Crowdsourcing and Scientific Truth

ygslash writes "In an opinion piece in the New York Times Sunday Review, Jack Hitt states that comments posted to on-line articles, and elsewhere on line, have de facto become an important factor in what is accepted as scientific truth. From the article: 'Any article, journalistic or scientific, that sparks a debate typically winds up looking more like a good manuscript 700 years ago than a magazine piece only 10 years ago. The truth is that every decent article now aspires to become the wiki of its own headline.'"

Re:Science as a social construct

[ApharmdB]

Is the article author aware of how pervasive astroturfing is in the comments sections? Perhaps if the article is about a subject that no one has a financial or political interest in, comments sections could serve this way. But as soon as someone's got an interest to protect, you can't trust the comments to be anything other than posts made by paid people creating fake personas to do so. Slashdot has had articles about this type of astroturfing before.

"Scientific truth" vs "Popular perception", Etc.

[Gimbal]

There is a huge difference between scientific truth and, alternately, popular perception. I don't even want to try to explain that, it's so obvious - and there may some be more pertinent matters to address, in this.

I think we can accept that comments sections do not make much of a forum for development of scientific anything. Comments are comments. Comments are not journal articles. Comments can be said to be peer reviewed, to some extent, but then again, comments are not journal articles, comments need not follow any specific format for reporting of questions and results, comments are just comments.

I'm afraid that that all may be beside any points raised in the linked article, however. What the article looks like to me, in all my sense of bias: It looks like a way of trying to excuse a lack of significant content in articles, in lieu of some kind of perceptual bias about comments. It think it's just as well for the birds, though I know it's been said, "It's the thought that counts."

Those who disagree

[ygslash]

As OP (here on /., not the author of the article), I'd like to re-raise here in the comments a point in my original post that got edited out:

There are many who disagree with the thesis of TFA. It is interesting to note that they are trying to make their point - where else? - in the comments on the article, in comments here on ./, and elsewhere in the blogosphere.

Re:Science cannot prove historical events.

[jc42]

Since "science" cannot prove historical events, the only thing left is opinion. By definition, if something is repeatable or testable, it cannot be "proven" by scientific methods. All you are left with is belief.

It'd be difficult to find a more misleading characterization of science.

First off, as various historians and theoreticians of science have observed, scientific methods rarely (if ever) "prove" anything. Scientific methods are all based on 1) proposing explanations for observations, and the 2) attempting to disprove those explanations. After sufficiently many such attempts at disproof have failed, an explanation gets promoted to "hypothesis", and then to "theory". But these are only tentative, with further attempts at disproval continuing whenever anyone can come up with a new test that hasn't been tried.

As part of this, an explanation that is untestable isn't considered scientific at all. It's neither true nor false by scientific standards, until someone comes up with tests that could possibly disprove it. Some explanations (e.g., "God did it") have remained in this state for centuries.

Actually, there is one situation where there is a sort of scientific "proof". This is dealing with negative claims of the form "There are no X".A canonical example is the old "There are no Black Swans". This was disproved by the discovery of a species of swan that is (mostly) black. It lives in Australia, so at one time it was Unknown to Science. You can rephrase this in the positive form, "There are Black Swans", and such existence statements can be "proved" by simply presenting examples. But this is generally classified as data collection, which is understood to always be incomplete. And such negative claims are generally not taken seriously by scientists unless you can give good reasons why X can't exist, based on previously accepted theories. Even then, a single (non-fraudulent) example can suffice to shoot down your reasoned argument against X existing.

In any case, "proof" is something done by mathematicians, not scientists. If you reject science that doesn't present proof, you reject all science, since proof isn't what science does.

If all you have left is belief, then you are susceptible to being defrauded by anyone who comes along with a new belief. But history shows that science's testing process has been pretty good at disproving most beliefs. In the process, the leftover ("not disproved") beliefs that fell out of the process have led to all the technical advances of the previous several centuries, something that the earlier purveyors of belief systems ("religions") have failed to do for as long as we have recorded history.

Re:Science as a social construct

[msobkow]

What's common is the accusations of astroturfing by fans of competing products, theories, or systems. It's become the "in thing" to claim that any dissenting opinion is astroturfing.

Unfortunately for those who like to use terms without understanding their meaning, it's only "astroturfing" if you're compensated for broadcasting a statement. People are entitled to share their opinions as they see fit provided they're not paid to take a side.

Even if they disagree with you.

Re:Science as a social construct

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

I would say "no". To my mind there has to be malice, i.e. a hidden agenda for an expression to count as astro turfing. I.e. it's a fake, grass roots movement. An organisation/special interest group that is open with the fact that that's what they are, cannot thus be astro turfing.