[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.