Posted on 02/28/2015 10:28:40 AM PST by DeweyCA
When a researcher gets proved wrong, that means the scientific method is working. Scientists make progress by re-doing each others experimentsreplicating them to see if they can get the same result. More often than not, they cant. Failure to reproduce is a good thing, says Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch. It happens a lot more than we know about. That could be because the research was outright fraudulent, like Wakefields. But there are plenty of other ways to get a bum resultas the Public Libary of Sciences new collection of negative results, launched this week, will highlight in excruciating detail.
You might have a particularly loosey-goosey postdoc doing your pipetting. You might have picked a weird patient population that shows a one-time spike in drug efficacy. Or you might have just gotten a weird statistical fluke. No matter how an experiment got screwed up, negative results can be extremely exciting and usefulsometimes even more useful than positive results, says John Ioannidis, a biologist at Stanford who published a now-famous paper suggesting that most scientific studies are wrong.
The problem with science isnt that scientists can be wrong: Its that when theyre proven wrong, its way too hard for people to find out.
Science needs skeptics for every theory. Its how science avoids dead end thought.
"I know I'm right -- this was peer reviewed!!"
"I know you're wrong -- yours wasn't even peer reviewed!"
"It's settled science!"
"Of course I'm right -- you're just a science denier!"
"Oh, you don't think so?? I suppose you also think the earth is flat!!"
Science today is often close-minded.
Beyond the shady operators who fudge their findings and who should be caught by peer review and repeatable results, at the center of science is the necessity that a hypothesis be falsifiable.
Political scientists- warmingists et al can never be wrong because their science is based in ideology and thus has no connection to reality. The connection is to political power.
Grist for Mark Steyn’s mill.
That’s why Global Climate Change is such a better scam than Global Cooling or Global Waming ever were. Global Climate Change can NEVER be proven wrong.
Whenever there is bad weather no matter what the weather happens to be it is because of Global Climate Change.
Maybe if we had a government of truly limited powers, this wouldn't be such a sticky wicket.
Ecologists aren’t real scientists... they need to be culled...
I definitely like how God messes with these guys.
>> The problem with science isnt that scientists can be wrong: Its that when theyre proven wrong, its way too hard for people to find out.
Science is in so many regards political.
A large part of being a Scientist is being able to Make things up as you go along
This is a very informative article for the layperson of science.
Popper’s theory and other scientific commentary articulate well that the difference between science and astrology as systematic bodies of reasoning is that science can be wrong whereas astrology is never wrong because it always has another explanation according to its zodiac.
With science there is true learning by trial and error. With astrology there is never trial and error, there is always another interpretation that fits so that true learning never takes place.
Let that sink in.
The worst thing about climatology is the fact that too many people lump them in with real scientists.
Einstein was a great example of how theoretical sciences are supposed to work. He proposed his theory that gravity bends space/time/light and it set off a mad scramble by many others to prove or disprove his theory. He didn’t interfere, he just sat back and waited for others to provide evidence one way or the other.
He was also sometimes wrong and had no problem admitting it. He disagreed with Monseigneur Georges LeMaitre that the universe is expanding. Hubble came along and showed a red shift that indicated an expansion so Einstein declared that Lemaitre was probably correct.
Now, one might say Idea #1 is a lot better science than Idea #2 -- but conversing with the two sets of believers is precisely the same experience. It's all insults, all emotion, all "you just don't understand/you reject science/I know the facts".
For me, Darwinism is not scientifically superior to Global Warming. They are religious cults and they refuse to be disproven by any evidence.
A lot of money has been squandered on Global Warming and Green Energy, and scientists are right in the middle of that scandal.
Every branch of science has its prejudices, its sacred cows, its blind spots. It takes a courageous person or a kook to step outside the lines. By discounting all of them as kooks, we are perhaps missing some brilliant out-of-the-box insights into nature.
I think most mistakes in science are honest mistakes, but the ones that are dishonest are often very costly.
Scientists are not always right, but unfortunately, they are usually ready to assert to their last breath that they are right. Scientists in powerful positions can be powerfully wrong.
It cracks me up that humanists see scientists as the priesthood of all truth.
I remember studying the famous Michelson/Morley experiment in 8th grade (yes, 8th grade: we had very smart Sisters of St. Joseph for teachers)the the big point was: it was not an “unsuccessful” experiment. It “successfully” proved that their hypothesis abut ether was wrong.
Scientists do two things:
Define what we don’t know:”Well, that hypothesis was bad, we don’t have to look at it again.”
Define what is plausible: “Look this looks to be true!”
“The worst thing about climatology is the fact that too many people lump them in with real scientists.”
This is one of the real tragedies of the Global Warming Freaks, the claim that all scientists are in agreement. Most of them know it is wrong and have started to push back.
Most science is not at all political. They just deal with the plausible explanations for processes and do not wish to have politics enter their universe.
I know this because I have a number of acquaintances who do science. Good science. Science which is sometimes proven wrong. Other times it is used to do other things, which is the real test of science.
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