beth@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Beth Christy) (09/03/85)
[Massage this line with your replacement] From: csdf@mit-vax.UUCP (Charles Forsythe), Message-ID: <717@mit-vax.UUCP>: >It's >funny, when a model doesn't work, science tends to look at the model and >fix it. That way, accurate models are maintained. I don't know how religiously (:-) you believe this statement, but I sort of feel called to point out that science, like religion, is carried on by people, and people aren't always that willing to toss out their beliefs (and especially not their preconceptions) just because they don't match the available data. Even scientists occasionally ignore or fudge data that doesn't fit (although it may often be entirely unintentional). If you consider psychology and research into child development to be at all scientific, read Carol Gilligan's _In_A_Different_Voice_ for *truly shocking* examples of "scientific" researchers FLAT OUT IGNORING over 50% of the available data, even during the formative stages of their theories. (Even if you don't consider psychology scientific, I highly recommend the book.) It's true that during working hours scientists are much more open to alternate models than most folks, and to the degree that they're able to maintain that, accuracy is more likely in science than in other areas. But I just wanted to remind folks that they're not perfect at it. -- --JB (Beth Christy, U. of Chicago, ..!ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!beth) "Oh yeah, P.S., I...I feel...feel like...I am in a burning building And I gotta go." (Laurie Anderson)
gjerawlins@watdaisy.UUCP (Gregory J.E. Rawlins) (09/05/85)
In article <1088@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> beth@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Beth Christy) writes: >[.......] >I don't know how religiously (:-) you believe this statement, but I sort >of feel called to point out that science, like religion, is carried on by >people, and people aren't always that willing to toss out their beliefs >(and especially not their preconceptions) just because they don't match >the available data. Even scientists occasionally ignore or fudge data >that doesn't fit (although it may often be entirely unintentional). If >you consider psychology and research into child development to be at all >scientific, read Carol Gilligan's _In_A_Different_Voice_ for *truly >shocking* examples of "scientific" researchers FLAT OUT IGNORING over 50% >of the available data, even during the formative stages of their theories. >(Even if you don't consider psychology scientific, I highly recommend the >book.) >[.....] >--JB (Beth Christy, U. of Chicago, ..!ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!beth) Although i hate giving ammunition to creationists <half smile> it's important to remember that scientists are in fact human (just like creationists - draw your own conclusions). Since i don't really consider psychologists scientists (simply because there are too many variables in human interactions to control so it makes the concept of a repeatable experiment vacuous) here is a book that shows that (hard) scientists sometimes even _fabricate_ results out of whole cloth: Betrayers of the Truth - William Broad & Nicholas Wade Simon & Schuster 1982 ISBN 0-671-447469-6 Most of the cases documented tend to be in medicine then biology then chemistry then physics and astronomy only a few are actual fabrications and most of those are in medicine, but it does make the point that scientists are fallible. It would be easy for a creationist to use the examples in this book and "extrapolate" that we may as well discard evolution since it's based on experiments conducted by people with (on the whole) a vested interest in seeing the "expected" result. This is a non-trivial problem to which i have no convincing answer. Help anyone? greg. -- Gregory J. E. Rawlins, CS Dept., U. Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L3G1, Canada CSNET:gjerawlins%watdaisy@waterloo.csnet BELL:1-519-884-3852 ARPA :gjerawlins%watdaisy%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa BELL:1-519-886-4671 UUCP :...!{allegra|clyde|linus|utzoo|inhp4|decvax}!watmath!watdaisy!gjerawlins
csdf@mit-vax.UUCP (Charles Forsythe) (09/06/85)
Beth Christy writes: >From: csdf@mit-vax.UUCP (Charles Forsythe), Message-ID: <717@mit-vax.UUCP>: >>It's >>funny, when a model doesn't work, science tends to look at the model and >>fix it. That way, accurate models are maintained. > >I don't know how religiously (:-) you believe this statement, but I sort >of feel called to point out that science, like religion, is carried on by >people, and people aren't always that willing to toss out their beliefs >(and especially not their preconceptions) just because they don't match >the available data. I'm not going to disagree with that, but there are some distinctions to be made. I will, once again, bring up the "ether" theory. It physicists didn't abandon that because of stubborness, they would have to come with some way of explaining contradictory data coming from special relativity. It was too much trouble, so they accepted the wave-particle theory and it's worked REALLY WELL for a long time. Meanwhile, theoretical physics can be a bit hairy, because some things, such as black holes, are difficult to study. The theory of creation from big-bang through evolution has worked very well, but is fuzzy enough to come under scrutiny from certain intellectuals such as Ted Holden. It seems to me though, that if the theory of evolution et al were really that big a failure such creationism would do ANY good to adopt (ie explain anything new) it would be more widespread. A creationist lost a lecture at MIT two years ago. The creationist said,"I am only going to argue from science!" so the evolutionist said,"I am only going to argue from religion!" and he won. No creationist could ever win tenure at MIT. Ha. -- Charles Forsythe CSDF@MIT-VAX "We pray to Fred for the Hopelessly Normal Have they not suffered enough?" from _The_Nth_Psalm_ in _The_Book_of_Fred_