[somenameforme]

I don't think it's the "process" of science that achieved much of anything. You could go back thousands of years ago, teach everybody the scientific method in excruciating detail and it's unlikely much of anything would change. And vice versa the researchers in modern times producing work that has basically 0 ability to be replicated or those overtly pursuing their own biases are equally well aware of the scientific method.

It's actually somewhat hard to say what did change. Einstein, for instance, went to his grave rejecting the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics simply because he felt, solely due to his own personal biases, that the world must be deterministic and rational. His famous quotes like 'spooky action at a distance' or 'god doesn't play dice' were essentially sardonic mocking of the Copenhagen Interpretation, the interpretation we hold to be most accurate to this very day. That's not exactly the behavior of some guy able to step outside the normal ideological biases and bounds that constrains us all, to say the least.

But nonetheless something did change. And similarly, in modern times I think it's very arguable that science has again regressed. Trust in science and scientists isn't declining because of Facebook or Trump or whatever. It's declining because politics and science have once again become deeply intertwined - like they have been for about 99.99% of humanity's entire history, the overwhelming majority of which we achieved essentially 0 from a scientific perspective.

[jemmyw]

Einstein didn't outright reject the Copenhagen interpretation. We like a story, but such a story glosses over all the nuance and messy chaos of real life. The physicists of the time were friends and friendly rivals. We probably get the same for any story: there's the simple story most people believe, then several more complex stories and interpretations, then a chaotic and nuanced mess of data, then the actual goings on that weren't written, actions and thoughts and so forth. So we should always be very suspicious of pat stories about historical figures that are used for an argument about behavior.

[bawolff]

Also, its not like Einstein was rejecting the data, as far as i understand he just felt the theory was unsatisfying and was hoping to come up with a better one.

Something physicists are still trying to do to this day. Science is never done. There is no "final" theory.

[somenameforme]

I probably should have placed my other comment [1] as a response to yours in order to continue our discussion, as it won't appear when you view 'threads' on the HN UI. You can't really reject data (though you can reject how it is measured), but you can reject attempts to explain data - and that is precisely what he did, til his death, with quantum mechanics. That comment is a full-context letter from Einstein, in his own words, on this topic. His comments against it were harsh and highly prejudiced. He was, and remained, completely convinced of his own rightness, even though he had absolutely no justification for it, and every bit of evidence that existed seemed to falsify such a perspective.

And I'm not using this to argue that Einstein was somehow flawed. Rather I'm using it to argue that he was a human, and we all behave the same way. Putting scientists, or even science, on a pedestal is turning it into a cargo cult. Einstein's success was not driven by any systematically replicable method or anything of the sort. Rather he was an extremely intelligent human who happened to have biases for ideas that turned out to be completely correct in one dimension, and [probably] completely wrong in another.

This is also why increasing the number of physicists by 100x won't increase the rate of advances in physics by 100x, or even remotely close. There's even an argument it could viably reduce it by some sort of Malthusian crowding effect. Everybody scrapping for limited publication and attention pushes science more and more towards high brow click bait and vast sums of plausible sounding noise (which is easier than ever in modern times due to LLMs) can make it difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45640321

[somenameforme]

Yes, he did reject it, completely. In his own words:

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"We have become Antipodean in our scientific expectations. You believe in the God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world which objectively exists, and which I, in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture. I firmly BELIEVE [emphasis original], but I hope that someone will discover a more realistic way, or rather a more tangible basis than it has been my lot to find. Even the great initial success of the quantum theory does not make me believe in the fundamental dice-game, although I am well aware that our younger colleagues interpret this as a consequence of senility. No doubt the day will come when we will see whose instinctive attitude was the correct one."

Einstein, 1944

----

He rejected it based on his instincts. He felt it was wrong. Einstein in general poses a major problem to many of those of a certain mindset of what drives success in science and academia, because he was arguably the greatest scientist to have ever lived, yet he was no less possessed of the demons of bias, prejudice, and 'feels' than anyone else - if anything he seems to have suffered them perhaps even more greatly than average. As you can see in his own words, not only did he reject it - but he actively mocked the entire idea, repeatedly.

There's no nuance to be had there. The only issue is that Einstein's behavior, character, and even history largely contradicts the idealized view of science and scientists that many like to try to imagine, or push, now a days. It also again largely contradicts the ideal that science, in and of itself, is what drove such rapid progress. I think the truth is that we don't know what drove such rapid progress, but we can use people like Einstein (and many other great scientists it turns out...) to falsify most hypotheses.