Comment by lutusp
3 days ago
This idea suffers from a number of practical obstacles:
One, in a sufficiently advanced field of study, an idea's originator may be the only person able to imagine an experimental test. I doubt that many physicists would have immediately thought that Mercury's unexplained orbital precession would serve to either support or falsify Einstein's General Relativity -- but Einstein certainly could. Same with deflected starlight paths during a solar eclipse (both these effects were instrumental in validating GR).
Two, scientists are supposed to be the harshest critics of their own ideas, on the lookout for a contradicting observation. This was once part of a scientist's training -- I assume this is still the case.
Three, the falsifiability criterion. If an experimental proposal doesn't include the possibility of a conclusive falsification, it's not, strictly speaking, a scientific idea. So an idea's originator either has (and publishes) a falsifying criterion, or he doesn't have a legitimate basis for a scientific experiment.
Here's an example. Imagine if the development of the transistor relied on random experimentation with no preferred outcome. In the event, the inventors at Bell Labs knew exactly what they wanted to achieve -- the project was very focused from the outset.
Another example. Jonas Salk (polio vaccine) knew exactly what he wanted to achieve, his wasn't a random journey in a forest of Pyrex glassware. It's hard to imagine Salk's result arising from an aimless stochastic exploration.
So it seems science relies on people's integrity, not avoidance of any particular focus. If integrity can't be relied on, perhaps we should abandon the people, not the methods.
> So it seems science relies on people's integrity, not avoidance of any particular focus.
Science relies on replication. And any real gain society gets that comes from science is a form of replication in itself.
Integrity can't be relied on. But then, complete reliability is not necessary, just enough to make replication work.
And also, science is in a crisis due to the lack (or really large delay) of practical use. We actually don't have any other institution that ensures replication happens.
>> So it seems science relies on people's integrity, not avoidance of any particular focus.
> Science relies on replication.
If that were true, then extraterrestrials would be real, because people repeatedly report sightings. The fact that most such sightings are misinterpretations of natural phenomena would be swept away by the sheer number of events, i.e. by replication, not interpretation.
> And also, science is in a crisis due to the lack (or really large delay) of practical use.
That's not a crisis in science, because science doesn't care whether an idea can be applied, only whether it can be verified, whether it resists falsification.
When Maxwell constructed his electromagnetic theory, it had no practical application -- none whatever. But much of modern technology relies to a greater or lesser degree on Maxwell's work, 175 years later. Because of Maxwell's theory with no practical application, Einstein regarded him as a scientist on a par with Newton.
Richard Feynman correctly called science "The pleasure of finding things out," with no consideration given to science's applications, if any. Science is judged, not based on its utility, but on its accuracy.
Science asks, "Is this true?" It doesn't ask, "How can we sell this?" That's not science, that's marketing.