Thread: An Interesting Read: Is the Scientific method flawed?

I've had to read my fair share of publications in many fields of science including soft and hard sciences. I could only make it 3/4 of the way through this article and I have to say that there is a reason that there is a rule in my biology department why the New Yorker is not allowed into the building. This was filled with half-truths, misdirections and blatant discounts in many sciences. I also must agree with the flexibility of sciences and the errors reported within corporate funding, but methods cannot be compared between sciences they are rampantly different even within the same science.

I have many problems with that article, but the main issue is that the author is just setting up a straw man. There are different levels to discuss the 'scientific method' and it's pretty disingenuine to take arguments from a somewhat simplistic framework, and then extrapolate them to draw conclusions about something much more fundamental. If you are going to deal with the fundamental (philosophical) issues you have to address them within the corresponding fundamental framework.

His central conclusion is

Originally Posted by Jonah Lehrer

The decline effect is troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything.

which is the perfect illustration of the article's flaws. It is extremely easy to prove or disprove huge amount of things, as long as you start with proper definitions, including that of 'proof'. On the other hand under the ambiguous meaning of 'proof' that the author uses, it is actually impossible to prove anything. Under his use there is nothing observable, because a human observation constitutes of the generation of certain electrochemical reactions in the brain, which can be done by a wide range of manners, from stimulating the conventional receptors, to stimulating the pathways of the electrochemical signal or even the brain via drugs, mechanical, electric, magnetic action....


And to stoop to the author's level, we probably shouldn't discount the journalistic bias towards publishing - it doesn't need to be particularly sound logically, it only has to be what the target readership would like.


I wish he had taken the more straightforward approach and had actually investigated more thoroughly either the philosophy or the practice of science, instead of making wild and unfounded generalizations about both.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

A colleague passed this article in the New Yorker on to me. I found it interesting, but unfortunately nothing I haven't already experienced countless times over the past 15 years as an academic and consulting statistician. However, it is heartening to see that the more "mainstream", non-scientific, literature has picked up on it.

I'd be interested to hear others' views. It is not an overly long read, and well worth it if you can spare 10 minutes.

The Decline Effect and the Scientific Method : The New Yorker

James.

Since statistics show that 100% of university professors grow beards that can be used to house a colony of fruit bats I am 200% certain you can't be what you claim to be.