[nsainsbury]

Science does eventually self-correct, but unfortunately it takes far too long to do so.

One area I've studied pretty extensively is the history of cancer treatment. In the long story of the history of cancer treatment, it is absolutely scandalous how often the scientific consensus was wrong and persisted for years in spite of the evidence. For example, the radical mastectomy for the treatment of breast cancer continued to be used for many years, leaving many women disfigured, in spite of wide evidence that it did not produce better outcomes vs more restrained breast tissue removal.

In the history of science, many of these kinds of bad ideas have persisted simply due to deference/seniority - the incentives are all stacked towards paying your dues and not challenging the status quo and absolutely not towards being right/following the actual scientific method. There is a reason the saying "Science advances one funeral at a time" exists - as Max Planck noted: "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

[jcims]

I saw this first hand walking with my wife through two years of intensive cancer treatment. It seemed impossible to break through the ‘not standard of care’ wall to even incorporate low risk adjuvant therapies.

Overall it just felt like she was a hot potato and nobody wanted to put their name on *anything* outside of protocol. Even blood work. She was treated at the James Cancer Center in Ohio and we got second opinions from Cleveland Clinic and MD Anderson in New York. These are all fairly well regarded institutions in cancer treatment. I was expecting strong opinions and got hand waving and reluctance to interfere with any treatment selected by her primary oncologist. In the process of all of this i read hundreds of studies and research papers, spoke with numerous PIs, trial coordinators and industry reps. I couldn’t get any traction for anything and came away feeling a bit hopeless.

After it was all over i started making public offers of $25k as a starting point to just review her case from end to end to assess the quality of her care and determine if anything could be learned from it. The only takers I got for that were lawyers who were hoping to twist it into malpractice case, which I wasn’t interested in.

The experience left me extremely bitter about the current state of healthcare. After a while i was able to develop some empathy for the providers. They’re trapped in a system that mortgages their future with student loans and directly threatens their ability to cover with litigation and insurance. They have to stay on the rails or risk financial ruin.

[cgrealy]

> Science does eventually self-correct, but unfortunately it takes far too long to do so.

So kinda like the democracy then.... the worst system, apart from all the others (paraphrased)?

[anitil]

The oil drop experiment was a nice example of this same phenomenon - a slow correction over time - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_drop_experiment

I remember seeing a plot of the values over time, but my google-fu is failing me.

[function_seven]

I found this article that has a whisker plot.

https://alexholcombe.medium.com/confirmation-bias-in-science...

It that the one you remember?

[anitil]

Thanks! It must be that one

[overgrownzygote]

This seems to be a particularly salient issue in the area of medicine, since many practice but may not actually “do science” unless they’re affiliated with a university or research hospital.

Most doctors are more like engineers than physicists.

[whatshisface]

They're more like airplane mechanics than engineers. Few doctors design treatments or procedures but they're very careful about performing them according to the right practices.

[ketzo]

I just got the horrifying image of a lead engineer who refuses to move on from Java 9 because "it's all you need," but they're working on human bodies. Yeesh.

[nlitened]

I just got the horrifying image of a lead engineer who jumps onto a newest JS framework of the day because "it's exciting," but they're working on human bodies. Yeesh.

[im3w1l]

And yet scientific cancer treatments are miles and miles better than quackery.

[mike_hearn]

But the difference came about only due to relentless informed written criticism of scientists, many of whom happily described their critics as spreading misinformation (or similar words from their era).

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-0348-9008-3_...

"Even individual fanatic scientific advocates of the Einsteinian theory seem to have finally abandoned their tactic of cutting off any discussion about it with the threat that every criticism, even the most moderate and scrupulous ones, must be discredited as an obvious effluence of stupidity and malice"

People often present science as some sort of free-floating edifice that "self corrects" through mysterious mechanisms. It doesn't. Scientists with wrong ideas have to be explicitly corrected by other people, some of whom will be random Swiss patent clerks and other outsiders. Therefore you cannot have science without free speech, because otherwise there's no way for bad ideas to be corrected. It's as simple as that. And yet, academic "scientists" are often at the forefront of demanding it be shut down.

[beerandt]

Arguably it's scientific cancer treatments so frequently failing that lead the vast number of cancer quacks to quackery in the first place.

[kuhewa]

even if more cancer treatments didn't have horrible side effects and treatment increased survival rates for all cancers by a significant margin,

I think COVID has demonstrated that a substantial fraction of people would still be opting for quackery instead of conventional treatment.

[Broken_Hippo]

Sounds like someone pushing quackery, honestly. "Science-based medicine is flawed and sometimes make you feel bad! Obviously, you need quackery!"

This also paints a too-simple picture, since there are obvious things like the promise of quick recovery if you do simple stuff (cancer being a big one) and the alternative medicines seeming cheaper than regular medicine (It may be the only treatment you think you can afford in the US). Not to mention the dismal state of "Health classes" - I'm a little over 40, and those classes mostly just told you about the parts of the body, the food pyramid, and that sex was bad and would probably kill you through disease unless you only had sex with another virgin.