[bchjam]

> No experiment could ever possibly hurt scientific knowledge

what about one with a falsified result?

fwiw I think convexity and understanding are relatively orthogonal, but how could one employ the former without the latter? However the author's position seems to be more that gaming systems works better than exploring their contexts. Sometimes you might make more money in less time, but the money is all you'll get out of it. In practice, maybe understanding and convex payoff functions are both useful at different scales.

[hannasanarion]

Falsification is something that you do to hypotheses, not data. Experiments that Aristotle performed to demonstrate classical elemental theory are still valid and useful, his incorrect interpretation of the underlying mechanisms notwithstanding

[systoll]

You’re using a different meaning when you talk about falsifying a hypothesis.

From Oxford via https://google.com/search?q=falsify :

1. alter (information, a document, or evidence) so as to mislead. "a laboratory which was alleged to have falsified test results"

vs

2. prove (a statement or theory) to be false. "the hypothesis is falsified by the evidence"

[thaumasiotes]

> Falsification is something that you do to hypotheses, not data.

Nonsense. Falsification of data happens all the time. But more importantly, falsification as applied to hypotheses and falsification as applied to data are two completely different concepts.

Falsification in the sense "we tried this, and got unexpected results, disconfirming our hypothesis" is something you do to hypotheses. This is Popperian falsification.

In the sense of what happens to data, falsification is "we tried this, and got data that disconfirmed our hypothesis. But instead of recording that data, we recorded spurious data which confirms our hypothesis". (Or, of course, "we didn't try anything, but here are some numbers that we feel reflect what would have happened if we had".) This is falsification in the same sense you'd see it applied to, say, accounting records.

[bchjam]

If someone knowingly uses bad data, aren't the claims supported by it false?

[Nasrudith]

Technically that is fallacious - a lie doesn't make the claim false it not being true does. Rarely frauds can be accidentally accurate.

It has a bit of a meta role I suppose - a system must be robust enough with replication that it shouldn't matter. Knowing bad actors are about can promote better verification practices than a blind trust.

[yesenadam]

I thought Aristotle didn't do experiments.

[hannasanarion]

Sure he did. He didn't follow the modern Bacon/Popper empirical method with testable hypotheses, but he still performed experiments and drew conclusions based on what he saw.

All beside the point: his observations are not invalid, his conclusions are

[yesenadam]

He made observations, sure, but what are some actual experiments he did? (Or where to read about that?)

[mattkrause]

So women do have fewer teeth?!

[coldtea]

No, but not because Aristotle was against observation. Just because he either miscounted or trusted a wrong earlier observation. What he wrote is:

"”Males have more teeth than females in the case of men, sheep, goats, and swine; in the case of other animals _observations have not yet been made_”

Emphasis mine.