of it was serious. The joking part wasn't even that funny, though of course that's subjective.
In yet another recent incident, there was a post which somehow got +5 insightful/interesting without making an interesting or original point. It also used broken English. Half the replies were, "how did this get modded up?" It was modded down a while later, but a similar post from the same person was modded up later in the thread. Why anyone would think that person's garbage was insightful is a mystery to me.
There is a strong tendency for forcefully negative posts to get modded up. The "Randian" +5 insightful post above is a good example. The OP is entertainingly negative towards the article, yet it includes a ridiculous definition of gravity. Three people (including myself) have replied about that definition yet the OP just repeats it as if nobody understands; the only forcefully negative reply is very recent and unlikely to get modded up so late. The only moderation in the thread, excluding the OP, is NeutronCowboy (the same guy from the "wrong" post above) being entertainingly negative and another person doing the same thing though with less skill.
I know mentioning this will change nothing, but it's nice to vent sometimes. The moderation system has enough holes to drive a truck through. I'm not sure if it's worse recently or if I've just been noticing more flaws.
This happens with disturbing regularity. What is going on in Medicine cannot be equated to Science as a whole. Hell, Medicine isn't even a Science. If it were, there'd be a overlying theory to explain how the body works, etc. But, Medicine can't even predict with /any/ accuracy what to expect with regards to side-effects when testing drugs (expectations from experience don't count, it has to be from the model). It's still, poke it and see what happens.
A real Science has a theory to explain the data, puts out new predictions, and those predictions get tested to prove/disprove the prediction. Also, those tests need to be verified by several people/groups (e.g. peer review). Rise, repeat. It'd be nice if people would just accept this as it is by definition.
Now, Medicine is what it is. It obviously has utility as can be seen from various metrics including our increased life expectancy, quality of life, etc. It is a good thing. However, just because it's a good thing, and those that work in the field try to apply the Scientific Method, that does *not* make it a Science.
Why is it that many (if not most) Slashdot articles now have trolling headlines and "abstracts"?
An in-depth feature in Wired
Don't make me laugh !
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
But if it's not easy to get a pilot's licence then stupid people wouldn't be able to get one.
Fuck you
I'll grant that the article is interesting - I don't think he's an idiot, but ...
A lot of what he goes over are basically examples of known fallacies that didn't actually get eliminated from the science - the back pain anecdote is particularly good for that. He's *right* that a causal relationship was found in large part because no one checked the null hypothesis, and a scientist is just as liable as anyone to see an 'obvious' connection and make the obvious assumption. Known fallacy: confirmation bias.
But the solution was exactly what was done - check the null hypothesis and realize that you're finding these symptoms in 2/3rds of patients because 2/3rds of people have these issues whether they have backpain or not.
That's - not a failure of science. That's a *success* of science that eliminated a modern superstition that had arisen out of a known fallacy.
A lot of the anecdotes seem to fall in that same path.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Medical science is more of a religious cult than science.
Medical research loan some knowledge from solid sciences like chemistry and biology, but most of it has not been part of scientific scrutiny (there is simply to much of it and no glory can be won or professional advances made in scrutinising other peoples medical research papers), and much of it is plain stupid (the academic world) or plain hoaxes (research conducted by pharmacy companies). I know very little about medicine, biology and chemistry, but some of statistics and mathematics, enough to find the errors in medical research papers, where statistical models (applied to real world data, that has almost always been collected wrong, or at least without sufficient documentation on how it has been collected) is always used as the last step to prove that the theories work in the physical world, and the statistical models used in medical research is always (at least I've never seen an exception) used in the wrong context, or just plain wrong in any situation. When computers is used to calculate the results, there is very often miscalculations due to that the researchers (or whoever run their calculations for them) don't know how computers work, or what applications that don't work well enough to be used in a scientific context. You can even find a lot of typical MS Excel miscalculations.
Medical practise is even less grounded in science then medical research. At best it is grounded on personal experience and observation from the care givers, but usually it is grounded one what the last pharmacy sales person said, or what is the latest fade in a glossy medical magazines.
"An in-depth sermon at your local church explores the reason religion may be failing us. Quoting: 'For too long, we've pretended that the old problem of faith can be cured by our shiny new interpretations. If only we devote more resources to modern translations or dissect religious history at a more fundamental level or search for ever more subtle mysteries, we can discover how it all fits together. But a faith is not a fact, and it never will be; the things we can't see will always be bracketed by what we can. And this is why, even when we don't know anything about anything, we'll still be inventing stories about why it happened. It's mystery all the way down.'"
oooh! let me try this
FSM failed us?
Nope.
It's us, the human beings, who have failed FSM.
FSM stays the way it is. FSM principles stay the way they are.
It's us, the human, who have failed to put enough effort to get to know FSM and now we blame FSM for failing us.
Ridiculous !!!
Good science takes time. I'm not talking about years, more about decades or even centuries. Be patient my non scientific and scientific peers.
Science failed us?
Nope.
It's us, the human beings, who have failed science.
Science stays the way it is. Scientific principles stay the way they are.
It's us, the human, who have failed to put enough effort to get to know Science and now we blame Science for failing us.
Ridiculous !!!
What!? We have failed science? By being too subjective and human i guess. Because real science is objective and independent of humans? You have reduced science to a religion. Stop it, science is not a religion, it is a tool. Part of having a tool is having a handle for the human hand to grasp, or a monitor for human eyes to view what is going on. What is this 'Science' that you praise and worship so? This omnipotent, omniscient, universal force the embodies all that is good and pure in the universe. Go start a church if you like, the word scientology is taken though, I usually use the word 'scientism' to describe your particular religion. Now go, and leave this discussion to the tool-using animals that wish to improve their tools.
Totally agree.
I think it's a basic case of 'information overload', a common problem when humans need to access data. By providing more data you assume that you are doing the human a service, but it's just the other way around. Too much information drown the relevant information. You can do some things to enhance important stuff (blinking, bold etc.) but quickly a lot of data becomes important in some way or another and then they're all blinking, again causing the truly relevant bits to drown.
This is taken from the field of human-computer interaction but it comes straight from cognitive psychology, and that is exactly relevant for any and all perception we have of the world around us, including the bits making up science.
I think we often end up having way too many facts (MRI images, blood tests, subjective patient statements, claims by drug companies, recently published research and so on) and then we get to solve the problem of an aching back. Way too much information - some might be incorrect, irrelevant or misleading - and there's no clear path and you get completely confused and possibly end up making things worse, despite the best of intentions.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
I saw this article a couple of weeks ago, and wrote a response to it. Here it is again...
I think the critical part there is "[Science is] not a way to make money." The author refers to science as "failing" in industry because the industry can't make money off it. That's not what it's for. It's a nice side effect, granted, but it's not the point. What we call "science" is a set of guidelines for testing guesses. Sometimes those tests show that our guess is probably accurate. Sometimes they show that guess is just plain wrong. In both cases, "science" is doing what it's supposed to do.
Science as a general, human undertaking self-corrects. Whether an individual scientist properly and self-referentially applies scientific principles to his own efforts in his specialized field of study, really matters relatively little in the long run...eventually, somebody will. This is an indefinitely iterative process of successive approximations that we pursue to whatever extent is promoted by personal, cultural, and racial demands and biases present at any given point in timespace.
The example of Pfizer does not imply a general failure of science. Science was applied to detect that Pfizer's hypothesis was flawed. Our understanding is improved. We might want to encourage Pfizer to do better science in the future before employing its human, public market-base as guinea pigs. Financial motives to rush products to market occasionally yield poor science. I expect a few multi-million-dollar, class-action lawsuits and a loss of brand-prestige may move Pfizer to correct that aspect of their process...if they survive.
Let's just give the author of the article a D- in Epistemology 101 and move on.
The quote in the summary is funny. Nietzsche wrote something much more interesting and thorough about cause and effect and what it means for science in 1882. That's right, Wired's newfound worry about science today has already been dealt with 130 YEARS AGO.
http://books.google.fr/books?id=Vf8KETLiKXMC&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=nietzsche+gay+science+cause+effect&source=bl&ots=7pQG91yPvP&sig=JFwAumRAPzIqqwwMDk2XPbpqqIE&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=X0spT-fROYje8QODzZ2kAw&ved=0CFoQ6AEwAw
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
i was once told ( never did verify it) that as many as 40% of the people in the world do not have sufficient IQ to understand the advanced Calculus like deferential equations. If that is the case then what percentage of the population can understand Quantum Mechanics.
Or worse yet, is it possible that fully understanding Quantum Mechanics is beyond the IQ of even the most intelligent human being?
If so , how would we know?
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
So yes, it supports what I said that there has been a reversal of opinion. I'm not sure what you are trying to assert.
I'm asserting that you don't read your citations, which is a sign of a terrible scientist. Considering that that particular line, that early in the article, from a place you shouldn't be citing anyway, indicates that Gobal Cooling was never a widely accepted theory of how the climate was going to evolve, I'm right.
My institution prefers people who can argue with reason, rather than ad hominem attacks
You also demonstrate an inability to understand when you're being insulted, and when flaws in your reasoning and problems with your facts are pointed out.
I doubt it would surprise any scientist that policy recommendations have changed over time.
That's almost a truism. However, your list was made up entirely of shrill hyperbole, incorrect assertions and non-sequiturs. Those do not fall under changes in policy recommendations.
What is your specialty, and what do you claim has not happened?
For what it's worth (i.e., very little), computer science and Physics, with publications in both fields. I seem to have at least gotten the ability to properly cite and support my assertions out of it.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I don't directly experience what my former "self" experiences. I experience memories of "my" past that exist now. I also don't experience what my future "self" experiences. The idea that the self exists in multiple points in time is an illusion. That which qualifies as a unique identity exists only at a particular point in time. That is why it is possible that I just came into existence now, built with a full set of memories. Fortunately for those who want to be immortal, we probably are, since all points in time probably have existence beyond time. (think of Einsteinian 4 dimensional space-time)
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
No the reason science is failing us is that scientists have given up on the scientific method in favor of pursuing MONEY. Whether it be grant money from government or protecting their jobs the scientists are all too eager to start with the results that their paymaster wants and work backwards from there to a conclusion that is favorable to their owners.
Sad but true.
http://xkcd.com/54/ 'nuff said.
"we are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
This is just Heissenberg, the more you want to know about some thing, the more you impact it by your observation. Nils Bohr was the original poster of this hypothesis which was proofed by many scientists after. However, we often fail to apply this knowledge to our macro-world in which we live. The dream of the distilled truth about something is still very much alive. We have a lot of people out there trusting that the scientists will find the truth, just to learn that only the fewest of them have found teorems that stay for longer than a few decades. It all lives in ourselves, we are subjective, target-driven, selfish and therefore much to occupied to see the whole truth of any problem, even though we consider ourselves very neutral. Only a large and well reviewed community with the most different interests can control something that can try to describe the truth as close as possible for the context of our time and (other) knowledge. Let's face it, peole who think they know it all usually are very limited in their view ... ;-)
My personal conclusion is that we have to keep trying, science community is the only option we have today and it produces a lot of usable models for the truth. Some are error prone, but we just need to accept that humans can be tempted to assume wrong things or draw wrong conclusions - until somebody finds it out.
The fact that we are able to talk about errors in science in it self is fantastic, it is proof for the concept works out and is perfectly working
"Considering that that particular line, that early in the article, from a place you shouldn't be citing anyway, indicates that Gobal Cooling was never a widely accepted theory of how the climate was going to evolve, I'm right."
Would you mind showing me how you parsed the sentence to interpret that "Gobal Cooling was never a widely accepted theory"?
"For what it's worth (i.e., very little), computer science and Physics, with publications in both fields."
If you are who you say you are, it sounds like you suffer from the bias of people employed in the "exact" sciences. In the health sciences, shrill hyperbole and media sensationalism is integral to the establishment. Professors will treat people like they're stupid for not believing in pop-psychology or pop-health books, even though they are riddled with obvious errors. People who come from the exact sciences believe that there are exact mathematical solutions to everything, and that the math cannot be refuted. But then, mathematics is a closed system of logical reasoning with no implied relationship to reality. In the real world, numbers are just so many measurements which contain both bias and random error.
so we can look forward to an infinite series of morons gravely intoning that the role of fossil fuels in global warming is not proved.
Everyone here is a dumby, and missing part of the big point. People are billions of years in the future, and trying to figure out how to stop the universe from expanding and going dark. Everything about the universe is understood, new fields of physics and mathematics have been created, Newtonian and quantum physics unified into a single comprehensive theory, but guess what? We still don't know what going to happen when we use all that knowledge and energy at our fingers to suddenly reign it in and stop it from expanding, or possibly drag it in more. Why? We still have no clue what set it off in the first place...because that information, perspective, piece of knowledge, whatever, is just unknowable in the first place. Its beyond our perspective.
This is very insightful. It's beyond our perspective, exactly. Just think about what would knowing the "ultimate answer" give us? I always find that people are "looking for answers" that are fairly meaningless, like, say, "what's the meaning of life?". I mean, what the heck, how would knowing the "meaning" of life help us?! How even you'd specify what the "meaning of life" itself means? To me, it seems, there's this way that people have of attaching random adjectives to things, putting question marks behind them, and think it's a valid question just because you can form it. Life has no meaning, it's a biochemical process in a huge system known as biosphere. How could it have meaning? How would it help us to know what meaning it has, even if it was a valid question?
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.