From the article:
Such anomalies demonstrate the slipperiness of empiricism. Although many scientific ideas generate conflicting results and suffer from falling effect sizes, they continue to get cited in the textbooks and drive standard medical practice. Why? Because these ideas seem true. Because they make sense. Because we can’t bear to let them go. And this is why the decline effect is so troubling. Not because it reveals the human fallibility of science, in which data are tweaked and beliefs shape perceptions. (Such shortcomings aren’t surprising, at least for scientists.) And not because it reveals that many of our most exciting theories are fleeting fads and will soon be rejected. (That idea has been around since Thomas Kuhn.) The decline effect is troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that’s often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe.
I actually drew on Kuhn a bit in my article. I tried to show the way science shapes our perceptions and our values and how our values shape them
ReplyDeleteIt is hard for me to accept the idea that our opinions or our perceptions are what we define as to be true or false. I was about say something along of the lines of Descartes's Meditations to help provide some support that there can be a right and a wrong, a true and a false, but as we have seen throughout this class it is often the case that we must put away our previous knowledge. We must look at things through a different lens. So, it may be true that we are moving into a time where so much has been accepted that should have been more thoroughly considered with our own interpretations. This would call for new ways we are taught through education, the way that things are accepted and denied and there would no longer be a standard. It is not having a standard or some suppose truth value that makes me uneasy about the article that you found.
ReplyDeleteI also give pause before accepting anything as "scientific" simply because some researchers declare something to be the case. I find the quote by Bacon that science must "Put nature to the question" to hit the nail right on the head, concerning the aims of science. The concern for many of us is when science is simply wrong - despite the rigorous testing and replicated experiments, science is still fallible and this should be kept in mind. Sadly, for the hoi polloi there is little in the way of questioning when it comes to science, and many people simply equate strength of scientific validity with truth.
ReplyDeleteThat was more of what I was getting at, Colin, rather than trying to support the abolition of objective truth claims. I'm all for objective truth, as we can all probably tell, but it's the lack of recognition of science's fallibility that leads to an unhealthy scientISM rather than science proper.
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