What is Science?

Zosimus · Dec 7, 2015

KTS said:
Science can get wrong results due to mistakes in the experimentation process or data gathering process, unusual events distorting the results (if I make a study of average human height, my results will be skewed if I have several people from a pro-basketball team, as they tend to be rather taller than average and will thus increase the average height I get), improper calibration of scientific equipment, incorrect use of scientific equipment, contamination of samples, outside interference, inadequate isolation of variables.

But the cool thing about science is that it has mechanisms built in to get rid of these things. Scientists get others to go over their work, repeat their experiments and put their results to the test. If one scientist makes a mistake, or has the wrong equipment, or has a contaminated sample, chances are that most other scientists won't, so the error can be found.

I'm going to have to shout a big BS on that one.

http://www.nature.com/news/replication-studies-bad-copy-1.10634

QUOTE:

Daryl Bem, a social psychologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, showed student volunteers 48 words and then abruptly asked them to write down as many as they could remember. Next came a practice session: students were given a random subset of the test words and were asked to type them out. Bem found that some students were more likely to remember words in the test if they had later practised them. Effect preceded cause.

Bem published his findings in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP) along with eight other experiments1 providing evidence for what he refers to as “psi”, or psychic effects. There is, needless to say, no shortage of scientists sceptical about his claims....

Consider the aftermath of Bem's notorious paper. When the three groups who failed to reproduce the word-recall results combined and submitted their results for publication, the JPSP, Science and Psychological Science all said that they do not publish straight replications. The British Journal of Psychology sent the paper out for peer review, but rejected it. Bem was one of the peer reviewers on the paper. The beleaguered paper eventually found a home at PLoS ONE9, a journal that publishes all “technically sound” papers, regardless of novelty.
----------------------------
I repeat again so you get the point:

the JPSP, Science and Psychological Science all said that they do not publish straight replications.

So if you think a study is wrong, you want to replicate it, and get published? Good luck with that!!!!

Science?! Self-correcting?! Don't make me laugh!

Loudmouth · Dec 8, 2015

Zosimus said:
I repeat again so you get the point:

the JPSP, Science and Psychological Science all said that they do not publish straight replications.

So if you think a study is wrong, you want to replicate it, and get published? Good luck with that!!!!

Science?! Self-correcting?! Don't make me laugh!

You are using the scientific method to try and prove something wrong. Interesting.

justlookinla · Dec 8, 2015

KTS said:
Science can get wrong results due to mistakes in the experimentation process or data gathering process, unusual events distorting the results (if I make a study of average human height, my results will be skewed if I have several people from a pro-basketball team, as they tend to be rather taller than average and will thus increase the average height I get), improper calibration of scientific equipment, incorrect use of scientific equipment, contamination of samples, outside interference, inadequate isolation of variables.

But the cool thing about science is that it has mechanisms built in to get rid of these things. Scientists get others to go over their work, repeat their experiments and put their results to the test. If one scientist makes a mistake, or has the wrong equipment, or has a contaminated sample, chances are that most other scientists won't, so the error can be found.[/QUOTE]

And this is why we can never fully trust science, generally speaking.

Bradly Capel · Dec 8, 2015

justlookinla said:
And this is why we can never fully trust science, generally speaking.

That must be why you trust science every day of your life, without science you and I would not be alive today, disease and hunger would have got us or our parents years ago, my great grand mother had 11 children (and I suspect countless miscarriages) and only 4 survived long enough to have children of their own, my grand mother had 9 and 6 of them survived, to my knowledge they were all God fearing people but a lot of good it did them, it seems Gods kill not matter what people believe.

PsychoSarah · Dec 8, 2015

joshua 1 9 said:
That is what they taught us in the teacher training class. What works one day may not work the next day. What has not worked in the past may work at some point in the future. You have to keep trying to come up with new ways to get the message across to people. Still Jesus is the greatest teacher that ever lived and we should try to follow His way of teaching. He came to live His life as an example for us to follow. I was happy to do construction work because Jesus was a carpenter and I was following His example.

I think his students fail at being students the majority of the time, though. How many Christians do you think have actually read the whole bible on their own? Additionally, Jesus didn't write anything in the bible himself.

PsychoSarah · Dec 8, 2015

Zosimus said:
I'm not going to spend a lot of time on your post because we basically agree. However, I do want to take one of your points to task. You claim that "[cheaters] always get caught, and the punishments...are exceedingly severe."

I refer you to http://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-cancer-idUSBRE82R12P20120328 wherein we find that:

QUOTE:

A former researcher at Amgen Inc has found that many basic studies on cancer -- a high proportion of them from university labs -- are unreliable, with grim consequences for producing new medicines in the future.

During a decade as head of global cancer research at Amgen, C. Glenn Begley identified 53 "landmark" publications -- papers in top journals, from reputable labs -- for his team to reproduce. Begley sought to double-check the findings before trying to build on them for drug development.

Result: 47 of the 53 could not be replicated. He described his findings in a commentary piece published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

"It was shocking," said Begley, now senior vice president of privately held biotechnology company TetraLogic, which develops cancer drugs. "These are the studies the pharmaceutical industry relies on to identify new targets for drug development. But if you're going to place a $1 million or $2 million or $5 million bet on an observation, you need to be sure it's true. As we tried to reproduce these papers we became convinced you can't take anything at face value."

...

Other scientists worry that something less innocuous explains the lack of reproducibility.

Part way through his project to reproduce promising studies, Begley met for breakfast at a cancer conference with the lead scientist of one of the problematic studies.

"We went through the paper line by line, figure by figure," said Begley. "I explained that we re-did their experiment 50 times and never got their result. He said they'd done it six times and got this result once, but put it in the paper because it made the best story. It's very disillusioning."

Such selective publication is just one reason the scientific literature is peppered with incorrect results.

For one thing, basic science studies are rarely "blinded" the way clinical trials are. That is, researchers know which cell line or mouse got a treatment or had cancer. That can be a problem when data are subject to interpretation, as a researcher who is intellectually invested in a theory is more likely to interpret ambiguous evidence in its favor.

The problem goes beyond cancer.

On Tuesday, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences heard testimony that the number of scientific papers that had to be retracted increased more than tenfold over the last decade; the number of journal articles published rose only 44 percent.

Ferric Fang of the University of Washington, speaking to the panel, said he blamed a hypercompetitive academic environment that fosters poor science and even fraud, as too many researchers compete for diminishing funding.

"The surest ticket to getting a grant or job is getting published in a high-profile journal," said Fang. "This is an unhealthy belief that can lead a scientist to engage in sensationalism and sometimes even dishonest behavior."

ENDQUOTE.

Oh yeah, pharmaceutical malpractice does get caught. Unfortunately, despite the hefty losses from drug recalls and having to pay trial fees, those companies still make a profit off of bad medicine. This is a problem that is currently marked for fixing, unfortunately, political changes like this are slower than they should be. My recommendation is that you not get drugs advertised on TV, and wait for drugs to be in common use for at least 5 years, the longer the better, before considering use unless the situation is dire and no other treatment options are available.

It's a problem almost exclusive to the medical industry though. But what does one do? Put off allowing a cancer drug into the market 20 years to see if it has any long term side effects or ones that take that long to develop, and risk withholding life saving medication, or take the risk, and only account for side effects that show up within 5 years? In the end, the demand for treatment often wins out.

Additionally, certain side effects, such as birth defects, cannot be tested for with human test subjects by law in most countries, making this a common tragedy in the medical industry. There just aren't any animal test subjects that react exactly the same as humans do to medications. There just is no winning for anyone here; either you would have to find pregnant women willing to make themselves and their unborn children guinea pigs for science, which would more likely than not be poorer people, or cross your fingers and hope that since the chimpanzee babies turned out ok, so will human ones.

Zosimus · Dec 8, 2015

Bradly Capel said:
That must be why you trust science every day of your life, without science you and I would not be alive today, diciece and hunger would have got us or our parents years ago, my great grand mother had 11 children (and I suspect countless miscarriages) and only 4 survived long enough to have children of their own, my grand mother had 9 and 6 of them survived, to my knowledge they were all God fearing people but a lot of good it did them, it seems Gods kill not matter what people believe.

You rely on Allah every day. Without Allah, you and I would not be alive today. Diciece(sic) would have killed you long ago.

PsychoSarah · Dec 8, 2015

Zosimus said:
You rely on Allah every day. Without Allah, you and I would not be alive today. Diciece(sic) would have killed you long ago.

Obviously, the intended word was "disease". However, if you are going to say we should dispose of science, it isn't good enough, what do you propose we replace it with? Pure math cannot be applied directly in all situations by itself.

Zosimus · Dec 8, 2015

PsychoSarah said:
Oh yeah, pharmaceutical malpractice does get caught. Unfortunately, despite the hefty losses from drug recalls and having to pay trial fees, those companies still make a profit off of bad medicine. This is a problem that is currently marked for fixing, unfortunately, political changes like this are slower than they should be. My recommendation is that you not get drugs advertised on TV, and wait for drugs to be in common use for at least 5 years, the longer the better, before considering use unless the situation is dire and no other treatment options are available.

It's a problem almost exclusive to the medical industry though. But what does one do? Put off allowing a cancer drug into the market 20 years to see if it has any long term side effects or ones that take that long to develop, and risk withholding life saving medication, or take the risk, and only account for side effects that show up within 5 years? In the end, the demand for treatment often wins out.

Additionally, certain side effects, such as birth defects, cannot be tested for with human test subjects by law in most countries, making this a common tragedy in the medical industry. There just aren't any animal test subjects that react exactly the same as humans do to medications. There just is no winning for anyone here; either you would have to find pregnant women willing to make themselves and their unborn children guinea pigs for science, which would more likely than not be poorer people, or cross your fingers and hope that since the chimpanzee babies turned out ok, so will human ones.

No, I'm afraid the mistakes show up everywhere. The point is that when science screws up medicine, people die. When science starts spewing nonsense about common ancestry, dark matter, string theory, and global warming people don't die. Therefore, this type of idiocy can persist far longer than decisions that kill people.

Zosimus · Dec 8, 2015

PsychoSarah said:
Obviously, the intended word was "disease". However, if you are going to say we should dispose of science, it isn't good enough, what do you propose we replace it with? Pure math cannot be applied directly in all situations by itself.

Do you realize how stupid that sounds? It's like saying, "All right. Throwing virgins into the volcano isn't good enough. Maybe it doesn't always prevent the volcano from erupting. However, what do you propose we replace it with?"

Well, maybe I don't have a magic method of preventing volcanoes from erupting. That doesn't require me to sacrifice virgins to the volcano god.

Does it?

PsychoSarah · Dec 8, 2015

Zosimus said:
No, I'm afraid the mistakes show up everywhere. The point is that when science screws up medicine, people die. When science starts spewing nonsense about common ancestry, dark matter, string theory, and global warming people don't die. Therefore, this type of idiocy can persist far longer than decisions that kill people.

In medicine, it is literally illegal to do some of the tests required to ensure medication safety. That isn't a problem in the scientific process, but rather that in certain cases, it is immoral to do science in a complete way. That's why errors are so common in medicine, not because science itself is imperfect, but because it is illegal to do it in a "full and complete way".

As for other scientific disciplines, there is always a degree of error, but the longer we get to test, the better the accuracy. Evolution has been continuously tested for more than 100 years, longer than most theories. If there was a rank higher than theory in science, evolution would have long since achieved it. And if you have a better explanation for the observations than it, I congratulate you on your impending Nobel Prize, and would very much like to hear about it.

Funny thing is, unless you actually disprove a theory, you can't discard it without something better to put in its place.

PsychoSarah · Dec 8, 2015

Zosimus said:
Do you realize how stupid that sounds? It's like saying, "All right. Throwing virgins into the volcano isn't good enough. Maybe it doesn't always prevent the volcano from erupting. However, what do you propose we replace it with?"

Well, maybe I don't have a magic method of preventing volcanoes from erupting. That doesn't require me to sacrifice virgins to the volcano god.

Does it?

Science works a lot better at expanding our understanding of the world than that, and you should know that. You are comparing apples to oranges. Do you propose we sit around and do nothing? We want to understand the world around us, science is a means of doing that. If you find it unacceptable, then what do you do to understand the world?

joshua 1 9 · Dec 8, 2015

PsychoSarah said:
I think his students fail at being students the majority of the time, though. How many Christians do you think have actually read the whole bible on their own? Additionally, Jesus didn't write anything in the bible himself.

If all we had was the sermon on the mount that would be all we need. Jesus could pretty well teach it all in one sermon. I believe the atonement is twofold. Jesus died to reconcile us with the Father and He died to reconcile us with each other. He reduced it all down to treating others the way you what to be treated. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul & strength and love your neighbor as yourself. This is all of the law and all of the prophets and all of the commandments. All of the Bible can be summed up in one word: Love. God's love for us and His desire for us to walk in Love and to love one another. No matter how people treat us, we are to show love to them.

PsychoSarah · Dec 8, 2015

joshua 1 9 said:
If all we had was the sermon on the mount that would be all we need. Jesus could pretty well teach it all in one sermon. I believe the atonement is twofold. Jesus died to reconcile us with the Father and He died to reconcile us with each other. He reduced it all down to treating others the way you what to be treated. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul & strength and love your neighbor as yourself. This is all of the law and all of the prophets and all of the commandments. All of the Bible can be summed up in one word: Love. God's love for us and His desire for us to walk in Love and to love one another. No matter how people treat us, we are to show love to them.

And then people used the religion as a justification for war and bloodshed. Didn't turn out so great, did it?

joshua 1 9 · Dec 8, 2015

Zosimus said:
That doesn't require me to sacrifice virgins to the volcano god.

Does it?

As long as you have virgins to sacrifice you will be ok. It is when you run out of virgins that you will be in trouble. In other words the sacrifice God requires is the sacrifice it takes to be Holy and Pure.

PsychoSarah · Dec 8, 2015

joshua 1 9 said:
As long as you have virgins to sacrifice you will be ok. It is when you run out of virgins that you will be in trouble. In other words the sacrifice God requires is the sacrifice it takes to be Holy and Pure.

Not exactly. Belief isn't fully a conscious choice. If it was, I wouldn't be an atheist, as I have been trying to find faith for the past 7 years. Belief isn't a matter of sacrifice either in your religion, as literally all is forgiven as long as you do believe.

However, this detracts from the purpose of this thread.

joshua 1 9 · Dec 8, 2015

PsychoSarah said:
And then people used the religion as a justification for war and bloodshed. Didn't turn out so great, did it?

Not me I refused to go. But that does not mean I would not defend my family if I needed to. So I do not qualify as a conscientious objector.

PsychoSarah · Dec 8, 2015

joshua 1 9 said:
Not me I refused to go. But that does not mean I would not defend my family if I needed to. So I do not qualify as a conscientious objector.

But again, we are derailing this thread with theology unrelated to it, so let's move on.

joshua 1 9 · Dec 8, 2015

PsychoSarah said:
Not exactly. Belief isn't fully a conscious choice. If it was, I wouldn't be an atheist, as I have been trying to find faith for the past 7 years. Belief isn't a matter of sacrifice either in your religion, as literally all is forgiven as long as you do believe.

God has to put His faith in us and that is something science does not understand. Even though Science knows a lot about human faith. They do not understand Divinity.

PsychoSarah · Dec 8, 2015

joshua 1 9 said:
God has to put His faith in us and that is something science does not understand. Even though Science knows a lot about human faith. They do not understand Divinity.

Because god purposely doesn't let people understand by any means that is actually measurable. But anyways, we should stop derailing threads with unrelated theological discussions, it's annoying the crap out of people.

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