neufer wrote:Re: Red Shift Alternative
by neufer on Sat Jan 17, 2009 3:45 pm
bystander wrote:Dr. Skeptic wrote:Speculation ≠ Science
<<For Feynman, a cargo-cult science is one that has all the trappings of
science-the illusion of objectivity, the appearance of careful study, and
the motions of an experiment-but lacks one important ingredient: skepticism,
or a leaning over backward to see if one might be mistaken. The essence
of science is to doubt your own interpretations and theories
so that you may improve upon them.>> -- Anthony R. Pratkanis
http://www.csicop.org/si/9204/sublimina ... asion.html
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_Cargo Cult Science_ by Richard Feynman
From a Caltech commencement address given in 1974
<<During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that
a piece of of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method
was discovered for separating the ideas--which was to try one to see
if it worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method became
organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we
are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact, that we
have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed,
when nothing that they proposed ever really worked--or very little of it
did.
There are big schools of reading methods and mathematics methods,
and so forth, but if you notice, you'll see the reading scores keep going
down--or hardly going up--in spite of the fact that we continually use these
same people to improve the methods. There's a witch doctor remedy that
doesn't work. It ought to be looked into; how do they know that their method
should work? Another example is how to treat criminals. We obviously have
made no progress--lots of theory, but no progress--in decreasing
the amount of crime by the method that we use to handle criminals.
Yet these things are said to be scientific. We study them. And I think
ordinary people with commonsense ideas are intimidated by this
pseudoscience. A teacher who has some good idea of how to teach her children
to read is forced by the school system to do it some other way--or is even
fooled by the school system into thinking that her method is not necessarily
a good one. Or a parent of bad boys, after disciplining them in one way or
another, feels guilty for the rest of her life because she didn't do
"the right thing," according to the experts.
So we really ought to look into theories that don't work,
and science that isn't science.
I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples
of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is
a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good
materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged
to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to
make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head
to headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the
controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing
everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked
before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo
cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of
scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential,
because the planes don't land.
Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they're missing. But it
would be just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea islanders how
they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It
is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the
earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in
cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in
studying science in school--we never say explicitly what this is, but just
hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It
is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly.
It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that
corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards.
For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything
that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about
it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you
thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they
worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you
know them. You must do the best you can--if you know anything at all wrong,
or possibly wrong--to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and
advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that
disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more
subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an
elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that
those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the
theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right,
in addition.
In summary, the idea is to give all of the information to help others
to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information
that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another.
We've learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other
experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were
wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your
theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement,
you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to
be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this
kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent
in much of the research in cargo cult science.
A great deal of their difficulty is, of course, the difficulty of the
subject and the inapplicability of the scientific method to the subject.
Nevertheless, it should be remarked that this is not the only difficulty.
That's why the planes don't land--but they don't land.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the
easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After
you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just
have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
So I have just one wish for you--the good luck to be somewhere
where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described,
and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position
in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity.
May you have that freedom.>> -- Richard Feynman