Have Some Physicists Abandoned the Empirical Method? 364
HughPickens.com writes: Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser write in the NY Times that two leading researchers, George Ellis and Joseph Silk, recently published a controversial piece called "Scientific Method: Defend the Integrity of Physics," that criticized a newfound willingness among some scientists to explicitly set aside the need for experimental confirmation of today's most ambitious cosmic theories — so long as those theories are "sufficiently elegant and explanatory." Whether or not you agree with them, Ellis and Silk have identified a mounting concern in fundamental physics: Today, our most ambitious science can seem at odds with the empirical methodology that has historically given physics its credibility.
Quoting: "Chief among the 'elegance will suffice' advocates are some string theorists. Because string theory is supposedly the 'only game in town' capable of unifying the four fundamental forces, they believe that it must contain a grain of truth even though it relies on extra dimensions that we can never observe. Some cosmologists, too, are seeking to abandon experimental verification of grand hypotheses that invoke imperceptible domains such as the kaleidoscopic multiverse (comprising myriad universes), the 'many worlds' version of quantum reality (in which observations spawn parallel branches of reality) and pre-Big Bang concepts. These unprovable hypotheses are quite different from those that relate directly to the real world and that are testable through observations — such as the standard model of particle physics and the existence of dark matter and dark energy. As we see it, theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man's-land between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any."
Richard Dawid argues that physics, or at least parts of it, are about to enter an era of post-empirical science. "How are we to determine whether a theory is true if it cannot be validated experimentally," ask Frank and Gleiser. "Are superstrings and the multiverse, painstakingly theorized by hundreds of brilliant scientists, anything more than modern-day epicycles?"
Quoting: "Chief among the 'elegance will suffice' advocates are some string theorists. Because string theory is supposedly the 'only game in town' capable of unifying the four fundamental forces, they believe that it must contain a grain of truth even though it relies on extra dimensions that we can never observe. Some cosmologists, too, are seeking to abandon experimental verification of grand hypotheses that invoke imperceptible domains such as the kaleidoscopic multiverse (comprising myriad universes), the 'many worlds' version of quantum reality (in which observations spawn parallel branches of reality) and pre-Big Bang concepts. These unprovable hypotheses are quite different from those that relate directly to the real world and that are testable through observations — such as the standard model of particle physics and the existence of dark matter and dark energy. As we see it, theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man's-land between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any."
Richard Dawid argues that physics, or at least parts of it, are about to enter an era of post-empirical science. "How are we to determine whether a theory is true if it cannot be validated experimentally," ask Frank and Gleiser. "Are superstrings and the multiverse, painstakingly theorized by hundreds of brilliant scientists, anything more than modern-day epicycles?"
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Re:There is no such thing as non-empirical science (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. It then stays what it is: a hypothesis, not a theory.
Re:There is no such thing as non-empirical science (Score:5, Informative)
Speculation. It's bad form to say hypothesis, because while it doesn't strictly refer to only scientific hypotheses, it is commonly implied. Stop abusing the terminology.
Re:There is no such thing as non-empirical science (Score:5, Informative)
Re:There is no such thing as non-empirical science (Score:5, Insightful)
A scientific hypothesis is, by definition, falsifiable. I've never liked the word "testable": some of the greatest confirmations in the history of science were simply observations of the universe around us, not "tests" one could run in the lab. From the observation of gravitational lensing during an eclipse as predicted by general relativity, to the CMBR temperature curve matching the blackbody curve, as predicted by the big bang theory, many of humanity's "science: it works, bitches" moments weren't "tests".
Re:There is no such thing as non-empirical science (Score:5, Informative)
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No, it starts out as falsifiable, or it's not a scientific hypothesis.
Whether it becomes falsified at some future point is irrelevant.
Useful hint: scientific/technical terms in modern English often have different meanings from the Greek/Latin words they're derived from.
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(something i find very problematic and wrong, since... Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." !
I don't. "rtrgaerg" doesn't have an inherent or universal meaning. What words mean is what we decide they mean not some meaning from an unrelated human endeavor.
There are plenty of meaning collisions out there. Words like stress, field, normal, trace, etc have wildly different meanings depending on what particularly nomenclature you are using. For example, "stress" has radically different meanings in human physiology, linguistics, and mechanical engineering.
we still have problems with that hypothesis term
Like what? It's pretty straightforward with a l
Re:There is no such thing as non-empirical science (Score:4, Funny)
It's in Wales. I went there once.
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The German term Gift is also derived from gift, but the meaning is quite the opposite. It means poison. So while you are right about the origin of the words, the meaning of words change. The terms theory and hypothesis have a distinct meaning in science and they differ from the original. However, it is still not far away. A hypothesis must be testable, however, it starts out being a speculation, but only if you can provide a way to test the hypothesis. Otherwise it is a untestable speculation and then you h
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About that "is more religion than science" - from a comment i made somewhere else:
I just try to define "un-scientific" (e.g., in case of a non-empirical "scientific method") as... "un-scientific" (!), NOT as "religion", because religion, even while un-scientific, can be empirical if it is a belief *with* knowledge (of God) instead of a belief *without* knowledge (of God) - in my case, a (Greek Orthodox) Christian, my religious beliefs are because of my empirical knowledge of God (note: of course it is un-scientific knowledge/statement, and i can't use a scientific method to prove my claim, but still i know the truth empirically - no need for anyone to get upset by that statement, it is just my personal example for the definitions).
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"empirical knowledge of God"
you're a deluded idiot
come back to us when you find your way out of that cave
Come back to me when you have some scientificaly empirical method to prove me wrong...
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You can't use the ancient Greek meaning. In the modern technical context, a hypothesis is something that can be tested. A theory is a larger body of explanations. Look here for the specifics of statistical hypothesis testing in the last hundred years or so. This is basic Stats 101 stuff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_hypothesis_testing [wikipedia.org]
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Exactly. It then stays what it is: a hypothesis, not a theory.
Except without an empirical basis, it's not even a hypothesis. It's just interesting math with no basis in reality. "Not even wrong" applies here.
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When Emmy Noether develops algebraic invariant theory, does she know that some physicists are going to call her up for help with general relativity?
After enough of these cases, physicists are trying to develop their own interesting, novel mathematical contributions. Who knows, maybe some of them will have applications.
The most outrage I can muster here is that some of these researchers are housed
Re:There is no such thing as non-empirical science (Score:5, Insightful)
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I swear, funding of basic research has enough enemies in this world -- it hurts to see it all over slashdot.
Re:There is no such thing as non-empirical science (Score:5, Interesting)
I suppose that's why I want scientists to continue working on other hypotheses for the explanation of the fundamental structure of the Universe, so that scientists and the public don't make too many assumptions about what's right versus what's still up for debate.
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String theory has in no way become dogma, except to those who keep looking for drama where there is none.
No one's going to be rejecting LHC results which explicitly refute large chunks of string theory (and lets be clear: every particle accelerator has been setting some fairly rigorous bounds on all sorts of hypotheses over the years). Just as people were plenty interested in a possible confirmation of neutrinos moving faster then light in a major experiment.
Re:There is no such thing as non-empirical science (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem though, is that we might be approaching the limits of what is testable in modern physics by non-godlike beings. Yes, some supercollider might find something new that's inconsistent with superstring or alternative hypothesis, hence disproving them.
But we might also never find anything new at all. It's not impossible that we have already discovered all the fundamental particles that exist, or that those remaining would require the controlled annihilation of entire galaxies to create (aka the exertions of godlike beings). In which case our experiments could invalidate any hypotheses which *requires* intermediate particles, but sufficiently broad or untestable hypotheses (such as superstrings, taken as a class) would remain forever unfalsified.
Of course the flip side is that if we are entering such a period, then it's largely irrelevant what theories we adopt. So long as they're consistent with observable reality, that's all that really matters. With a couple caveats:
1) If the accepted theory actively discourages research in directions that *would* reveal new physics, we have a problem.
2) If the theories remain broadly accepted for long enough (many generations?) then there is a danger that if conflicting data is eventually found it will be rejected or suppressed. Many a researcher has had their career devastated by making claims inconsistent with accepted science, especially if the results can't be consistently replicated (a hallmark of new phenomena where we don't actually understand what's happening, but *something* seems to be). Fleischmann and Pons spring to mind - granted they did a particularly irresponsible job of releasing their findings, but follow-up research does continue to dangle tantalizing hints that under certain poorly-understood conditions fusion does occur.
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Yes! This article better not be an attempt to keep the 'dark matter' handwave going for another generation without direct proof.
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That is not the same thing as string theory, there is verifiable evidence for dark matter, defined as matter having gravitational effect on galaxy shape for which there is no known accounting yet.
Re:There is no such thing as non-empirical science (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no problem at all with being a mathematician or a philosopher of science. I'm a physicist, and I don't think any of my colleagues would argue that these fields should go away or that physicists shouldn't work in them. Emmy Noether is a great example of how people outside physics can help develop new physics.
But... relativity wasn't accepted until it was tested. Neither should any other theory coming out of advanced mathematics. Simply being around for a long time is not enough to move a set of math from clever speculation into physics. We've been down this path before. Allowing foundational theories to be integrated into the rest of physics without verification might end up fine, or it might waste the careers of a generation of physicists. Today, that also might mean many billions of dollars of funding and significant public trust.
Re:There is no such thing as non-empirical science (Score:5, Interesting)
There's no problem at all with being a mathematician or a philosopher of science. I'm a physicist, and I don't think any of my colleagues would argue that these fields should go away or that physicists shouldn't work in them. Emmy Noether is a great example of how people outside physics can help develop new physics.
But... relativity wasn't accepted until it was tested. Neither should any other theory coming out of advanced mathematics. Simply being around for a long time is not enough to move a set of math from clever speculation into physics. We've been down this path before. Allowing foundational theories to be integrated into the rest of physics without verification might end up fine, or it might waste the careers of a generation of physicists. Today, that also might mean many billions of dollars of funding and significant public trust.
You say this like there's some cabal deciding on 'allowing foundational theories into the rest of physics without verification'.
If you look at the Dec. 2014 Nature article that sparked the NYTimes article, you'd see that the concern there isn't even about the conduct of science itself -- it's about the worry that apparent dissent among scientists will fuel anti-scientism. So we'd better work out these 'what's experimentally verifiable' questions far away from the inquiring public.
There's no real worry that somehow the world's best and brightest physicists have forgotten about falsifiability.
Re:There is no such thing as non-empirical science (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been trying to explain this to people this for years. Logical truth isn't binary. Every hypothesis (theory, speculation, faith, whatever you want to call it) doesn't resolve into being true or false. They resolve into true, false, or cannot be determined. While by the standards of the scientific method something in the "cannot be determined" category cannot be shown to be true, it is equally erroneous to decide it is false. So contradictory to what many rationalists think, there are actually three categories of belief - scientific truth (belief in things provable by science), superstition (belief in things disproven by science), and what for lack of a better word I'll call supposition (belief in things that cannot be proven nor disproven by science). String theory probably falls into the third category, which is why it's wrong to lump string theorists with the second category simply because it can't be proven by the scientific method.
From a mathematical standpoint, even if string theory is wrong, if it can come up with accurate predictions, it can still be useful and worth pursuing. Early astronomers believed the planets were painted onto spheres, and attempted to define their motion across the sky as a circle within a circle, offset slightly from the observer While we now know that their method was wrong, the predictions these circles came up with were pretty accurate. Basically it's like using a nth order polynomial to fit a set of data points. The phenomenon that created those data points probably isn't a nth order polynomial, but if the polynomial can accurately predict in-between data points, then it doesn't really matter that it's wrong. You just need to be careful of extrapolating outside the data points, or expecting more accuracy from your prediction than the accuracy of your data points.
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This is the truth.
Let them dream. The ability to test these hypotheses by experiment will come along soon enough. Just because it now lags behind doesn't mean we should just stop the show.
And, this supposed "non-empirical science" is not new. I bet we can come up with many examples of hypotheses that took decades to be properly tested.
Pop science fans like the ones you find working in tec
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When a theory seems interesting, you can't just give up on it saying "Oh, there's no way to test it!". Who knows? Down the line when it's fully fleshed out, it might make predictions that can be tested. It might have a much more elegant explanation of existing patchwork theories. Ultimately you have to ask yourself whywe do physics. We don't do it to stick to some ideal standard. We do it for fun, for ourselves. To satisfy our craving for understanding.
Curiosity is a much bigger motivation that will not be
Re:There is no such thing as non-empirical science (Score:5, Insightful)
If it can't be falsified, it's not even a scientific hypothesis. It's storytelling. It may be a very pretty story, or like String Theory it may be an artless sprawl of a story, but it's not science. It's not a theory until it's made enough predictions, predictions that differed from the null hypothesis, yet turned out to be true, to have gained widespread acceptance.
Yes, sure, stories can be valuable, can inspire, can teach. But we don't call that "science".
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That's just terminology. All of mathematics is "storytelling". The fact is that physics desperately needs ideas more than anything else. And we need them in a flood. Who cares what terminology is used? Let people make ideas and follow them. Some may pan out. Most won't. So what?
If some people don't want to call it "science", let them. It doesn't matter.
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physics desperately needs ideas
What do you based that claim on? Physics is drowning in ideas; what it needs now is data. Every piece of high-end apparatus, from the LHC to large telescopes, is so over-saturated with ideas, with proposed tests and observations, that it's a big challenge just to decide which experiments are the most important to run.
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I disagree. We have lots and lots of data. What we need more is a coherent framework to put it all together. The data from the LHC is so vast that processing it is a herculean task. More frameworks, more ideas will help make sense from all of it.
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It's not a theory until it's made enough predictions
What makes a theory a scientific theory is only that it makes testable predictions. You want to talk about validity, though as a falsificationist you're stuck.
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If it can't be verified or falsified by experiment, if it makes no useful predictions, it has no business being published as science. It is, at best, fluff for the academic. Science will go on without the "contributions" of those who propose the unscientific.
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But what happens when you have multiple theories that agree with all the experiments we can make, and the only areas where they differ are for experiments we cannot make? Any of them would still be better than the current theories.
Re:There is no such thing as non-empirical science (Score:4, Insightful)
If they make predictions about things that are inherently unfalsifiable, the theories should be stripped down to respect that boundary.
If they make predictions about things that are falsifiable, but not within our reach to test at present, then keep all the theories.
Re:There is no such thing as non-empirical science (Score:5, Interesting)
Cosmologists are in the same boat, just at different scales. Untestable assumptions like "space is uniformly flat everywhere" and "the gravitational constant and the speed of light is the same everywhere and everywhen" lead us to conundrums like Dark Matter(TM) and Dark Energy(TM) just to put a label on the things we are ignorant about because the sums (and assumptions) don't add up.
TL;DR If you have an explanatory story where the math works, I, for one, don't care, and don't think it matters if your story amounts to "it's turtles all the way down". At least then we can start trying to dream up experiments and observations to prove or disprove it. But physics current OBSESSION with empericism has us painted into a corner where we don't have (and may never be able to have) the equipment to come up with defintive answers directed from observation rather than directed from theory.
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Fine. Do it on your own dime and file it in the drawer labelled "Things To Do Later".
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Let me rephrase that: Global warming as enunciated by media popularizers is untestable.
The best evidence that it exists is melting of long-term ice in different parts of the world. But as a theory, in which you can predict specific weather changes when you feed it new observational data and then turn the crank, it's a complete failure.
Garbage in garbage out (Score:2)
Try someone other than a British Sudoko puzzle writer or Danish economist next time and you'll see.
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Let me rephrase that: Global warming as enunciated by media popularizers is untestable.
Possibly. Is there only a single such theory? Who cares what the popularisers say?
The best evidence that it exists is melting of long-term ice in different parts of the world.
... and the rising global temperatures, and the rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere, and there are probably a few other indicators as well.
But as a theory, in which you can predict specific weather changes when you feed it new observational data and then turn the crank, it's a complete failure.
They are climate models, not weather models, so that they don't work so well for weather prediction is no surprise. Good thing nobody is claiming that then, eh?
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"They are climate models, not weather models, so that they don't work so well for weather prediction is no surprise. Good thing nobody is claiming that then, eh?"
Unfortunately those media popularizers of carbon warming love to use it as their latest club against civilization and, ultimately, the human species itself. So they do nothing but claim that every kind of weather is evidence of carbon warming. They love to predict drought, because in most parts of the world that is the worst kind of weather. But th
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Keep in mind that "religion", when it is a belief *with* knowledge (of God) instead of a belief *without* knowledge (of God) IS empirical (a Greek word -i am a Greek by the way- meaning "derived from experience/observation"), it is just "non-scientific".
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There are many religions, "nontheistic religions", that don't worship any particular god - your definition doesn't work. Perhaps you've heard of Buddhism? I would say that a religion necessarily includes a set of philosophical principles that guide us through daily life, however.
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Unless you consider "Hope that you don't piss the gods off" to be a guiding philosophical principle, that's still a fairly restrictive definition of religion. Consider, for example, Roman religion: it provided structure to daily life, but was largely orthogonal to the philosophical guidance of schools such as stoicism and epicureanism.
"True enough" (Score:2)
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Not verifiable through experiment, but reasonable enough to pay the rent.
To a lot of people, so's this:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.
And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.
And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.
And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
I already have to deal with enough religion on a day-to-day basis. I don't need more of them.
Why shouldn't Physics abandon empiricism? (Score:2, Interesting)
Social Scientists regularly jettison reproducible, empirical methods of gathering data in favor of cherry-picking to push ideological outcomes in their studies. Biologists are starting to do the same. It's all about producing the right "narrative" now. "Problematic" facts will be discarded, and any semblance of objective truth will be damned.
Not the only game in town (Score:3)
There are alternative theories, and they probably ought to get much more attention than they do. I think the fact that science is a career for people these days, makes them more keen to play things safe.
For example, Professor Mike Mcculloch's MiHsC http://physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.co.uk/ seems to predict a variety of otherwise anomalous observations rather well, without endless fudge factors. He's a respected academic, but seems to get little mainstream scientific attention.
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So? Just because he's a marine scientist it doesn't mean he can't have made a decent insight.
Careerism at it again. He's in a different field, so he could never teach US anything...
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No, in the case, he really is a crackpot.
Don't mistake "careerism" with an actual understanding of physics. Sometimes people just don't know what they're doing.
It is an issue throughout science (Score:4, Insightful)
It is disturbing that the problem is starting to effect physics. They should have been a bastion of resistance. Though, if the softness is in the cosmology department than that is more understandable.
In any case, if they're not backing up their theories with empirical observation or experimentation then it isn't science... at all.
So that has to happen.
This reminds me of when I heard some journalists say "it is impossible to be objective so there is no point trying. Take sides."... that's not journalism.
No one said your jobs were easy. But you have to play by the rules or you're not doing your job.
Scientists need to base their theories on empirical observation or experimentation.
Journalists need to control conflicts of interest and be as objective as they can... and where it isn't possible and there is no one else to report on the issue, at the very least declare your bias.
This nonsense is a bit like a judge saying he doesn't need to worry about conflicts of interest. Or when police officers say they don't need to give people due process.
You have to go through a process to be doing your job in these professions. You go through the process and you're a scientist, a journalist, a judge, a police officer.
If you don't... then you're just some asshole walking around with a badge that doesn't mean anything.
It wasn't true in the other thread either (Score:3)
You are only saying it is a problem throughout science so you can feel better about accusing every climate scientist of being a fraud so that you can toe your petty political line and fit in with other radicals that pretend to be "conservative". Denial of the authority of experts is very much the opposite of being "conservative".
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Yes, some guy in the Lancet said so... the chief editor said so in fact. And he was reporting on a conference in Oxford that was concerning the same thing.
Your pathetic attempt to undermine me with these childish arguments merely makes clear to anyone watching what you are.
You presented yourself in the last argument as a person with insider knowledge of the peer review system and said I was ignorant for suggesting there were problems.
I pointed you at an essay provided in the OP comment that showed the edito
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Not really. Physics has been up and running for a long time now. Maybe forever, some say.
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It is useful to note that some real things were discovered simply by applying mathematics with no d
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I thought you might enjoy this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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As you point out, my statement was correct. I specifically used words with specific meanings in conjuction with other words that apply to those specific terms.
You imply a correction while admitting that my statement was accurate.
Does a hypothesis need evidence? Yes and no. Simply proposing a hypothesis does not require evidence. However, VALIDATING one does.
The process of science has a great deal more to do with the validating of various models of natural phenomena than it does with coming up with as yet ba
Not surprising at all... (Score:2, Funny)
Look at all the fun the social scientists have with their lack of empiricism.
Also, abandoning empiricism is the only way for science to become the new opiate of the masses.
Just because it's difficult ... (Score:3)
... doesn't mean we should give up.
The awkwardness of the state of physics simply informs that we have no brilliant physicists at this time.
We just have to wait and keep at it.
Simplified version (Score:5, Insightful)
Question: Are some physicists theoretical physicists while others are experimental physicists?
Answer: Duh...
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Theory has its place (Score:3)
Untested theories are not the equal of experimentally verified theory.
That does not mean they are completely without value.
It's not either-or.
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Difference between science and religion (Score:4, Funny)
Was nice while it lasted.
Re:Difference between science and religion (Score:5, Interesting)
No one bothers with preproducibility anymore. I caught my colleagues repeatedly at cheating and outright cooking up results. The articles are written in a way that it is impossible to replicate the methods, let alone simulation/experimental results. I know couple of articles in mathematics that contain non-working algorithms. Those were "peer"-reviewed articles in good journals...
Another desese is called simulations. Good Lord, if only you knew how primitive and wrong those simulations are! I'm sitting right now and for 2 freaking months I'm trying to make a simulator (written by my boss) to work. When it does, those simulations are nowhere near the results he pulished in the paper. Half the questions about the code he answers like "we found THIS to work, but we don't know why". F%$#ing great! Am I in the laboratory of astrophysics, or maybe in astrology and homeopathy lab?
And don't get me even started about those so-called "soft sciences" like sociology...
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None of that is exactly new. Science has always had a large share of fraud, disagreement, feuds, and errors.
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The downmod is just another example of why science as science is dying. There are too many people in the field that neither love nor care about what drives the universe. Witness the reaction to environmental stories on this site to see it.
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LOL I can guess.
I point out that there is a certain very popular political science that has been making testable predictions that haven't come true. Many political types who like to think themselves scientifically correct don't like to be reminded of how science works.
Here's another one that was modded down
Pardon me there is no physics involved here.
You make a set of predictions, you specify contingent conditions, over the course of four decades your predictions are consistently wrong despite being able to modify them every year, and even fudging the data. Physics doesn't enter in this just basic logic.
This is what happens when you let the political scientists in. You get the whole perception is reality thing going, and if the perception benefits the agenda it must be good.
Just a matter of time (Score:2)
nothing new (Score:3)
The idea that physics was this pristine area of pure science, rigorously following the scientific method is an illusion. Most science has always been junk; the good stuff gets separated from the bad stuff by people building on it over decades and centuries.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with untestable physical theories; if you don't like to call them physics, call them "physics-inspired applied math". While not useful in themselves, they may lead to better, testable physical theories eventually, or they may simply find applications in entirely unrelated areas.
Problems only arise when people say things like "it's been published in a peer reviewed physics journal and lots of physicists believe it to be true, therefore we must spend lots of money to..."
the non-empirical research dollar (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a different version of the question.
Has the general public set aside empiricism as a standard against which to judge funding appropriations in the name of fundamental scientific progress?
I say no.
The public has not set aside empiricism as part of the social contract through which public money is directed at research institutions. Once the public understands how tenuous empiricism has become among research physicists, the tiny trickle we already provide will only get smaller.
So here's my message to all the modernist physicists out there ready to bury Karl Popper (there were one or two in this year's Edge question): speculate all you want about the non-falsifiable multiverse, but use the Templeton Foundation to fund your chalk supply, and whisper sweet nothings on bent knees so that they also fund your chalk boards, bean bag chairs, and baloney sandwich cafeteria.
It's not like public research funds have nowhere else to go. Proteomics, as difficult as it is, has not yet broken free of its empirical yoke (the complexity of this field begins with the water molecule, and ramps up from there).
We should start with the auto-immune diseases which ought to be simpler systems—if, in fact, they are indeed auto-immune diseases after all.
There really ought to be an entire chapter in Kahneman's next book devoted to the human psychology quirk through which an otherwise sensible person willingly exchanges ten of twenty free physical parameters for 10^500 fiendishly complex initial conditions and calls it a good deal.
That way lies phologoston and not oxygen (Score:2)
An answer to "why does this happen" is better than a recipe book, and "burying Popper" is a piss poor description of what is really happening as theory pushes ahead of what we can test for now. Some of the crystallography theories on the 1920s couldn't be tested until the 1970s for instance.
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No Joseph Priestley's experimental work gave us oxygen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J... [wikipedia.org]
What?? (Score:2)
So you are saying those theories were NOT TESTED?
> Purely empirical science gave us the "element of fire", phologoston.
The reason we went beyond that is because It could be tested and proven wrong.
The discussion is about "testing no longer needed", not "testing done later". As it clearly says in article and even summary.
"Evidence" universe is simulation (Score:3)
More and more physics seems to be relying on simulations. In a case in which a theory has been discarded because it can't account for certain observed phenomena there can be a benefit in show that the theory can't be discarded. However it seems like there are more cases in which a simulation seems to be used as evidence that a theory is correct. http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.0481... [arxiv.org]
String theory has been somewhat predictive and new experiments in particle physics can be compared to expectation with string theory without needing to modify the theory.
However a lot of theories do not seem to be very testable or have any likelihood of being testable. Here is some "evidence" I came up with for the theory that we are living in a simulation. I use minecraft to illustrate. Probably others have provided the same evidence, I am just not aware of them. It has the same problem of some of theories coming out, it does not seem to be predictive and testable.
1) Quantum mechanics/uncertainty principle.
Assume that any construct must have limited resources.It would require substantially less "memory" and "cpu power" to estimate particles and groups of particles using equations rather than track the particulars of every particle and its interaction. Only when a query for the state of a specific particle occurred would the value be determined. Once the actually value were determined, the behavior would no longer match the shorthand equations that governed undetermined particles.
Minecraft analogy: Minecraft is an unlimited world in which each "block" [piece of earth or other material] can be manipulated. So unlike most game there are no walls or objects that can't be destroyed or moved, etc. Blocks objects are not instantiated until someone interacts with it. In this way many properties are not fully determined until the interaction occurs.
2) Speed of light
The speed of light limits the amount of interaction. It is extremely computationally intensive to have everything interact with everything else simultaneously. With the speed of light, interaction is limited to a single direction from source to object. While two objects might interact together, say by reflecting each other on their surfaces, the reflection is actually showing the other object from a point early in time that was "computed" on the prior "cycle". Aggregates can be used for distance objects. For example the light of a distance galaxy would not need to be computed with every individual particle.
Minecraft analogy: There is a render distance. Based on the graphical and network power the user can adjust the render distance. Objects beyond that distance are not visible and the display does not need to account for them.
Interestingly the speed of light indicates, to some extent, the type of construct. In a typical simulation of a reality, all values are computed simultaneously and then the next time cycle is calculated. This is used when attempting to model of a "real" system in which accuracy is more important than performance.
3) Planck time
This is the equivalent of CPU cycle or a singe "tick" in Minecraft
4) Unusual physics at "extreme" values
Strange things happen and "extreme" values like Bose-Einstein condensates, singularities and perhaps plasma. A construct of a system would be more concerned about behaviors within a "sweet spot" of interest.
Minecraft analogy: Minecraft uses double precision values for everything, including coordinates which are based on an integer number of blocks. There is a place in minecraft called "the far lands". If you travel far enough from your point of origin when the game is created, doubles no longer accurately represent integers. So blocks no longer form a continuous surface and there are occasional missing blocks and the player can get stuck between blocks or fall through "holes" in solid earth.
[Interesting aside: people can get to "the far lands" with mods etc. However once the creator announced the existence of "the far lands
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We would know we "hacked" the Universe when we can get something for nothing.
So far, energy is conserved and their is no instance of getting "two for one" or getting more work out of a process than put into it.
I do believe we CAN harness energy -- but it would likely be the high frequency energy left over from the big bang, which can be called Quantum Foam or Vacuum Energy. I'd call it a carrier frequency which is related to what we call the "Hubble Constant" in a Geometric way. Space is growing and that at
Not just physics. I see this in a number of fields (Score:5, Interesting)
in academics.
The problem is that there is a huge oversupply of Ph.D. and Ph.D. candidate labor for the number of positions available pure academic research and institutions.
People that offer incremental improvements or work—just lab stuff, just more data, just duplication research, or slight variations to tease out empirical nuances—are a dime a dozen and struggle to differentiate themselves. Real science is often workman-like and laborious.
On the other hand, if young Ph.D. candidates and people weaving their way through the identity-building process that is a Ph.D. focus on conceptual innovation and performances—ideas, narratives, radical departures—then they are seen as doing something "new" and "innovative" (which somehow has become what science is about in popular discourse, which creeps into academic discourse), and something that sells better in the presses and to the public when the monographs come out, enabling "crossover" works and coverage that is much more lucrative than straight empirical work that gets buried in the journals or small print runs. They also more attendees at the conferences, and by virtue of interviewing and appearing more, get more coverage for the institution that hires them, often doing more to drive prestige and enrollments.
I think market forces play into this in a significant way.
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People who just to lab work should not be awarded PhDs. A PhD must have demonstrated ability to act as an independent researcher and come up with, as you put it, 'new' and 'innovative' things. Doesn't have to be Nobel-prize winning material, but it has to be at least somewhat interesting to someone versed in the field.
But I see this lab work-oriented phenomenon increasingly often in biology/medicine-related research. A supervisor/PI hands a lab protocol to a PhD student and they have to follow it to a T. Ve
Observe, predict, test (Score:3)
Observe, predict, test.
Nobody says *how* you should go about doing the "predict" part, so long as you test carefully afterwards. It happens that in certain fields of science, especially fundamental physics, prediction has become very difficult. And that's why we need a bunch of theoreticians developing wild new theories which we, the experimentalists, will then test. But as I said, this process isn't easy and takes some time. It takes time to develop the theory far enough to make concrete, testable predictions, and it takes time to develop the technology to carry out those tests.
Take string theory. Nobody in particle physics is under any illusion that this has been through the complete scientific process. String theory is not a scientific result, it is merely an intermediary phase in the discovery of something more complete than the existing Standard Model.
A Very Old Problem (Score:3)
How would I know? (Score:2)
Difficult to say. Might I suggest doing some sort of experiment?
answer: No (Score:3)
string theory is mocked by over half of physicists as being useless and unverifiable. In fact some it's predictions such as SUSY have taken huge hits in the last ten years.
Non-Science (Score:2)
This is the basis of the split with Bohr and Einstein so long ago that in my view even now has not been satisfactorily resolved. When things are too small to measure, its fine to dream up ideas, but this should lead to finding a way to measure objectively or its really just fiction.
Always the same stupidity... (Score:3)
As soon as some discipline has identified a method that actually works, some idiots crop up that claim it is too much effort and try to do things on the cheap, despite it being well-known that that does not work. Whether it is some physicists abandoning the scientific method, software creation with barely capable people, teaching that ignores that the person of the teacher is central, stability of the financial system, vaccinations, keeping peace, maintaining freedoms, etc.
Getting to a point where things actually work is hard. But it seems that staying there is even harder, because many humans cannot recognize that many things take real effort to do right and all shortcuts come at a hefty price.
No. (Score:2)
There's no such thing as "post-empirical science." That sort of scholarship already has a name: "religion."
Cosmos Exemplified This (Score:2)
It is all about the Benjamins (Score:2)
As long as they get funding, they don't care. Sticks and stones, etc.
Cut off their funding, and it will all fade away into who-cares-ville.
Many-Worlds Hypothesis (Score:3)
I think the short answer to the title is 'no'. There have been times in science when we have had no good experiments we could do with the apparatus we have at the time, and have had to speculate. Current theories about the inflationary period of the Big Bang are pretty odd, and very short of actual experiment. We have the LHC results which probe the quark-gluon state that we think existed at the time, and that tells that the physics isn't completely different or unexpected; and yet the big picture doesn't really add up. We may eventually come to a state where we have done the best experiments we can, and in the end the theory with the prettiest equations will win. But I think we are some way from that yet.
However, there is one argument that does worry me. I have seen people argue this way...
If Universes were created at random we are extremely unlikely to live in one where the fundamental parameters lead to the sorts of complexity that lead to lifeforms such as us with the intelligence to appreciate it.
There must therefore be many other barren Universes where everything collapses to one massive particle, or everything stays as isolated simple particles. We cannot detect them in any way, but we know they must exist because we are here. In some ways they have affected our Universe, as they have contributed to the overall probability that we can exist.
This is a strange idea. Some people think it is obvious. It feel to me like a convenient piece of sophistry to dump a lot of improbability that you cannot account for. I have to admit that if Universes sprang into being at random, then this argument would work in just this way, but I still don't trust it as an argument. This even stretches our use of the verb 'to be' beyond any other usage. 'Are there' other Universes, if we do not share a time-line? Or 'were there'. Or will we have to invent a new tense? It is going to be interesting to see how this one plays out.
In the meantime, I don't think any scientist, anywhere, is abandoning the search for experimental proof.
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not being ignored, that is just nonsensical rubbish without merit.
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Your self delusion and ignorance of experimentally verified quantum nature of electron orbitals is epic. That rubbish you link does not make one prediction verified by experiment.
angels.....on the head of a pin (Score:2)
That obviously depends on the size of the 'head or a pin'
Anyway shouldn't we be talking aboint the point of a pin which is a lot smaller.
And an 'angel' is 1,000 feet (altitude)
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That actually depends on the claims made. If, like the quoted string theorists, they claim to have the truth, then it is indeed religion. If they just claim to have a possible model, then it is scientific modeling, which is science. Experimentation only becomes critically important to the scientific method when you claim to have something accurately modeling reality. You can do a lot of scientific work and never do one experiment.