Comment by akavel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by akavel | Hacker News Reader

I believe the article is dangerously drawing incorrect conclusions. In particular, from the cases shown, I'd say it's rather that there's a lot in the world that we currently are unable to measure (esp. in human behaviors and mind). That's where science indeed and emphatically has limits, and that's why medicine doctors must not rely purely on science. And why anyone who tries to ignore people's descriptions of how they feel is not a great doctor, I think. Although it's super hard to practice good medicine outside what can be measured... especially compared to how where science really works it's so much easier... it may have spoiled some doctors... And it doesn't help that there seems to be a "science crisis", with high profile journals eagerly accepting crappy papers that are falsely "proving" various stuff, and otherwise scientists falsifying their findings, tempted by wrongly aligned incentives. But throwing the baby out with the bathwater by saying "all science is crap" through some romantic argument that "it's distant from the people" is just leading us all straight back to charlatanerie :( bloodletting and all such stuff... :(

Yes, the article does not propose a credible way of achieving comparable or better results.

I don't think the article is saying "all science is crap" it is saying "we need to think critically about what we are doing and how we are doing it because we can see flaws in the current way of working"

Hm, sorry, I overreacted somewhat. I do agree with the conclusion that the article presents, that scientific method brings great value, but that it's not enough, because there are many places we are not able to apply it. I'm however afraid of some arguments and claims the author uses to support their thesis, such as: "[person X] was a victim of the scientific method". They were not a victim of the scientific method, but of people who abused the scientific method. The conclusion is correct that the output of the scientific method as is practiced in our imperfect world, by imperfect people, cannot be zealously believed without scrutiny. (Scrutiny is in fact one of the pillars of the method!) But saying: "a victim of the scientific method" instead of: "a victim of errors in application of the scientific method" is reverse, misleading and dangerous.

In other words: if someone doesn't follow, say, fire prevention guidelines, and starts a fire, it is misleading and socially dangerous to say that a person burnt by the fire was a victim of the fire prevention guidelines!

I agree with you completely. I agree with the conclusion, but the way the author gets there just looks wrong to me. I feel the scientific method is mischaracterised throughout, for example when the author says it's one of "intentional ignorance" where scientists only look at certain facts an leave out others, the point is they aim to include as many as they need to capture the phenomena they're looking at.

Elsewhere, the article's just wrong. It claims "the concept of temperature lacks clear meaning" amongst scientists. This isn't true: temperature has a perfectly clear meaning through statistical mechanics.

I came away with the feeling the author doesn't really understand the science under discussion, which is frustrating because I share the conclusion and I think it's an interesting question

The final conclusion of the article is that we can use science to look at planets but not people because people are complicated. This coming from a doctor, who in my experience has little to no idea how much science goes into tools they take for granted. Even the example about the elderly patient ends with the doctor generating a hypothesis (something is wrong with the patient) and then testing it (using imaging) using a model generated by the modality.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com