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

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.