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Scientific Skepticism
- Thread starter Calderaro
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Puppycow
Penultimate Amazing
That's a rather broad question.
Here's the Wikipedia article about it:
Scientific skepticism - Wikipedia
We usually just call it skepticism. "Is it based solely on the scientific method?" No, I wouldn't say that. But scientific methods are often good tools to use.
arthwollipot
Observer of Phenomena, Pronouns: he/him
The reason skeptics rely on the scientific method is that it is the best and most successful method humans have ever come up with of determining what is actually real, and what is not.
The Great Zaganza
Maledictorian
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you might also want to familiarize yourselves with Bayesian reasoning:
en.wikipedia.org
as has been mentioned, don't seek The TruthTM, seek a process that will let you get closer and closer to it by regularly seeking new information of quality.
Bayesian inference - Wikipedia
as has been mentioned, don't seek The TruthTM, seek a process that will let you get closer and closer to it by regularly seeking new information of quality.
you might also want to familiarize yourselves with Bayesian reasoning:
Bayesian inference - Wikipedia
as has been mentioned, don't seek The TruthTM, seek a process that will let you get closer and closer to it by regularly seeking new information of quality.
thanks!
thanks!
arthwollipot
Observer of Phenomena, Pronouns: he/him
You're welcome, I guess.
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
As mentioned above, there are various degrees and depths of skepticism, and their usefulness varies with what you're looking at. As a general rule skepticism implies that one does not accept ideas and facts without some substantiation, either in direct experience or in the opinion of those who are trusted, and that those we trust have applied similar rigor. Experience comes in more than one flavor. So, for example, as William James famously pointed out, you can be a skeptic and even a true empiricist and still believe that there are tigers in India, without having come face to face with one. But to believe so is also to be able to judge the quality of evidence, ready to accept reality as it occurs. Our belief is part of a progression from sitting here on the couch, and, in imagination at least, leading through reasonable steps to the experience of those tigers, ready to accept that they are not something else, and really there only when they are actually there, and so forth. A signal part of skepticism consists in the readiness to admit when the process goes wrong.
I think of the scientific method as mainly a set of rules whereby we can sort out what we are doing, and isolate what we hope to know from everything else. You can set up an experience or an experiment in such a way that its outcome depends on a single thing being the case. Even if we do not know all the other elements of the experience, and even if some of its elements are beyond our ability to figure them out, we can isolate some aspect and determine its validity. If some mysterious event occurs every midnight in our darkened closet, that we cannot fathom, we can still scientifically determine whether it makes a difference what color the coat on the hanger is.
I think of the scientific method as mainly a set of rules whereby we can sort out what we are doing, and isolate what we hope to know from everything else. You can set up an experience or an experiment in such a way that its outcome depends on a single thing being the case. Even if we do not know all the other elements of the experience, and even if some of its elements are beyond our ability to figure them out, we can isolate some aspect and determine its validity. If some mysterious event occurs every midnight in our darkened closet, that we cannot fathom, we can still scientifically determine whether it makes a difference what color the coat on the hanger is.
Is the scientific method evolving?
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
I would suppose that depends on what you mean. We might find some other way to ascertain what is true, or, as we have seen over history, another way to define truth itself. We might abandon what we now call the scientific method and apply the term to something new (not that I have any idea what that might be). But that assumes a rather broad definition of what evolution means. We can say, for example, that literature or philosophy or music has evolved, because we use the term to define cultural change in a way that is not the same as what Darwin was talking about, and what we mean when we look at fossils to determine how the world has become what it is over millions of years.
We are of course also actually evolving in the strictest sense, so one might presume that the way we think and perceive and what we perceive will evolve too. But we will not see it happening in our lifetimes or even in our long history. If the scientific method is essentially a way of perceiving what is real and understanding the nature of reality, and if it succeeds in doing so, then we should not expect anything but cultural evolution to be visible to us. And given our vantage point, it may be up to our descendants to decide whether it is in the right direction.
Does scientific skepticism only accept empirical evidence?
Why do you keep saying "scientific skepticism?" Try saying "nonscientific" or "unscientific" or perhaps "nonsensical" skepticism. We see plenty of those kinds of skepticism nowadays. Do you like them?
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
I'm not sure that question makes much sense until one decides what is meant by empirical evidence. Direct, indirect, etc. I think in a very general sense, yes, somewhere at the end of the chain of theory and discovery, empiricism rules. Even if you do not think of the rules of physics by looking at the sky, or the cloud chamber or the collider, that is where they are tested. But not all truth needs to be tested every time. Once a phenomenon has been agreed to occur, a theory in which that phenomenon cannot occur is nonsense before it needs to be tested. If a flat earth theory makes the existence of Antarctica impossible, nobody now needs to repeat the experience of the thousands of people who have sailed to Antarctica in order to call it nonsense. There is empiricism underneath it all, but it need not be direct.
Do you want to use some sort of mysticsl, occult or spiritual "science" somehow?
If so, how would it be tested and repeatable?
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
This is of course the central issue if you think about it. How do you define evidence if not by tying it to verifiable experience, even if by a long cord? I know it can be pedantic at times to demand that people define their terms, but in this case I think the discussion requires it.
We should probably define a few things.
Basics of the Scientific method(feel free to correct if I'm wrong)
Observation
hypothesis/prediction
Test the hypothesis.
Repeat as necessary and make its others can as well.
If it holds up, theory.
Skepticism, basically doubt regarding certainty.
Put a scientific in front, then doubt but accepting the best current evidence.
In my experience most modern skeptics put some value on prior probability. I don't need much evidence to be fairly certain there's an invisible unicorn in my garage for instance. I need a lot of evidence to believe the world is a flat disc.
Basics of the Scientific method(feel free to correct if I'm wrong)
Observation
hypothesis/prediction
Test the hypothesis.
Repeat as necessary and make its others can as well.
If it holds up, theory.
Skepticism, basically doubt regarding certainty.
Put a scientific in front, then doubt but accepting the best current evidence.
In my experience most modern skeptics put some value on prior probability. I don't need much evidence to be fairly certain there's an invisible unicorn in my garage for instance. I need a lot of evidence to believe the world is a flat disc.
arthwollipot
Observer of Phenomena, Pronouns: he/him
Yes, it is.
There's been something which has been called the "Replication Crisis". One of the pillars of the scientific method is the replication of experiments by different teams of scientists to check whether results are consistent, and recently we've been finding that failed replications have been vastly under-recognised for a variety of reasons. This means that many potentially invalid results are being seen in the established literature.
The scientific method is evolving in order to better account for these poor results and ensure that only reliable conclusions enter the literature.
arthwollipot
Observer of Phenomena, Pronouns: he/him
What other kind of evidence can be shown to be reliable?
Wudang
BOFH
Many many years ago I remember reading a plea for a Journal of Failed Experiments which would publish articles on, obviously, failed experiments to allow others better to see what has failed and what hasn't and so try a different path.
As a side note I rather like the Good Thinking Society's term "rational enquiry".
arthwollipot
Observer of Phenomena, Pronouns: he/him
Indeed, negative results are very rarely published. In today's publish-or-perish academic environment, getting a negative result on an expensive study invites p-hacking so that something positive can be published, even if it's spurious.
jt512
Illuminator
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I wouldn't call the improvements to the practice of science that are being undertaken as a result of the replication crisis to be an evolution of the scientific method itself. I'd say it's more like scientists doing a better job of following the scientific method.
Two innovations that might be considered evolution of the scientific method are greater acceptance of Bayesian statistics and the use of computer-simulated data.
arthwollipot
Observer of Phenomena, Pronouns: he/him
And the use of AI tools to analyse large quantities of data, perhaps.
Explorer
Graduate Poster
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AI might be able to deliver quantity, but what about quality of that analysis, or is this still going to rely on natural intelligence?
We seem to have skipped over the "Replication crisis" a bit here. You said earlier that there are many reasons for this, but it would be good to know these reasons. Peer review is one of the most important elements in the scientific method, so surely the "crisis" has to be addressed urgently by those who need to adapt to this in evolutionary methodological terms.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
In its theory and philosophy, no, not really. The basic principle of the hypothetic-deductive method was formulated by Karl Popper in Conjectures and Refutations. Thomas Kuhn introduced an important shortcut—the null hypothesis—in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It is this philosophical framework that governs the expression of all scientific methodology.
As practice, however, the philosophy must be expressed in a way that fits what's being studied without violating the underlying epistemology. This gives rise to individual methods in individual sciences, and all of them are being constantly debated, revised, and improved. Most notably, scientists are always on the lookout for previously unknown sources of bias and error. This is a laboriously intensive group effort. Also noteworthy is the debate over what constitutes scientific certainty, since statistical models are often at the heart of reasoning about measurement.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
As with others, I'm not sure what you mean by "scientific skepticism." The apparent need to qualify one with the other doesn't make it especially clear what you mean.
A scientific inquiry works best when evidence is reliable. That means it can be obtained or observed consistently. It means the evidence can be measured or characterized by objective means based on rationally based deductions or separately evidenced laws and principles. The handling of the evidence must be free from any of the ways known or suspected to introduce bias or error, and there must be a way to quantize the error that cannot be eliminated. And there must be a way to relate the observation of evidence to the causal effect suggested in the hypothesis being tested.
The bulk of activity in scientific inquiry is involved in setting up these conditions.
I think using the modifier scientific is useful in may context to distinguish between what most folks here mean by skepticism vs philosphical skepticism or even conspiracists and various denialists who also tend to identify as skeptics. A holocaust denier will often call themselves a skeptic but are unlikely to call themselves a scientific skeptic.
Short version, a scientific skeptic demands evidence rather than just doubting current knowledge.
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Short version, a scientific skeptic demands evidence rather than just doubting current knowledge.
Scientific skepticism - Wikipedia
Skepticism - Wikipedia
Philosophical skepticism - Wikipedia
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
It's important to keep the replication requirement in context. One of the ways we assure ourselves that we are obtaining and measuring data in a consistent, reliable way is to do so according to a fully-defined method. We encourage other people to reproduce results according to the method not just to see whether the results appear, but to ensure both teams that the method being espoused fully satisfies the requirement to have been set forth in detail sufficient to allow a different team to execute it successfully. When experiments fail to replicate prior work, and the cause can be traced to a failure or shortfall of the protocol, that is science correcting itself back to proper method. Thus I agree it is not an improvement or evolution in the process per se, but rather an integral part of the process that ensures we are doing it right.
The replication crisis is especially acute for those of us who have to try to apply scientific methodology to explaining happenstance events. We can't go back and replay the train wreck or the industrial accident and instrument it properly to obtain data that might help explain the cause. We're left with what we can sift through in the wreckage and what we can demonstrate in the lab might happen. The bellwether example here is the infamous Boeing 737 rudder hardovers that caused a number of fatal crashes and weren't replicated on the bench until literally years later after countless attempts. That still doesn't prove that's what happened on those flights, but merely that it can have happened. Someone on the team dug deep into his arcane knowledge and said, "Hm, let's try this." That sort of ubiquitous human experience is what we have to ferret out by replication when it has an effect on a scientific protocol.
The replication crisis is especially acute for those of us who have to try to apply scientific methodology to explaining happenstance events. We can't go back and replay the train wreck or the industrial accident and instrument it properly to obtain data that might help explain the cause. We're left with what we can sift through in the wreckage and what we can demonstrate in the lab might happen. The bellwether example here is the infamous Boeing 737 rudder hardovers that caused a number of fatal crashes and weren't replicated on the bench until literally years later after countless attempts. That still doesn't prove that's what happened on those flights, but merely that it can have happened. Someone on the team dug deep into his arcane knowledge and said, "Hm, let's try this." That sort of ubiquitous human experience is what we have to ferret out by replication when it has an effect on a scientific protocol.
Q: Is irrational belief evolving?
A: No, not in my lifetime for damn sure anyway.
Nor since any past era that we can discern, whether from texts or from pretextual evidence. (I'd like to give Altamira and Chauvet a break, but I doubt -- I'm skeptical -- that they were just redecorating to impress the neighbors.)
A: No, not in my lifetime for damn sure anyway.
Nor since any past era that we can discern, whether from texts or from pretextual evidence. (I'd like to give Altamira and Chauvet a break, but I doubt -- I'm skeptical -- that they were just redecorating to impress the neighbors.)