BF2S Forums D&ST - Science

Study using the scientific method does not make a subject a science though, you can study patterns in tea-leaves using the scientific method but thats never going to be a science either.

I've never said there's anything wrong with the pseudo-sciences, just that they don't meet the definition of a science. Much of real-world engineering doesn't really.

As for 'arts', I think it would be more useful to let people play Wow for 3-4 years for all the good which comes out of that part of academia.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Study using the scientific method does not make a subject a science though, you can study patterns in tea-leaves using the scientific method but thats never going to be a science either.

I've never said there's anything wrong with the pseudo-sciences, just that they don't meet the definition of a science. Much of real-world engineering doesn't really.

As for 'arts', I think it would be more useful to let people play Wow for 3-4 years for all the good which comes out of that part of academia.

i can tell you're mad because you're being a silly little boy again. job done for today. let's have round #773 tomorrow. you can humiliate yourself some more then. plenty of opportunity, dear dilbert. life is very long.

Shahter wrote:

and, as a result, you'll have perfectly scientifically coherent understanding of patterns in tea-leaves.

Which still doesn't mean anything.

Depends, at the far end of theoretical physics you're right, but most science isn't comparable with sorcery or palmistry.
That most people can't follow it doesn't mean its not a science though.

Psuedo-sciences don't even make it that far, if even the average person can see clearly that they don't meet the most basic tests of rigour, prediction etc.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2013-03-12 06:26:27)

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

i just think it's a little misguided to look for mathematical rigour in the study of the human interior. we don't have that consistency.

Mathematical rigour probably the wrong term in hindsight, though I certainly think it could use it.

psychology can use (quasi) scientific methods to try and collect data, observe, test, and make some tentative conclusions about the results. but the human mind is not the same as the observable material universe. it'll be a dark and shady spot in human understanding even when the furthest reaches of the universe have been observed and brought to light.

Yeah, but that doesn't really justify - in my eyes - silly practices like failing to include a control group, failing to produce a falsifiable hypothesis, failing to ensure that the results and theory are testable/repeatable. Just plain sloppy.

should psychology just give up, then? not try? consign itself to freud-like late-19th century philosophizing? of course not. psychology can still be applied in medicinal and pragmatic ways to produce 'results'.

of course not. it should just get better.

it's not an exact science, but then not many things in life are as mechanical as physics or engineering.

Yeah, but you should still be applying reasonable scientific principles at a bare minimum.

you are trying to reduce the world to black and white; or rather, recognizing that impossibility, you'd rather the gray areas of existence got no benefit from your beloved 'scientific method'. what's the point? to what end? nobody is demeaning or thinking less of science qua SCIENCEEEE when they describe psychology as 'scientific'. i really don't see the issue.

They do.

there's so much dubious shit in theoretical science that most of it is totally indistinguishable from reading tea-leaves to most of the people. applied sciences are not all there is in the realm of science.

I don't think you get science. Without theoretical science all "applied" sciences have no purpose or direction; without applications any theory has no point (and I'm not meaning "making shit that sells" by applications)

Last edited by Spark (2013-03-12 06:30:57)

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

... Science [is] yet another attempt by humans, still grieving the loss of the gods, to establish contact with a “lost ocean of authority.” Science offers a rational splendor that explains everything, a charismatic leader or succession of leaders who are highly visible and beyond criticism, a series of canonical texts which are somehow outside the usual arena of scientific criticism, certain gestures of ideas and rituals of interpretation, and a requirement of total commitment. In return the adherent receives what the religions had once given him more universally: a world view, a hierarchy of importances, and an auguring place where he may find out what to do and think, in short, a total explanation of man. And this totality is obtained not by actually explaining everything, but by an encasement of its activity, a severe and absolute restriction of attention, such that everything that is not explained is not in view.

If thats what you think about science you really don't have a minimal understanding.

can't give us a quotation and not tell us who said it, surely?

who said i was going to rebut it? i just want to know who said it so i have some context.

I guess the thing is this: from "inside" the science-bubble it can look frustrating when you see what seems to be a lack of rigour - not the mathematical kind, but the "make a prediction that can be tested and proven wrong". Also a lack of, well, accountability, in that theories not matching up to evidence not getting discarded. Hard to take things seriously when such obviously basic steps to ensuring that your theories can be trusted - I mean, it's the scientific method but really on a more basic level it's just opening your theories up to scrutiny. It's not that hard ffs, make it testable and make it reasonable enough so that people can actually prove that it's wrong (which is all you can ever do ofc). Is that so much to ask?

This doesn't apply so much to the humanities ofc which takes a completely different approach (I don't even know if falsifiability even would make that much sense in the context of, say, literature) which I respect but some of the "social" sciences really should be doing better. Just because you're a 'soft' science doesn't mean you can't just say whatever the fuck you please, which is what avoiding some of those basic requirements entails.

This applies especially in the case of psychology and economics.

Last edited by Spark (2013-03-12 07:03:06)

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

i agree that historically there have been meeting places between scientific methods - statistics and testing - and 'new' emergent disciplines, wanting to stake their credibility - notably the newcomers to the academy: economics, political science, psych/sociology, etc.

You say this like it's not happening continuously.

historically i can see a clear trend of misusing scientific methods and scientific jargon in order to try and pass off unfounded ideas as more stable and reasoned.

As do I - again, it comes from this misapprehension that having maths makes it scientific. A lot of people assume it does because, fuck, maths is hard, especially beyond first-year calculus level. Look, I have a pretty graph, it MUST be scientific!

To be fair, this happens a reasonable amount in the physical sciences too, which leads to some appalling things being published. EDIT: 404'd, but it's that dumbass GM food paper some green groups were pushing late last year

however, as far as i can tell from my experience of research, with friends researching in psychology and such like, there is a real caution about this now. testing is still done, but it's not the 1950's anymore. i'm not really sure there's any more results fiddling going on, unpunished that is, in psychology than there are in many  hard science disciplines.

I wouldn't really call it results fiddling that bugs me.

There's a wonderful saying by Wolfgang Pauli - that theory is worthless, it's not even wrong - I'd just like to see theories with a firmer, more unified theoretical basis, with a much better understanding of what is generally called 'the scientific method' but is mostly just making sure your shit stacks up straight (null hypothesis, control groups etc.) and just generally a greater weight on actual evidence.

it's a question of professional practice and ethics, not the whole discipline being somehow 'flawed'.

Partly. It's also a question of mindset - if the whole field is like that, what incentive is there to change?

it's a "do better" invective, as opposed to a "your whole field is bullshit" claim (as dilbert makes out).

There we agree. Psychology has important things to contribute and the sooner it unifies properly with neuroscience the better, but we're some ways off yet.

And economics has zero excuse IMO. They have the minds and they have the mathematical understanding. Now all they need is to subject their theories to proper scrutiny.

I do get the issues with making many social sciences properly scientific, and Jay hinted on it - you're dealing with people and they rarely behave. It's bloody hard to get a coherent, unified theory which is testable, repeatable and falsifiable when you're dealing with people. That doesn't mean they shouldn't try, though.

Last edited by Spark (2013-03-12 07:17:28)

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

i do not agree that psychology should be totally unified with neuroscience. there are many areas of psychology and its theories that are useful beyond material-mechanistic explanations by neuroscience.

Unified in the sense that one should support the other, and where there's overlap - and there will be once neuroscience gets up to scratch, this is still quite a young field - there isn't conflict. In the same way physics and chemistry are unified, for example - they share a lot of foundational theory but they're very different fields.

Last edited by Spark (2013-03-12 07:19:38)

Spark wrote:

there's so much dubious shit in theoretical science that most of it is totally indistinguishable from reading tea-leaves to most of the people. applied sciences are not all there is in the realm of science.

I don't think you get science. Without theoretical science all "applied" sciences have no purpose or direction; without applications any theory has no point (and I'm not meaning "making shit that sells" by applications)

oh, i understand this perfectly well. the thing i intended to point out is that science, which is of course supposed to be like what you described, has its mediators and, ultimately, its only intended benefactors - the humans. and those, as it happens, haven't been researched and explained fully by science yet. this is what i think uzique's been trying to get across - we are so much more than science has been able to figure out it makes it pretty hard to exactly determine purposes, directions and points of scientific development. not every theoretical discipline in science has real and strictly defined practical goal (string theory ) and not every practical solution produced by science had solid theoretical background.