Mumbo jumbo

Yes there are a lot of fools roaming the world and opining; some even have their own blogs where they pretend to expertise.

But the medium aside aside, was it ever any different? Judging from the calamities and stupidities of the past it appears that the foolishness of our own age has a long pedigree.

Let’s be skeptical of our current roster of weirdos but let’s be skeptical that something brand new is afoot.

Are we more likely today to suffer the megaphones of fools? That is what it boils down to, practically, doesn’t it?

I admit that the digital world makes that a plausible perspective but think of a medieval village, held in thrall to ignoramuses loyal to to one myth or another. Can we possibly suggest that those folks were less immersed in clap-trap than are we? My sense is no. We in 2004 are indeed far more open to antidotes to the poison of anti-reason.

Say it ain’t so, Ophelia.

The title makes it seem that there was a time before mumbo jumbo. The author is lying to himself. Isn’t that the definition of delusion, and of “mumbo jumbo?” People make the mistake of identifying themselves with the authority that comes to them only through their participation in a system. Cops tend to think they ‘are’ the law. Scientists imagine themselves as ‘science.’ The essence of fascism is to equation of a self with power. A monarch is the leader within a system, a leader for whom rules apply. A fascist dictator makes the rules himself. Fascism is about power. Monarchy and democracy are about systems. Simple, yes?

“an insistence on intellectual autonomy, a rejection of tradition and authority” led many not only to associate themselves, but to equate themselves with logic, and from that with necessity. This has been the major delusion of modernity. Do I really have to run down the list here? Do I really have to explain what that delusion has meant, for millions?
I’m truly sorry for anyone who is unable to understand or admit their own weakness, I’m truly sorry for those who mock the foolishness of others as a way to avoid admitting their own credulity. Laugh all you want at fools, they’ve been with us forever. But a skeptic is willing to laugh at himself. Do you really think the new popularity of illogic comes from nowhere? Do you not think that the equation of logic with mechanics and mechanization- the mechanization of behavior- has not produced a counterforce? The problem with fiction is that some fools confuse it with reality. But as any connoisseur knows, the good stuff makes even the most intellectual reader a little nervous. That’s the god damn point!
Sorry for rambling but I’m sick of this sht.

S.E.,

Fascinating. Rambling is not necessarily a problem, but lack of clarity can be. Which shit are you sick of, exactly?

Seth Edenbaum I feel your pain. You are definitely not alone there where you are. Where we are.
–
In my seemingly endless role as loopy inconsequentialist I would like to stress for what seems the hundredth time this season that there is no consistent biological advantage to “the truth”. That there may be a cumulative advantage, and in some key moments of conflict and crisis; but overall it’s like the poisonous Monarch butterfly and the non-poisonous but identically-marked Viceroy. The Viceroy’s lying but so what?
And the comfort of delusion isn’t all, there’s a fire in the belly the zealot carries into battle. Psychopaths have a leg up as far as doubt goes, sociopaths don’t get bogged down in moral ambiguities. Existential terror and disgust are debilitating, though they may be much closer to what’s really happening than the idea that animal lives are the punishment zone for souls who mess up their human opportunities, or that strict obedience to a particular code of behavior will guarantee eternity in paradise.
This dilemma is played out locally in the arms race, in business, in all kinds of compromised endeavors, where rationalization erodes integrity. The one hopeful thing, that brightens all that for me, a little, is the possibility that the truly long-term may finally matter more than any immediate success, that the universe may be tipped one small degree from neutral, toward the true.

Ophelia,

Are you ever not smug and passive/aggressively dismissive of other commenters? I’m just wondering.

Again, there’s always been a nonrational tradition in western intellectualism. I don’t like it, but it’s not new.

And, for that matter, freaking Descartes’ dualism is mumbo-jumbo.

I’ll grant that some individual brains may be more healthy in the same way that average height has increased because of nutrition. But this is a small effect relative to the enormous effect of persistent and increasingly complex culture. People got “smarter” when we developed written language.

The Flynn effect is most likely due to the fact that you can learn to do IQ tests through practice and more kids are forced to practice. The story about IQ measuring innate ability is crud, I raised my IQ by about 35 points through weekly practice. Everyone else in the class improved their scores, otherwise the school would not have done it. Yes I could join pretty much any high IQ club, but membership of them only proves you are too stupid for words.

IQ is a great example of a modern dellusion. See Stephen Jay Gould. Other examples would include supply side economics, see Krugman.

As for the experts, there are some folk who think that expertise comes from a position. So you make them chair of a technical panel they must be an expert. I am currently dealling with an idiot who thinks because he wrote a ‘Dummies’ book and got made chair of a technical committee he is now the worlds foremost authority.

“It’s actually pretty horrifying to read about some of this stuff; like how not eating iodized salt as a child will, on average, reduce your IQ by 15 points. Leaded paint has similar effects.”

I don’t doubt that improvements in healthcare, diet and environment have played a role in the Flynn effect, but I think their role has to have been minor.

The rise in scores has simply been much too great to be explained as an accurate reflection of how the average person’s brainpower has risen in that period. We’re talking about a rise of 30 points (i.e, 2 standard deviations) over 2 generations here, which, if it really were meaningful, would imply that the average European of the early 1940s fitted the clinical definition of retardation; a full third of Europeans then would have had IQs less than 55, with concomittant difficulties communicating and socializing unsupervised. I know that a lot of Europeans were out of their heads in the first half of the 20th century, but to assume that this is an accurate description of what people were like at the time is ridiculous.

People put too much faith in IQ tests when they assume that they are absolute measures of intellectual ability that can be relied upon without regard for time and place. I think we flatter ourselves too much in assuming that most of the rise in raw scores reflects actual improvements in our ability to learn. Mere exposure to TV programs like Sesame street, and video games like Super Mario Bros, with their sequential puzzles and whatnot, probably suffices to account for 85 percent of the rise that has occurred.

At the risk of unknowingly committing some online faux pas, uhm, Keith, stop it.
The question I have is Ophelia’s “hmmm…” came after something I wrote. Not that that’s a problem. The etymology of hmmm being general enough and all. But that it was immediately after.
Then Keith.
So is that me there? Being defended obliquely? By personal attack against Ophelia?
Keith you need to not do that.
It would be too time-and-energy-consuming to monitor Crooked Timber’s comments.
Polite discourse, which is what got my attention here in the first place, is paramount. Self-regulating polite discourse. It’s an affection thing, almost. Love of ideas, love of clear language, like that. If there’s an attitude in need of adjusting, doing so from within the bounds of politesse has more zing. And it has the added advantage of being more fun for spectators.

Being in the process of reading a large chunk of H. L. Mencken’s journalism, I am well aware that illogic, idiocy and superstition was as widespread
80 years ago as it is today. It is somehow comforting that despite the great mass of blithering morons we have still managed to make some progress in the meanwhile.

“Nonsense. And you know it.“—Tim

Is it? Because although I suspect I know what you think, in fact, science is; I also know that there’s quite a bit of discussion and inquiry that make a strong argument that science is closer to what Seth says it is than to what you (I’m guessing) think it is.

For example, Daniel invokes Popper in another thread as a defense of astrology and a critique of climatology. I think he meant it, partly at least, ironically. Nevertheless, I think he should have intended to be completly ironic since there’s lots of reason to think that it’s Karl Popper who’s wrong about the nature of science.

Science is not a body of knowledge, nor is it a methodology. Those things help define it; but it is a community far more than it is anything else. If you’re a working scientist or have spent time around them, you’ll know this to be true.

It’s like the law, really, in this respect. The romanticized view is very different from reality; but the romanticized view serves an important social purpose, within and without.

No, actually it’s because I thought you were black and I’m racially threatened.

Okay, so maybe Relativity *will* stand or fall on its own merits, but so what? How does it really help the non-scientist on the street?

Of what use are complex scientific theories when, say, someone you love has just died? What if believing that there is an aferlife is just more damned comforting than acknowledging that they are six feet under and going through the rational, scientifically recognised process of organic decay?

Yes, science may well be as objective a form of enquiry into the world as we’re likely to get. But is objectivity what we, as human beings, really need? All the time? Perhaps we need a bit of mumbo-jumbo too.

Otherwise, why would so many scientists believe in God?:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1034872,00.html

Mumbo-jumbo is fine… as long as the death of the loved ones wasn’t due to substituting crystal healing for modern medicine (“Christian Science” medicine does a roughly similar thing), or accidental asphyxiation during a rebirthing exercise, or the collapse of a building constructed in ignorance of basic engineering principles.

I’m all in favour of entertaining oneself by learning about other people’s folly: it’s been the basis of comedy ever since Aristophanes. It’s also somewhat futile to require a painstaking analysis of one’s own folly before having the right to criticize someone else.

One of the great advantages of other people is that they are much better than you are at seeing your mistakes.

It isn’t my business to write about science, you will be relieved to know. It is only my business to do science.

But the facts are pretty clear – relativity didn’t succeed because of Einstein’s stature. Quantum mechanics was debated fiercely, but it wasn’t the reputations or personalities of the scientists that ensured its success. QED won’t be discarded because the people who champion it fall out of favor. It was his work that made de Broglie matter, and not de Broglie who made his work matter.

There are a handful of competing efforts out there to unify relativity and QM: is it really your assertion that the theory backed by the most prestigious scientists will win the day regardless of whether it works?

Because, of course, if the scientists are science, that’s exactly what we should expect. But it plainly hasn’t been the case, and there’s no evidence to suggest it will be the case. And that’s what makes the assertion nonsense, in spite of your sensibilities.

That was perhaps a little too harsh. I am sympathetic to your view of the activity of science and I understand your heartfelt allegience to it. But as with a lover, one must eventually come to love on the basis of who the person really is and not on the basis of their idealization. I love science for what she is, even if she’s not the idealized goddess I fell in love with as an infatuated child. Indeed, I think I love her even more for what I now truly understand her to be.

Ah, I get it. Yet again, it all comes down to an occluded difference in what different people mean by a word.

“Science”, to people like Tim and myself, is primarily defined by empiricism and a correspondence theory of truth.

“Science”, to people like Keith M Ellis, and what seems like 99% of the people working in “Science Studies”, and “Science and Technology Studies”, above all means a sociological system.

Of course, they then both come up with conclusions which are pretty much correct – but those conclusions are starting from a different definition of Science.

And ironically, we probably all tacitly recognise the existence *and validity* of these two senses of the word science, but all two often we fail to realise when we’re talking at cross-purposes.

Let’s recognise that the differences in our preferred definitions are more like the differences between sociologists and psychologists – a choice of field of study – rather than the differences between an honest person and a sophist.

Thomas Kuhn said science is whatever the community made up of practicing scientists says it is:

http://www.emory.edu/EDUCATION/mfp/Kuhn.html

Science can not be defined as an accumulation of knowledge. That definition doesn’t work. The Bible is an accumulation of knowledge, but it isn’t science.

My grad school researcher friends all seem comfortable with Kuhn’s definition of science as a definition that comes closet to describing what they actually do.

This is an old debate. I remember hashing out this issue with friends back around 1991 when it seemed very cool to talk about Kuhn and Popper. Anyone who finds this subject interesting can go read a thousand web pages devoted to the Kuhn/Popper “what is science” question.

“Thomas Kuhn said science is whatever the community made up of practicing scientists says it is”

Thomas Kuhn was full of bunk. Fashionable theorizing to the contrary, Popper was essentially right; the Duhem-Quine “debunking” of his position is based on an overlooking of the fact that when any of the “auxiliary assumptions” of a theory changes, one no longer has the same theory.

I’m sorry, but I have to give the argument to Tim here. I do know the odd thing about how science is done, and while prestige may occasionally allow nonsense to slip by the odd reviewer, in the end theories really do stand and fall on the basis of how well rooted they are in the empirical evidence. Popperian falsificationism is actually a rather decent description of how good science is done.

Let’s put this another way, since you’re all getting so blogged down here.
Scientists are interested in a metaphysical construct called ‘truth’. When Steven Weinberg defends the supercollider mad other projects that require lots of money, he refers to the search for ‘truth’. What the hell does he mean? He means the search for facts. We MUST strive to learn what we can. Curiosity he might argue is it’s own reward. But his curiosity is aroused by solving problems that are logical and therefore by implication solvable. He wants to KNOW. But not all questions are solvable. Some are recurring. Guilt or innocence is a recurring question. What defines moral responsibility, is a recurring question. And god damn it! people whose curiosity is peaked by questions that are not recurring, that can be solved ONCE AND FOR ALL, have no patience for the rest. Scientists use ‘logic’ to defend all sorts of crap. Eugenics was ‘scientific.’ Mainstream economics is ‘scientific.’ Tell that to someone working the factory floor for 30 years. Efficiency is ‘scientific.’ These are all metaphors based on a certain idea of problem solving. that is esthetically pleasing to scientists. That’s a hell of a way to run a railroad.

Steven Weinberg loves ‘truth.’ It’s nice to have doctors who know what they’re doing, but I have not love for ‘truth.’ I like problems.

I’m becoming convinced that most scientists and technicians are moral idiots.

“1) How many times those papers are subsequently cited; and,

2) How many of those experimental results have been replicated?

Science relies upon authority; not, as a practical day-to-day matter, falsification.”

How exactly does your claim that “Science relies upon authority” follow from your first two statements? If you think the replication of past results is anything other than routine, or that bold new claims can be advanced merely on the basis of authority, I suggest you tak a look at one or two actual scientific publications. If you bother to read some of the papers in these two journals, or do a search on PubMed, you’ll notice that these sources are chock full of well-articulated, factually backed responses to other claims advanced within them, none of which rely in any way on mere “authority.”

You’re the one who’s wrong, not Popper. That Kuhnian stuff may wash amongst the literati, but it will not serve as a description of how real, living science is done.

“But his curiosity is aroused by problems that are logical and therefore by implication solvable.”

A false statement.

“‘But his curiosity is aroused by problems that are logical and therefore by implication solvable.—Seth Edenbaum’

A false statement.“—Abiola

A second invocation of Godel within just a few minutes. You are, in fact, wrong. Seth’s was a true statement.

Seth was using ordinary language, and in ordinary language implication is not deduction. The use of logic implies solvability notwithstanding the undecidability of the Godel statement, because the undecidability of the Godel statement is quite clearly the exception and not the rule. As I say in another thread, Godel Incompleteness is a very special, very specific form of incompleteness. One should be careful not to make more of it than it is.

“If science is just the sociology of scientists…”—Tim

But that is not what I’ve asserted.

Listen, you and Abiola have an axe to grind. I know what that axe is and I know why you want to grind it. Nine time out of ten I find myself on your side of the fence arguing essentially your position for the same reason you are. I am not a philosophical relativist (in this context). I am not saying that science is unmoored from “truth”.

What I am saying is that you have a damn naive conception about the nature of science that, while normally a felicitous misconception to my sensibilities is, in this case, more and more obnoxious as you use strong words, make strong assertions and basically reveal that you may be competent at science but you are certainly not competent at discussing the philosophy of science.

An unintended consequence of your romanticized view of science is that it gives credibility to the crackpots.

Like you, the crackpots see the revolutionaries—the Einsteins, the Newtons, the Darwins—as exemplary of exactly what science is all about. Authority, consensus, the community of science is immaterial, the truth will out. Except they believe that science has been hijacked by the conservatives and the authoritarians and is in the service of lies, not truth (but only temporarily, for surely their genius will inevitably be recognized). You, in contrast, believe that no such hijacking has taken place; indeed, that such authoritarianism as exists embraces truth wherever and whenever it appears.

You’re both full of shit.

We can forgive them, they’re egomanical crazy people. But you should know better.

Another unintended consequence of this blind faith in science’s egalitarian embrace of truth is an overconfidence that conventional scientific wisdom is largely “true”, and the result is an ironic conservatism that is deeply resistant to revolutionary truths as they appear. I happen to think that, in these cases, science is working as it should.

And in this sense, I don’t particularly mind if the average working scientist shares this naive view of science as, on balance, the conservatism it engenders squelches more crackpots than it encourages them. But when said scientists began writing in the public sphere about their naive vision of science, the balance begins to tilt the other way. They encourage by their words the crackpots more than they discourage them by their actions. Furthermore, beyond the legions of crackpots out there are the overwhelming majority of humanity who does not understand what science is but in some way contributes to its existence. These people have views reflected in policiemakers who also don’t understand science but have the power to direct research resources. The result is junk science. Bad science that overcomes the inherent skepticism and conservatism of the scientific community with the arguments “they said man would never fly, either” and “Einstein was working as patent clerk when he developed relativity”.

And here we come back to being fully on-topic. By engaging in the public sphere this naive and false view of the nature of science, you and those like you are inadvertently encouraging the milleu in which pseudoscience thrives.

Stop it.

“Replication of results is not routine.”

Evidence? Don’t ask me to do your homework for you; provide evidence for this claim or hold your tongue.

“A second invocation of Godel within just a few minutes. You are, in fact, wrong. Seth’s was a true statement.”

Here’s a tip for you: I’ve done graduate level study of logic. I think I know this terrain a wee bit better than you do. Seth’s statement is (pardon my french) bullshit.

Now it is getting ridiculous.

‘An unintended consequence of your romanticized view of science is that it gives credibility to the crackpots.’

The simple truth is that whether or not the crackpots’ perpetual motion machines work has nothing – absolutely, positively nothing – to do with the authoritarian structures of the scientific community. As for other ideas the crackpots may have, I’m willing to let the evidence do the talking there, too. Speaking of which, you were going to provide some evidence for my challenges, weren’t you? QED, de Broglie, etc.? It was going to be something more than ‘You’re both full of shit.’ I hope.

‘You, in contrast, believe that no such hijacking has taken place; indeed, that such authoritarianism as exists embraces truth wherever and whenever it appears.’

No, I, in contrast, believe that such authoritarianism may be part of the sociological structures in which scientists work, but that it is not science; that a musicians union is not music; that the federal agencies sponsoring grants aren’t mathematics; that a tail is not a leg. Naive of me, perhaps.

‘And here we come back to being fully on-topic. By engaging in the public sphere this naive and false view of the nature of science, you and those like you are inadvertently encouraging the milleu in which pseudoscience thrives.’

On the contrary. Pseudo-science thrives when people believe that ‘science relies upon authority’ and not (for example) empirical evidence or falsification; when people believe that science and truth come from having a prestigious endorsement, not from having experimental results. Pseudo-science – like, for example, Lysenkoism, Keith – arises when people accept the authorities instead of evidence. Those people selling pseudo-science are selling it based on authority, on testimonial, on charisma, on claims that it comes from members of the scientific community (preferably in white lab jackets).

If in fact there is a problem with the understanding of science that leads to this undesireable state of affairs, it comes from the people telling us that ‘science relies on authority,’ that science is whatever someone who is a part of the scientific ‘community’ says it is. And I think we know who has asserted these things in this debate.

But I’ve had my say, time to get back to doing science.

You get the last word.

Abiola, I repeat: in common parlance, “implies” does not mean “requires”. You well may know Godel’s proof better than I, but you seem to have difficulty parsing a simple sentence. And we both know Godel’s proof well enough to know that the Godel statement certainly does not imply that in general logical statements are undecidable. It demonstrates only that a certain kind of statement is undecidable. Godel is inappropriate as refuation of Seth’s statement.

But it was nicely authoritarian. Isn’t that ironic?

“Evidence? Don’t ask me to do your homework for you; provide evidence for this claim or hold your tongue.”—Abiola

This is not my homework, it’s yours. You’re dismissing Kuhn and countless people who have done work you have not. You claimed that:

“Popperian falsificationism is actually a rather decent description of how good science is done.“—Abiola

Unless you want to aver that most actual scientific work isn’t “good science”, then for this statement to be true most scientific results would need to replicated so that their falsifiability is relevant. But most experiments are not replicated because there is a community of trust that allows that if an experiment has all the trappings of a good solid experiment, then replication is assumed possible but unnecessary. Authority and credentialism win the day. This is how the majority of science is done. By necessity, it’s not how revolutionary science is done. But revolutionary science is no more the model for the entire activity of science than is a consitutional convention a model of the entire activity of representational government.

Tim keeps challenging me to demonstrate something I have not asserted. I never once claimed that empirical truth does not play a decisive role in science; I have no need, then, to demonstrate how opinion necessarily must win the day. I never claimed such a thing.

You both are arrogant and propietary about science in the way that a basketball player might be arrogant and propietary about physics. That is to say, improperly. That you practice science no more means you have an aquaintance and facility with the study of science than does living in the physical world make one a physicist. The points I am making are well known and uncontroversial to people that do study science, however, and when you waltz onto this field of study and make loud, obnoxious and contrarian claims:

Thomas Kuhn was full of bunk. Fashionable theorizing to the contrary…I do know the odd thing about how science is done…I suggest you tak a look at one or two actual scientific publications. If you bother to read some of the papers in these two journals

…the onus is on you to back up your assertions with proof. Furthermore, your demeanor is arrogant and rude and fully warrants a “you’re full of shit” from someone who’s lost patience with it.

There is nothing “wrong” with Popperian falsificationism; but as a model for the enterprise of science it is inappropriate.

I have bent over backwards for you and Tim and repeatedly reminded you that I agree with you in the essentials of empiricism and that I am not the least some pomo trotting out a vulgar relativism in an attempt to knock down the “false god of Science”. Here, there, and everwhere else I play your present role as Science’s defender. Yet you insist on responding to me as if I were arguing things I am not, as if they were your strawman version of the pomo argument you clearly have a chip on your shoulder about.

And, Abiola, our exchange about Godel is revealing: you quite inappropriately invoked Godel as an authority to contradict Seth Edenbaum. Whether it was a willful or unwitting misreading of Seth doesn’t matter. When challenged on it you double down and yet again invoke authority. In doing so you are demonstrating mine—and even his!—point.

From another thread:

“The Mathematical Experience, Phillip Davis and Reuben Hersh. A nice mix of history, philosophy and the odd bit of actual mathematical insight. Useful for dispelling the notion that maths is the dry stuff taught to engineers and economists.“—Abiola

A book I, too, highly recommend (as well as Innumeracy).

Perhaps you’ve forgotten a central theme of the book: that what mathematicians feel they do is not exactly (or not at all) what they believe they do which may, in turn, be quite different than what they claim they do.

Particularly, Davis and Hersh argue that most mathematicians are secretely Platonists while publicly, and rigorously, presenting themselves as formalists. And this is a very important matter to Davis and Hersh because, to them, understanding the tension between these two dual-minded views is essential to understanding what mathematics is. That is the theme of their book.

Science is this same situation turned on its head. Scientists present themselves as naive realists the way mathematicians present themselves as formalists. But as a practical matter, scientists are consensualist pragmatists, where mathematicians are idealists. In both cases, to really get to the heart of what this means for mathematics and science, you have to understand the whole of this apparent dichotomy and not just a part.

Well, Robin, I suggest you read Davis and Hersh’s book. It’s very interesting. It’s been many years since I’ve read it, but I do believe that they argue that there would be practical consequences for a wholly consistent platonist or formalist mathematician.

And this is why I brought it up in this context. A completely culturally relativist science would be something quite different from what it is, as Tim was pointing out. But also so would a pure empirical realist science. The reality is more complex; and, I think, more interesting.

Very, very nice and thoughtful comments, Sennoma, and I appreciate them. I think overall you and I are pretty much in agreement. I got stuck arguing the position I did because, yes, Seth made an overstatement but then so did Tim and Abiola in response.

“That second sentence smells suspicously like an appeal to authority to me, and the first is just plain wrong.—Sennoma

Well, I respectfully disagree.

My education is deep in the history and philosophy of science, and not in the sense of reading someone’s survey. We read the original works and did a lot of the experiments up to mid-twentieth century science. There’s six semesters of laboratory science and eight of math.

And I was a physics major before I went to SJC.

Anyway, I’m not arguing primarily from a “science studies”/Kuhnian point of view. I am familiar with a fair bit of his and related work; but my opinion on this arises from a combination of my understanding of western science in its progression, and in my experience training in science and being (then and later) among and observing scientists. It’s my opinion that there’s a hell of a lot that scientists don’t know that one would expect them to know; and they are especially naive about the philosophy of science. It’s especially weird to me given that many of them are quite cynical about the daily practice of science; but I don’t think many people can become scientists without being in some sense deeply idealistic about the enterprise of science. It’s my observation that this creates a sort of intellectual blind spot.

Anyway, I think it’s sort of odd that people like yourself who are normally quite skeptical could imagine that practicing science equates to a deep understanding of the enterprise of science. This is rarely the case with anything else—what would be so special about science?

Yes, I understand you’re on the defensive from the attacks of the pomo relativists and that most of them don’t know jack shit about science. But, you know, there are people that do. And they’re not all scientists.

Sorry. I talk about where I went to school a lot since it’s so unusual. I’m almost certainly obnoxious on the subject, actually. That’s why I mentioned it here only in an off-hand way. Kinda backfired, huh?

“But when you say ‘Authority and credentialism win the day’, and you’re talking about the ‘community of trust’ (your phrase!) method of doing day-to-day science, you’re using terms that I just don’t think are appropriate and that don’t match my experience.—Sennoma

Well, perhaps it’s a connotation of what I’m saying that you have trouble with. I think I’m just saying that those things are a lot more of the reality of day-to-day science than is commonly supposed.

You really should spend some time on a USENET newsgroup like sci.physics.relativity. You’ll be adopting an credentialist/authoritarian position pretty quick, I bet. I say that jokingly but also half-seriously. This is my point about how the over-romanticized view of science plays into the hands of crackpots.

“That’s very true, but it’s not a common insight in my experience. You have spent a lot of time around scientists. :-)“—Sennoma

Yep. I have. :) Seriously, no one could work even remotely as hard as a scientist does for so little pay without being motivated by a deep idealism.

Well, okay. One woman I was involved with, an astrophysicist, was one of the most deeply pragmatic people I’ve ever known. She once said that she does what she does because she “gets to play with the big toys”. Which, since I’m pretty idealistic about science, sort of took me aback. (Had I continued in physics I would have gone into cosmology, so I think had a little case of hero worship going on and I was disapointed in her.)

All the scientists I’ve known are amazingly dedicated and hard working people.

Keith: I think I’m just saying that those things are a lot more of the reality of day-to-day science than is commonly supposed.

Well, I can live with that. Interestingly, my wife, who is not a scientist, was suprised to hear your point of view and even more suprised by the extent to which I agreed with it. In particular, she imagined replication of individual observations to be rather stricter and more routine than my experience indicates it is. It seems that the lay view of science may be rather different from what I imagined it to be (although I should add that my wife has a deep and abiding interest and autodidactic background in science and is probably not a good example of an “average” view).

Allen: Isn’t it at the moment when it would get dropped (when the paradigm is in danger from contradictory evidence, and it can’t be, or isn’t, ignored) that social factors—the politics—are most important?

I would think so, yes; but my contention is that all the politics can ever do is delay acceptance of the new model, not prevent it: the evidence always wins. Also, I was explicit about the length of time I am talking about: months to years, not decades or lifetimes. Years of delay because of politics might seem — well, it is — miserably inefficient; but even so, the enterprise of science can claim remarkable success, and no other system that I know of has ever come close to matching it. (I should confess here that I have Kuhn’s ideas only at second hand; a copy of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is on its way to me as I write, since this conversation has revived my interest.)