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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...?
It's a direction.
But the summary is rubbish. Ignore the summary and just read the article.
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.
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.
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance. - Hippocrates (c.460-c.377 BCE)
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.
Anonymous troll. Only deserves contempt.
2019 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
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."
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.
You don't seem to comprehend what kind of timespan millions of years is. If you weren't able to convince him, it's probably because your argument is weak and unsupported, I'm just guessing. Please expound upon this.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
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.
... 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
I think that depends on what you mean by "figure things out." I'm fairly confident that in much less than a million years we'll have a profound understanding of the basic laws of physics, of the basic ordering of the universe. Does that mean that we will have solved every single problem? Probably not. Just because you understand the underlying mechanisms of any system does not mean you can immediately work out every solution that stems from it. Take the problem of solving Newtonian equations for a large number of bodies. It can become insanely complex. So just knowing the basic formulas is not enough.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I challenge you to read Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz, and then come back to your statement. OP is right: we will NEVER be able to solve everything. It's wrong-facing Turtles all the way down.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
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
I never said it's impossible to prove anything. I said that it's impossible for the scientific method to prove anything. You can of course prove things through contradiction, induction, exhaustion, construction, etc. That is not the scientific method. What you illustrated in your examples is not the scientific method.
Your examples are not science, and this is what non-scientists do not understand. Our goal is to discover the fundamental laws of nature. It is not just to observe and say "things happen" as you do with your examples, but to understand why and how. What you illustrate is the famous correlation != causation fallacy. Letting go of the rock correlated with it falling to the ground. Does that mean letting it go caused it to fall to the ground? No, in fact if the gravity of the earth increased enough, your strength would fail and the rock would fall to the ground with your hand still around it. Or assume I held a piece of ice to a candle and it burst into flames. Does that mean the ice caused the candle to light on fire, or maybe did someone with a laser shine it on the candle at that exact moment? The appearance of the substance in the child correlated with the introduction to the mother, but was it caused by it, or was it just chance? Do you see the dangers of simply observing and drawing conclusions from observations?
Your first two examples are very simple because of course every time we let go of the rock it falls to the ground and of course every time we bring a flame to the candle it combusts. But did you know that according to statistical mechanics there is a very very small probability that if you drop the rock to the ground it will rewind itself and leap into your hand? Or that according to quantum physics if you walk into a wall enough, all particles in your body will quantum tunnel through the wall at the exact same moment and you will pass straight through it? Of course it would take several ages of the universe to ever see such an effect with 1% probability, but this is what science and mathematics and the scientific method tells us. If we just stopped with what we observe we'd be missing out on most of the universe.
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.
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 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.
I agree with you. There are some areas that one should think were subject to a scientific approach, but have proved exceptionally resistant to it, namely intelligence and consciousness. AI does not even have a working theory that could produce anything resembling human intelligence. The best we can to is mathematical calculus and that is certainly not what is going on in a human mind. It also runs into rather hard limitations due to computational complexity. Consciousness also is a complete mystery and can only (unreliably) be observed by its effects. Life itself seems to be better understood on the surface of it, but if you dig a bit deeper, that impression does not hold up. And when you look at quantum theory, quite a lot of fundamental stuff there is undiscovered and the degree of applicability to reality is uncertain.
So, no, science is not failing us at all, but a) it is far less advanced in some areas that people think and b) some observable things may or may not be subject so a scientific approach at all.
Note that I do not try to propose a religious angle here. Religion is very much subject so science and has been understood for a while as a (more or less malicious) group of memes that has been produced by an evolutionary approach. I am just pointing out that there are limits to scientific understanding and that it is at this time unclear whether they are fundamental, in theory (but not practice, e.g. because we cannot handle the complexity or there is not enough time) a matter of time, or just a matter of time. Any good scientist will confirm that.
As to the article, making predictions about global effects of a local change is tricky in any complex system and usually fails. While only very partially understood, the human body certainly is a complex system with a lot of regulators and mechanisms that in themselves already qualify as complex systems. In addition, it is absolutely no surprise predictions made by people that are after investor/grant money fail very, very often.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
"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.
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.
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
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) --
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.
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.
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."
"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.
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.