[Jun8]

As always, many of Feynman's points are spot on. Yet, why do I get a sense of unease after reading this piece? I think his description of the scientific process is right, but its a bit too simplistic (of course, he was giving a address, not a lecture, but still). Specifically,

1. Very cleverly, he mixes in examples of absolute crackpottery (e.g Uri Geller, reflexology) with those of somewhat researchers (e.g. the psychology student) who may be somewhat clueless in their experimental procedures but are trying to do valid science, which in our minds equate both.

2. He seems to say: "This is the way to proceed scientifically, you can't do it another way", where the methods he alludes to are the methods of experimental physics. (simply put) In physics you do your experiment, carefully controlling factors and you get your result. Unfortunately, this method is either hard to apply (e.g. in the rat experiment, there are so many variables to control, some unknown, because it's a complex organism, now think of experiments on humans) or downright impossible (e.g. the educational problem he mentions, which is a good example of a Wicked Problem, we're still discussing solutions).

3. Expanding on the education system point: Feynman says: " A teacher who has some good idea of how to teach her children to read is forced by the school system to do it some other way--or is even fooled by the school system into thinking that her method is not necessarily a good one." But therein lies the big problem: nobody can agree on how to measure how good a system, observe the huge teachers's ratings debates taking place in the US. What Feynman misses, I think, is that these are socio-scientific problems, if scientific problems have O(n^2) complexity these have O(2^n). You definitely need the scientific method but that's not going to be enough in attacking these problems.

4. Feynman also directs his assault solely on the "experts" and charlatans who create and perpetuate these stupid pesudoscientific theories, e.g. "ordinary people with commonsense ideas are intimidated by this pseudoscience." What would be a better way to eradicate such tendencies would be to study why human beings are so susceptible to ideas like religion, UFOs, superstition, etc., i.e. target the consumers rather than dealers.

Of course, Feynman was a genius in Physics, in his intuitive grasp of complex physical concepts he may be the best in history. And from what I've ready about him he seemed to have a weak spot (like Newton's alchemy, Einsteins's reluctance to accept QM, etc.) for showmanship, by which I mean: when he got the momentum going with a good example/though/principle that has applications outside physics he was a bit too quick to overgeneralize.

[crusso]

I think your criticisms miss the mark by a long shot.

1. Mixes in? Is your charge that he tried to commit the fallacy of equivocation in some way? I'm not following how discussing the obvious abuse of integrity that Geller demonstrated and then the less-obvious abuse of integrity the psychology student demonstrated detracts from his point that integrity is really important to the usefulness of the Scientific method.

2. Seems to say? To me, he "seems to say" that a lack of integrity in the whole process is a commonly occurring characteristic of Cargo Cults. He seems to say that a lack of integrity diminishes the utility of the Scientific method.

3. You entirely missed the point of Feynman's education comment and the context of the part you quoted. Basically, he said that what we're doing to fix problems in education isn't working and we continue to rely on the same people and methods to fix them. The funny thing is that here we are almost 40 years after Feynman gave that address and we've never added the integrity that he spoke about to the process of improving education in America. As with the Cargo Cults, it's not surprising that results haven't improved.

4. This item/suggestion makes no sense. Feynman isn't proposing a holistic plan to fix the problem. The speech we're discussing was a commencement address to upcoming graduates from an institute that trains Scientists. Why wouldn't it be entirely appropriate to urge new Scientists to consider the importance of integrity to the Scientific method?

> Of course, Feynman was a genius in Physics, in his intuitive grasp [...]

I don't think you made one semi-solid point in your critique of this address by Feynman; but you're going to double-down and start to generalize about how Feynman was too quick to overgeneralize? Are you trying to be ironic?

[Jun8]

1. There's a huge difference between the Geller and the psychology student, the former does lack the integrity but you can't talk of "abuse of integrity" for the student, because (i) she was doing things in the prescribed way (unless, of course, you're ready to say almost all psychology departments (and most other humanities, too) are guilty of the same sin, and (ii) even if she did want to do a better experiment, in general it's not obvious how to do it in most cases in such disciplines. The point about putting the rat maze in sand is far-fetched (how many of us took such precautions in our PhD experiments). My point is that there's absolutely no comparison between Geller and his ilk and the student. Feynman is beating up on psychology here, I think, because it's not as rigorous as physics.

3. I think you missed my point here, based on your mentions of "same people" , "integrity", etc. Many, many approaches have been used to solve the education problem in the US in the past 40 years, some quite innovative, and not by the same people either. People from outside the field, like Feynman or more recently Bill Gates, think that the problem is just a case of idiots doing the same old thing, once you bring about the better methods, "integrity" (in this case perhaps may refer to teacher's ratings) and money, the problem may be solved relatively easily. As we have seen, that is not the case, because although the above sentiments contain most of the truth, there are other factors affecting the problem, too. The point is, unless you can attack all the factors at once, you won't be able to solve such deep sociological problems, which is why these require scientific++ approaches.

As for your tone, why not try to be a little more humble, rather than "makes no sense", "semi-solid" etc., why not "I didn't understand", even if the argument does suck.

[crusso]

1. I don't understand. Are you saying that Feynman needed to NOT point out a flaw in the psychologist's method because she was doing things in a prescribed way or because doing things with "Scientific integrity" wouldn't have been easy?

> Feynman is beating up on psychology here, I think, because it's not as rigorous as physics.

I don't think the text of the address supports that conclusion. Even he were doing that, it doesn't mean that his argument was unsound. I don't understand the motivation for your ad hominem here, but I note the invalidity of your argument.

3. I don't understand. Does the fact that we have plenty of examples of 180 degree turnarounds in academic performance in the worst school districts in the country not indicate that there are solutions that empirically show a better way to run an education system not put a lie to your claim that this is not a problem that we can apply success-based Scientific-like methods to? I would most humbly suggest that you view the documentary entitled "Waiting for Superman" which documents successful education initiatives in some of the worst school districts in the country that are resisted by teachers' unions and the politicians whom they fund for obvious money and power reasons. Feynman, 40 years ago, had remarkable understanding of the problem that we're still dealing with today.

> As for your tone, why not try to be a little more humble,

I don't understand. Am I supposed to feign ignorance when I thoroughly understand the arguments you attempted to make and spotted why they are invalid? Would dissembling make me humble? I think they would make my rebuttal less clear and needlessly disingenuous... but we can try it your way for this post.

[Retric]

His point is science is all or nothing. If you half ass it your simply wasting time.

Perhaps you can't do controlled experiments with people that's fine, give up and go work on something else don't compromise and still call it science. Because your results are meaningless.

PS: How much useful information has been gained from human nutritional experimentation over the last 50 years?

[Jun8]

I disagree. Take the education reform problem (in the US). A number of solutions have been proposed, which one should we implement, or should we come up with a new one? Are teachers' ratings completely bogus, as some claim, or can they be used to rate them. People want answers, you can't just give up. Not everybody can close shop and work on other, more well-defined problems because these problems need to be solved, or lacking that, addressed. You have to come up with a methodology. Now, you may not want to call it "science" but that doesn't make the results meaningless.

Similar problems that require a combination of statistics, biology, psychology, ethics, and politics:

* Should universities stop affirmative action, should they stop reverse affirmative action for Asians?

* Should we (like Norway) enact laws that require a certain percentage of women on company boards?

* Should there be gender equality (in the sense of numbers) in almost all professions? Are men (or women) more suitable for certain jobs?

etc., I'm sure you can think of many more.

[crusso]

> Take the education reform problem (in the US).

I think you're completely wrong about education. The science is already there. We have empirical evidence on ways to improve it. The problems with education are almost all political... but this thread isn't really about education, though is it? From reading your posts, it seems like you really want this thread to be a battle over education and if I had to guess I'd say that Feynman's insightful almost throwaway comment on education really struck a nerve.

> Now, you may not want to call it "science" but that doesn't make the results meaningless.

If you're not doing good science, then your results will likely only be indirectly useful. The last 50 years of increasing education expenditures without showing any results speaks volumes about what a tragedy having an attitude like yours is. Maybe if someone had listened to Feynman in 1974 and quickly eliminated any educational expenditures that didn't produce results, we wouldn't be having this argument.

[Retric]

You can do meaningful science with people. There are plenty of solid drug studies out there, and even good education research. What I mean is there are experiments you don't get to do with people and when that happens you need to move on and not try and get by half assing it.

So, you don't get to see what happens when people eat the exact diet you want them to for 20 years. Having people fill out servery on what they ate is not a reasonable substitute. In this case there are options like sending people actual food. You don't know if they eat it, but you do know you sent it and you can measure outcomes based on what food was sent.

PS: Also, most of what your talking about is almost pure politics. When politics and science really clash it's rare for science to make much headway. See: Climate Change, Evolution, etc.

[evincarofautumn]

I’m not sure his generalisations were really overgeneralisations. When you have a strong intuition about something, it’s going to be a real challenge to cast it into words for an audience that lacks that intuition. You can impart understanding but not sense—like explaining colour to someone blind from birth.

[crusso]

Right. As was typical, Feynman had a level of understanding of a great many things that were difficult to convey to even some of the smartest people like a bunch of Caltech graduates.

The beauty of his genius was that he managed to distill an important essence of Science into a relatively short and entertaining address that he could pass on to those new Scientists in hopes that they would grasp it as a useful concept that could be applied to their careers, the Scientific community, and to society in general.

The fact that we're still quoting it here on the Internet and thus passing on the wisdom is a nice bonus.

[ErrantX]

> Right. As was typical, Feynman had a level of understanding of a great many things that were difficult to convey to even some of the smartest people like a bunch of Caltech graduates.

And indeed, he even makes that exact point in this speech.