Posted on 11/30/2017 7:43:57 PM PST by MtnClimber
Suppose a scientist makes a bold claim that turns out to be true. How confident are you that this claim would become widely accepted?
extraordinary evidence. Still, the indirect evidence is mounting and most cosmologists now believe that dark matter exists. To the extent that non-scientists think about this issue at all, we tend to defer to experts in the field and move on with our lives.
But what about politically contentious topics? Does it work the same way? Suppose we have evidence for the truth of a hypothesis the consequences of which many people fear. For example, suppose we have reasonably strong evidence to believe there are average biological differences between men and women, or between different ethnic or racial groups. Would most people defer to the evidence and move on with their lives?............
There are many forms of pluralistic ignorance, and some of them are deeply important for how science works. Consider the science of sex differences as a case in point. Earlier in the year James Damore was fired from Google for circulating an internal memo that questioned the dominant view of Google’s diversity team. The view he questioned is that men and women are identical in both abilities and interests, and that sexism alone can explain why Google hires more men than women. He laid out a litany of evidence suggesting that even if average biological differences between men and women are small, these differences will tend to manifest themselves in occupations that select for people who exhibit qualities at the extreme ends of a bell curve that plots a distribution of abilities and interests.
(Excerpt) Read more at quillette.com ...
Engineering is applied science.
“Adjust the data to fit the hypothesis.”
In junior high chemistry that wad called “fudging your results” and if you’re caught you get a big fat F for that lab experiment. Now you get a full professorship at Penn State University with tenure.
It’s disheartening how much of that goes on *coughglobalwarmingcough.*
Yes it is, but real science is based upon:
1. Observation of the real world,
2. Formulation of hypotheses which attempt to explain those observations,
3. Experimentation, which is designed to test the validity of those hypotheses, rendering objective and duplicatable results which prove or falsify said hypotheses.
That,in a nutshell, is the scientific method, which is the only proven path to understanding the truth of our physical universe.
Engineering (applied science) can only operate or build upon proven scientific principles.
Unfortunately, the quasi religion of scientism holds sway over much of our accepted cosmology, which is rooted in purely theoretical mathematics, and NOT direct observations and empirical evidence. As a result, modern cosmologists have been forced to invent ever stranger explanations for the failures of the Standard Model to predict inconvenient observations that falsify that theory.
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Yes it is
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[Irrelevant rant deleted]
Thank you for agreeing that civilization as we know it is based on science. It strikes me as churlish when the benefactors of something delight in attacking it. But, there you go.
It strikes me as churlish when the benefactors of something delight in attacking it.
And I find it somewhat disappointing when a professed conservative and 'seasoned citizen' considers it beneath himself to engage i honest, reasoned, respectful debate.
No one here is attacking real science, or its benefits to mankind. The author of the article, as well as most participants on the thread, are merely drawing a much needed distinction between real science and politically driven 'scientism'.
“And it wasn’t my experiment, so the “you” and “your” don’t exactly fit.”
Yes, they do, because YOU are voicing YOUR interpretation of the experiment.
“The signals to the muscles were measured by the monitoring equipment, and were building up before a conscious decision was made.”
See, this is where YOU insert YOUR opinions that can’t be supported by any data. There is no way to scientifically determine or measure a “conscious decision” being made. Science cannot detect, quantify, or even define such an ethereal thing as “consciousness”, since it is a wholly subjective and insubstantial phenomenon. However, you would like to equate the detecting of some electrical activity in the brain with a “conscious decision” in order to support your opinion. The experiment doesn’t actually support that conclusion.
“So, science cannot be applied to biology, ie, evolution?”
No, what I mean is that science cannot be applied to questions in the sphere of philosophy or religion. It simply is not equipped to deal with those matters.
Therein lies the distinction between science, which applies the methods of science within the proper sphere that science can address, and scientism, which is when people try to apply the methods of science to all spheres, including those that science cannot address.
“Scientism isn’t perfect”
It’s just imperfect, it’s fallacious. After all, scientism posits that science alone is sufficient to answer all questions, yet science operates based on a priori assumptions that aren’t supported by science. So if scientism is true, then the axioms underlying science are untrue. It’s a self-contradictory position.
I surrender.
My memory it turns out wasn’t far off, which is gratifying.
Here’s more than I ever want to know about the subject.
I leave it with you and exit the thread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will
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