Ask HN: How do you decide science or pseudo science? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you decide science or pseudo science?

1 pointthallukrish10 comments

A bunch of friends were debating about Allopathy vs. Homeopathy. There were for and against each. In the end I was left with these questions. 1. How do you decide something is scientific? 2. Who should decide it ? Are there guardians of Science ? 3. if every theory is wrong until proven right and vice-versa then how can science be in any way effective for theories that are not currently worked on to prove them ? 4. Who and How is it decided that something is science or pseudo science?

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> 1. How do you decide something is scientific?

Is it a body of knowledge arrived at by means of the scientific method? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

> 2. Who should decide it?

Each person for themselves. The whole point of empirical knowledge is that it does not matter who performs the experiment.

> Are there guardians of Science?

Yes, but they will tell you that the true authority is the real world: the results of experiments.

> 3. if every theory is wrong until proven right...

No scientific theory is right. Science does not and cannot prove anything. This is also something that the guardians of Science will insist on. Even the Standard Model (which has no known violations) has only failed to be disproved so far.

I don't understand the rest of Q #3.

> 4. Who and How is it decided that something is science or pseudo science?

There's a lot of hemming and hawing but it comes down to empirical experiment as the source of confidence in knowledge. (Also, math.)

Thanks. The rest of Q#3 is actually questioning how one makes a choice to go after theory X to prove vis-a-vis theory Y. Does it have a grounding on the impact (positive) on humanity, funds, personal likes and dislikes etc.?

Ah, how the scientific sausage is made, eh? You'd have to ask a real scientist, sorry. :-)

> How do you decide something is scientific?

Science is a method of making a claim, testing it with vivid experiments, testing it more, recording observations, wait for other people to test the claim with their own experiments, and if the tests happen to agree with the claims, it becomes a consensus.

You can participate in the scientific verification of a claim by

1) By testing it yourself using proper scientific method and proper lab equipment. President requisite is education.

2) If you can't afford that, then wait for scientific community to test that. If there is a consensus of statistical certainty from the various scientific institutions you trust, then you can choose to form your facts around those.

So how does the scientific community decide which are the theories that is worth spending time on to prove them and which are not ? Are there personal biases ? How do we know choosing theory X over theory Y to prove will advance Science and humanity ? Is it just the budget available to prove theory X over theory Y the criterion?

>So how does the scientific community decide which are the theories that is worth spending time on to prove them and which are not?

Four primary variables: 1) Collective interest of the researchers in the topic of attack 2) Collective interest of the financiers of research on some application of the topic of attack 3) Funding for research 4) The effective tools for experiments are already invented and available (example, a microscope)

So it is possible that we could have pursued(time and money) on things that do not turn out to be impactful or left out working on those that could have had a major impact.

Yes. But it does not matter.

We do not do science for some high level goal of "Benefit for humanity". I love stars, I like astronomy, and when I study the stars, I do not think about how my study would impact humanity. I just study them because I find them interesting. (Studying star systems do not actually have much impact on humanity in general, mostly).

Attempting to qualify science only limits it.

That probably explains why we didn't put money in an anti viral drug which would have saved lives during a pandemic. Our goals if you look from a humanity or global perspective are misplaced

Evidence. Replication of results by multiple unrelated investigators.

Those two points alone remove a lot of gibberish. Even an appeal to authority is suspect if those first two aren't addressed.

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