Comment by notdrunkatall | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notdrunkatall | Hacker News Reader

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The private sector doesn't advance science? Intel doesn't advance science? Pfizer doesn't advance science? GE? IBM? ADM? BASF?

You don't think that private companies regularly form hypotheses, test those hypothesis, and draw conclusions from their results? Applied science is no less worthy of the title of science than is pure science, and the private sector is applied science writ large.

As for pure science and government funding, I'm not against it, and promoting one over the other is not my intention, as they both have their roles to play. I agree that pure science would not occur to the extent that it does now absent government funding. What I disagree with is that science would not happen at all were that the case. That's flatly stupid thing to say, and I'm a little amused that you would make that claim just before calling me stupid.

In a world where the rate of technological advance is larger than it has been at any other time in the history of the world (and is still increasing), it seems obvious that both are playing their roles rather well. The system is functioning. Science is not dead. Hell, it's not even sick.

First off, I'm pretty sure he was trying to make a point about the inefficacy of name-calling in such an argument, not literally calling you stupid.

Second, Intel advances very specific, safe-bet science like shrinking the semiconductor. As plenty of other people have noted, the semiconductor was a public-funded invention and farmed off to Japan before it could be made "profitable" by American corporations. Heck, early American business laughed transistors off the continent before the value proposition was discovered.

Also, as long as I'm commenting here, I'll note that science is not dead, but I believe that our ability to consume information has tainted our ability to understand true science. To me, the quintessential American scientist of the 20th century was Richard Feynman. His Cargo Cult Science [1] essay, which pops up on HN from time to time explains what's happening best: people who claim to follow science, are actually practicing some sort of modern-day witch doctor magic. They wave their hands and claim the data supports their wild discovery and someone bites. Suddenly it takes 10,000 hours to become a master of something "on average."

1: http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html

As far as I know the early ICs were much less reliable than circuits made from discrete components. It's the improvement made by private companies like Fairchild and others that made them practical. There's really a long path from invention to its practical application and the world benefited much from the improvements made by companies.

On the other hand scientific research is an example of a positive externality. According to economic theory the market underproduces this kind of goods. There are numerous measures to correct this including patents and public funding of science. We shouldn't dismiss the private companies nor public funding as both parts have positive contributions to science and are necessary for the science to operate effectively.

> people who claim to follow science, are actually practicing some sort of modern-day witch doctor magic.

Maybe this is just phrased poorly. In that essay Feynman is saying some people (namely advocates of pseudoscience) are invoking "science" to give credence to their claims but are abandoning scientific rigor, this is what he calls cargo cult science. Not all people who claim to follow science.

Fellatio by fruit bats prolongs copulation time. (PLoS One) [1]

Seriously? The greater issue here is modern day "scientists" or people who are interested in and consider themselves scientifically-minded, reading something like that and filing it away as new knowledge and not questioning the veracity of things.

As the other child to this comment noted, the problem that Feynman outlines is that no one is doing these tests over again to re-test hypothesis under new conditions or with new devices. The results get published and suddenly it's taken as Truth with a capital T.

"Because there are no facts, there is no truth Just a data to be manipulated I can get any result you like" -- Don Henley [2]

If that makes you uncomfortable, I suggest you try out some form of theism. Because if tomorrow I fall through my floor when getting out of bed, all we can do is re-evaluate our knowledge based on new data. And there's probably going to be a lot of new data.

1: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.... 2: http://ntl.matrix.com.br/pfilho/html/lyrics/g/garden_of_alla...

I don't even know what you're trying to illustrate with those links. My point was not that bad science doesn't exist, it certainly does. But Feynman did not have this nihilistic view of knowledge, he believed very firmly in the ability of science to deduce truths about the physical world and that there is objective truth.

Sorry to dwell on this, but this is not a nihilistic view, this is what's called the Pragmatic view of truth and was expounded by 20th Century Chicago School philosophers like John Dewey. Feynman was oft quoted as being a pragmatist, and a key tenet of pragmatism was embodied in one of his quotes:

"We never are definitely right, we can only be sure we are wrong."

In this fashion, we never hold objective truth in the Platonic sense, rather we accumulate knowledge that explains how the world works.

Does fellatio in fruit flies improve sexual reproduction? One study suggests it does. The problem we face now is that a substantial portion of people, including many very well educated folks who would claim to live scientifically-based lives, say "That's amazing!" and run and tell their friends this hilarious new "fact" they've learned.

Unfortunately there are plenty of these new "facts" people learn that are much more than novelty and lead to public policy or destructive dietary changes cough fructose cough.

We could all use to be a little more skeptical, pragmatic and curious in our lives.

you should reread the essay. He then goes on to mention how mainstream physics experiments have failed to do basic things like "repeat an old experiment with the new apparatus" and therefore careening towards pseudoscience.

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