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Science in Crisis
I have an uneasy feeling about how things are going.
Years ago I was involved in clinical studies that examined the effectiveness of treatments for acute stroke. I participated in four of these. Each one took years and enrolled thousands of patients. We were one of hundreds of centers worldwide that did this work. All in all dozens of different medications for the treatment of acute stroke were tested. The idea was that people who had a stroke would receive one of these medications, and this would reduce the disability the stroke caused. They were supposed to work in various ways — reducing toxicity, reducing inflammation, inhibiting oxidation, etc. — all of them having been tested in labs and found to work in tissue cultures and animals prior to being tried in patients. At the end of it, not a single one of these medications worked when they were tried on human beings.
It was an incredible disaster. Billions of dollars were spent by drug companies trying to develop these drugs, and it was a total bust.
Looking back we can still only guess at what went wrong, but a big part of it was poor methods in the lab. When studies were rigorously controlled and blinded the positive results in the lab often disappeared. Some of the fundamentals of lab science had been forgotten. We already knew there were problems and results were inconsistent, but this was ignored in the rush to be the first to come up with a proven treatment.
Now I think there’s not a single drug company anywhere that would ever trust the claims made by academic scientists doing this sort of work. Pharma is doing all the basic research themselves, in their own labs, if at all.
So it didn’t surprise me when I learned that most scientists don’t trust more than half of what is reported in peer-reviewed scientific journals to be true. This is true of all fields of science, even the hard sciences like physics.
Sabine Hossenfelder, a Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics, dissected the situation in her own field of science in her book “Lost in Math”. Particle physics is concerned with the most fundamental of nature’s building blocks, fundamental particles, like the electron, photon, and quark, some of which can only be studied by smashing atoms together in powerful accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and examining the debris. Fundamental particles are particles that can’t be smashed into smaller particles but combine to make other larger particles like protons. (Three quarks combine with gluons to make a proton.) Particle physics is in crisis, she says, because no advances have been made in particle physics in 40 years. The LHC was built at a cost of billions to confirm the existence of the Higgs Boson but was expected to also uncover a whole host of other new fundamental particles. The discovery of these particles would confirm the new theory of particle physics, called Supersymmetry, most widely expected to replace the Standard Model of particle physics. The LHC did indeed find the Higgs Boson as expected, but not a single one of the other hoped-for particles was found. It was an almost total bust.
This happened, thinks Hossenfelder, because the physicists stopped being strictly scientific. They started putting the cart before the horse. Science is supposed to proceed by first gathering data and information, then coming up with a theory to explain it, then testing the theory against new data. Because new data are so hard to come by in particle physics the physicists started coming up with theories in advance of any data. They based these theories on hunches and aesthetics. They tended to be attracted by theories that looked good, simple, elegant, even beautiful. But beauty and elegance are not scientific criteria. When the theories are finally tested they usually fall flat. Scientists basing their ideas on aesthetics have historically often been wrong.
But these physicists have often refused to give up on the theories even in the face of contrary data or absence of data Some of them have even militated for the abolishment of the need for testing, thinking that theories can be validated on the basis of aesthetics alone.
Some of the theories other physicists are talking about can never be tested and will never have anything to do with the real world. These include such ideas as the existence of a multiverse, i.e., multiple universes that exist in parallel to our own; the many worlds theory, the idea that all possible outcomes of an event exist in an infinite number of worlds parallel to ours; and ideas about what came before the Big Bang. It’s all perfectly useless, and yet it’s showing up in scientific journals.
To be sure, a lot of senior members of the physics community view these developments with disgust and alarm. “We’re taking a 2,000-year step back,” said one. To paraphrase another, we are in the process of forgetting the fundamentals of science.
Proponents of the Supersymmetry theory want an accelerator even bigger than the LHC to be built to search further up the energy ladder for the missing particles, convinced without much evidence that their theory is right. They have forgotten the non-scientific source of the whole supersymmetry thing. Hossenfelder cringes to think what might happen if billions more are spent just to come up with nothing. Will theoretical particle physicists ever be trusted again?
It’s time to step back and take a hard look at our ideas, she thinks.
Hossenfelder goes on to point out how the same malady is affecting other fields, like economics, where economists have become over enamored with the elegance of their math over against accurate descriptions of the real-world economy.
All across the West people are forgetting the fundamentals that made the West so great. Not just in science but in other areas as well.
Published in Science & Technology
Pretty sure there are bad translations out there, but that it refers to Venus. Also, did you run across the guy a few years back who said the Bible predicted Obama, because it used the word “lightning,” which in Semitic languages is “brq?” People do all sorts of mistranslating. Also, “Satan” is the enemy within, that voice that says that we can’t do something or should do something we know we shouldn’t. It isn’t an external being, but our limiting and worst impulses.
Einstein was trying to resolve anomalies that had arisen in Newtonian physics vis-a-vis Special Relativity, so he was working from data.
It’s not even clear that there is a problem when it comes to particle physics. There’s just a problem with the aesthetics of the existing theory, the Standard Model, that has given rise to Supersymmetry theory. Physicists have this strong intuition that the real truth has to be simple, clean, and beautiful, and the Standard Model is not any of those things.
Reading this Comment made my day!
Sometimes I’ve wondered if think I am the only person who regarded the version of the scientific method imprinted on our minds in public schools as a hoax. And I agree about the importance of Kuhn’s book and of Hayek (and the other Austrian writers on science methodology, especially Hans-Herman Hoppe.)
There is also “Beauty and Revolution in Science” by James McAlister.
McAlister asks, “How reasonable and rational can science be when its practitioners speak of “revolutions” in their thinking and extol certain theories for their “beauty”?”
A revolution in science can be as much a revolution in aesthetics as in theory.
One crazy claim does not provide validation for another….
He’s not saying it does. He’s just saying it’s no use getting yourself excited about what other people think or emote.
That’s not what the blond guy with angel wings said in Colorado.
Anything “settled” isn’t science, it is religion, or just math (which is a model, another form of hypothesis).
Feynman covered this very well
“If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.”
The branch of science that drives me the most nuts is “evolution.” I do not doubt that there are evolutionary forces at work. But in the field itself, the “scientists” make astounding leaps on the basis of very little information.
A few years ago I read a book written for the general trade market, Alice Roberts’s The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being: Evolution and the Making of Us (Quercus, 2014), that brought to light how evolution theory was being affected by DNA research. It’s a fascinating subject, but it was quite clear that much of what early evolution biologists said happened didn’t actually happen that way. A lot those diagrams in textbooks showing how species evolved have been thoroughly debunked.
I think that scientists are in a rush to publish and reporters can’t evaluate the announcements.
This is false. According to Einstein himself, he was not familiar with the Michelson-Morley experiment, or at least it was not the motivation for his work on Special Relativity. Furthermore, you have chosen to ignore my example of General Relativity. In case you’ve forgotten, I wrote this:
You also neglected to mention this:
You still have a long way to go in understanding how science works in general, and historical facts specifically.
A theoretical scientist is trying to discover a theory that accounts elegantly for natural phenomena. In the course of imagining a model, he invents variables and constants, and then he is able to generate data. The imagination, the creation of a beautiful mental picture of the world, precedes any data.
I was taught in middle school and high school that Einstein was working from the data, specifically data that seemed to indicate that the speed measured for light was independent of the relative motion of the source and the observer.
This is what everyone was taught. It sounds like you were, too.
It is false, but it suits the needs of the institutions. It doesn’t require teaching students how to think scientifically, how to think abstractly, and allows them to flatter themselves that they understand a theory that they do not, and that they understand the scientific method when they have only memorized a concretized counterfeit of it. It is a program designed for the mass processing of uncurious minds–kids who have no desire to learn and cannot be made to learn–that society wants stamped with educational credentials.
You must have wondered, as I did, what was so great about Einstein’s theory, when the equation giving the dilation of time and contraction of space had been already published by Lorenz. To a positivist, which we were indoctrinated to be, once you have an equation that accounts for the data, the science is done, except for an infinite number of blindly generated variations on experiments to inductively “confirm” (increase, for no reason that the positivists ever give us, the confidence we have that the equations are right.) What did Einstein add?
What he added was a scientific theory that “had to be” right in a sense that a positivist cannot comprehend. Einstein also knew that “special relativity” had to be wrong. It was more beautiful than the theory before it, but it created a new ugliness. That is why he went to work on general relativity. NOT because of data about gravity, as a positivist would tell you.
It would be more correct to say that Einstein was looking at the theory (Maxwell’s equations plus Galilean relativity) and seeing something wrong, something that was not “beautiful”. Both of these theories were formulated long before there was any data about the dependency of the speed of light on the relative speed of observer and light source.
The questions were ALREADY being asked and pondered before there was any data, just because the questions were generated by the theory itself.
I took that to mean that if Hillary became president, she should have to wear a burqa.
I don’t know enough about physics to even pretend to follow this conversation. But could you please stop being a dick.
The I guess all the many mnay conversarion that I have had throughout my life with close friends who were for instance, top notch electronics and physics experts, who then worked at Bell Labs due tot that laboratories HR people determining that they would most likely want to utilize their vast comprehension of their dual fields’ expertise and apply that knowledge to making everyday devices – all those people would agree that yes, there is a theoretical side to matters, and then there is the applied side, but genius breaks down those barriers. (One of the people I used to hang with ended up developing the signalling processes that made the USB come into every day consumer mode.)
Dr Fauci, is that you? And how is it you have forgotten the 2005 science paper you co authored, the paper in which you touted the propensity of HCQ to defeat corona viruses?
CarolJoy, applied science and theoretical science are two different things. Electronics is applied science. It is not theoretical science.The goal of electronics is by definition nothing more and nothing less than to build useful devices. The goal of theoretical physics is by definition nothing more and nothing less than to understand physical reality, nothing more and nothing less.
Using one’s vast knowledge to make everyday devices is by definition pure applied science. You are again confusing two different things.
I said that theoretical science and applied science have different goals. This isn’t a barrier, so there is no barrier to break down.
There is a difference between a purpose for an action and the results of an action.
That was then. This is now. The year makes it totally different. And that was a different coronavirus. And science has progressed beyond simple cures. And we have to experiment on large populations while we have an excuse in order to find the health limits of this new mRNA platform technology.
(This is all sardonically intended.)
No, but is this Dr Zev?
Well I guess we will have to continue to agree to disagree.
One consideration I need to interject – you made the assumption I am against spending money on theoretical science. I am not at all against our nation having an Argonne Laboratory or there being a CERN.
I am against what often happens – the search for a Major Truth becomes a cash cow that gets milked when instead it should be re-examined in a critical light, rather than the agenda being continually shoved forward to keep looking for things that do not exist or else they are not where they were thought to be. Or perhaps the determining factor is they are not “when” we are looking. (Definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.)
It could be there are indeed companion items to Higgs-Boson, but that the factor we are misconstruing is time. If some item only shows up every 125 years, we can look for it all we want, today & next week. Only if it truly is on a 125 years time table, than the extra looking will provide no answers until the 125 year mark arrives. (And of course, that companion item to Boson Higgs could have a 12,500 year time line instead.)
End of Part One
@markcamp
Part Two
The world of medicine abounds with theories. Doctors use ideas they see as proven principles with which to treat patients. But usually any and every theory has its counter argument.
Having worked in Marin County for many years, often doing private duty elder care for some extremely brilliant medical minds of the Twentieth Century, there is an important situation to point out. In many fields of medicine, there are disputes regarding the accepted principles arrived at by the Established Medical Authorities as far as theories of a particular illness or disability.
For instance, with Alzheimer’s, there was by 1995 or so, a theory that it was plaque in the brain causing Alzheimer’s.
There was at that time a counter theory that what was being called plaque was actually a mechanism used by the body to eat away at the harmful substance causing Alzheimer’s. So the physicians and researchers going along with the former idea did get their medicines approved by the FDA. Meanwhile the physicians and researchers who believed plaque was not the problem and then were attempting to get their medicines approved totally failed to have that happen.
It should be pointed out that those behind the “failing” ideas often spent oodles of money and a great portion of their lives on their work. In a perfect world,w e could rest assured that they failed because they were wrong about their theory and the actual True Theory prevailed.
However by now, if the idea of plaque prevention and/or eradication was the right one, and medications that did get approval have been on the market actually worked so well, why hasn’t Alzheimer’s been cured?
This is just one example of how the theory around a condition leads to accepted medical principles, But in so many cases there are alternatives that are cheaper and more effective with fewer side effects. Yet those remedies, for some damn reason, are not embraced by the AMA or by the FDA. (It wouldn
It couldn’t be a profit motive that has deprived the public of a 17 buck a month remedy for diverticulitis, rather than a surgery that requires anesthesia, and can result in the need to have it done all over again as the diverticuli often appear 18 months later, plus the side effects of a colostomy bag, sometimes needed for life. I’m glad I found out about the principle of using acidophilous to get rid of diverticulitis before going under the knife.
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Two days ago I posted the arguments of Dr Doug regarding the way that the mRNA vaxxes could turn out to be DNA-altering, over in the group “COVID 19 trackers” Anyone is free to join that group, I believe.
Here is a site of knowledgeable people putting together a compendium for HCQ facts: https://hcqmeta.com/
No, I was thinking of the precession of the planet Mercury, among other things, which Einstein was clearly aware of since he himself proposed it as a test of the general theory of relativity. Newtonian physics did not correctly predict the precession, but Einstein’s theory did.
I’m kind of astonished at the assertion that Einstein wasn’t aware of the Michelson-Morley experiment. From where did he get the idea that the speed of light is the same to all observers without regard to their motion or the motion of the source? I’m aware that Einstein was looking particularly at Maxwell’s equations in different inertial frames of reference, that they’d only work of one assumes constant c, etc., but he wasn’t aware of M-M? Really?
I was responding to that point exactly.
Here again, Boltzmann was trying to find a way to explain known phenomena. (Fascinating stuff, actually. Boltzmann came up with discrete quantities of gas to explain what a continuous energy spectrum would not, similar to the problem faced and solution proposed by Plank with regard to the Ultraviolet Catastrophe.)
Boltzmann was recognized as a great scientist in his lifetime, received several honors, and held distinguished positions in his field. His suicide was likely the result of a primary affective disorder, not despair over lack of acceptance of his ideas.
Hossenfelder wasn’t saying that science is never advanced by notions of beauty. Sometimes it is. But beauty is not a reliable guide and has often failed. It even failed Einstein when it came to his estimation of the cosmological constant or his assessment of some aspects of quantum mechanics.
Don’t we all?
Combining more low quality, mainly observational studies together only achieves a bigger pile of garbage- more garbage isn’t better quality it is just more garbage. You need to move on from HCQ – place your hopes elsewhere- where this is a chance of success – like ivermectin- altho I wouldn’t bet much on it. The problem for HCQ is the high quality studies do not support it- & it isn’t big pharma trying to deep six a cheap drug- decadron works in high quality studies & it is cheap.