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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.
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.
The article doesn't remind me of Cause and Effect, but something more like Bull and Shit.
Trolling is a art,
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
I thought the summary was just stating the obvious, but since you ask.. even if we did understand every particle in the Universe and its interactions, it seems unlikely that we can ever explain why it's possible for these things to exist.. how anything can exist at all.. what kind of realm exists for the "big bang" to happen in, whether there are more universes like ours, whether there are infinite universes, whether all patterns of information exist somewhere.. that type of thing.
God doesn't explain it either, because then you're left wondering where this god came from. Even if some kind of spiritual god did exist, I doubt it would be able to explain its existence either.
"Mysteries all the way down", as the summary said. I quite like that turn of phrase :)
which is totally what she said
...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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
The universe would be boring. Next question?
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.
That's not a scam - that's honesty. Statins (Lipitor is a statin) do what it says on the box: they lower blood cholesterol. As you've often read on this site, correlation does not equal causation - the statement you find troublesome is an acknowledgement of that. A scam would be an outright claim that statins reduce the risk of heart disease. They actual do in certain cases (reduce risk of cardiac events and stroke in patients with pre-existing cardiac conditions), apparently (http://www.bmj.com/content/326/7404/1423.full). What's not clear is whether they prevent the development of cardiovascular problems, which is probably what you're harping on.
The popular perception of pharmaceuticals seems to want a simple "miracle drug" that works wonders in all circumstances. That's not how things work - it's complicated, but drugs do actually work, under the right conditions.
and base 10 has it's own flaws: one of which is Pi. Pi, in base 10, cannot ever be calculated out.
I've solved that by switching to base Pi!
Of course, I'm still working out how to write 10...
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
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.
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
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.
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.
Similar point in a different form:
Hacker koan: Uncarved block
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.
" we confront borders that an empirical (or scientific) method simply cannot transcend."
There are no such borders.
Don't be ridiculous. First, science is not and has never been limited to empiricism exclusively (otherwise, we'd just call it empiricism!). Second, the limits of empiricism are well-understood and have been discussed for thousands of years (and for hundreds of years in the modern western conception).
Further, that the process of scientific inquiry has limitations (its scope is bounded; not infinite) should come as no surprise to anyone with even a basic understanding of the processes of science. Again, you'll find that this has *also* been discussed at great length for hundreds of years
It is only through some religious faith in science (that it can exceed it's own known limitations) or through pure ignorance that you could make such an absurd claim!
Required reading for internet skeptics
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.
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.
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.