Scientific research has changed the world. Now it needs to change itself.
Here we want to collect the problems and your ideas for better direction
Science is done by scientists. Not science can be wrong but the persons who do it must be wrong if we feel that the direction is wrong. As an engineer I learnt that the solving of problems should follow these 4 dimensions - first: technical or cultural (depends on kind of problem), second: environmental, third: social and forth: economical (for basic research less important) . If we follow these 4 dimentions in a convincing and strict manner we act sustainable even as scientists. There have been developed very sophisticated methodologies over the last 30 years to quantify the different aspects of problems or scientific items and aims. The names are Life Science Engineering, Design for Environment, Life Science Costing aso. I recommend scientists to study them and to apply these kind of overall balancing to evaluate their ideas and projects. The result is a useful help for complex decisions for open questions. Usually the nessesary datas in research stages are missing. Then work with szenarios and iteration half year wise.
Peter
why wrong ?
Science should be responsible for our 'progress' ? Progress has gone wrong, may be?
Science should put more emphasis on such 'soft'-topics like sociologie, philosophie but may also 'harder'-topic like organisation, mass-phenomena, administration.
I do not know how it is related.. Arrogance, selfishness, and fear has mislead our economies. (this one dominant law in present time)
Not change Science, but what we do out of it. That for do some more 'soft' science.
Lukas
Modern scientists are doing too much trusting and not enough verifying—to the detriment of the whole of science, and of humanity.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong
Science is done by scientists. Not science can be wrong but the persons who do it must be wrong if we feel that the direction is wrong. As an engineer I learnt that the solving of problems should follow these 4 dimensions - first: technical or cultural (depends on kind of problem), second: environmental, third: social and forth: economical (for basic research less important) . If we follow these 4 dimentions in a convincing and strict manner we act sustainable even as scientists. There have been developed very sophisticated methodologies over the last 30 years to quantify the different aspects of problems or scientific items and aims. The names are Life Science Engineering, Design for Environment, Life Science Costing aso. I recommend scientists to study them and to apply these kind of overall balancing to evaluate their ideas and projects. The result is a useful help for complex decisions for open questions. Usually the nessesary datas in research stages are missing. Then work with szenarios and iteration half year wise.
Peter
Science may go wrong when data are misleading or when misinterpreting the results of an experiment.
Careerism also encourages exaggeration and the cherry-picking of results. In order to safeguard their exclusivity, the leading journals impose high rejection rates: in excess of 90% of submitted manuscripts. The most striking findings have the greatest chance of making it onto the page. Little wonder that one in three researchers knows of a colleague who has pepped up a paper by, say, excluding inconvenient data from results “based on a gut feeling”. And as more research teams around the world work on a problem, the odds shorten that at least one will fall prey to an honest confusion between the sweet signal of a genuine discovery and a freak of the statistical noise. Such spurious correlations are often recorded in journals eager for startling papers. If they touch on drinking wine, going senile or letting children play video games, they may well command the front pages of newspapers, too.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong
The principles of science are clear and well-defined. If every scientist would work according this principles, science would be fine.
But science is done by humans. As long as science is done by humans, there will occur mistakes.
Rudolf Ritt
Hi,
Science has gone stray since its birth. Compare and contrast how many sharp brains working on how to kill faster, more, cheaper and so one, with how many brains are trying to correct their doings. I would like t re-phase your question and ask how can the science brought back to the service of humanity.
Dear Colleagues,
Good Day,
"HOW SCIENCE GOES WRONG – A RESPONSE
BY SMILODON'S RETREAT • OCT 18, 2013
The Economist published an article called “How Science Goes Wrong“.
First, it pissed me off. Just what we need more ammunition for the millions of people who already distrust science and promote policies and practices that are dangerous to everyone else.
Then I started thinking about it and conversing with someone whom I respect. After some consideration, I think that there are some fair points to be made by the writer of this article. However, I think that the writer made these points very sloppily and became part of the problem rather than part of the solution"....
Please, see the link for more detail...
http://www.skepticink.com/smilodonsretreat/2013/10/18/how-science-goes-wrong-a-response/
When Science Goes Wrong: Twelve Tales From the Dark Side of Discovery
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3152599-when-science-goes-wrong
Dear Hazim, dear Jeanan,
thank you both for finding the same question in literature. I did not look for it. I am sorry.
Dear Essam, my recommendation is to look before placing a question in RG if the same title has already been published.
Best Peter
When it is being used to fulfill the "commercial goal". There we condemn the beauty of it.
Thank you very much for raising such an interesting and insightful topic. I'll be looking forward for more discussion.
I believe that I know the answer to this very interesting question. This response would be useful for science, but dangerous for many scientists.
If we look at science in past time, we see that most of scientific hypothesis were wrong, and only ONE was right. I guess that current science is not much different. Just wait, and you will see what was the right in our science...
Science based on 100% correct theories would never move forward.
Dear Kotb & Eyerer
THANKS for your invitation.
I believe that "Science with no Conscience is doomed to fail". So far so observed!
Regards!
Dear Dr. Essam,
Science goes wrong when (1) it is separated from morality and human values, and (2) the commercial/ economic interests sideline the truth.
Scientific research has changed the world. Now it needs to change itself
A simple idea underpins science: “trust, but verify”. Results should always be subject to challenge from experiment. That simple but powerful idea has generated a vast body of knowledge. Since its birth in the 17th century, modern science has changed the world beyond recognition, and overwhelmingly for the better.
But success can breed complacency. Modern scientists are doing too much trusting and not enough verifying—to the detriment of the whole of science, and of humanity.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong
Science itself does not go wrong. On the other hand, applications of science or methods of science could go wrong. When these went wrong, rectifying should be made by human conscience.
Science is Holy!!!, True science can never go wrong!!!
It will go wrong if and only if:
It is misinterpreted.
It is used inappropriately.
Thanks for sharing.
I believe that as long as human greediness is dominating, science will 'take' one step ahead and two behind.
Morality is a serious issue with regard to the progress of science.
Dear Essam,
science doesn't go wrong. People (f/m scientists) do.
Best regards,
Igor
Hello everyone!
The question is important and we have great answers. For my part, I believe that science is doing well and what needs improvement is related to the use people make of the results.
Greetings!
I don't think science went wrong or people who tried to interpret/make it available to the general public wronged it , it is part of evolution (like other things that effect our lives).
I am intrigued my alchemist - making gold /diamonds . There are companies who did successfully come up with synthetic diamonds /pearls .
The question is - who will buy and why ???
Well , don't blame on science , it did try its best to come out with( close to) RICH form !!!!
Another issue that bugs me is Obesity - Well is food cheap (thanks to science) or has hunger increased (economic reasons) !!!
I guess people (everyone) are caught up with wanting, nobody takes the time to use their own responses decisively .
Honestly , science is ingrained in us , no room for assumptions Essam.
The fact that bad people were successful killing others by using scientific principles only prove its efficiency. If you repeat those methods, you will be able to kill again. So, this is "good" science, but manipulated by terrible people.
Killing people is not a science, People apply science to kill people.
Pure science does not know good and evil, what people do with the findings of science may be good or evil. Pure science is innocent.
(Is it the debt of the opium poppy that so many people suffer from drugs?)
Science can never be/go wrong. What may be wrong is false science or the wrong use of the scientific advances.
I think the wrong things should not be named science
and the wrong person of course is not scientist
Science is to bring something to new for usefulness .It may be either totally new research or in certain cases with certain modification for the betterment .
In this case it may not work out successfully & it may be considered as a failure . The same is possible only even for medical research with number of error & trials if the product comes out it may not be accepted to the medical profession . In this case also the science goes wrong & it is not accepted . Last but important for the researcher is scientific & technological & in certain cases with the hard labor of working for getting the result it may not come out as per the expectation . It is only in this line that science goes wrong .
This is my personal opinion
We can go wrong in science when we adopt a reductionist approach to science without thinking holistically on what the major problem is. While reductionism is necessary to simplify and tackle a complex problem in terms of its constituents, we miss solving the bigger problem if we just stay there.
Dear All,
Wrong doing is not a scientific problem. This is a collateral quality and product of basic human mind. Scientists are humans. Humans are erroneous and have had vain, egoistic and exaggerated desires. See those working for military and many industrial companies. They are blinded by the big money and other human allowances.
There is some scientific knowledge that we are not socially mature enough to deal with properly at the moment and so we should delay the investigation of such domains until the time we become mature enough to handle such knowledge. It is the personal responsibility of a researcher to choose its domain of research and to make this evaluation to the best of his/her capacity. The argument that science in itself is neither good or bad is true but this argument is flawed because science is not in itself but always in the hand of peoples, corporations , military organisations, states, etc. Science is like gun, in the hand of people and although gun do not kill by themself, they kill when in the hands of poeple. So we have to use our judgement before developing science. Once developed, the scientists loose all controled of science. Our only power is to wether or not we want to pursuit a domain of science or not.
"history makes no pardon to conjunctive mind " I forgot who said it, but how do we discern a higher order logic among most ordinary ones? Give an example of code, is this comprehensible to you?
https://kr5ddit.com/post/1097/recalling-a-chunked-high-order-sequence#comment-5866
Science ought to be used more for recovering natural or long lost endowment, not to speed-up what is already there and sooner or later shall come in one's own timing within a life time... in certain sense...yes? revolutionary vs. reactionary - scientific vs. un-scientific...3 generations is a good bench mark, in order words, through three generations strife, if nothing changes for the better, it is about time for revolutionary actions. yes?
https://kr5ddit.com/post/1097/recalling-a-chunked-high-order-sequence#comment-5866
Dear Essam Kotb
Every thing is knowledge in science.....rather than wrong, perhaps "mismatch" can be better to describe the gap between question and its answer.
Deliberate attempt to divert the directions and intentions of researchers and institutions might nothing to do with science, although its on the name of sciences.
Change might can measure by the difference of previous state, stage and the new & upcoming state, stages. its depending on trend lines and its directions.
Regards,
Raja
scientific research changing the world because it goes forward and it is like driving a car your aim is to go forward , sometime to correct your way you need to go back rear,,,, if sciences lost its way and goes wrong turn,,,, you will know that the car is going in the wrong way because you are the driver and the master so, we have to but rear,,,,, go back to the wright track and then forward,,,,,
I think science needs to return as a previous writer says to humanitarian roots of healing curing and preserving life those who work in that area need to think leads about distruction but rather the sustainment and nurturing and enhancing of life and well being. Science should benefit all of society whether pauper or ki g in providing life sustaining plans rather than chemicals that kill and nuclear war heads that destroy.
I propose that science should be frames by correct moral and relgion, so that science not only for shake of today advantage but also for sustainable human live
"Science is founded on uncertainty. Each time we learn something new and surprising, the astonishment comes with the realization that we were wrong before"
— Lewis Thomas In 'On Science and Certainty', Discover Magazine (Oct 1980)
I agree with the views that science does not go wrong. What goes wrong is the use of the scientific advances for purposes which are not beneficial. Bernard Baruch quote is very relevant:
"Science has taught us how to put the atom to work. But to make it work for good instead of for evil lies in the domain dealing with the principles of human duty. We are now facing a problem more of ethics than physics"
— Bernard M(annes) Baruch
Speech to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (14 Jun 1946). In Alfred J. Kolatch, Great Jewish Quotations (1996), 39.
“The Seven Social Sins are:
Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.
From a sermon given by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925.”
― Frederick Lewis Donaldson
Pierre Curie voluntarily exposed his arm to the action of radium for several hours. This resulted in damage resembling a burn that developed progressively and required several months to heal. Henri Becquerel had by accident a similar burn as a result of carrying in his vest pocket a glass tube containing radium salt. He came to tell us of this evil effect of radium, exclaiming in a manner at once delighted and annoyed: “I love it, but I owe it a grudge.”
Marie Curie, 1867 to 1934
Chemist, Physicist
It is the "use of science" which can be right or wrong and not science itself!. Use of chemical weapons does not make the chemistry a wrong/bad science, it is just a terrible choice and tragic use of science.
Dear Louis,
It is crucial whether we have time enough to attain the necessary maturity? Are there sufficient time for the maintenance of biosphere?
Hello Dear
Problems with scientific research: How science goes wrong | The Economist
2013-10-24
The Economist takes a look at what goes wrong in science and what should be done about it: http://econ.st/1hYoAaN
Nothing wrong with Science itself and the arena still commands enormous value. However, erroneous ideas, falsity in experiments/trials, observation and deduction, unreasonable publications and subjective, materialistic and unethical approach are destroying the merits of science.
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x1cp.pdf
Article Science, ethnicity, and bias - Where have we gone wrong?
With experimental drugs, 'right to try' can go wrong
http://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/experimental-drugs-right-try-can-go-wrong/
Science is not bad
Science is a blessing and a miracle, because it originated from the creativity and originality of thought and action of another miracle that is conscious life, currently embodied in Homo sapiens and other non-human consciousnesses.
Science allows us to know, know our world and enables us to modify nature for the benefit of all living beings and the ecological environment that sustains it.
The application of science by humans, is what has taken some wrong or unethical ways. For example:
- Technological research arising from the "war economy"
- Telecoms and Internet that benefits all humanity, but it also serves big capital for speculative purposes and for the manufacture of weapons and other technologies used in wars.
- innovative technology to find and explore territories that operate through metal mining, precious stones and oil and gas extraction from the deep sea and land. Benefits remaining in an oligarchy that deprives the real owners of such wealth.
- Innovative technology being used in mining extraction of metals, gemstones, other minerals and fossil fuels, have neglected the environment where they have settled, destroying the environment, preying ecology and extinguishing all life by food contamination and water.
- Using innovative technology in the research of new drugs (monoclonal antibodies) with high financial cost and investment, to treat rare or chronic / degenerative and neoplastic diseases, which because of its high cost of acquisition, are inaccessible for the majority of patients who need them. They are only accessible for people of high socioeconomic status.
- The desire to investigate investigate a research, apparently promising and original, but increasingly, the findings have no immediate or application within a reasonable time for the benefit of society. Only benefits the scientific productivity and the curriculum of some researchers, making creditors to benefits in kind and in currency for that productivity.
This, just as a sign of inadequate directions, wrong and often not sustainable or ethical, in the application of science and scientific research in the discovery of new knowledge and invention and innovation of new technology, which should be accessible everyone, but in practice only benefit the few, the very rich and members of social and governmental oligarchies in many countries.
Sincerely
Dr. Jose Luis Garcia Vigil
La Ciencia no está mal
La Ciencia es una bendición y un milagro, pues se originó por la creatividad y originalidad de pensamiento y acción de otro milagro que es la vida consciente, encarnada actualmente en el Homo sapiens y en otras consciencias no humanas.
La Ciencia nos permite conocernos, conocer nuestro mundo y nos faculta para modificar la naturaleza, en beneficio de todo ser viviente y el entorno ecológico que lo sustenta.
La aplicación de la ciencia por los humanos, es la que ha tomado algunos caminos equivocados o no éticos. Por ejemplo:
- La investigación tecnológica surgida a partir de la "Economía de Guerra"
- Telecomunicaciones e Internet que beneficia a toda la humanidad, pero que también sirve a fines especulativos del gran capital y para la fabricación de armas y otras tecnologías utilizadas en las guerras.
- Tecnología innovadora para encontrar y explorar territorios que explotar por medio de la minería de metales, piedras preciosas y extracción de gas y petroleo de las profundidades del mar y la tierra. Beneficios que quedan en una oligarquía que despoja a los verdaderos dueños de tal riqueza.
- Tecnología innovadora que al ser utilizada en la minería de extracción de metales, piedras preciosas, otros minerales y combustible fósil, han descuidado el medio ambiente donde se han asentado, destruyendo el entorno, depredando la ecología y extinguiendo todo tipo de vida por contaminación de alimentos y agua.
- Uso de la tecnología innovadora en la investigación de nuevos medicamentos (anticuerpos monoclonales) con alto costo financiero y de inversión, para tratar enfermedades raras, o crónicas/ degenerativas y neoplásicas, que por su alto costo de adquisición, son inaccesibles para la generalidad de pacientes que las necesitan. Están accesibles solo para las personas de nivel socioeconómico muy alto.
- El afán de investigar por investigar sobre una línea de investigación, aparentemente promisoria y original, pero que cada vez más, los descubrimientos no tienen aplicación inmediata ni a un plazo razonable en beneficio de la sociedad. Solo beneficia a la productividad científica y el currículo de ciertos investigadores, haciéndoles acreedores a beneficios en especie y en moneda por dicha productividad.
Esto, sólo como una muestra de los rumbos inadecuados, equivocados y frecuentemente no sustentables ni éticos, en la aplicación de la ciencia y la investigación científica en el descubrimiento de nuevos conocimientos y la invención e innovación de nueva tecnología, los que deberían de estar accesibles a todo el mundo, pero que en la práctica sólo benefician a pocos, los muy ricos y los integrantes de las oligarquías sociales y gubernamentales de muchos países.
Atentamente
Dr. José Luis García Vigil
Science is the best methode for finding the problem solving in several cases but unfortunately the development of the sciences in the next step always get obstacles in several cases because of there are unpredictable phenomens in the science development process.
While it may be argued that science is an abstract entity that does not go wrong, I would argue otherwise. We measure the advancement of science by the cumulative knowledge that is acquired through time (for example in publications). When we as a collective choose the wrong methods, procedures and implementations as a collective we are leading science astray. The argument here is: when can it be considered to have gone astray ? Is it a single individual or publication, a journal, a community, ...?
A second argument would be that it depends on the time of judgment(one could argue that I am judging harshly and in a miopic way because I use today's standard instead of year XXXX when it happened). While this argument can be raised, I would judge the deviation in terms of the cumulative effect through time and its inability to correct some of its perpetuated misconceptions, biases, etc.
You may like reading the attached article from NATURE:
Theocharis, T., & Psimopoulos, M. (1987). Where science has gone wrong. Nature, 329(6140), 595-598.
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x1cp.pdf
copy over from that paper published in Nature Oct. 1987:
it has photos of these four, under the title "betrayers of truth? Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend. "
Science is the body of knowledge generated in the search of truth.
In the search of truth (as per the accepted reasonable norms, otherwise called 'methodology'), which otherwise is called research, students of science arrive at conclusions rationally (evident to human senses) as solution or answer to all complications or confusions that confront humans.
What else other than science is there in the world for humans to take decisions in every kind of confusions? Dogma or pseudoscience or amoral science is not an alternative to science.
Science is the product of research means that all scientific findings are not absolute truth.
In the scientific search, of course trial and error procedures are inevitable.
Students of science has the humility to learn from failures.
If any theory or applications fails, scientists self correct (peer corrections as well) the mistake and make better science
Every body of knowledge by name 'science' is not science.
Therefore, failure in science is not failure of science, but inevitable steps in the advancement of science
Where science go wrong? Yes, go wrong sometimes!
1. if somebody does not understand the aspects of incompleteness or weakness of the body of knowledge by name 'science' he or she deals with and assert the 'half-truth' as truth, it is highly wrong and dangerous. (Every student of science should understand the limits and scope of the knowledge that he or she deals with)
2. In the application of any piece of knowledge, if a person does not take into account the ethical questions properly, amoral science will be the outcome (For example, by advising Hitler to use Ammonia as a weapon to kill people, Fritz Haber became notorious as the father of amoral science.
Religion of course has the power to support humans in ethical decisions (Einsteins famous words "Science without religion is blind; Religion without science is lame" is highly relevant in this regard)
3. If the person of science is not committed to truth and purposefully misrepresent truth (asserts pseudoscience), science fails (actually it is not science, but it is the inevitable failure of pseudoscience - pseudoscience has to fail in the course of time - it is question of time e.g. Lysenkoism)
The original "How Science Goes Wrong" article in Nature 1987 seems to relate to the philosophical shortcomings of science... where the main error is in the model & process of induction - the way researchers conclude from samples to general truths.
It is a very old argument about discoveries and their substantiation going back ~400 years.
My personal view is that we need a new science model that can cope with today's technology challenges. The new model that I'm going to suggest is based on logics. See project announcement - https://www.researchgate.net/project/Philosophy-of-Data-Science-review-for-big-data-analytics.
Dear all
Whether science goes to wrong or not, the first I must know what’s wrong and what’s right.
Our human ought to respect and follow the law of nature or destroy the law of nature. Human should protect the nature or remodel and remake a new nature with science.
If science improved our human’s lives, but it polluted our nature, does it go to wrong? Just as the detergents, during the manufacturing procedure and waste procedure both pollute our rivers and lakes.
We are widely using gene-modifying or gene-improving techniques. Are we remodeling a new nature? Can we make a new mad cow disease like disease?
Dear Colleagues,
Good Day,
Please, see what "Cynthia Kenyon" had said about the thread"
"With science it's very important not to go down the wrong path, but the wrong path in science is a path you go down where everything you learn is already known. So you need to steer around the obvious."
If science aims exact truth, every student of science should remember that only nature is exactly true.
What science enables is gradual unveiling of the whole truth of nature, which helps humans to live happily and peacefully forever on the earth.
Nature is quite complex and not easily comprehensible.
Science is not for over simplifying natural complexity, but to understand its complexity exactly so that free will of humans do not go wrong in their actions
Student of science should always remember that humans form a unique living creature with the cognitive capacity to learn the whole truth apart from instinctive actions.
Animals are quite instinctive and are not free to make any mistakes; the cognitive capacity enables humans to do against truth.
Therefore, cognitively active humane mind invented the scientific procedure for not to go wrong when use own freedom to modify nature.
Therefore, it is the duty of humans to make sure that their science don't go wrong.
It is not science that go wrong but humans who use science is going wrong.
Failure of Science reached it to succeed
http://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/is-it-possible-to-have-meaningful-failure/
Dear all
I live by a big lake. The month is the fishing month of the lake. Some fishmen were selling fresh Asian carps by the lake. Because polluted water few people want to buy the fishes. I spent 6 YM (= 1USD) for two 2KG weighted Asian carps (4KG) for my dog. If the fishes were in an unpolluted lake, the price could multiply 50 at least.
Is there any detergent that does not polluted water?
Dear all
From Archeology discovery, earliest human or hominids have lived in our area. The early human lived in the area had the palpable feature without culture. That meaning they were without any word, without any picture and without any symbol. So the area is called uncivilized and uncultured region. But now some scientists rethink the phenomenon. Are the early human in the region intentionally escape cultures.
I have published some pictures of the early human or hominid’s artifacts.
The idea of science is a sociocultural construct of a human Society. It is bound to the iidea of time-bound metaphysics. There is no neutral objective science. So Content and form of science is changing by time and culture. To accept this and react accordingly is appearingly the next step, which is hard to take by Hardliners.
Dear Colleagues,
Good Day,
"Four Ways Data Science Goes Wrong and How Test-Driven Data Analysis Can Help
1. Errors of Implementation.
2. Errors of Interpretation.
3. Errors of Process.
4. Errors of Applicability.
Please, see the original article for more detail....
http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/patimes/four-ways-data-science-goes-wrong-and-how-test-driven-data-analysis-can-help/6947/
Dear colleagues
I think most important thing is aim and dream, but other thing else impact on the research like supervisor ( for student), government, fund and ....
Actually Im working on my thesis and I had this challenges.
Best wishes.
Hii,
Science is one of the most important and interesting one. Scientists are exploring a new new technologies day by day. So they are using in a right way means it will be going to positive way. But some of money minded peoples(scientists) are sell their products to a wrong persons so at that time only science will be going wrong. I mean somebodies are doing that kind of actions.
thanks,
saran
The way we perceive science and scientific knowledge is important. Science is not wrong; for it is through science that we currently know many things. Science fails when we do not accept its limitations and consider it invincible. It just like being human, where one feels invincible but does not realize that it is actually one's ego that is at play.
Science would be wrong if he is accompanied by the 'interests' is wrong anyway.
Science has generated knowledge and a number of revolutionary technologies. However, it has definite limits. Moral and aesthetic judgments, decisions about applications of science, and conclusions about the supernatural are outside the realm of science, but that doesn't mean that these realms are unimportant. In fact, domains such as ethics, aesthetics, and religion fundamentally influence human societies and how those societies interact with science.
Science has limits:
http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/whatisscience_12
“It is very dificult to fnd a black cat in a dark room,” warns an old proverb.“Especially when there is no cat.” Stuart Firestein
https://www.ted.com/talks/stuart_firestein_the_pursuit_of_ignorance
Dear Colleagues,
Good Day,
Art and science are intrinsically the same except for one thing. The universe is in control of your science, whether it's right or wrong, and the public are in control of your art - if they're going to buy it, if you're going to make a living that way.
---- Harry Kroto
YOGESH,
Science by definition cannot talk about supernatural issues but at least it can help us in some cases decide if an issue is natural and consequently, not supernatural. For example, rain and tunder were considered supernatural by the early humans but nowadays rain and tunder are considered to be part of the natural order because science explain these phenomena. Moral issues have not received a lot of help from science although we know more about phenomena such as epileptic crisis and do not interpreted them as case of demonic possessions or other type of supernatural occurences. But sometime the scientific tendencies to explain everything as cause and effects tend to obscure the real responsibility of a criminal into a crime and instead explain the killing of a children by a father in a rage as the occurence of momentary deficiency of the brain and wash away the crime under the rubric of temporary malfunctioning. This kind of scientistic thinkings is as retarded and blind as thinking a epileptic crisis as a demonic possession.
Dear Louis Brassard,
Best wishes for your placements! I enjoyed reading. Greetings!
I have problem understanding and accepting this question. How scientists can go wrong? How scientific thinking can go wrong? How science can be interpreted wrong? Rather than asking these, how can we ask 'how science goes wrong?'. I would say asking question such as this one (how science goes wrong) would be a serious misnomer, misleading, and subject to misinterpretation.
Every scientists work by developing a hypothesis. It is a trial and error and method. It may become correct or wrong. If it becomes wrong, we changet the course, and navigate to the right tract. Science grows by trial and error method, slowly and steadily. What might seem correct now, might not be accurate down the line. So, recalculation is needed for a course correction.
With the advent of science and technology, we have come a long way, and we have advanced in many frontiers. Many beneficial development has helped humanity of course. Along the course, we have also come across few destructive elements associated with it. As long science keep advancing, the same trend is going to continue. That said, we cannot penalize science for it.
Science may not have answer for all our questions. However, working towards it.
Two of the respondents talks about science and morality. Surely science has addressed it from the evolutionary point of view. From Darwinian perspective, the the evolution of morality has a definitive scientific basis, which is the altruism. I don't have too much time to enumerate it, but one can dig deeper into the facts themselves.
Coming back to the question per se, let me pose another question to all. Suppose, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Jew, or a Christian did something horrible; Would you call this - how Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, or Christianity goes wrong? I hope everyone get my point!
Science has its own realm, limits, uncertainty levels, biases, social aspects, and reasons for reliability. Several misuses, misrepresentations and abuses of science are the result of ignorance of these features. Natural explanations are testable and there as chances to being disproved by being shown not to consistently follow the rules of nature. Supernatural explanations can neither definitively or reliably tested nor can they be disproved. However, scientific knowledge and tools can be used to shed light on subjective, political, religious, ethical or aesthetic judgment issues, but it seldom provides any final answers. Science can be done poorly, and it can be misused. There are many variations of medical quackery, where unconfirmed claims are presented as scientific fact to prove a flood of discredited assertions about a whole range of seemingly mysterious phenomena.
In a article: The qualities of Robert Musil,
by Roger Kimball
http://www.newcriterion.com/ articles.cfm/The-qualities-of- Robert-Musil-3658
QUOTE from the article:
''In one pivotal chapter ('' The Man Without Qualities''), Musil reflects on the “peculiar predilection of scientific thinking for mechanical, statistical, and physical explanations that have, as it were, the heart cut out of them.” This is the key passage:
The scientific mind sees kindness only as a special form of egotism; brings emotions into line with glandular secretions; notes that eight or nine tenths of a human being consists of water; explains our celebrated moral freedom as an automatic mental by-product of free trade; reduces beauty to good digestion and the proper distribution of fatty tissue; graphs the annual statistical curves of births and suicides to show that our most intimate personal decisions are programmed behavior; sees a connection between ecstasy and mental disease; equates the anus and the mouth as the rectal and the oral openings at either end of the same tube—such ideas, which expose the trick, as it were, behind the magic of human illusions, can always count on a kind of prejudice in their favor as being impeccably scientific.
Scientific rationality in this sense is not merely disillusioning; it is radically dehumanizing. It replaces the living texture of experience with a skeleton of “causes,” “drives,” “impulses,” and the like. The enormous power over nature that science has brought man, Musil suggests, is only part of its attraction. Psychologically just as important is the power it gives one to dispense with the human claims of experience. How liberating to know that kindness is just another form of egotism! That beauty is merely a matter of fatty tissues being arranged properly! That every inflection of our emotional life is nothing but the entirely predictable result of glandular activity! Just another, merely, nothing but … How liberating, how dismissive are these instruments of dispensation—but how untrue, finally, to our experience.
Musil presents scientific rationality as a temptation as well as an accomplishment because he sees that inherent in its view of the world is an invitation to forget one’s humanity. It is this Promethean aspect of science that links it with evil. The feeling that “nothing in life can be relied on unless it is firmly nailed down,” Musil writes, is “a basic feeling embedded in the sobriety of science; and though we are too respectable to call it the Devil, a slight whiff of brimstone still clings to it.”
"Scientific research has changed the world."
Yes, this is basic observation. Observation is at the very basis of science that leads to knowledge.
"Now it needs to change itself."
This is pure authoritative argument. Authoritative arguments are at the basis of beliefs.
Science is by no way a static corpus of human activity, it continuously changes following the world it changes in a recursive way. Do nowadays scientists work the way Newton or Marie Curie worked? No, science has changed, science has moved from a rather individualistic activity to a cooperative activity. The era of wonder-scientists is gone. Nowadays, thousands of high-level scientists working full-time during tens of year are needed to cope with HIV or for landing a spacecraft on a comet. In-depth specialization has become a must to keep new knowledge to emerge. Is this what you call a wrong way? If so, it is a value-based judgement with no scientific interest.
This move of science goes the exact reverse way the societies do go in which individualism has become a rule.
Was the question technical/logical, or a philosophical / psycho-socio-economy question... ? In the latter case, conversations can only be endless and human-centered rather than knowledge centered, and valuings-biased.... Idn't there already enough literature & words on that?
If technical, there may be new ideas, because we have new tools. Saw a couple here. Here is my 2-bobs worth.
-Science drifted when it got colonised by statistics: they eliminate 'outliers'... the very core of 'fundamental' science; exploring "anomalies", what does not make sense within known laws. Now science only re-presents what the majority of humans experience (and sometimes what a minority experiences) and ends up justifying that what occurs in our human-centered world cannot exist any other way. An example: the medical views of 'weak female health' and 'normal ageing'. Some others are too challenging to say. Of course these consequences are ladden with value attributions.
- There is an unrecognised fundamental problem of domain of application/validity and of logic. I tried some years ago to formulate it in words because it induces cultural vicious cycles of shifts in perspectives back & forth (e.g truth & reality; or wine good or bad for you) and us particularly relevant to evolutionidt /compkexity increase flaws. See
https://sites.google.com/site/basicoptions/on-representations
- Trying to 'reintegrate' the fragmented fields of science does not quite restore the original way of knowledge. It has only led to the same paralysis of multiplied extreme detail of knowledge that already occurred at least in medieval, antiquity, and archaic periods, with same result: normalised expectations of human behaviour and social binding of knowledge (limitation).... this time, statistics are operating most efficiently this exclusion (which goes with its symmetric, exploitation). [could argue that money or power do that too]. Rather than an ill-logic 'evolutionary' explanation, which like the rest, leads to human elitism or dominion, there is a simple way to understand how al that works:
a topologic property of spreading at boundary, with counter-productive effects of breaching boundary. In other words, over-development has gone too far. We will keep doing it until this image is clear to the human mind.
-and it won't be until scientists, philosophers, psychologists and sociologues alike (who create the civilised-cultured ways of life imposed on us) acknowledge that their explanations are dependent on the "state" in which they live (or 'try to survive' or exPERIence), which governs what their primary observation instrument (themselves) can apprehend, with or without tools, which have the same foundation) from what is only a localised viewpoint, that of their own body. Two examples from 'universal' knowledge: what is recognised as "natural" for humans and what is known as "human nature". Both are profoundly biased (proof: ideas about them drift over time), both based on limited parameters of representation and another topologic property, of deployment (=orienting at boundary).
Change state and basic property, and both truth/reality are very different (but repressed by dominant state/culture: e.g. refused publication and public discussion, validity denied, pressured to change the story... that's not new).
Missing: the unsophisticated ability (not an aquired capacity) to 'see whence' things come and 'where-to' they go. With it, kniwledge and tools stay in their domain if validity, and most of the problems discussed here and elsewhere simply do not arise.
@ Chun, unfortunately, I have to downvote your answer. It doesn't help at all with any argument. OK, I have worked nearly 30 years in medical/hospital setting, I have seen too many diseases. So what? You want to make an argument that science didn't help? Did you know, there are so many reasons (confounding factors) to which someone get disease? What about over eating, eating junk food, poor health habits (smoking, drinking, illicit drugs), not sleeping enough, etc. What about genetics? How can you ascribe all problem to Science? If I eat too much of junk food and get a disease, how can that be a problem of science? Have you ever thought about it? Evidence suggests that man's lifetime was much shorter during the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and early Neolithic periods, averaging only about 30–40 years. What is the life expectancy now? If science cannot be attributed to this, what might be the plausible reason?
Dear Seithikurippu
I have noted you live in Canada. We are living in different circumstance. I have leukocythemia as an example. When I was working in the hospital, there were one or two cases during a year, but now hundreds. Three of the people I know well also suffer the disease. What’s the cause? Chemical pollution in air, in water, in food…
I mentioned fishes ahead, because pollution of the water, there are a lot of green substance in the fishes’ gill.
Dear Seithikurippu
Now we are discussing sterility. I think we force the causes utterly on smoking, drinking, illicit drugs is not accurate. If gene-modified food is one of cause（I have seen some reports supported the view）, we do not know. But developing countries export a lot of the food to my country. If it is true, what is the life expectancy now and future?
At least human have lived through the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and early Neolithic till now.
By the way, thank you for letting me know your down-voting reason. Now I don’t care any down voting. A Chinese proverb says” as a scientist, you must say what you have known, and you must sure that you have told what you have known utterly”. I have vowed that I do not down voting any one for any reason.
Dear Chun, thank you for your understanding. I just listed some man-made reasons. Of course, we could identify and list too many reasons. When I listed those items, I didn't specifically listed it for cancer or sterility. But you have identified it correctly!
Of course, when I down vote someone, there is no personal reason behind it.
We are right to say that many technologies help humans and it is right in many cases that such technologies stems from new sciences. But if we should acknowledge some of these benefits to science, with the same logic we should acknowledge some of the bad consequences of technological processes such as wide spread pollution to science. It is never science alone but science combines with the type of society it is serving. We cannot use the NRA argument that ''gun don't kill but people''. No people kill with gun. The difference witht he gun question is that at this point we are both benefiaries and victims and we cannot go back the pre-industrial and scientific society. There is no going back but the way forwards is not as clear as in the heydays of the promess of progress, that all can be fixed through science and technologies. Now we are under a pollution cloud, under the thread of nuclear war, the ocean are filled with plastic and are in the middle of a large scale extension of life on this planet.
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