Restoring the Scientific Method

[Nitai]

http://climateconference.heartland.org/ Source

"The theme of the conference, “Restoring the Scientific Method,” acknowledges the fact that claims of scientific certainty and predictions of climate catastrophes are based on “post-normal science,” which substitutes claims of consensus for the scientific method. This choice has had terrible consequences for science and society. Abandoning the scientific method led to the “Climategate” scandal and the errors and abuses of peer review by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The scientists speaking at this conference, and the hundreds more who are expected to attend, are committed to restoring the scientific method. This means abandoning the failed hypothesis of man-made climate change, and using real science and sound economics to improve our understanding of the planet’s ever-changing climate."

[Nitai]

No comments? I figured a bunch of scientist coming out and admitting that they have strayed from the Scientific Method was a pretty big deal

[mharratsc]

I think that's a central theme with the NPA as well, and they also have quite a few scientists in their ranks... but still they are a small group by contrast to how many scientists are out there that aren't willing to 'rock the boat' and jeopardize their careers and their incomes over making a big stink and bucking the system. :\

[nick c]

Sounds familiar, from:
Science, Politics and Global Warming

The Global Warming circus in Copenhagen was politics driven by a consensus that, by definition, has nothing to do with science. The apocalyptic nonsense that opened the meeting highlighted that fact. How many who attended or demonstrated at the meeting actually understand the (disputed) scientific grounds for the hysteria? Meanwhile, leading science journals allow skeptics of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) to be labelled “deniers” and refuse them the right of reply. It is doctrinaire denouncement, not science. It is the journal editors who are denying the scientific method by censoring debate. It is they who are peddling ideology.

Despite the glossy media image, modern science is a mess. When the fundamental concepts are false, technological progress merely provides science with a more efficient means for going backwards. At the same time, government and corporate funding promotes the rampant disease of specialism and fosters politicization of science with the inevitable warring factions and religious fervor.
[...]
Human nature is the greatest impediment to scientific progress.

The CRU emails expose the anonymous peer review system as a means of excluding challenges to ideology. They reveal the “herd instinct” in science. Journal editors are the “sheep dogs.” As the late lamented skeptic, Tommy Gold, observed, “The sheep in the interior of the herd are well protected from the bite in the ankle by the sheep dog.” Of course, none of this is news to the dissident scientists who are vital to science progress. They are forced to publish in obscure journals, or self-publish, which lays them open to the accusation that their work is not peer-reviewed. And there’s the catch-22. Often they have no mainstream peers. We must learn to ignore such hollow arguments and insist on open debate.

[mrjacquel]

Restoring the scientific method means scientists have to be willing to stop constantly trying to immunize their theories against falsification, to recognize (potential/possible) falsifying evidence when it presents itself, and to understand that a test of a theory ought to be a conscious and deliberate attempt to refute that theory. Until scientists can do that, science, it seems to me, is going to continue to operate under "paradigms" that follow long periods of stability periodically interrupted by a "crisis" that finally provides the incentive to abandon them. Karl Popper, anyone?

[orrery]

Who puts the frauds that dictate acceptable science in charge in the first place?

[Nitai]

Who puts the frauds that dictate acceptable science in charge in the first place?

Everyone as a people does. If one does not independently seek to verify the information by oneself, then the individual only contributes to giving up their power to someone else of authority.

As a People, the Americans have given up all their Scientific Authority to NASA, and we know that stands for Never A Straight Answer.

That is why forums such as this one that promote independent, interdisciplinary thinking are a great boon to mankind as a whole.

[arminw]

Human belief systems have always been much more powerful than factual evidence. The earth centric cosmology was stubbornly adhered to by the "mainstream establishment". Those who brought forth new, now accepted revolutionary ideas, were ignored, ostracized or even put to death. In my way of thinking, there is a simple reason underlying the irrational persistence of mainstream cosmologists to refuse to even consider electricity and electric currents operating in the large-scale universe. The fact that the electric force is 36 orders of magnitude greater than gravity, means that electricity can get things done MUCH faster than gravity.

The foundation stone of modern evolutionary belief is immense, unimaginably large periods of time that it supposedly took to make galaxies, stars, planets and ultimately people. Applying known experimental facts about electricity and magnetism to the data we have been getting from telescopes and space probes, show that cosmological structures can be formed much faster than evolutionary beliefs would allow.

Evidence that contradicts widely and passionately held theories has always been and will always be suppressed, until the mountain of evidence gets so huge this suppression can no longer be maintained. One way to discount and eliminate physical evidence is to simply ignore it by relying on complicated, computer-driven mathematical models that are based on politically correct, acceptable assumptions. Black holes, dark matter, dark energy, string theory and other so-called scientific beliefs are not based on actual observations of these entities, but on complex computerized mathematical models trying to make sense of the increasingly "anomalous" data arriving via modern scientific instruments.

Unfortunately, what humans believe to be true always trumps the objectivity of the scientific method, until the evidence against these beliefs becomes overwhelming.

[tayga]

If one does not independently seek to verify the information by oneself, then the individual only contributes to giving up their power to someone else of authority.

Nice one, Nitai. That's worth putting on a plaque somewhere.

[Plasmatic]

Restoring the scientific method means scientists have to be willing to stop constantly trying to immunize their theories against falsification, to recognize (potential/possible) falsifying evidence when it presents itself, and to understand that a test of a theory ought to be a conscious and deliberate attempt to refute that theory. Until scientists can do that, science, it seems to me, is going to continue to operate under "paradigms" that follow long periods of stability periodically interrupted by a "crisis" that finally provides the incentive to abandon them. Karl Popper, anyone?

Your mixing a little bit of Kuhn In there.

Think about it, Popper made his falsifiability notions because of his skepticism of induction, the inability to recognize if something is true in a positive ampliative sense (verificationism) , so one looks to find out if it's false or identify a negative.

The whole silly thing about this (well one of the silly things) is it's whole skepticism is centered on the inability to identify a certain kind of fact. What stops a sloppy thinker employing the wrong epistemic method from mis-identifying a negative result. So one always looking for indications of falsehoods doesn't change anything. It still assumes an observer can differentiate a fact correctly according to a epistemic standard.

What is needed is a proper epistemology that prescribes this method of identification from an objective standard
( The rules whereby ones conceptions correspond to perceptual reality.) and an active vigilant mind ready to recognize a challenge to ones premises.

[seasmith]

Plasmatic scribed:

What is needed is a proper epistemology that prescribes this method of identification from an objective standard...

The standards as written may be objective.
The "perceptual reality" primarily is not.

[Plasmatic]

Plasmatic scribed:

What is needed is a proper epistemology that prescribes this method of identification from an objective standard...

The standards as written may be objective.
The "perceptual reality" primarily is not.

So the automatic input that is non-volitional and a product of physical causation is flawed and the volitional ,fallible,acquired skill ,that must be discovered by induction ,is the only source of objectivity???? I think not.The very meaning philosophically of objective calls mind independence to context. (even if Popper titled one work "objective knowledge",with those quotes intending all that Stove pointed out about them...) Of course this would require a topic all its own. (the necessary validity of the senses).

[seasmith]

P,

True, the mental derivative of the sensory perceptions would always strive for objectivity.
~ didn't really understand the rest.

s

[mrjacquel]

Sorry, I should have returned to this forum a long time ago. Let me pick up where I left off then.

Your mixing a little bit of Kuhn In there.

Think about it, Popper made his falsifiability notions because of his skepticism of induction, the inability to recognize if something is true in a positive ampliative sense (verificationism) , so one looks to find out if it's false or identify a negative.

A falsification and a verification are not the same thing. And while it is true that by falsifying x you're thereby verifying not-x, this is not the same as verificationism. More importantly, a verification is not a justification, for the simple reason that verifications are question-begging.

The whole silly thing about this (well one of the silly things) is it's whole skepticism is centered on the inability to identify a certain kind of fact. What stops a sloppy thinker employing the wrong epistemic method from mis-identifying a negative result.

On a justificationist view, nothing. On a Popperian epistemology, criticism is the organon of progress - and logic is the organon of criticism. Sloppy thinking is filtered out from better thinking.

So one always looking for indications of falsehoods doesn't change anything. It still assumes an observer can differentiate a fact correctly according to a epistemic standard.

No, this assumption is never made anywhere in falsificationism. The critical attitude all Popperians speak of constantly is everything. But there is a logical basis for criticism as a progressive tool, rather than the attempt to justify or verify. Your last statement is pardonable - this is a common misunderstanding of Popper and falsificationism in general. You have to remember that Popper's view of knowledge is that all knowledge is conjectural. Thus, the falsification of x is NOT a verification of not-x... it is a conjecture about the falsity of x. As such, the conjecture that not-x is thereby true is likewise open to refutation at any time. This is not verificationism.