[FRIAM] IS: Rhetoric in scientific arguments WAS: FW: Fractal discussion Landscape-bird songs

Fri Mar 3 12:37:50 EST 2017

The article referenced in that blog post turns out to be open access and
pretty pertinent, too.

  http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/9/160384

The natural selection of bad science, Paul E. Smaldino, Richard McElreath,

-- rec --

On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 12:25 PM, Roger Critchlow <rec at elf.org> wrote:

> Here's a spin on Eric's question about how is trusting a scientist
> different from trusting an authority or a scholar.
>
>  http://sometimesimwrong.typepad.com/wrong/2017/03/
> looking-under-the-hood.html
>
> concludes
>
> but, you might say, scientists *are *more trustworthy than used car
>> dealers!  sure,****** but we are also supposed to be more committed to
>> transparency.  indeed, transparency is a hallmark of science - it's
>> basically what makes science different from other ways of knowing (e.g.,
>> authority, intuition, etc.).  in other words, it's what makes us better
>> than used car dealers.
>
>
> The proposal is that authors of papers need to share more about the
> context of the paper so journals and readers get stuck with fewer lemons.
>
> -- rec --
>
> On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 9:25 PM, Vladimyr Burachynsky <vburach at shaw.ca>
> wrote:
>
>> Eric,
>>
>>
>>
>> I doubt an idea before I ever apply for a grant. Then I deceptively claim
>> to be trying to replicate an authorities claims. But the devil within me
>> recalls that at least once maybe more often , I have noticed
>>
>> that the authority’s prediction failed. That knowledge is my group’s
>> secret until publication. Then it becomes everyone’s knowledge.
>>
>>
>>
>> I have in my memory a perfect “Black Swan” event. I suppose that I have
>> more faith in water birds than in statisticians. Perhaps we often hide
>> behind obscure math to shield our superstitious insights.
>>
>> Some times using the math first reveals an outcome that is used as a
>> gloss to hide the unknown. For instance the Griffith’s Crack Theory  widely
>> held in Classic Mechanics. Exactly what is the use of a singularity zone
>>
>> when a crack propagates in wild directions? The material does not use it
>> but then at that scale the material uses Quantum Mechanics but the engineer
>> favours The Classic Mechanics. So indeed certain materials do emit light
>>
>> from crack tips. At the edges of any discipline anomalies will define
>> limits or boundaries for paradigms. Without doubt and secret devilish
>> memories Science would not evolve so quickly.
>>
>>
>>
>> At this point I am reminded of an eminent chemist , Polanyi? who received
>> the Nobel Prize and afterward became a philosopher who suspected something
>> like superstition, drives many scientists much like
>>
>> Isaac Newton.
>>
>> I think as civilized people we prefer to stick with conduct rules knowing
>> perfectly well how to violate them and the consequences of doing so.
>>
>> vib
>>
>> I guess we should never believe the whole of PR.
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Eric
>> Charles
>> *Sent:* March-02-17 1:04 PM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] IS: Rhetoric in scientific arguments WAS: FW:
>> Fractal discussion Landscape-bird songs
>>
>>
>>
>> Glen,
>>
>> To "Peirce-up" the discussion of doubt a touch. To doubt something is to
>> be unable to act as-if-it-were-true without reservation. So, for example,
>> you do not doubt Newtonian mechanics under a wide range of conditions (you
>> are willing to act as if it is true under many circumstances), however,
>> there are conditions under which you would be nervous acting as if they
>> were true. Your doubt is not absolute, and the "caveats" you refer to,
>> could be expressed as a description of the circumstances under which you
>> start to get nervous.
>>
>>
>>
>> Your description of replication is good, but non-typical (particularly
>> among the chemists, which are Peirce's favorite scientist). We now think of
>> replication as part of the falsification process, but that is actually a
>> weird way to think about (a symptom of the degenerate state of many current
>> fields). The most natural reasons to replicate a research report is a)
>> because the outcome is itself useful or b) because you intend to build upon
>> it. For example, if someone publishes a novel synthesis for artificial
>> rubber, I would probably try to replicate it because I need artificial
>> rubber, or because I intended to start with that artificial rubber and try
>> to synthesize something new. Under those conditions, anyone trying to
>> replicate would be very frustrated by a failure (given some tolerance for
>> first attempts).
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick,
>>
>> I think Glen is prodding, in his second part at an extremely important
>> point, and one that I have been wrestling with quite a bit lately. It is
>> quite unclear why "trusting the work of other scientists" - as currently
>> practiced - is not simply another deference to authority. The current
>> resurgence of assertions that people shouldn't argue with scientists (e.g.,
>> that we should care what an astrophysicists thinks about vaccines, or what
>> a geneticist thinks about psychology) is bad, and "science-skeptics" are
>> not wrong when they attach a negative valence to such examples. Let us
>> ignore those flagrant examples, however. How do I determine how much weight
>> to give to a report in a "top journal" in psychology? Does it matter that I
>> know full well most articles in top journals turn out to have problems (as
>> flashy reports of unexpected results are prone to do)? And if I am
>> suspicious of that, what do I make of the opinion of a Harvard full
>> professor of psychology vs. a bartender who has been helping people with
>> their problem for 5 decades? Etc. etc. etc. I think there is a very deep
>> issue here, which I'm not sure I've ever seen explained well. I think, in
>> part, it is a challenge that was not as prevalent even 50 years ago, but
>> that may just be imagined nostalgia.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----------
>> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
>> Supervisory Survey Statistician
>>
>> U.S. Marine Corps
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 4:13 PM, glen ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Heh, your lack of social salve has left me unclear on whether I should
>> respond or which parts to respond to. >8^D  So, I'll just respond to what I
>> think is the most important point.
>>
>> >  That implies that what you say below supports arguments from
>> authority. [NST==>I don’t think we can EVER escape arguments from
>> authority.  Science is locked in a matrix of trust.  Doubt in science is
>> really important, but it has to be relatively rare, or we would never know
>> which of a million doubts to take seriously.  <==nst]
>>
>> I think you use "doubt" differently than I do.  Even if we replace
>> "doubt" with "falsified", it's not a binary thing.  When I doubt something
>> an authority says, I'm not refuting, denying, or rejecting it.  I'm simply
>> expressing that the saying probably has caveats, some of which I might know
>> about, some of which I might not.  The same is true of (critical
>> rationalist) falsification.  Even though we know Newtonian physics isn't
>> end-all, be-all True with a capital T.  It's satisficing in most
>> circumstances.  To (When I) say it's been falsified simply means it has
>> caveats.
>>
>> And, in this sense of the two terms, doubt and falsification are
>> _rampant_ in science.  When you try to replicate some other lab's
>> experiment, you must doubt, say, the methods section in their paper,
>> usually because you don't have the exact same equipment and the exact same
>> people ... doubt is what promotes reproducibility to replicability. ... at
>> least in this non-scientist's opinion.
>>
>> >  I.e. we can't treat a lack of salve as an assertion of objectivity
>> without implicitly asserting that every statement without such salve is
>> fallacious. [NST==>Yep.  All statements are more or less fallacious.  So
>> does that render all statements the same?  If I flip the coin once and it
>> comes up heads, what evidence do I have that the coin is biased.   None.
>> If I flip it twice, a little.  If I get a hundred heads, the probability
>> that the coin flips represent a population of fair coin-flips is finite,
>> but vanishingly small.  I’ld bet on it, wouldn’t you?  All statements of
>> certainly of that character.  <==nst]
>>
>> No, not all fallacies are the same.  Different statements are fallacious
>> in different ways.  And the argument from authority fallacy, in my opinion,
>> is the worst one because it's opaque.  You can't learn from it.  At least
>> with, say, assuming the conclusion, it encourages us to understand the
>> relationship between premises and conclusion... it helps us grok deduction
>> as well as the host of concepts surrounding languages, formal systems,
>> algebras, etc.
>>
>> Your inductive argument, by the way, isn't obviously an argument from
>> authority (obvious to me, anyway -- see how annoying it is), particularly
>> with (as someone recently phrased it) interpersonally assessable things
>> like coin flipping.  Anyone with the usual complement of sensorimotor
>> manifolds (!) can put in place the kernel and carry out the iteration.  The
>> only authorities involved are whatever physical structures are required for
>> coin flipping and counting.
>>
>> But, more importantly, self-consistency (local coherence) is the governor
>> of induction.  Can you imagine if "successor" were redefined at each
>> iteration?  So, it helps make my larger point that it's irrelevant what you
>> or I believe or state with authority.  What matters is whether the
>> method(s) hang(s) together.
>>
>> --
>> ☣ glen
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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>
>
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