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by SoftwareMaven 5288 days ago
I'm not sure John Ioannidis[1] would agree with you. The number of papers he has shown to be incorrect in some way is disturbing. I don't think anybody would say no progress is being made, but we are taking two steps back for every three forward.

The article did leave something critical out: what now? Reductionism doesn't seem to be working for systems like the human body (or psychology or climatology or...). So what do we do about it? I think that is what my grandparent reply meant by a new process to deal with complexity, because reductionism is failing to often in these systems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_P._A._Ioannidis
1 comments
mindstab 5288 days ago
I also don't think it's always the case disproving something is a step backwards, that still enhances our understanding of the topic.

Sure newton was essentially wrong, but a) newtonian physics is still a fine short hand for near earth simple stuff, and b) it's not like we lost understanding of the world, it was supplanted by a better more precise understanding

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jerf 5288 days ago
"I also don't think it's always the case disproving something is a step backwards, that still enhances our understanding of the topic."

In theory, yes, in practice, no. The human body is wildly complicated with an absolutely enormous state space, surrounded by an incomprehensibly larger possible state space that expresses our ignorance about what the body might be actually doing. Throwing a dart at random and eliminating some particular claim about the nature of that state space may impart vanishingly small fractions of a bit of information, roundable to zero with insignificant loss. Not entirely without value? Sure! Worth it? Well, losing the bet and coming up effectively empty in information a certain amount of the time is inevitable, but when you pretty much do nothing but lose, it's time to change your strategy.

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mindstab 5288 days ago
Which may be acceptable if we read science to equate to biochemisty.

But the author said "Science is failing us" not "Biochemistry".

And I still disagree, there is still tons of new amazing and effective stuff being churned out. If you want to draw a line in the sand and try not taking and new medicines invented after today and see how you do fine, but I'm going to keep up because I still think there is a lot that can be done and we've barely started

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