I challenge you:cite ONE paper that discerns Science from Pseudoscience wth CERTAINTY

[Dave Rogers]

This thread is a good example as to why philosophy has achieved nothing of practical value.

I disagree; I would characterize this as deliberate abuse of philosophy to try and gloss over the fact that homeopathy doesn't do anything by attacking the concept of words being allowed to have meanings. And it's also a classic example of the loaded question fallacy too, a standard technique of proponents of woo. The form of that fallacy goes something like this:

P1: A single scientific paper giving objective criteria by which investigation may be classified as science or pseudoscience may be taken as justification that the classification is valid.
P2: No evidence of such a paper has been offered.

C: The classification is invalid.

Which is, of course, a textbook case of denying the antecedent; the loaded question aspect comes from the choice of the single piece of evidence outlined in P1, which is typically chosen to be something whose existence is highly unlikely and which the proponent strongly believes not to exist.

Dave

 

[Robin]

So you agree with me that there is NO way to tell science from pseudoscience with certainty but, if only, with a certain percentage, i.e.: 80% pseudoscientific because of THIS and because of THAT, correct?

Again, I most certainly didn't say that. You say "I understand" but apparently you did not.

Again, the fact that the demarcation line is not sharp, ie that there are some cases where we cannot say if it is science or pseudo science does not imply that there are not some things that are definitely pseudo science and it does not imply that there are not some things that are definitely science.

Einstein working on the theory of relativity was definitely science because he was working on something that he had good reason to believe could be true and that he was genuinely interested in finding out how the world works.

Someone who is working of a process to establish that the Earth is 6,000 years old is definitely doing pseudo-science because there is no chance of the hypothesis being true and he is working on this, not to find out how the world works, but to reinforce a prior belief.

Also, I don't see the point in assigning percentages to things unless you can also describe the function by which you would calculate these percentages. Zoology professors handing out movie cameras to chimpanzees sounds like pseudo science to me, as does quite a lot of evolutionary psychology, but I couldn't describe a function to assign percentages to these.

 

[devhdb]

Devhdb,

You said, "Mine is not a claim, mine is a NEGATION: that it can be possible to distinguish between science and pseudoscience."

What I'm saying is that we can and do make functional distinctions between science and pseudoscience. There's no need to go all Descartes or Hagel. We can be pragmatic.

When it comes to philosophy, we believe a lot of stuff. Those beliefs are less subject to empirical evidence. They are in fact matters of preference that hang on more than just empirical evidence.

To admit them as intellectual preferences is intellectual honesty. To assert them as certainties and dogmas is a failure of integrity in that instance.

(and before someone tries to do this number on me, I admit that I just expressed a preference.)

One must beware sweeping either-or assertions or negations. It's the quickest way to paint oneself into a corner.

Thanks Apathia,

As I already replied to bruto above:

When you define something as pseudoscientific, is it all or nothing or you address it with a "80% pseudoscientific".

Please see: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=13055716#post13055716

Let me ask you: do you claim to be able to tell them apart? If so, what kind of rational algorithm do you follow to do it?

Thanks.

 

[Apathia]

I like that.

Question: how do you claim to be able to tell a scientist from a pseudoscientist? Do you address a pseudoscientist with "a 90% pseudoscientist" or, once your particular Demarcation Criterion points that you seem to have found one, you address him as a 100% pseudoscientist?

I wonder, because I've never heard the term "80% pseudoscientist" and maybe -and just MAYBE- we should begin to address them like that.

Also, could you please answer any of the 5 questions above?

Thanks!

Pseudoscience is in respect to a position held that does not admit empirical evidence that questions it. As I said, a given scientist may embrace questionable positions and even believe them contrary to evidence. I'm not going to assign a scientist/pseudoscientist percentage. But if one's main schtick is a pseudoscientific one, you lose credibility.

And again, what is a "pseudoscientific" position? One that continues to be asserted as science, empirical evidence to the contrary.

 

[devhdb]

Do you agree with me that there is no way to tell day from night with 100% certainty?

Do you agree with me that we can only ever say with 50%, 80% or 15.275% certainty whether it is day or night?

Please show me on Google Scholar a paper describing your method for measuring the percentage of day and night.

Thanks

Hi again Jack by the hedge. I already replied you here:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=13055723#post13055723

And I'm still waiting for your answers to ANY of the 5 questions above.

Thanks.

 

[devhdb]

This thread is a good example as to why philosophy has achieved nothing of practical value.

Hi Captain_Swoop, welcome,

Do you claim to be able to tell science from pseudoscience with rigour?
If so, how?

Could you please do something practical and answer ANY of the 5 questions above for us? Nobody seems to have dared yet.

Thanks!

 

[devhdb]

I notice you cut off the second part of my post. Was that deliberate?

Carl Sagan said it many years ago: “Science delivers the goods.” Psuedoscience doesn't, because it has no way of determining if it has succeeded or failed.

Sorry Blue Mountain, I didn't mean it on purpose, it's just that I didn't see anything significant to reply. But I will now:

What do you mean by goods? Technology?

If that's the case, as replied to Robin before (http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=13055667#post13055667)

Do you mean that science is that AND ONLY THAT *KNOWLEDGE* which produces *TECHNOLOGY*, such as an iPad? Please correct me if I'm wrong... is that your final posture?

Fine.

In that case, please, let me know:

- are Mathematics science?
- what kind of technology has produced String Theory?
- what kind of technology has produced the hypothesis of the Multiverse?

Are String Theory and/or the hypothesis of the Multiverse science of pseudoscience?

Thanks.

 

[devhdb]

If a pseudoscientist who is, for example, a proponent of some ineffective medicine also believes in real things, like gravity or carbon dating or electromagnetic induction, does that reduce their pseudoscience percentage?.

Me neither.

 

[Apathia]

Thanks Apathia,

As I already replied to bruto above:

When you define something as pseudoscientific, is it all or nothing or you address it with a "80% pseudoscientific".

Please see: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=13055716#post13055716

Let me ask you: do you claim to be able to tell them apart? If so, what kind of rational algorithm do you follow to do it?

Thanks.

I believe I have made the distinction between science and pseudoscience.
There is no "rational algorithm." It's a process of investigation that yields useful knowledge as opposed to some philosophical certainty.

Some held positions will shake out as being of lasting use, while some will be found useless. Mostly there will be modifications, qualifications, and provisos.
(Newton's Physics have not become pseudoscience.)

OK, it's not a pretty picture for someone who wants to know what is TRUTH now!. It's not good news for someone who craves a secure certainty.

And it's not to the liking of anyone who wants to push a belief lacking empirical credibility on the grounds that we can't know for certain anyway. Or the presuppositionalist who says "Therefore we need Divine revelation to give us the necessary certainties.

Just roll with the punches.

 

[devhdb]

Devhdb, you asked, "In that case, what do you think about String Theory or the hypothesis of the Multiverse? Are those science or pseudoscience?"

They are scientific conjectures on the fringes of Cosmology and Physics, but they are open to the evidentiary process and questioned on the basis of empirical evidence. One can get pseudoscientific about them if ze says, I believe in them in spite of what evidence you have to the contrary.

Fine.

but they are open to the evidentiary process and questioned on the basis of empirical evidence.

How do you TEST the assertion that we live in a Multiverse? What precise observation do you predict that would REFUTE your hypothesis?

Same with String Theory.

The investigator H in homeopathy could also claim that he is open to empirical evidence, it's just that his is a proto-science that we should respect and leave space for experimentation, for his claims *ARE* suitable for FALSABILITY, which maybe the Multiverse "scientist" aren't, correct?

Actually, maybe we should FUND the homeopath with millions of dollars more that what we do with the string theorist, whose predictions might not be FALSEABLE in any way, right?

ô_Ô

 

[Jack by the hedge]

5 is certainly a most convoluted question. It starts, one infers, with a case of a person who publicly declares a certain homeopath to be "pseudoscientific".

The homeopath feels this insults her honour and complains to the authorities that she has been slandered. Presumably this is in a jurisdiction which recognises criminal defamation as it leads to imprisonment as well as a fine. The judge demands the defendant explain the criteria by which they found the homeopath to be pseudoscientific, but is dissatisfied with whatever defence is offered. The defendant is fined and imprisoned.

We are then asked to imagine we are the convicted defendant and to define, as a percentage of something, how confident we would wish the judge to be of our guilt before we would be satisfied that our conviction was just.


It makes not a scrap of sense. If I was convicted of something, my agreement or not that I was genuinely guilty would not be set by the judge's percentage of confidence in my guilt. They're two different things. It's just silly.

 

[devhdb]

OP, I do like Richard Feynman’s idea that what distinguishes science is a rigorous honesty manifested in reporting to peers the ways in which you have earnestly tried to falsify your own theories. Other than that I like Paul Feyerabend’s anything goes idea of science.

;-)

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Me neither.

It's disappointing that you don't understand it since you introduced the concept.

 

[Lithrael]

Giving the benefit of the doubt (sort of)... If you’re talking about evaluating things that we think of as ‘hard science’ where in principle you should be able to see if a Thing Is Happening When You Do This... There are certainly lots of resources on how to evaluate an attempted scientific experiment to see whether it’s likely to be collecting accurate data, or likely to be confirming biases, or indeed likely to simply be collecting junk due to mistakes, misapprehensions, or contamination.

Anyone can do cargo cult science and get crap. This is the stuff I’d call a 100% pseudoscientific experiment. There’s a beaker, and a lab coat, and I wrote stuff down. Fine if you’re learning. Not a finished product ready to ‘do science.’ Students practice the basics on experiments with well established outcomes. They evaluate their tools and methods. A study experiment scoring a perfect grade is probably what I’d call 100% scientific experiment.

The series of experiments described earlier did not include anything like enough information to judge whether they were scientific or just science-ey.

 

[devhdb]

I disagree; I would characterize this as deliberate abuse of philosophy to try and gloss over the fact that homeopathy doesn't do anything by attacking the concept of words being allowed to have meanings. And it's also a classic example of the loaded question fallacy too, a standard technique of proponents of woo. The form of that fallacy goes something like this:

P1: A single scientific paper giving objective criteria by which investigation may be classified as science or pseudoscience may be taken as justification that the classification is valid.
P2: No evidence of such a paper has been offered.

C: The classification is invalid.

Which is, of course, a textbook case of denying the antecedent; the loaded question aspect comes from the choice of the single piece of evidence outlined in P1, which is typically chosen to be something whose existence is highly unlikely and which the proponent strongly believes not to exist.

Dave

Hi Dave, welcome to the debate.

I am glad that you bring this up:

P1: A single scientific paper giving objective criteria by which investigation may be classified as science or pseudoscience may be taken as justification that the classification is valid.
P2: No evidence of such a paper has been offered.

C: The classification is invalid.


In order to clarify my posture, I do *NOT* claim that the classification is invalid. The *ONLY* thing that I claim is that NO EVIDENCE OF SUCH A PAPER HAS BEEN FOUND.

But if you have found it, I'll gladly read it.

Do you claim to know the difference between science and pseudoscience?

a) YES.
b) NO.

Also, could you please answer any of the 5 questions above?

Thanks.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Hi Dave, welcome to the debate.

There is no debate. You've asked a series of dishonestly framed questions which I have no intention of bothering to address beyond explaining how their framing is dishonest.

Dave

 

[JoeMorgue]

I gotta say "Why are we funding string theory research and not homeopathy research?" is a rather novel Woo stance.

I mean only in the details, the broad rant is just more "Big science doesn't know everything" nonsense.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Of course.

Do you agree with me that there's no 100% way of telling science from pseudoscience?

Do I agree that there can be cases where one can be unaware of whether a concept is science or pseudoscience? Of course.

For example, I used to think that homeopathy was a form of herbal medicine. In that case, due to my having insufficient evidence, I could not make any better informed judgement on whether it was likely to be scientific or not.

I won't attempt to put any percentage of certainty on what I thought at the time, especially since there doesn't appear to be any substance to this notion of percentages.

One might wonder if the idea of percentages of certainty about pseudoscience is itself scientific or pseudoscientific.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Fine.

but they are open to the evidentiary process and questioned on the basis of empirical evidence.

How do you TEST the assertion that we live in a Multiverse? What precise observation do you predict that would REFUTE your hypothesis? Same with String Theory. The investigator H in homeopathy could also claim that he is open to empirical evidence, it's just that his is a proto-science that we should respect and leave space for experimentation, for his claims *ARE* suitable for FALSABILITY, which maybe the Multiverse "scientist" aren't, correct?

Actually, maybe we should FUND the homeopath with millions of dollars more that what we do with the string theorist, whose predictions might not be FALSEABLE in any way, right?

ô_Ô

Just for the jollies:

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-pa...ot-just-maths-it-s-science-that-can-be-tested

 

[Apathia]

Fine.

but they are open to the evidentiary process and questioned on the basis of empirical evidence.

How do you TEST the assertion that we live in a Multiverse? What precise observation do you predict that would REFUTE your hypothesis?

Same with String Theory.

The investigator H in homeopathy could also claim that he is open to empirical evidence, it's just that his is a proto-science that we should respect and leave space for experimentation, for his claims *ARE* suitable for FALSABILITY, which maybe the Multiverse "scientist" aren't, correct?

Actually, maybe we should FUND the homeopath with millions of dollars more that what we do with the string theorist, whose predictions might not be FALSEABLE in any way, right?

ô_Ô

Actually Homeopathy has had much more scrutiny and years of investigation to pan out as a real medical treatment, It hasn't.

As for String Theory and Multiverse, there are empirical observational issues that call them into question, or give them a smidgeon of support.
No, we can't haul them into the lab for a simple science experiment, but Astrophysics and particle physics can and does continue to evaluate these fringe conjectures on the basis of empirical observation and evidence.

In the meantime we enjoy the ride.