[torpidor]

Although you present it as ridiculous, whether or not 2+2=4 is actually a serious topic among mathematicians. The search term you are looking for is "alternative axiomatic set theories". The alternatives may or may not be useful, but a lot of math we use today was not originally useful and it's a good thing people worked on it.

I understand that you are concerned about a general distrust of science that stands in the way of human progress. I am too. But this distrust is only partly caused by "those with an agenda". The other part is that science is sometimes oversold by zealous adherents. Then, when the results are more moderate, people feel lied to and they grow distrust. Being more critical about science, far from being the problem, is actually the solution to the problem you are concerned about.

Elsewhere in the thread the question of eugenics etc have been raised. And I understand you know they are psuedo-science etc., but without you personally labeling all the pseudoscientists how is someone supposed to tell the difference? (And if there's an oracle who can tell us what is true or false we can just use that, we don't need science.)

A more modern example might be this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26834996. tl;dr it is a quite well-designed, peer-reviewed meta-analysis published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology from a credible researcher who concludes that precognition exists (which is ESP, basically). Now obviously that is bullshit, but A) isn't it a little backwards to say something is obviously bullshit when it has strong evidence behind it, B) if obvious bullshit can make it through the scientific process what does that say about the usefulness of that process?

The scientific method as it is practiced is deeply flawed. It is operated by fallible humans, funded (or not) to advance an agenda, and so on. At various times it has been the scientific view that the sun revolves around the earth, that electricity exists in two fluids, that flies are spontaneously generated from rotting meat, and on and on. Modern times are actually the golden era for scientific acceptance and its influence on human lives, and yet it is those same scientific discoveries – the combustion engine, atomic bomb, antibiotics and mass communication technology – that threaten our civilization.

Being critical of the scientific method is not only important, it is necessary. The temptation throughout human history is to find some "holy grail" that will lift humanity beyond its current vantage point. Once upon a time this was actually a holy grail, but in modern times science – perhaps due to its effectiveness – has often captured this slot in human psychology. But a grail science is not; it's a human system with human triumphs and human weaknesses and the sooner we get a realistic picture of that, the better for learning how to use it to achieve our objectives effectively.

[08-15]

> credible researcher who concludes that precognition exists

See, that's exactly what Popper referred to when he said that theories cannot be confirmed, only rejected. Simplified to that extent, it's not nearly correct, but apparently we need to simplify it even more to get through the thick skulls of people like Bem.

The theory Bem et.al. refuted is "ESP doesn't exist and if ESP does not exist, there is no effect in these experiments." That's a much bigger theory than "ESP doesn't exist". And indeed, every single time somebody purported to have evidence for ESP, it turned that the typically tiny effect was a flaw in the experimental design, be that due to fraud or incompetence.

> obviously that is bullshit

No, not at all. Nothing is obvious. It's bullshit by sound reasoning.

There aren't just two theories that are competing here ("ESP" and "no ESP"). There's also "this researcher is incompetent", "this researcher is a fraud", "these statistical methods are useless", "I'm high on crack and none of this real", etc. A priori, "ESP" and "no ESP" might be the most believable among those, but all the past evidence points strongly towards a combination of "this researcher is incompetent" and "these statistical methods are useless". That's why we can say that this is bullshit and not feel bad about it.

> if obvious bullshit can make it through the scientific process

A pay-to-play journal like F1000Research is part of the scientific process? That may be where your confusion comes from.

[torpidor]

> but all the past evidence points strongly towards a combination of "this researcher is incompetent" and "these statistical methods are useless".

Your arguments seem to be based in unfamiliarity with the paper. Bem is an extremely well-regarded researcher in social psychology, he has hundreds of papers, several of which are seminal in the field and boast thousands of citations (this paper in particular has a citation score of 700+). Moreover this is a meta-analysis, not his own study.

While there has been some chatter about the statistical methods in those 700 citations, the fact is the methods are a lot better than the average social psychology paper (and this paper has attracted extraordinary scrutiny for the obvious reason). So if there is a problem in the paper (and of course there must be) there is a much larger problem in the standard practices in the field.

> pay-to-play journal like F1000Research

The original paper was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vd-Z7x...) but their website is down

> every single time somebody purported to have evidence for ESP, it turned that the typically tiny effect was a flaw in the experimental design, be that due to fraud or incompetence.

This is incorrect for the simple reason that it is much easier to make claims than it is to investigate them, and therefore, not all claims can be investigated. Perhaps you meant to say that of the proper subset of things we investigated turned out to be methodologically flawed, but then we have situations like the present paper, which somehow got through peer review. Of course we can continue to poke at it until we find what is wrong since we "know" it "has to to be there", but if science only produces the correct answer when we make it match the answer in the back of the textbook, it doesn't seem a good method for finding anything out.

[spruciefic399]

I agree completely with what you wrote, but wanted to add something, which is a comparison between reactions to the Bem ESP study and work on the EM Drive (https://www.space.com/40682-em-drive-impossible-space-thrust...).

At some level, both of these are ostensibly bullshit. The ESP study results fly in the face of all known physical laws, but so do the EM Drive results. In the former case, you might say that the scientific method is obviously flawed, or that psychology isn't a science; in the latter case, though, you say "someone presented anomalous results that need to be explained," but we don't question the scientific process or physics as a science. This is even though in both cases, anomalous results were presented, people expressed disbelief in the results, and a lot of time and energy were spent trying to explain the anomalies. I think of both of them as akin to scientific illusions or magic tricks, where an anomalous result is observed, that is so astonishing, but in which a lot of explanations that immediately come to mind can be ruled out initially, and people spend a lot of time coming up with more satisfying explanations.

The Bem study has not really ever been accepted as evidence of ESP in psychology. What it led to were a lot of sophisticated discussions about Bayesian versus frequentist inference, and study design. If the response were to just dismiss things with handwaving as not being "real science" I think none of that discussion about Bayesian inference would have been gained. In the same way, I think it's safe to say that something has been learned about engineering phenomena, even if relatively minor, by studying the EM Drive.

Science as it is practice is deeply flawed, because, as you say, humans are flawed. But another issue I think is that science, even when it isn't flawed, is very unpredictable and often harder than it seems. It's not just that a lot of flawed theories were once accepted scientific positions, it's also the case that a lot of currently accepted positions were once seen as lacking in evidence or even preposterous. The hubris and gatekeeping that accompanies a lot of modern science is counterproductive not only because it's naive and disingenuous, but also because in many ways it shuts down systematic discussion, which constitutes the scientific process itself.

[crazydoggers]

> The scientific method as it is practiced is deeply flawed.

That's a controversial statement, and I'd have to disagree with that.

> Being critical of the scientific method is not only important, it is necessary. The temptation throughout human history is to find some "holy grail" that will lift humanity beyond its current vantage point.

That's a true and important point. However, it's also important that the critique be logical and well constructed. This article makes a number of logical fallacies, and is political in nature. It's using age old science denial tricks to sow doubt, rather than improve the scientific method in any actionable way.