The Infallibility of Science

[yallerdawg]

From “Infallibility and Its Errors, Part 2: The Infallibility of Science"

Source: Patheos, by Father Seán ÓLaoire, PhD

*****

Science as Revelation

The scientific method itself, though it does, indeed, deliver significant practical benefits, is based on probabilities, typically at “p-values” at less than 5% -which means there’s only a 5% chance that the results happened randomly. Thus, “probable” is conflated with “proven.” So, in fact, experimental science can never prove anything but merely establish probabilities based on an acceptance of its postulates and methodology. And it’s a very recent and young story. Other stories have been just as satisfying to the populace and lasted much longer. Since it’s another kind of storytelling, then, like all stories and storytelling cultures, it is only consistent within its own parameters and methodology. Once you accept the postulates and parameters and methodology of any storytelling culture, then its “findings/truths” are consistent.

Fundamentalism in science

For all its braggadocio, militant atheism has a much more difficult time trying to prove that God does not exist than timorous, doubt-filled theists/believers have in proving She does exist. This is true, firstly, since absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; and, secondly, even a single black swan, however long it takes us to discover it, immediately negates the proclamation that “all swans are white.” Moreover, when you get down to the individual arguments, the application of Occam’s Razor heavily favors the existence of some kind of mastermind behind project cosmos. Parsimony and elegance favor God’s existence.

Major faux pas by prominent scientists

Even when these grievous errors have been acknowledged, a smug scientific attitude will then say that, though individual scientific claims have been subsequently discredited, the scientific method per se, is infallible, since it always, eventually, corrects its own errors. This is a very handy “blank check” that absolves it from all previous sins and promises that even present hidden sins, once they are discovered, will be remedied. Nice piece of self-exculpation! So, we are expected to still trust science since its present “truths” will be abandoned once contradictory truths have been established. Thus, not only does it forgive itself for past sins, it prophylactically forgives itself for its current crop of errors because someday they, too, will simply be past mistakes. How can you lose with that kind of deft footwork?

Like all of the storytelling cultures that preceded it, science is very fond of patting itself on the back. But it, too, will prove to be a temporary story, and will give way to a much greater future story. I believe that that future story will be some form of deeper mysticism whose adherents I’ve called, “mysticists” – people for whom the mind, heart, and soul are a trinity of antennae, receiving, deciphering, and acting upon unconditional love, pure awareness, and unity consciousness.

Read it all (and more!) at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/companionsonthejourney/2018/02/infallibility-science-fundamentalism-truth/


The new gods?

[MineralMan]

1. How sad for that author.

How embarrassing...

[Cartoonist]

2. For the first time in my life

I have NEVER heard science called infallible. However, I have heard that the Pope is infallible. I think it was in first grade I was told that. And I've heard it many times since.

[yallerdawg]

11. About that papal infallibility:

Being raised Roman Catholic, I “knew” without a shadow of a doubt, that the pope was infallible. I was convinced that he communed daily with God and was given nuggets of knowledge to guide his one-billion-plus globally-scattered flock. It was sobering to learn that he was infallible only under very specific circumstances i.e., when he spoke “ex cathedra” on matters of faith and morals to be held by all the faithful. This circumscribed his omniscience significantly but he was still infallible under those constrained limitations. [In actual fact, the only example of an ex cathedra decree took place in 1950, when Pope Pius XII defined the Assumption of Mary as an article of faith.] Then I began to read church history and discovered the unbridled skullduggery including assassinations by wannabe popes of sitting popes whom they then succeeded to “the throne of Peter.” Throw into the mix sexual misconduct and all manners of Machiavellian intrigue. To make matters worse, I discovered that the doctrine of infallibility had only been decreed in 1870 at the First Vatican Council, in order to compensate a petulant Pius IX for the loss of his temporal power – the Papal States.

Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/companionsonthejourney/2018/02/infallibility-mass-media-fake-news/#0pKseRHseAUyQcWa.99

[Cartoonist]

14. Thanks for the laugh

Only partly infallible. Ha!

[Permanut]

3. Nonsense..

the scientific method has "sins"?

[MineralMan]

6. Only if you are a priest who is writing about science.

Then, you are allowed to pretend anyone has ever said that science is "infallible," and call the scientific method "sinful." As a priest, you are allowed those things in your writings.

[VMA131Marine]

4. For a scientific discovery you need 5-sigma significance

That's a 99.9999% probability that your results are not due to chance alone. I don't know where the author gets 5% from.

[AtheistCrusader]

9. Got it from the same cavity he stores his melon in.

[marylandblue]

16. 5% is common in medical research

Last edited Thu Mar 8, 2018, 04:17 PM - Edit history (1)

Where all you are a looking for is a 95% chance that a drug improved a condition, and most sick people will take those odds. Those are the results that make the newspapers most often and they are often proven wrong by later studies. Also 95% is used for the margin of error in election polls and those are in the news all the time.

99.9999% is used in particle physics where physicists really don't want to take a chance of going decades down a blind alley. New particles are rarely discovered so this higher standard is rarely mentioned in the news.

Other science fields uses various other cutoffs depending on how critical it is to avoid false positives.

[Voltaire2]

21. All done with an assumption of fallibility

You know, sort of like the exact opposite of the horseshit in the op.

[Igel]

22. It's common in social sciences.

Also in linguistics.

Even in a lot of science, you don't get 5 sigma. That's really what you get with infrequent hits given a lot of data.

Things aren't considered "proven" at p = 0.05. In fact, there's controversy over using that as the guideline. A lot of studies have p = 0.01, but 0.05 seems to be the minimum cut-off for "maybe there's something here." But reproducibility is important and lots of p = 0.05 results are ditched. It's worse given the propensity to data dredge. Once watched a PhD say he used his data and ran 57 different tests (a tour de force for a historian) on his data set and found--gasp--something like 3 significant results. Which is pretty much what you expect given random variation. But he impressed himself and most of the people who were listening. (Of course, his PhD was in education and his audience education folk.)

Oddly, he condemned data dredging when I asked him. I had a real struggle with not asking him if he had a clue what it was, or if he just disliked the competition from others.

(As for reproducibility, notice that in particle physics it's hard for another researcher to set up similar equipment and run the same experiment a few times. Most physicists don't have the funds to order an LHC from Fischer Scientific.)

[ExciteBike66]

5. Come on, yaller, you're making my eyes hurt they are rolling so much!

I can't tell who this article is attacking, since I have never met anyone who said that the current body of scientific knowledge is 100% proven and true. This is like a flamethrower aimed at a whole field of straw-giants...

I can tell the author at least believes in Santa Claus, though, since "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".

[Voltaire2]

7. Impressive.

You’ve outdone yourself mining the depths of anti-intellectual idiocy on the Internets.

[yallerdawg]

12. Which are you?

...I find that the spectrum of reactions to any proposition can be divided into five basic stances.

First, come the Innocent who have no boundaries to their credulity. They are totally open and simply swallow any thesis without objection.

In group two are the Naïve. These, while not being quite as gullible as the Innocent, have very permeable boundaries and, after a few tentative objections or questions, succumb completely to the arguments of the proponent.

In group number three are the Critical Thinkers who examine all of the evidence with an open but very discerning mind, and are prepared to abandon even fervently held prior positions in the light of powerful new evidence. This, I believe, is the optimal stance when dealing with any topic including religion, revelation and science.

In group number four are the Skeptics, who are partially closed, and who only open up to “extraordinary” evidence. I find myself, here, in opposition to Carl Sagan’s statement that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. I have great regard for Sagan, but this is one of those statements which sound very profound but which, I believe, are actually pretty dumb. Why would any claim need to be subjected to test criteria or protocols which we would also not apply to the “hard sciences”? For example, the standards which mainstream science demands of parapsychological research are way in excess of what it demands of its own research. And even when top class research in parapsychology uses these “ultra-protocols”, the skeptics (and especially the debunkers) are still not convinced.

Finally, comes the Debunker group. These are people who are totally closed and whose modus operandi is to arrogantly act as if they already have the full truth, and any claim that might make a dent in that infallible edifice must ipso facto be false. Without ever examining the evidence, they “know” that the new claim cannot be true. All that remains to be done is to find the best way to discredit the research or, failing that, the good ol’ “argumentum ad hominem” is frequently summoned to the fray. This group cleaves to its positions with a religious fervor that would put even the most fanatical God-fearers to shame.

[MineralMan]

17. Did you write that, yallerdawg? Never mind.

I see it comes from the same source as the utter nonsense you quoted in your OP. Pretty arrogant of this priest, I think, to categorize in that way. He appears to think quite highly of himself, indeed.

[Heddi]

19. I'm sorry, but anyone who calls Carl Sagan "dumb"

can go straight to hell.

Let me guess, Yaller. You consider yourself to be in the highest plane of understanding, the most open of mind, the purest of soul. The rest of us...we just haven't been as enlightened as you. Ah, if only we were so anointed with your intelligence, your open mindedness to understand what garbage science is and how God has all the answers. BUt our closed, Atheistic minds....asking questions, reading books...thinking for ourselves....how pedestrian. We should just swallow the shit sandwich we're fed, say how delicious it is and ASK FOR MORE.

[DetlefK]

8. Errors... so many errors in this "analysis".

and, I humbly suggest, using my own definition of “truth” – something is true if it transforms me and aligns me with God/Love.

Somewhere out there a philosopher, a mathematician and a logician just killed themselves.



And the scientific community’s response to Sheldrake, and many other brave scientific souls before him, shows us that power corrupts, and that questioning authority is frequently seen as anti-social, unscientific or irreligious. No prophet is accepted in his own household.

If Sheldrake rejects that we use these hypotheses as axioms, he should at least give us an outline how likely it is that these hypotheses have been accepted as true due to a statistical error. You know, as he should do as a scientist.



Moreover, when you get down to the individual arguments, the application of Occam’s Razor heavily favors the existence of some kind of mastermind behind project cosmos.

If we apply Occam's Razor in this way, then "God-did-it" is the answer to EVERYTHING.



I find myself, here, in opposition to Carl Sagan’s statement that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. I have great regard for Sagan, but this is one of those statements which sound very profound but which, I believe, are actually pretty dumb.

Because extraordinary claims being correct or wrong has extraordinary real-world implications. Duh!



Why would any claim need to be subjected to test criteria or protocols which we would also not apply to the “hard sciences”? For example, the standards which mainstream science demands of parapsychological research are way in excess of what it demands of its own research. And even when top class research in parapsychology uses these “ultra-protocols”, the skeptics (and especially the debunkers) are still not convinced.

I would loooooooooooooooooooooooooooove to see an example for his claim that the criteria for topics outside of mainstream-science are tougher.



Even when these grievous errors have been acknowledged, a smug scientific attitude will then say that, though individual scientific claims have been subsequently discredited, the scientific method per se, is infallible, since it always, eventually, corrects its own errors. This is a very handy “blank check” that absolves it from all previous sins and promises that even present hidden sins, once they are discovered, will be remedied. Nice piece of self-exculpation! So, we are expected to still trust science since its present “truths” will be abandoned once contradictory truths have been established. Thus, not only does it forgive itself for past sins, it prophylactically forgives itself for its current crop of errors because someday they, too, will simply be past mistakes. How can you lose with that kind of deft footwork?

Waitwaitwaitwaitwait.
First he attacks scientists for being arrogant and making errors. And then he attacks science because enthusiastically getting rid of errors is a bad thing?
First he explains that science does not lead to indefeatable answers, and then he attacks science for admitting that science is fallible?



Like all of the storytelling cultures that preceded it, science is very fond of patting itself on the back. But it, too, will prove to be a temporary story, and will give way to a much greater future story. I believe that that future story will be some form of deeper mysticism whose adherents I’ve called, “mysticists” – people for whom the mind, heart, and soul are a trinity of antennae, receiving, deciphering, and acting upon unconditional love, pure awareness, and unity consciousness.

Yeah... except that we already tried esoterics 500 years ago during the Renaissance. We only have science in the first place because esoterics was revealed to be an embarassing failure and we needed a replacement.

COME ON, BUDDY! If you want to trash the foundations of science, at least read up where these foundations come from.

[AtheistCrusader]

10. Author lost me at 'humbly suggest'. Humble my ass.

[edhopper]

13. lost me with

"militant atheist"

I swear, YD digs in all the fundamentalist quarries for this nonsense.

[Cuthbert Allgood]

15. That's just sad.

I would suggest a good reading of The Structure of Scientific Revolution by Thomas Kuhn for a better understanding of why pretty much every main point this joker rights is just patently untrue.

[longship]

18. Absolute rubbish!

That's all one can say in response to this.

[tonedevil]

20. What Father Sen Laoire, PhD...

fails to tell us is which militant atheists are trying to prove there is no God. To the best of my knowledge there isn't an Operation Disprove God. If there is such an effort I know why it is failing and they can stop now.
Although somehow in the Father's world timorous, doubt-filled theists/believers have been much more successful in proving the existence of God he again fails to provide any evidence of these successes. To say his definition of truth is not universally accepted is to be as generous as possible. I do not think the Father has the logical skills to convince anyone who wasn't already 100% convinced.