What is "anti-science"?

[Sparko]

No.

yes.

[shunyadragon]

yes.

No, I did more that just lab experiments as do the millions of scientists over the millennia. As cited in the different definitions of 'faith.' Theological faith as defined is not supported by objective verifiable evidence.

[Kbertsche]

I disagree, the definition I cite, and you repeated is consistent with theological faith that lacks the objective verifiable evidence that has predictive value in science, but in science it is supported by objective verifiable evidence and consistent predictive value lacking in theological faith. The definition I cited applies only to the religious realm. The uses of the word 'faith' are distinctly different.

Equating theological faith as equivalent to faith in science is the problem of some theists, and not scientists

Sorry, but you don't get the privilege of redefining the English language for your own agenda. The root idea of the word "faith" is simply "trust" or "confidence". The word "faith", without other qualifying language, gives no implication for the basis of this trust or confidence. The basis can be scientific or not, objective or not, evidence-based or not. The word "faith", on its own, provides no implication one way or the other.

[Sparko]

No, I did more that just lab experiments as do the millions of scientists over the millennia. As cited in the different definitions of 'faith.' Theological faith as defined is not supported by objective verifiable evidence.

You must be the smartest man in the world, Shuny! You have verified all of physics, astronomy, chemistry, archeology, paleontology, ecology, meteorology, biology, zoology, botany, psychiatry, medicine. Everything! A Jack of all Trades you are. Astounding.

[seer]

As cited in the different definitions of 'faith.' Theological faith as defined is not supported by objective verifiable evidence.

You mean like your faith that Adam live about 6,000 years ago and is the father of all living humans today?

[Joel]

Please don't put words in my mouth. You can look at all the evidence relevant to a topic without taking a "teach the controversy" approach that involves examining ideas that are blatantly, laughably wrong.

I wasn't putting words in your mouth, I was asking a clarifying question.

The looking at the evidence part of the scientific method is the testing step--that is, to answer a question. What I propose is that there be a question. And when you are teaching beginners, the questions will be ones where one answer is blatantly true to experts, and the other answer(s) is blantantly, laughably wrong, to experts. The only alternative is to have them accept those 'true' answers apart from evidence, apart from understanding how we know what we know.

The experimental exploration of a question can hardly be called anti-science, regardless how certain anyone is what the results are going to be.

I don't recall seeing acceptance of the testimony of others included in any description of the scientific method. I think including that would be nonstandard. Rather acceptance/rejection of something is based on testing by experiment/observation.

Publishing results of experiments, and building on the works of others, has been part of the scientific process since Galileo and Newton - before science existed as a discipline as such. It's now formalized through the peer reviewed publication process, but it's been there from the start, whether or not you've personally seen it described as part of science.

Of course. I didn't say otherwise. And published results of experiments were considered good insofar as they were replicable.

And again, you're dodging the larger issue: the alternative is to redo science that's been verified countless times.

Yes. Feynman, for one, was a big fan of doing just that, and warned of the problems that arise when you don't. Replicating experiments is not anti-science. Surely Feynman was not anti-science.

To paraphrase a recent court decision on a scientific evaluation: you don't have to rederive a proof of the existence of the electron every time you want to talk about chemistry.

Sure, but you do need to do so for beginners, if you want them to accept the existence of the electron on a scientific basis, as opposed to accepting it as a doctrine from an authority. And the latter is not an option, if the person refuses to accept it as only a doctrine from an authority (i.e., faith in the authority). Teaching beginners how we know what we know is not anti-science.

Accepting well-evidenced findings is the only way for science to progress.

That may be, but I'm not just talking about people progressing scientific knowledge on the cutting edge. You give the appearance that you think that anyone but those experts are anti-science--that anyone that is merely in the process of working toward that point is anti-science.

[Joel]

Circling back to this, because it's something that I find fairly interesting. At the time epicycles were proposed, people really didn't have the concept of a mental model that represented an underlying physical reality. That's a central part of science, but science didn't exist back then. Copernicus and Kepler helped usher it in...

That's not true. The ancient Greeks (who developed epicycles and culminated in the Ptolemaic model) consciously had a mental model (of spheres) that they thought described physical reality.

There's also another common misconception that no one ever thought of making observations or experimental testing until modern times. On the contrary, the Greeks came up with the model they did (with nested spheres, epicycles etc) because the observational data seemed to indicate it. They made careful, precise observations. They noticed and measured the eccentricities of the orbits, for example. The model matched the observed data. The Ptolemaic model even today fits the data better than Copernicus' model does (and Copernicus' has as many epicycles). The real advance comes with Kepler's ellipses, which came about due to improvements in technology that made possible measurements that were precise enough to discover a discrepancy between the data and the Ptolemaic model. Again, the Greeks measured orbital eccentricities, and modeled it accurately by off-center circles. It turns out that an off-center circle is a very good approximation of nearly circular elliptical orbits. It is so good an approximation that it took the more precise measurements of Kepler's day to be able to measure the difference in planetary motions.

[TheLurch]

That's not true. The ancient Greeks (who developed epicycles and culminated in the Ptolemaic model) consciously had a mental model (of spheres) that they thought described physical reality.

My mistake there. I meant the people who favored epicycles at the time the Copernican model was first introduced. Poor phrasing on my part.

[TheLurch]

The looking at the evidence part of the scientific method is the testing step--that is, to answer a question. What I propose is that there be a question. And when you are teaching beginners, the questions will be ones where one answer is blatantly true to experts, and the other answer(s) is blantantly, laughably wrong, to experts. The only alternative is to have them accept those 'true' answers apart from evidence, apart from understanding how we know what we know.

One, you're assuming there are only two possible models, one clearly right, one wrong. Two, you're assuming that this or rote presentation of facts are the only way to teach. Three, you're assuming that doing things this way is good pedagogy. As far as I can tell, none of those assumptions are true.

I keep asking variations on this, but i don't seem to get an answer: if you have no idea whether this is good pedagogy and tailored to how students learn, why do you keep promoting it?

Of course. I didn't say otherwise. And published results of experiments were considered good insofar as they were replicable.

And again, i'd argue that experimental results have generally been considered good if they have testable consequences, rather than if someone repeated the same exact experiment twice. There's a frequent saying that the best answer in science is one that raises a bunch of new questions. That's precisely what i'm talking about.

Yes. Feynman, for one, was a big fan of doing just that, and warned of the problems that arise when you don't. Replicating experiments is not anti-science. Surely Feynman was not anti-science.

Can you provide actual examples instead of just claiming the mantle of a famous scientist? We've already pointed out the LHC has produced results that are widely accepted and incapable of being replicated anywhere else.

That may be, but I'm not just talking about people progressing scientific knowledge on the cutting edge. You give the appearance that you think that anyone but those experts are anti-science--that anyone that is merely in the process of working toward that point is anti-science.

Let me remind you of your own claims:
Flat earthers respect the scientific process.
"Teach the controversy" is a great way to do education.

You've been running away from lots of evidence to the contrary and shifting various goal posts, but not doing anything to dispel the fact that neither of these are true.

[Carrikature]

Sorry, but you don't get the privilege of redefining the English language for your own agenda. The root idea of the word "faith" is simply "trust" or "confidence". The word "faith", without other qualifying language, gives no implication for the basis of this trust or confidence. The basis can be scientific or not, objective or not, evidence-based or not. The word "faith", on its own, provides no implication one way or the other.

It's pretty disingenuous to insist on a particular usage of the word when the definitions you provided includes "belief".

People don't use this word solely to mean 'trust', however much you want to insist otherwise.

[Joel]

One, you're assuming there are only two possible models, one clearly right, one wrong. Two, you're assuming that this or rote presentation of facts are the only way to teach. Three, you're assuming that doing things this way is good pedagogy. As far as I can tell, none of those assumptions are true.

I keep asking variations on this, but i don't seem to get an answer: if you have no idea whether this is good pedagogy and tailored to how students learn, why do you keep promoting it?

I could try to explain again in different words if you like.

Or I could drop it and go back on topic. As I said, "The experimental exploration of a question can hardly be called anti-science, regardless how certain anyone is what the results are going to be." That is the point that is relevant to the main topic.

Can you provide actual examples instead of just claiming the mantle of a famous scientist? We've already pointed out the LHC has produced results that are widely accepted and incapable of being replicated anywhere else.

How about Feynman's address called "Cargo Cult Science":

"I explained to [the Cornell student] that it was necessary first to repeat in her laboratory the experiment of the other person--to do it under condition X to see if she could also get result A, and then change to Y and see if A changed. Then she would know that the real difference was the thing she thought she had under control.

"She was very delighted with this new idea, and went to her professor. And his reply was, no, you cannot do that, because the experiment has already been done and you would be wasting time. This was in about 1947 or so, and it seems to have been the general policy then to not try to repeat psychological experiments, but only to change the conditions and see what happens.

"Nowadays there's a certain danger of the same thing happening, even in the famous (?) field of physics. I was shocked to hear of an experiment done at the big accelerator at the National Accelerator Laboratory, where a person used deuterium. In order to compare his heavy hydrogen results to what might happen with light hydrogen" he had to use data from someone else's experiment on light hydrogen, which was done on different apparatus. When asked why, he said it was because he couldn't get time on the program (because there's so little time and it's such expensive apparatus) to do the experiment with light hydrogen on this apparatus because there wouldn't be any new result. And so the men in charge of programs at NAL are so anxious for new results, in order to get more money to keep the thing going for public relations purposes, they are destroying--possibly--the value of the experiments themselves, which is the whole purpose of the thing. It is often hard for the experimenters there to complete their work as their scientific integrity demands."

http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm

Let me remind you of your own claims:
Flat earthers respect the scientific process.
"Teach the controversy" is a great way to do education.

You've been running away from lots of evidence to the contrary and shifting various goal posts, but not doing anything to dispel the fact that neither of these are true.

What I said was that the particular flat earthers that I know don't reject the scientific method. They are not anti science. A person can be super skeptical of the claims of others and be interested in experimental testing. The point is that putting anything (even the consensus) to the test isn't anti-science. Accepting the consensus does not make a person scientific, and putting the consensus to the test doesn't make a person anti-science.

And what I said was that a controversy is one of the best ways that I learn and deepen my understanding. How many others are like me may be an open question. The relevant point is that that process of learning isn't anti-science.

[Tassman]

Right, but you can not know if uniformity will hold tomorrow, or that the laws of nature we experience necessarily hold in the rest of the universe that we have no access to. That would be arguing from the particular to the universal - or inductive reasoning.

True, but the laws of nature do not appear to change over time, and they also appear to exist throughout the universe, so we can act as though they were true to the extent that we can safely land a man on the moon.

Those assumptions we do in fact take by faith. We trust that they are so.

Yes, and with good reason. They work.

[Sea of red]

What I said was that the particular flat earthers that I know don't reject the scientific method. They are not anti science. A person can be super skeptical of the claims of others and be interested in experimental testing. The point is that putting anything (even the consensus) to the test isn't anti-science. Accepting the consensus does not make a person scientific, and putting the consensus to the test doesn't make a person anti-science.

And what I said was that a controversy is one of the best ways that I learn and deepen my understanding. How many others are like me may be an open question. The relevant point is that that process of learning isn't anti-science.

Joel, did it ever occur to you that the motivations of the people that deny these well established scientific theories, might just be disingenuous? Most of these people are not questioning these ideas because they have genuine scientific doubts. It's about some other philosophical, political, or religious commitments they are more loyal to over the inquiries of science.

[Sea of red]

Right, but you can not know if uniformity will hold tomorrow, or that the laws of nature we experience necessarily hold in the rest of the universe that we have no access to. That would be arguing from the particular to the universal - or inductive reasoning. Those assumptions we do in fact take by faith. We trust that they are so.

What evidence do you have that the laws of physics are not universal? Please, let me in on it.

[Sea of red]

Yes. Feynman, for one, was a big fan of doing just that, and warned of the problems that arise when you don't. Replicating experiments is not anti-science. Surely Feynman was not anti-science.

Interesting.

I recall when the subject of SR was covered in one of Feynman's lectures, he called those that questioned the validity of it's experiments "cranks" that shouldn't be taken seriously.