Problem with science today and the war on reason

[Student100]

As a general note there have been posts in this thread disparaging the social sciences, and even medicine, as not science. I'm a little surprised and quite dismayed at that. If scientists disparage each other's fields without acknowledging how scientific theory is being applied what hope does the layman have of figuring out what is legitimate?

I made a (perhaps the) post to that effect. The fact that they're not a science shouldn't be taken as disparaging. Engineering is not a science, but it has worth. Neither is history, but it too has worth. Certain fields in medicine are more akin to engineering and the use of "best practices." Sometimes it jumps the gun: for example the Zika scare, there was/is no good evidence that it causes birth defects, but "scientists" at the CDC would disagree: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2016/s0413-zika-microcephaly.html

Medical science also generally suffers because it is neither space nor time invariant. One population's outcomes are not necessarily readily applicable to another different population. HIV causes AIDS, except when it doesn't; such as, in populations with CCR5 mutations or those able to effectively create broadly neutralizing antibodies that stabilize viremia counts. Nor is it time invariant, given sufficient time of co-evolution, HIV would no more cause AIDS then any of the other retroviruses we've found in our DNA.

Social science suffers from the same problems, but to an even greater extent. A study of one population has no bearing on another. The time scales that the "knowledge" of one study is applicable is appreciably short, at least when compared to even medical science. I also believe many social scientist take offense when you call them "not a science" because they depend on an argumentum ad verecundiam to give their studies weight.

Social science also has a greater capacity to influence policy and human life, partly because it invokes the authority of "science". Look at lie detectors? How many people lost jobs or ended up in prison due to pseudoscience? How long before we have fMRI "lie detectors"? fMRI's can tell you one thing, blood oxygen levels in various parts of the brain, but there is all sorts of nonsense out there that extrapolates this to mean something it can never actually tell you. Is there any actual science in the social sciences?

 

[Rive]

... The fact that they're not a science ...

Sorry, but it's no fact but only a (rather narrow-minded) opinion.
And jumping to conclusions based on opinions is just totally not scientific.

Some sciences follows different kind of rule sets (other than natural science) to seek their own truths which will be valid only within the boundaries of that science, but to deny the title is just like saying that Germany is not a 'country' because they don't have any Washington and White House.

I really do hope that people would rather find the common values under such topic - especially under such topic! - than try to covertly excommunicate whole other branches from the scientific community.

This whole 'science or not' thread within the topic is just destructive and invalid.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Don't get me wrong, you should get arrested by the police if you drive too fast, erratically or in any dangerous way, whether you are drunk or not. Does it require a criminal record? That seems harsh in my opinion. If someone's drunk, just force him to call a taxi and a towing.

What are the results of these harsh laws? They don't work because there are still drunk drivers. We are just getting more and more enraged about them. I refuse to live that way.

Its a crime because the activity of drunk driving has been shown to increase the chance of an accident that can seriously injure/kill innocent third parties. Given that we don't have policemen in every car (or perhaps we should by your logic) that can instantly stop a person the moment they begin to drive unsafe we have prescriptive laws.

In order to stay on topic, I'll restate my opinion in other words and in a more general way.

Imagine we raise a generation of kids telling them that if you drive at 50 km/h for 2 hours you will travel 100 km. We tell them it's a scientific fact. We also tell them that if you drive drunk or over the speed limit, you will get into an accident. We also tell them science proves it. The kids don't know any better and have no reasons to doubt us.

That's not science. That's an a priori logical statement, it's no more scientific than "all bachelors are unmarried men". Empiricism is not required nor present in any way to explain or verify the statement. Again you seem to be claiming that the only real science is mathematics because anything else is just statistics. Is radioactive half-life not scientific? How about quantum tunneling? Enzyme kinetics? Statistical analysis and probabilistic phenomenon pervade science and they're entirely compatible with empirical philosophy.

As for your "thought experiment" with teenagers the issue is with your hypothetical teacher, not with science. The teacher should have properly explained scientific theory and probability rather than giving the blanket statement of "all drunk drivers will have an accident".

Can I just ask: what do you do Jack? What field of research do you work in?

 

[PeroK]

Imagine we raise a generation of kids telling them that if you drive at 50 km/h for 2 hours you will travel 100 km. We tell them it's a scientific fact. We also tell them that if you drive drunk or over the speed limit, you will get into an accident. We also tell them science proves it. The kids don't know any better and have no reasons to doubt us.

They would doubt it because they are human beings with a human brain. If there is one aspect to this whole issue it is how difficult it is to say exactly how and why people think what they think and do what they do. This problem does not succumb to the type of analysis that deals in basic certainties like this.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Medical science also generally suffers because it is neither space nor time invariant. One population's outcomes are not necessarily readily applicable to another different population. HIV causes AIDS, except when it doesn't; such as, in populations with CCR5 mutations or those able to effectively create broadly neutralizing antibodies that stabilize viremia counts. Nor is it time invariant, given sufficient time of co-evolution, HIV would no more cause AIDS then any of the other retroviruses we've found in our DNA.

This is not an argument that the field isn't science, this is an argument that the field has many complex variables for researchers to discover and take into account. You seem to have a simplistic view of medical research in that biomed scientists throw out absolute statements oblivious to the exceptions. That's incorrect, we're well aware that there are many other factors to take into account and when designing a new therapy or advising on policy these are taken into consideration.

Social science suffers from the same problems, but to an even greater extent. A study of one population has no bearing on another. The time scales that the "knowledge" of one study is applicable is appreciably short, at least when compared to even medical science. I also believe many social scientist take offense when you call them "not a science" because they depend on an argumentum ad verecundiam to give their studies weight.

Social science also has a greater capacity to influence policy and human life, partly because it invokes the authority of "science".

Social scientists:

- Observe phenomena
- Hypothesise over the cause of said phenomena
- Rigorously work to characterise the phenomena
- Design experiments/studies on these phenomena
- Create predictive models of the phenomena
- Publish their findings so that others can test their models

Thus, they are scientists. Just because it's a much harder field of science with many variables and large scale experiments are often impractical/unethical doesn't make them less of a science.

Look at lie detectors? How many people lost jobs or ended up in prison due to pseudoscience? How long before we have fMRI "lie detectors"? fMRI's can tell you one thing, blood oxygen levels in various parts of the brain, but there is all sorts of nonsense out there that extrapolates this to mean something it can never actually tell you. Is there any actual science in the social sciences?

I have never known a social scientist to advocate lie detectors. In fact I'm unaware of their use outside of the USA, which I think is the only country where they are officially considered to work. Lie detection is also not a social science topic, it's a biological and psychological one.

 

[UsableThought]

I'm going to check back into this discussion with what I hope will be a responsible & restrained comment. Back when the thread was new, I took exception to comment # 17 from @Student100 ; however, my initial response was much too ad hominem & over-the-top. Plus, when asked to explain, I realized that I was so stupid with fatigue that I wouldn't be able to do so; which meant I shouldn't have made the initial comment either. I deleted as much as I could & said I might be back. Let me apologize again to @Student100, as he was correct to ask for clarification of what was an overly aggressive statement to begin with.

I still can't really write anything sensible at any length. The issues are deep and my knowledge of them is shallow. I do want to just say a few things:

1) The contentious debate over "what deserves to be called science" goes pretty far back - a Wikipedia survey article on Hard and soft science suggests that some early distinctions were being drawn as far back as the 1800s, with contemporary interest accelerating in the 1950s and 1960s. Plus, it's a deep topic in that more than one scientific community is involved. We can assume multiple literatures/events/conversations, some of the conversations cutting across fields, but many not.

2) Building on point 1 above, when something with this obvious a background pops up in a thread, I think it's a always a good move to acknowledge the background - i.e. that an issue has a lengthy history & isn't just ad hoc. As a parallel example: when a poster starts a thread with an off-the-cuff comment or question on something inside physics, but with no cite, the usual response is to ask for cites and not just speculation or assumptions based on personal experience. I think the same could be done here: given this is a well known issue within the history & politics of science, if folks really want to get into the question of "what is science," we could do some research in addition to offering our own personal opinion. I'm not saying it's a "must," just a "nice to have."

3) Getting past just our only personal opinion might also help avoid the danger that I believe @Rive may be pointing to in his comment #92 above, and that others have pointed to as well - i.e. it's risky to say "field X is not really science" if we ourselves don't practice within X; we may be harboring a belief we know more than we actually do. So some judicious restraint might be useful (something I'm still working on, obviously) along with maybe doing some reading or a lit search – if this is something we really care about. I'm not saying a lit search is required; just that the fact it is even possible suggests the depth of history involved & thus some reason for caution before making overly broad statements.

4) History aside, the comments I see going on at the moment have brought up a lot of the nuances I think are important. I especially like the dialogue developing out of comment #91 from Student100 & the corresponding responses from Rive (#92) and @Ryan_m_b (#95); some really good points are being made. Hope the thread keeps on in a productive vein.

 

[brainpushups]

Social scientists:

- Observe phenomena
- Hypothesise over the cause of said phenomena
- Rigorously work to characterise the phenomena
- Design experiments/studies on these phenomena
- Create predictive models of the phenomena
- Publish their findings so that others can test their models

Replace 'social scientist' with 'astrologer' or 'creation scientist' and your criteria still arguably all apply. Further clarification of criteria in your set may help, but since the line demarcating science from non-science isn't 100% agreed upon we probably won't reach consensus here. These criteria may be necessary (or maybe not) for something to be called science, but they are not sufficient.

Perhaps an issue that brings this point back to an earlier discussion in the thread is to recognize that, within any scientific discipline exist sub-fields that could be considered non-scientific. This is probably necessary since there aren't any fields of science that are complete (and may never be) – new information comes in, theories and models are augmented, modified, or discarded. If there is a public distrust of the overall scientific method then the only way to combat it would be through education.

Rather than debating whether or not a given field or sub-field can be classified as science the question should be how do you know that X is true? I wonder what the results of a study in public opinion about how to answer this question would be? Would there be a large number of strict rationalists? I doubt it. Instead I would expect that most would be more on the side of empirical evidence being the acid test for the truth of a claim. If this is indeed the general perception of the public then perhaps this is more of a scientific age then there has been in the past. However, I would speculate that most people have a very limited understanding of the interplay between rationalism and empiricism that is essential for growth in science because non-scientists or science educators haven't worked with theory in enough detail.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Replace 'social scientist' with 'astrologer' or 'creation scientist' and your criteria still arguably all apply. Further clarification of criteria in your set may help, but since the line demarcating science from non-science isn't 100% agreed upon we probably won't reach consensus here. These criteria may be necessary (or maybe not) for something to be called science, but they are not sufficient.

I do agree with your general point that there are many aspects of scientific research that aren't strictly anything to do with the scientific method (like bioethics in pharmacology, ergonomics in engineering, linguistics in coding etc) but I don't think it's fair to say you can swap out social scientist with astrologer. Because if an astrologer or creation scientist was actually following the method then a) there wouldn't be so many non-predictive theories in either and b) when they get to the testing stage they'd reveal their models to be flawed. It's not just that those fields are bad science its that they're pseudo-science, having the veneer purely for authority purposes. On the other hand social scientists, like any other kind of proper scientist, adjust their models based on testing and new data. It might be a lot harder to gather the data on large scale populations compared to something mundane like an atom but that doesn't invalidate it.

 

[brainpushups]

Because if an astrologer or creation scientist was actually following the method then a) there wouldn't be so many non-predictive theories in either and b) when they get to the testing stage they'd reveal their models to be flawed. It's not just that those fields are bad science its that they're pseudo-science, having the veneer purely for authority purposes. On the other hand social scientists, like any other kind of proper scientist, adjust their models based on testing and new data. It might be a lot harder to gather the data on large scale populations compared to something mundane like an atom but that doesn't invalidate it.

I was comparing social science to pseudo science, not non-science. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I'm not saying that Feynman is the authority to trust here, but he is famous for arguing that social sciences are pseudoscientific. I'm assuming that some progress has been made since his death, but, as far as I know, there are no 'laws' yet. Some have argued in this thread that the statistical analysis inherent in the social sciences helps qualify them as scientific. I wonder how Feynman would respond.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I was comparing social science to pseudo science, not non-science. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I'm not saying that Feynman is the authority to trust here, but he is famous for arguing that social sciences are pseudoscientific. I'm assuming that some progress has been made since his death, but, as far as I know, there are no 'laws' yet. Some have argued in this thread that the statistical analysis inherent in the social sciences helps qualify them as scientific. I wonder how Feynman would respond.

There are barely any laws in biology either, does that make it a pseudoscience? When you're working with complex emergent systems with a huge number of variables you're not going to be able to reduce the observed phenomena to simple laws. I'd say that Feynman was wrong here and tbh I have virtually no interest in what he may or may not think on this topic.

 

[brainpushups]

There are barely any laws in biology either, does that make it a pseudoscience? When you're working with complex emergent systems with a huge number of variables you're not going to be able to reduce the observed phenomena to simple laws. I'd say that Feynman was wrong here and tbh I have virtually no interest in what he may or may not think on this topic.

Fair enough. I only use Feynman as an example as he was outspoken and well known. It's hard to know whether we may someday be able to reduce biological systems to obeying simple laws. Maybe someday they will and then biology would be 'elevated' (note: I agree with sentiments above that just because something is not 'hard science' that it is not valuable) to 'hard science.' It happened with chemistry.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Fair enough. I only use Feynman as an example as he was outspoken and well known. It's hard to know whether we may someday be able to reduce biological systems to obeying simple laws. Maybe someday they will and then biology would be 'elevated' (note: I agree with sentiments above that just because something is not 'hard science' that it is not valuable) to 'hard science.' It happened with chemistry.

You will never be able to reduce biology to simple laws. You're not going to get a neat little equation or absolute rule that describes cellular behaviour or pharmaceutic interactions. We may reach a point where we understand the underlying principles of chemistry so well that we can accurately model complex biological systems mathematically, but it's going to result in the same complex emergent behaviour as exists in vivo. It's not some question of limits, its a question of what biology is.

Also the idea that biology will be "elevated" to "hard science" as though the latter is some sort of special club for the better fields is laughable, no offense.

 

[UsableThought]

Sorry if that wasn't clear. I'm not saying that Feynman is the authority to trust here, but he is famous for arguing that social sciences are pseudoscientific. I'm assuming that some progress has been made since his death, but, as far as I know, there are no 'laws' yet. Some have argued in this thread that the statistical analysis inherent in the social sciences helps qualify them as scientific. I wonder how Feynman would respond.

There are barely any laws in biology either, does that make it a pseudoscience? When you're working with complex emergent systems with a huge number of variables you're not going to be able to reduce the observed phenomena to simple laws.

Something tickled my brain here while reading these two comments in order; and the word "reductionism" floated up.

Reductionism isn't quite the same as arguing that hard sciences are "better" ("more scientific", etc.) than soft sciences; but it seems awfully close. Now, I'm not trying to characterize anything that has been said in this thread so far, but in general, it seems to me there is a sort of lazy arrogance to saying "We in physics and the other hard sciences are better (morally, scientifically, whatever) than those squishy soft sciences who shouldn't even call themselves sciences"; and then, at the same time, when asked to help with the really tough problems of human society & physical environment - way tougher than cosmology, sorry - have nothing to offer because, guess what? "We say that's not science." Not, "Gosh that's tough, maybe certain aspects of the problem can be approached w/ similar techniques" but "That's not science."

That's not what has been said in this thread - fair enough - but doesn't it seem that is a chasm that could be fallen into if judgement is too severe & somehow the scientific community withdraws from these more difficult fields? The Wikipedia entry on reductionism, under the subtopic of science, summarizes the argument against over-application of reductionism pretty well:

Others argue that inappropriate use of reductionism limits our understanding of complex systems. In particular, ecologist Robert Ulanowicz says that science must develop techniques to study ways in which larger scales of organization influence smaller ones, and also ways in which feedback loops create structure at a given level, independently of details at a lower level of organization. He advocates (and uses) information theory as a framework to study propensities in natural systems.[19]Ulanowicz attributes these criticisms of reductionism to the philosopher Karl Popper and biologist Robert Rosen.[20]

The idea that phenomena such as emergence and work within the field of complex systems theory pose limits to reductionism has been advocated by Stuart Kauffman.[21]Ermegence is especially relevant when systems exhibit historicity.[22] Emergence is strongly related to nonlinearity.[23] The limits of the application of reductionism are claimed to be especially evident at levels of organization with higher amounts of complexity, including living cells,[24] neural networks, ecosystems, society, and other systems formed from assemblies of large numbers of diverse components linked by multiple feedback loops.[24][25]

Nobel laureate P.W. Anderson used the idea that symmetry breaking is an example of an emergent phenomenon in his 1972 Science paper "More is different" to make an argument about the limitations of reductionism.[26] One observation he made was that the sciences can be arranged roughly in a linear hierarchy — particle physics, many body physics, chemistry, molecular biology, cellular biology, physiology, psychology, social sciences — in that the elementary entities of one science obeys the laws of the science that precedes it in the hierarchy; yet this does not imply that one science is just an applied version of the science that precedes it. He writes that "At each stage, entirely new laws, concepts and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. Psychology is not applied biology nor is biology applied chemistry."

 

[Rive]

...sort of lazy arrogance..

Right. Since metaphysics cannot define itself as science (consequently: there is no scientific way to define science, regardless of the amount of words spent), without connections to practical means it tends to revert to authority and beliefs/religion.

I think as this conversation goes now the thread got completely derailed and is on a dead end already.

 

[jack action]

That's not science. That's an a priori logical statement, it's no more scientific than "all bachelors are unmarried men". Empiricism is not required nor present in any way to explain or verify the statement. Again you seem to be claiming that the only real science is mathematics because anything else is just statistics.

When you're working with complex emergent systems with a huge number of variables you're not going to be able to reduce the observed phenomena to simple laws.

First, let me start by saying that it is all science to me. If you make observations and hypotheses about your environment, it is science.

That being said, the methods that are used to make the hypotheses are not all equals.

My example about speed, time and distance is not simple logic nor it is just mathematics: It's a physics law, i.e. $v=\frac{dx}{dt}$. To be called a "law" in science there is a repeatability criteria which always requires a well defined environment (for example the speed of light is exactly equal to 299792458 m/s ... in vacuum).

Like you said yourself, the more complex the system is, the more difficult laws can be made. It usually is because there are too many variables involved and they cannot be isolated or some values are so great that they are humanly impossible to verify (ex.: It's difficult to prove what exactly happen 1 billion year ago, as nobody was there to share their observations).

If you use statistical analyses and find that in a given environment you can observe something in 99.99% of the cases, you pretty much met my criteria of repeatability. So statistical analysis is a valid scientific tool.

But the further you get from that certainty - no matter the tool you use - the less you get to claim your observation is a "scientific fact". Though, it doesn't mean I'm not glad you didn't make the observation nor the hypothesis. It does contribute to the advancement of science; In the very least, it proves what is not true.

Here's a betting game based on scientific evidences:

If a car goes at 50 km/h for 2 hours, how much how are you willing to bet it will travel 100 km? I'm willing to bet my life on it. Why? Because there is a well defined physics law that proves it.

If there is a smoker and a non-smoker, which one do you think will get lung cancer? I'll bet on the smoker without a doubt because there are scientific studies that says that the odds are 100:1. Am I going to bet my life on it? No, because it is very plausible that the smoker will not get lung cancer regardless of the non-smoker getting lung cancer or not.

If there is a smoker, would you bet he would get lung cancer or not? I'll surely bet that the smoker will NOT get lung cancer, because the odds are at least 3:1. That is also based on scientific observations and that is why I'm confident about it.

As you can see science is a good advisor in all cases. But right now, most people will squint about my third bet because they are used to hear the message from a strong lobby trying to hide this fact that doesn't say that all smokers will get lung cancer. Not getting lung cancer for a smoker is not an exception, quite the opposite. But some think that smoking must be "evil" and it must be shown that everyone who embraces it must lose in the end. So we treat others like 2-year-old and just tell what needs to be told in order for them to act the way we want. This use of these scientific results is not OK by me because the methods used in those studies are not good enough to define clear lines between right and wrong of these complex systems.

And the more we allow politics to use science in that way, the more we are going to get people disavow science.

 

[gleem]

I think as this conversation goes now the thread got completely derailed and is on a dead end already

You think?

But relative to the thread's topic, it appears that elitists have initiated a skirmish in the war on reason .

 

[Rive]

If you make observations and hypotheses about your environment, it is science.

For me there is one extra step here: if you seriously test your hypotheses to have some result - that's science.

As you can see science is a good advisor in all cases.

I'm not sure that it's true right now. Science, as you refer to it in your examples is to know the consequences: but we actually used science to create an environment where we have several means to escape from consequences. As matter of investment and gain, in this environment the science is on the losing side. Requires serious investments, but has limited gain (for the individual), since most of it can predict can be avoided easily.

I can't think of this situation any other way than 'it's just natural'.

You think?

But relative to the thread's topic, it appears that elitists have initiated a skirmish in the war on reason .

Ouch. You have a point, really...

 

[Ryan_m_b]

First, let me start by saying that it is all science to me. If you make observations and hypotheses about your environment, it is science.

Science is the application of empirical philosophy which requires more than just observation and hypothesis. It requires rigorous testing, falsifiability and a good application of logic. By your definition as it stands creationism would count as a science, rather than the pseudo-science that it is.

My example about speed, time and distance is not simple logic nor it is just mathematics:

Actually it is. As I keep saying it's just an apriori statement, it requires no experimentation to verify. That's different to physical laws that describe more complex relationships.

If you use statistical analyses and find that in a given environment you can observe something in 99.99% of the cases, you pretty much met my criteria of repeatability. So statistical analysis is a valid scientific tool.

But the further you get from that certainty - no matter the tool you use - the less you get to claim your observation is a "scientific fact". Though, it doesn't mean I'm not glad you didn't make the observation nor the hypothesis. It does contribute to the advancement of science; In the very least, it proves what is not true.

Nonsense. If rigorous study reveals a reliable probabilistic phenomenon that is as much a fact as a deterministic one.

Here's a betting game based on scientific evidences

This isn't a betting game this is you, yet again, willfully misinterpreting a factual probability as not fact and not science. On top of that it is you who keep bringing politics into it by insisting that the statistically significant observation that smoking increases lung cancer risk does not meet the criteria for scientific fact and therefore should not be regulated on.

this use of these scientific results is not OK by me because the methods used in those studies are not good enough to define clear lines between right and wrong of these complex systems.

Please back up your assertion that the wealth of studies showing a statistically significant positive relationship between smoking and cancer rates are based on faulty methods.

 

[Student100]

Sorry, but it's no fact but only a (rather narrow-minded) opinion.
And jumping to conclusions based on opinions is just totally not scientific.

Some sciences follows different kind of rule sets (other than natural science) to seek their own truths which will be valid only within the boundaries of that science, but to deny the title is just like saying that Germany is not a 'country' because they don't have any Washington and White House.

I really do hope that people would rather find the common values under such topic - especially under such topic! - than try to covertly excommunicate whole other branches from the scientific community.

This whole 'science or not' thread within the topic is just destructive and invalid.

This is a lot of words to say nothing. Evidence?

The thread is about distrust in the sciences, part of the distrust stems from things being defined as science when it isn't.

 

[PeterDonis]

Given that we don't have policemen in every car (or perhaps we should by your logic) that can instantly stop a person the moment they begin to drive unsafe we have prescriptive laws.

This is a true statement, but I don't think it's responsive because @jack action was not arguing that we don't currently have laws like this, he was arguing that we shouldn't have laws like this. You are assuming that our current system of prescriptive laws is the best way to balance personal freedom of choice and the risk of harm to others. I don't think that is established (in fact I personally don't think it's true, but I recognize that reasonable people can disagree).

To try to keep this subthread on topic instead of veering off into more personal opinion, I don't think the rationale for our current prescriptive laws, which is basically that we can reduce the statistical incidence of harms by having such laws, is a very good one, because it only compares the state with those laws with the state where we have no regulation at all. In other words, it assumes that there is no other way to adjust people's incentives besides having prescriptive laws. But I can think of a simple alternative: stronger rules about liability for people who do cause harm. We have already moved in this direction to some extent with drunk driving: I believe that in some states one accident while driving drunk is enough to revoke your license permanently. A law like this, IMO, is much better than our current prescriptive laws because it focuses on actual harm, and gives people a strong incentive to avoid causing actual harm, without imposing one-size-fits-all rules that might not be appropriate in all cases. (Speed limit laws are an even better example to illustrate this, IMO: the alternative would be laws that said you can't get a ticket just for speeding, but if you are in an accident and are found to have been exceeding the posted limit, you are presumed to be at fault, get more points on your license, your insurance rates go up more, etc..) Individual people in individual cases are in a much better position to judge the risk of harm from specific actions than lawmakers or bureaucrats. Detailed statistics on risk can be used by individuals to make better decisions about such risks, just as well as they can be used by lawmakers and bureaucrats, and the individual decision option still has the advantage of not requiring a one-size-fits-all policy.

 

[PeterDonis]

It's a physics law, i.e. $v=\frac{dx}{dt}$.

This isn't a law, it's a definition of $v$. A law would be something like $F = m a$ (or the speed of light is always $c$ in a vacuum--although now we would have to phrase that one somewhat differently since SI units are defined to make this a tautology).

 

[PeterDonis]

we actually used science to create an environment where we have several means to escape from consequences. As matter of investment and gain, in this environment the science is on the losing side. Requires serious investments, but has limited gain (for the individual), since most of it can predict can be avoided easily.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. Can you give some specific examples of what you are describing?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

This is a true statement, but I don't think it's responsive because @jack action was not arguing that we don't currently have laws like this, he was arguing that we shouldn't have laws like this. You are assuming that our current system of prescriptive laws is the best way to balance personal freedom of choice and the risk of harm to others. I don't think that is established (in fact I personally don't think it's true, but I recognize that reasonable people can disagree).

I'm not assuming that they are the best way, but I am saying that they demonstrably work. Studies like this one show that laws against driving after drinking do lower fatality rates:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3823314/

Though they also show that in some areas an increase in alcohol tax is more effective (which makes sense given that it possibly lowers the demand for alcohol). What I'm not aware of is any study showing that after-the-fact punishment lowers accident rates to a greater extent than prescriptive regulation,

 

[PeterDonis]

Studies like this one show that laws against driving after drinking do lower fatality rates

Yes, but at what cost? Unless we know what we're trading off to get lower fatality rates, we can't judge whether the lower fatality rates are actually worth the tradeoff. Of course many of the costs will be very hard to quantify; for example, what costs do speed limit laws impose by increasing the amount of time people have to spend traveling instead of doing productive work? But that doesn't mean we can just ignore them, which is what many of our preemptive laws, IMO, do--they pick an arbitrary point (e.g., 55 mph speed limits) and say that is where the optimal point is, without justifying that in terms of an actual cost vs. benefit analysis.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Yes, but at what cost? Unless we know what we're trading off to get lower fatality rates, we can't judge whether the lower fatality rates are actually worth the tradeoff.

The cost is not being able to drink and drive, or at least taking care to limit how much you drink. Do you believe that the right to drink and drive is worth the cost of people's lives? Lives which in many cases are innocent third parties?

 

[PeterDonis]

What I'm not aware of is any study showing that after-the-fact punishment lowers accident rates to a greater extent than prescriptive regulation,

Any such analysis would also need to factor in the costs. It seems plausible to me that after the fact punishment should be significantly less costly than prescriptive regulation (for example, if we didn't have speed limit laws, we wouldn't have so many cops monitoring speeds instead of going after people who are doing actual harm--not to mention all the potential corruption that comes from using speeding tickets as a revenue source for local governments, and the consequent manipulation of the limits without any regard to any actual safety impact).

 

[PeterDonis]

The cost is not being able to drink and drive, or at least taking care to limit how much you drink.

The cost to that individual, yes. And I agree with you that at the individual level, this decision should be a no brainer. But if all individuals were that rational, we wouldn't even need to have this discussion, nor would we need to have prescriptive laws because the risk of being liable for actual harm would be more than enough to deter them from drinking and driving.

In any case, there are other costs associated with such laws, because they have to be enforced, and enforcement will necessarily include both false positives--people who turn out not to be under the influence when tested--and resources expended without any prevention of harm--the time spent by cops watching for people driving under the influence but not actually finding any, or by cops stopping a person who is driving under the influence but who would not have caused an accident if they were not stopped. (There are also other costs, but drunk driving laws are not the best example IMO to illustrate those--see below.)

For drunk driving, these costs might well be less than the benefits gained; but we are not talking just about that specifically but about the general question of prescriptive laws. Again, my go-to example here is speeding laws: I think it's highly unlikely that the costs of these laws, in enforcement, lost time, fostering of a general attitude of disrespect for laws, since speeding laws are obviously not efficiently enforced (just look on any major freeway), and the increased possibilities of corruption, are less than the benefits gained. But because those costs are not easily quantifiable, whereas the benefits are (just show statistics on accidents vs. speed limits), we have these prescriptive laws. That does not strike me as a scientific attitude.

 

[UsableThought]

I think as this conversation goes now the thread got completely derailed and is on a dead end already.

I hold with @Rive when he says that the thread has gotten derailed. It started out as a relatively tight, small topic (or at least seemingly so). Here's a reminder of what that topic was, taken from the link the OP gave in his opening post to an article in the Guardian - this is a quote from that article:

Media coverage and bad science communication sometimes gives the impression that scientists are always changing their minds on climate models, whether chocolate or wine will kill or cure you or whether Pluto is a planet or not. This wrongly creates the impression that scientists are a pretty fickle lot.

That's where the thread started. Now, 6 pages deep, we are mired in disagreements about public policy - disagreements which have less and less to do with science and more and more to do with our learned attitudes towards authority, government, individual responsibility; etc. Disagreements at this fundamental level are never going to get very far in a forum setting; they don't get very far in real life either; people tend to talk past each other; and the unstated assumptions behind each point of view rarely if ever get surfaced, yet tend to be what really controls us. Most of us are unaware of our own personal history and how that may have influenced our stance on how much control government should exercise over liberty, etc. etc.

As an example, two very different attitudes are being expressed here by @jack action and @Ryan_m_b.:

But some think that smoking must be "evil" and it must be shown that everyone who embraces it must lose in the end. So we treat others like 2-year-old and just tell what needs to be told in order for them to act the way we want.

The cost is not being able to drink and drive, or at least taking care to limit how much you drink. Do you believe that the right to drink and drive is worth the cost of people's lives? Lives which in many cases are innocent third parties?

I have a life-long friend who is very much in jack action's camp, while I myself am pretty firmly in Ryan's camp. If there were time and space for a really open discussion, I think it would have to be done in person by people who were willing to try & open their minds to each other & go past surface expressions that seem quite rational but are also connected to deep beliefs that aren't necessarily rational. A hell of a hard thing to do. I used to teach essay writing, and when people wrote argumentative essays (essays with claims) I got into trying to touch Toulmin-style argument as a way of encouraging fair discussion of claims; so that's why I'm so interested in all this. I have read a lot of books on argument & the pitfalls. I'm not very good at argument myself!

Now, regarding @PeterDonis's comments about assessing risk & consequence - e.g.:

Any such analysis would also need to factor in the costs. It seems plausible to me that after the fact punishment should be significantly less costly than prescriptive regulation (for example, if we didn't have speed limit laws, we wouldn't have so many cops monitoring speeds instead of going after people who are doing actual harm--not to mention all the potential corruption that comes from using speeding tickets as a revenue source for local governments, and the consequent manipulation of the limits without any regard to any actual safety impact).

In principle I agree; but what is hard is the practice. One must ask, who is doing the risk assessment? How fair are they going to be? How skilled are they going to be? What assumptions will they make & will we agree with those assumptions? Who is going to pay for the study? Will the public at large support policy changes that the study might suggest, even if these changes are new ideas that might be difficult for most of us to grasp? Critiquing on the sideline is easy. Governing is hard. Tradeoffs are inevitable. It's definitely true that we have a lot of bad laws. My thought is to support a government and a process that would gradually work towards better laws. Which to me is why public trust or distrust of science matters. That we have gotten lost in side arguments about whether sciences such as sociology should really be called "sciences" is ironic - because you ain't going to solve public policy disputes with physics, guys; you are going to have to do some studies that will involve things like sociology.

And that goes back to my suggestion that if people really want to discuss things outside the narrow scope of the initial topic, then it would be good to do a lit search. Because there are tons and tons of studies on relevant subtopics, e.g. why & how even sensible approaches such as risk assessment - which Peter has offered up as the right way to do public policy ) go wrong. I have in front of me a 1994 book called https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DS8ZXEE/?tag=pfamazon01-20, 6th edition, which is an edited collection of case studies. (Yes, case studies by sociologists.) Included is an interesting study on a company that made aircraft brakes concealing the hazards its engineers discovered; how the Nazis made use of bureaucracy to overcome individuals' objections to participating in genocide; how Ford wasn't nearly as much to blame for the Pinto problem (remember, the exploding gas tank) as the whole bureaucratic/regulatory system, including the standards Ford was required to use as part of risk assessment; and a really interesting review of the Challenger disaster, attempting to demonstrate that the conventional narrative about how that disaster happened is not really accurate either.

Society is way too complicated for physicists to be telling us how to run it.

 

[PeterDonis]

the thread has gotten derailed

I think the scope of discussion has widened somewhat, yes; but I think we are trying, overall, to keep the discussion within the realm of how science is, can, or should be used to inform public policy discussions and decisions, and how the actions of scientists affect that process. I agree that personal beliefs about how public policy decisions should be made, independent of the question of how science informs such decisions, should be kept out of the discussion as much as possible. (I don't think they can be kept out completely.)

 

[KASCII]

The mistrust, disregard or disinterest in science is often framed as the "science community's" problem. But I see society's disengagement with science somewhat more as a symptom of other social problems than being a core problem in and of itself.

I'm sure we could all think of different factors that contribute to it, but drilling down would be a big task.