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Quote of the Day: Questions of Science
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” – Galileo Galilei
I hate appeals to authority when it comes to science. These always raise a red flag with me. “Trust the Science” is the technocrat’s version of “Because, shut up.” Science by its nature does not invite trust, it invites skepticism. Scientific progress is made by those challenging the science, and being convinced of its validity through reasoning.
I worked in a technical field (space navigation) for many years. I discovered many of my co-workers were little more than button-pushers and dial-turners. They could not explain why they got the results they obtained, only that they were the product they achieved from pushing buttons and turning dials in the prescribed manner. This often led to problems and sometimes to disasters. (Anyone remember Challenger?)
A good scientist, engineer, or doctor can always explain why behind the results through reasoning. If they cannot, if they cannot take a chain of logic which can be challenged and questioned, to the final conclusions they are presenting they are not a real scientist, engineer, or doctor. They are closer in kin to witch doctors and alchemists.
Always question the science before accepting it. Accept it only if reason tells you the conclusions are correct.
Published in Technology
While I agree with your post, I will quibble with the general misunderstanding of alchemy. Anyone trying it with chemicals and retorts has missed the whole point. It’s an allegory for spiritual transformation clothed in another story, just as the Bible is.
I love your post and am frustrated daily by the facade of purported science, which if questioned, results in accusations of “denier!”
Actually, I think that underscores the point I am making. It is allegorical rather than reasoned.
People who engage in accusations of “science denial“ are likely practicing scientism.
Category error. Allegory and reason are in no way mutually exclusive. In fact, whoever comes up with a good allegory pretty much has to use reason, I would think. Likewise, there is much reasoning in deciphering the allegory even if one is given a primer of symbols and their translations.
Likewise, being a witch doctor takes a lot more reasoning than you may be giving credit for, as you might remember if you think about Oomphel in the Sky. The problem isn’t a lack of reasoning. The problem with witch doctory is a lack of repeatable results and progress in knowledge though knowing what really works, as opposed to what theoretically should work. Science and witch doctory are competing fields. They both seek knowledge of the world around us and how to use that knowledge for physical goals.
Alchemy, properly understood, does not compete with science (certainly not with any of the hard sciences), but is rather an exploration of the thoughts and feelings and spiritual nature of man. The fact that it has been hidden behind the veil of pseudo-science through its terminology of turning base metals into noble metals does not make it about chemistry or nuclear physics. It’s about the soul.
It is not knowing, but the love of learning, that characterizes the scientific man. CS Pierce
“We do not really think, we are barely conscious, until something goes wrong” —CS Peirce
I think prudence generally dictates that we trust more in small things than large things. I’m happy to trust in the physics of flight every time I board a plane; I’m disinclined to put as much faith in prognostications regarding global temperature a century from now. Come to think of it, that’s probably a sound general principle: I trust the guy at the corner restaurant not to steal my credit card number when I pay my bill; I’m much less sanguine about the scoundrels in our nation’s capital.
“Trust, but verify” is great, but it breaks down when verification becomes effectively impossible. I think we have a greater problem with the public putting too much faith in science than too little.
“Upon this first, and one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not to be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry.”—CS Peirce
To be fair, the engineers said “Don’t launch at these temps” and some MBA said “We have to make a management decision”
We studied it in my MBA program as an example of how not to lead.
And yet, not one person in the NASA management team was stripped naked and flogged in public. Failure in government appears to be more of a rite of passage than the Mark of Cain.
As Dr. Raymond Stanz said, “You’ve never worked in the private sector. They expect results.”
My working opinion is that the vaccines are pretty safe, and that a lot of people died after taking them because tens of millions of weak elderly people took them. Usually most vaccines go to healthy young kids.
But it’s much better to think that than to think they’re safe just because we were told.
You gotta ask the questions to get that far.
And if this is right, then the experts are right about the vaccines being safe. Why they don’t just explain this instead of ignoring the question and hoping everyone who asks is written off as a vaccine conspiracy theorist–that I do not understand.
Kuhn.
I’ll go even further. Science is skepticism. If you are absolutely sure, you are absolutely blind.
I would say “In questions of science, the authority of a thousand
is notmay not be worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”Remember the old blonde joke:
Two blondes are sitting on a bench looking at the moon.
One blonde asks the other, “Which do you think is closer, the moon or Florida?”
The other says, “Duh, you can’t see Florida from here, can you?”
Not flu shots.
That’s the weak spot in my optimism!
I did check flu stats for one year, though, and it was only a couple million for the elderly.
True.
And it was a failure of non-engineers.
That is the standard retort.
Duh! As if I didn’t know that.
~quietly liquidates his lead stocks~
This is why, when I have an agricultural calamity on my hands, I get on the phone and call one of my farmer neighbors, rather than poring through books and relying on Wikipedia to get me through. I have nothing against books, mind you. They’re very useful. But sometimes those with a long history of direct experience and field expediency (see what I did there) are of much more immediate help.
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It was certainly a failure. Whether or not anyone was truly negligent is debatable. It was novel technology being used in an inherently risky application by people who knew that what they were doing was dangerous.
After all, the phrase is “it isn’t rocket science,” not “it isn’t small engine repair.” There are a lot of unknowns.
I’m reminded of something I read once about our military commanders participating in training simulations involving tactical nuclear weapons. Because of their unfamiliarity with the power of the early tactical nukes, they routinely deployed them too close to their own forces, causing large numbers of (simulated) friendly fire casualties. New technology is complicated.
Yes. People were negligent, especially in NASA management. Of the last six missions flown, up to an including 51-L, there was a potential crew-killing problem that occurred in five of them. In all five cases flight rules called for either a scrub of the launch or an early termination of the mission. In all five cases the flight rules were ignored. (For example, one was a failure leading to loss of redundancy on the Reaction Control System that controlled the Orbiter’s orientation during reentry. Flight rules called for an early termination of the mission. Instead it continued for several more days.)
While those were management decisions, they were also engineering decisions and the engineers had a responsibility not “to take off their engineering hats and put on their management hats.” There was one time in my career where management was proposing to do something truly (but not obviously) stupid. I offered to resign if they did it. They backed down.
The irony of rocket science is not that it is complicated. It is very simple. All the mathematics and principles required to put a rocket into orbit and keep it there are taught in high school physics and algebra. Small engine repair is more complicated. The difficulty lies not in understanding the principles, it lies in performing them flawlessly throughout the execution of them. You can bat .300 in baseball and be in the hall of fame. You get it right only 99.9 percent of the time in a rocket launch and you have an almost certain failure.
Yes, that is true.
And the engineers stated, categorically, “Do not launch below XX temp” (I forget the exact number). DO you know why? It is because they felt the O-Ring would be too brittle and fail in exactly the way it did. The Challenger disaster was 100% preventable if the engineering guidelines were followed. It was not a failure of experts, or not understanding new technology. The decision was made by non-engineers and non-scientists, for political reasons, to launch anyway.
If that is not clear enough, this is no different than being told the maximum weight a rope can hold, then overloading the rope and it breaking. This is the same as a warning label saying “Do not put this piece of metal in a microwave”. The engineers knew it could be a problem, and predicted the exact failure that happened.
I am against scientism. This is not an example of it. It is an example of non-technical people ignoring what the experts told them for political reasons. It was not about significant trade offs. Risking the destruction of the orbiter and deaths of the crew so that there was not a delayed launch of a few days was totally out of balance. The blame falls squarely on NASA administration for poor leadership.
As the program went on, they learned nothing from Challenger. They just kept taking stupid chances. It was appalling. I understand space flight has risks, but taking needless ones is stupid.
Here is the irony. Flight rules prohibited launching the Shuttle at temperatures lower than 32F because of an Orbiter limitation. At those temperatures there was risk ice might form, break off and hit the Orbiter, damaging the thermal protection system (the tiles), making a safe reentry impossible. (This later happened and brought down Columbia.)
The SRB engineers knew that once temperatures got into the 20s bad things could happen to the Solid Rockets. But they had not tested at those temperatures because flight rules prohibited launching at BELOW 32F. It was supposed to be off the table.
So there was a double failure. The SRB engineers were forced to prove something bad would happen for a condition that should never have arisen because another set of flight rules barring it from arising.
“I’m an expert and I said so” does more to harm “the science” and causes this backlash.
And they very conveniently begin the comparisons in January, when almost no flu shots are being given.
Shingrix & pneumovax
I like to claim that science does not prove anything; it disproves things. Mostly null hypotheses, but still …