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Shooting one’s self in the foot

Head Rambles Posted on by

I saw an interesting looking headline in the Irish Times.

"Society would benefit from a better understanding of what is and isn’t science"

Spot on, says I.

The sub-header was even better.

"A theory is distinguished by having both explanatory and predictive power"

At last, says I, someone is talking sense about science.  Let's see where he goes from here.

He started off on a strange ramble about the Giant's Causeway and Creationists, which confused me a little but a lot of what he says is bang on –

"In scientific use, theory means an explanation for some phenomena that has been well-substantiated through repeated experiment and observation. It must have both explanatory and predictive power, being capable of explaining a particular phenomenon and making testable predictions."

And

Science is a systematic method of inquiry that seeks to investigate various phenomena through empirical and measurable means, establishing new knowledge and correcting prior ideas.

A hallmark of science is its utter objectivity. It doesn’t care about your prejudices, political persuasions or religion; it is concerned only with evidence, and that which is asserted with only dubious evidence is suspect in the extreme.

You would never guess what's coming next?

Not only do people dispute evolution, many deny the existence of man-made global warming, despite incontrovertible evidence.

What the flaming fuck?

Here is a bloke claiming that a theory has to have "both explanatory and predictive power" and he then throws up Global Warming and claims "incontrovertible evidence"?  For a start, there are many theories as to the cause of climate change, but where is the clincher – where is the predictive power?  The so called Climate "Scientists" have so far failed abysmally in any attempt to predict anything. In fact they spend their time frantically adjusting their theories to fit the facts, and when they're not doing that, their adjusting facts to fit their theories.

He then even manages to bring in smoking claiming that "the scientific evidence was beyond dispute".  He derides cherry-picking of evidence, yet the whole smoking controversy is based solidly on cherry-picking.  And where is the predictive power?  Predictive power should state that under laboratory conditions, tobacco smoke should produce cancer in test animals, yet that has never happened despite their best efforts.  Predictive power should state that nations with the highest smoking rates have the highest cancer rates yet there is no relationship.

I don't know who this David Robert Grimes is.  He describes himself on his Twitter account as "Doctor of physics, Dabbling writer, occasional musician / actor. Full time Jedi Knight. Foppish hair."

Maybe he should concentrate on the acting?

 

 

Comments

Shooting one’s self in the foot — 10 Comments

  1. Doctor of physics, Dabbling writer, occasional musician / actor. Full time Jedi Knight. Foppish hair.

    Explains it all, really…

     

  3. Does the Doctor of physics, Dabbling writer, occasional musician / actor. Full time Jedi Knight. Foppish hair have a working definition of 'society'.

  4. I have a theory that all theories are subject to verification by logic, by observation and by experiment. All theories are liable to revision in the light of new facts, experiments and consequences. Doesn't matter what colour hair a guy has, nor the type of music he plays or listens to, nor whether he places his trust in the Man Above or in flying spaghetti octopi. Global warming may or may not be true, but some regions of the world have undergone climate change, as disgruntled polar bears will testify. The Sahara may eventually revert to tropical forest, so invest in sand and get out your buckets and spades while the sunshine lasts.

  5. As I have said before, the only way to reduce the impact of humans on the environment is to reduce the the number of humans. It will happen the only question is how. Too bad we can select those we want to be part of the solution. 

  6. The one that pisses me off to the extreme is when someone comes up with the modern clichés – "the science is settled" or "incontrovertible evidence".  Science is NEVER settled, and is ALWAYS open to debate.  We are constantly exploring the boundaries of knowledge and what might appear apparently obvious today can turn out to be patently absurd tomorrow.  Once upon a time the Earth was the centre of the Universe [and was flat] and witches cast spells.  They were the settled science of their day, but we are constantly opening new horizons.

    I would go so far as to say that anyone who comes up with such dogmatic statements has no right to call himself a scientist

    • I accept the comments on the unsettled nature of science questions, but demur at the idea that witches no longer cast spells. Witches and wizards still cast verbal and psychological spells in society. The Viennese psychologist Freud thought he had psyched us all out with his sublimation and subconscious – but his theories have been given a Scottish verdict Not Proven, or succeeding psychologists have dismissed much of his writing as myth-making non-science. In the matter of that noisy Big Bang Theory, let me just say it is an interesting theory that may eventually be given an Irish verdict of Proven Bullshit. I have an open mind on Black Holes and Big Bangers (great German sausages) but in the meantime I'll stick to Beethoven and Jazz, which are soothing and not noisy except when brass instruments are used.

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