I think the error is putting trust in scientists as people, instead of putting trust in science as a methodology. The methodology is designed to rely on trusting a process, not trusting individuals, to arrive at the truth.
I guess it also reinforces the supreme importance of reproducibility. Seems like no research result should be taken seriously until at least one other scientist or group of scientists are able to reproduce the result.
And if the work isn't sufficiently defined to the point of being reproducible, it should be considered a garbage study.
There is no way to do any kind of science without putting trust in people. Science is not the universe as it is presented. Science is the human interpretation of observation. People are who carry out and interpret experiments. There is no set of methodology you can adopt that will ever change that. "Reproducibility" is important, but it is not a silver bullet. You cannot run any experiment exactly in the same way ever.
If you have independent measurements you cannot rule out bias from prior results. Look at the error bars here on published values of the electron charge and tell me that methodology or reproducibility shored up the result. https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/264/timeline-of-meas...
TFA is about a person who literally faked the observations. Everyone on this sub is trying to shoehorn in their preferred view of "how to fix science" when the problem here has nothing to do with any of it.
The initial GP comment made the point that, at some level, science requires trust. And (in the case of TFA) specifically trust that the person making the observations is actually performing the experiments and recording them correctly -- rather than making them up. You can verify and replicate (and we do quite a bit of that, modulo the fact that resource constraints are a huge problem in science) but without some degree of trust you're in trouble.
But the OP's suggestion was that to fix this specific problem of faked observations, you should separate interpretation and observation. I don't see how that fixes this problem at all. And in my view the first step in solving the problem is to come up with some sense of how serious the problem is: meaning, rather than dwelling on each terrible isolated case and panicking, try to determine what the actual prevalance is and what the overall impacts are. With that information you can make resource-allocation decisions in how to address it. The HN response is much too emotional for anything useful to come of it (except for more anger and confirmation bias.)
You're talking about science, the methodology. They're talking about science, the social institution. Scientists lying is a problem with the latter, not the former.
The way I sum it up is: science is a method, which is not equivalent to the institution of science, and because that institution is run by humans it will contain and perpetrate all the ills of any human group.
This error really went viral during the pandemic and continues to this day. We're in for an Orwellian future if the public does not cultivate some skeptic impulse.
I'd say the public needs to develop some rational impulse, it already has plenty of skepitism to the point where people no longer trust science the methodology. Instead, they genuinely believe there is some alternative to finding the truth, and now simply believe the same old superstitions and bunk that people have prior to the scientific revolution.
Speaking of Orwell, I don't think science comes into it. Rather, when people stop believing in democracy, things will degenerate into authoritarianism. It's generally pretty hard to use science the methodology to implement an authoritarian government as the scientific method by definition will follow the evidence, not the will of a dictator.
However, something that looks like science but isn't could be used, especially if the public doesn't understand science and thus can't spot things that claim to be science but don't actually follow the scientific method.
Critical thinking = the ability to be skeptical, literally it is the ability to criticize.
Great critical thinkers become lawyers, post modernist intellectuals, and other parts of the "talking" class of intellectuals. Unfortunately, it's far easier to talk shit than it is to build things. We've massively over-valued critical thinking over constructive thinking.
Most people want to dunk on science. Few people want to submit their own papers to conferences. Many people act like submitting papers is impossible for non-Ph.D's. We have a lack of constructive oriented thinking.
>Many people act like submitting papers is impossible for non-Ph.D's.
I agree. But academia reinforces this perception. I feel like PhD's only give serious consideration to the utterances of other PhD's. The rest of the public consists of the unwashed masses, and at best gets the smiling-nod treatment from teh PhD.
PS I (a non-PhD) managed to publish a paper during the pandemic (doi: 10.3389/fphar.2022.909945 ). One of the biggest barriers was the item you mentioned quoted above, and the bogeyman of "epistemic trespass" in general, as operating in my own psychology. I've since become noisy in advocating for the #DeSci movement.
> I'd say the public needs to develop some rational impulse, it already has plenty of skepitism to the point where people no longer trust science the methodology.
Methodologies are inanimate - I may trust that a methodology is fine, but once Humans become involved I do not trust.
> Instead, they genuinely believe there is some alternative to finding the truth
There are several alternate means, the field of philosophy (that birthed science) has been working on such problems for ages, and has all sorts of utility, just sitting there waiting to be used by Humanity.
> and now simply believe the same old superstitions and bunk that people have prior to the scientific revolution.
Not possible for you to know, unless there are indeed forms of supernatural (beyond current scientific knowledge) forms of perception.
> Rather, when people stop believing in democracy, things will degenerate into authoritarianism.
Once again, not possible for you to know.
> It's generally pretty hard to use science the methodology to implement an authoritarian government
COVID demonstrated that to be incorrect.
> as the scientific method by definition will follow the evidence, not the will of a dictator.
Incorrect. Something defined to be true necessarily being true only works in metaphysics, such as linguistics.
And again, the scientific method is inanimate.
> However, something that looks like science but isn't could be used, especially if the public doesn't understand science and thus can't spot things that claim to be science but don't actually follow the scientific method.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how comprehensively and accurately do you believe you understand science?
Science is an anarchic enterprise. There is no "one scientific method", and anyone telling you there is has something to sell to you (likely academic careerism). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method
How does this work for things like COVID vaccines, where waiting for a reproduction study would leave hundreds of thousands dead? Ultimately there needs to be some level of trust in scientific institutions as well. I do think placing higher value on reproducibility studies might help the issue somewhat, but I think there also needs to be a larger culture shift of accountability and a higher purpose than profit.
I believe if we taught philosophy in school to a non-trivial level we wouldn't have to rely on trust/faith.
I wonder if it's possible to get people to wonder why the one discipline that has the tools to deal with all of these epistemic, logical, etc issues isn't taught in school. You'd think it would be something that people would naturally wonder about, but maybe our fundamentalist (and false) focus on science as the one and only source of knowledge has damaged our ability to wonder independently.
Suppose you need to make a decision on a topic that's contingent on P being true, which someone has already tested. How would you go about making the decision without testing P yourself (because that would mean that you would have to do the same for every decision in your life)?
> How would you go about making the decision without testing P yourself (because that would mean that you would have to do the same for every decision in your life)?
This does not seem necessary for my ask above.
There may be many approaches, some impossible/invalid, but perhaps not all.
I guess it also reinforces the supreme importance of reproducibility. Seems like no research result should be taken seriously until at least one other scientist or group of scientists are able to reproduce the result.
And if the work isn't sufficiently defined to the point of being reproducible, it should be considered a garbage study.