I Agree With Sabine That Most Science Is Of Little Or No Value
I like to tease Sabine Hossenfelder, especially when she chooses to inform us that she cannot make any choices, but I ought to say when I am with her
And here, except for one word, I am in enthusiastic agreement. She has a new video calling out bad, useless, superfluous time-serving science. Which is, in fact, most of modern science.
Most of physics she says, modern physics, that is, is useless. Or wrong. Or, to her, “pseudoscience”. I prefer bad or broken science, because even bad science is still science. It just isn’t any good, nor is it worthy of funding.
One of the tricks scientists us to fool us and, far worse, fool themselves, is to point to a swelling mass of research, a teeming steaming festering pile of accumulating flotsam and jetsam, and say “Critics! Look upon its size and despair!”
This is a special form of the Appeal to Authority Fallacy, which we might call the Everybody Loves Me Fallacy. Since scientists can point to long careers generously funded by your money, they conclude their theories must be right.
All the other scientists love them, which is why they were so free with your money, giving to each other largess in the form of grants. The science is therefore good because money. Lots of it.
Even stronger, scientists use paper count as proof any area is worthy and right. Most are not so far gone as to say this is because of their own large paper count, but just look at the thousands upon thousands–and more coming!–of papers that agree with me!
Therefore, we must be right.
Want an example? After reading it, I’ll reveal my new name for the Fallacy.
‘Shut out’: Journal fires editor after publishing research refuting ‘warming climate’
- Marty Rowland is no longer a special editor at the American Journal of Economics and Sociology after he published a paper challenging mainstream climate narratives.
- The paper, titled ‘Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems,’ faced immediate calls for retraction, its authors told The College Fix.
When anybody points to the naked scientist, as Rowland tried to here, he is shut out. Shunned. Ignored. Contumely is heaped upon him. He is sent beyond the gates where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Thus the other name for our Fallacy is The Scientific Method.
That’s what Sabine’s enemy tried to do with her. Stung by her critique that his paper was nonsense, one scientist tried to call her manager and get her to behave. Only she doesn’t have one. (Except for you dear readers, neither do I.)
We might call this a variant of the Peer Review Fallacy.
Or similar to, but not, the Science Is Self-Correcting Fallacy. The examples Sabine uses work better under this class of bad logic.
Endless mathematical models about new particles, fields, multiverses, wiggly strings, and on and on, almost all using pristine proofs–you have a better chance finding a Trump supporter in a Womyns Studies Department than finding a math mistake in these papers–but none relevant to the world.
Most won’t be “falsified” or otherwise self-corrected. Almost all will be forgotten. They only serve to bolster CVs, and to suck up grant money.
Cosmologist Will Kinney, whom Sabine points to, agrees: these “papers are mostly useless. Nobody, including the people writing the papers, has any realistic expectation that any of these models are correct. They’re just an exercise in empty mathematical world-building.”
It is not only physics, but all areas of science. Perhaps “climate change” is the worst offender. Endless (endless) papers showing how every good thing will be corrupted once “climate change” hits, while (miraculously) every bad thing will flourish. In medicine it’s the same.
Take almost any substance, and we see any number of papers showing health fails by its presence, and illness thrives.
All fields are harmed by this desperate need to DO science. This happens because there are too many scientists. And too much money.
Addendum: Even in math! Huge fraud in publishing in Germany.
Kinney makes this point in reviewing Jesper Moller Grimstrup’s (great name) new book The Ant Mill: How theoretical high-energy physics descended into groupthink, tribalism and mass production of research.
The central metaphor of the title is the phenomenon among army ants of a group of ants becoming detached from the main colony and ending up stuck in a feedback loop of following their own pheromone trails in a circle, until they inevitably die.
Of course, we can replace “theoretical high-energy physics” with your favorite branch and this would largely hold.
Yes, even AI. Some of the heat is already dissipating, as ought to have been expected. (See these two articles on AI’s limitations: predictions, intelligence.) The good news here is that a lot of that hype was built using private, and not your, money.
But then we recall much of our money has yet been pledged to it. I doubt there is any talking the administration out of this.
I can’t resist including a paper found by Scott Locklin, on so-called quantum computers (he is a long-time critic). The paper is “Replication of Quantum Factorisation Records with an 8-bit Home Computer, an Abacus, and a Dog” by Peter Gutmann and Stephan Neuhaus.
This paper is not peer-reviewed, so it retains its humanity.
I quote only the opening of the Introduction, but if you have a minute, read all of it.
In 1994, mathematician Peter Shor proposed his quantum factorisation algorithm, now known as Shor’s Algorithm. In 2001, a group at IBM used it to factorise the number 15. Eleven years later this was extended to factorise the number 21 [3].
Another seven years later a factorisation of 35 was attempted but failed. Since then no new records have been set, although a number of announcements of such feats have cropped up from time to time alongside the more publicly-visible announcements of quantum supremacy every few months.
And even these factorizations relied on tricks, which they examine in detail. Roughly, the answers were pre-built into the “physics experiments”, their name for so-called quantum computers, that gave the results.
They evinced no powers beyond a barking dog. Which they prove.
I could add to this list with evidence-based medicine, a lot of genetics, neo-Darwinism, every so-called soft science, and on and on, but that would take a book. It’s not that all science is bad.
It’s that most of it is, and add scientism on top, the argument for cutting off public—not private; they can do what they please—funding strengthens.
See more here substack.com
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Ken Hughes
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Yup.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi William M Briggs,
It seems you have never taken a chemistry course, for a school teacher studied. the results of chemistry experiments and concluded that MATTER is composed of tiny, tiny particles of various elements which can combine (attract each other to form tiny, tiny particles termed molecules. And this school did an experiment which the same atoms of two different elements could combine to form molecules of two different ratios such as CO and CO2.
Newton was a alchemist but he didn’t have the courage to enter the rough and tumble world of alchemists who did their chemistry experiments in an attempt to turn lead, or other heavy metal elements into gold metal because some brilliant philosophers wrote (considered) that such should be possible.
Have a good day
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Lloyd
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Always with the insults towards people’s education. If not for this site, almost no one would know you existed. Take a chill pill.
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Wilson Sy
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I agree with you that bad science is still science. However, Sabine is right is calling much of modern physics, pseudoscience, which is NOT science, good, bad or indifferent. One important characteristic of science per Karl Popper is falsification Most high energy physics papers are theories which can never be falsified by facts. Pseudoscience where theories are widely considered true, but are not falsifiable or have been falsified by facts include: economics, medicine, climate “science” and of course, high energy “particle” physics.
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Wilson Sy
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William M Briggs. Another important use of the term “pseudoscience” is to prevent charlatants from claiming their policy, their snake-oil, their contraption or whatever is “back by science”. Pseudoscience claimed to be “backed by science” include CO2 climate change catastrophe, Keynesian stimulus in economics, COVID vaccines in medicine, etc. They are not just “bad science’ in which case heir claims are justified, they are pseudoscience.
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Herb Rose
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The problem today is the money. Money is given to the experts. Experts are those who have all the answers while science is about finding answers. If an expert were to do an experiment that showed his answers were wrong he would no longer be an expert and lose funding. They can only affirm their beliefs and ignore any unexpected results or irrational logic. The dual thin slit experiment concluded that the experiment knew when it was being observed and changed results if it was invalidated experimentation as representing reality.
Physics has completely divorced itself from reality and become fantasy cult unwilling to correct its errors and accepting the infallibility of ++++its gurus. Energy creates motion. Energy decreases with increasing distance from its source. Light is a transmission of energy. The speed of light can never be constant.
Energy produce velocity. Energy equalizes with the energy field around it, absorbing energy from a stronger field and losing energy to a weaker field. The contention that the motion of an object will remain constant unless another force acts upon it is false. Objects do not move in straight lines but in arcs and will travel in orbits where their energy is in equilibrium with the energy field are in unless they gain energy or lose it
The gurus Newton and Einstein were wrong but are still revered by the cult.
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Tom
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Most scientists are bought and paid for to discover “science” that fits an agenda. The ultimate agenda is of course depopulation…and most science is heading in that direction.
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Seriously
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The only absolute pure science that exist are chemistry and observable physics. There are a few children born along the way…such as mathematics – a child that counts the observations, so to speak…and when unadulterated, give accurate, reproducible measurable consistent results. Add this, get that…so to speak…every single time.
As far as theory, Herb makes some serious sense, yet vilified. What he posits should be reproducable, provable…I’d be interested in that.
An antidote: In medicine, they guy who found that H-pylori BACTERIA caused ulcers in the stomach, was a medical doctor. He went to symposiums in his field, tried to publish his research, tried to prove his hypothesis to his peers….they refused him for over 20 years before he was vindicated. There are true scientists out there that never give in to the rhetoric, that strive for the truth. That says it all
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lloyd
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You can observe creatures in their natural habitats and develop information. You can then seize examples of the creatures for vivisection, etc., and observe more natural actions of the creatures in their habitats. You can run animals through mazes and observe. I believe such testing is pure science.
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jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers who commented and any who didn’t,
Since the beginning of the human Covid Thing I have commented several times over the years that I had read in major national newspapers that I 2019 that China had lost 50% of its swine herd. And to my knowledge no one else here (PSI) has commented about this history.. So this is a test to see if any one will comment about this comment.
Have a good day
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Lloyd
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Hubris much?
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Herb and Seriously and any other PSI Readers,
“this is a test to see if any one will comment about this comment.” Based on the FACT that as of yet no one has commented about China losing 50% of its swine herd. Hence, I must conclude you are all totally ignorant of the practical significance of China’s 2019 lost.
.Have a good day
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Herb Rose
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Hi Seriously,
Couldn’t get my comment to work under the REPLY to your comment.
Verification is not an option for “experts” if something disagrees with them.
Satellites orbit hosts in elliptical orbits. This is the data Newton used to create his law of gravity, g=GM1M2/d^2. Yet if you look at a satellite in an elliptical orbit the attractive force on the satellite is greatest at the apogee where the distance between it and the host is greatest, causing the satellite to move closer to the host and gain velocity. At the perigee, where the distance is shortest, the satellite begins to move away from the host and its velocity decreases showing the attractive force is weakest. Experts will not accept evidence that disagree with their beliefs, even when they used the same evidence to create their beliefs.
Herb
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Seriously
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Someday Herb, should humanity survive the controlling forces in the current epoch, with ability still to produce curious, analytical minds (which is no longer a forgone conclusion considering the corruption that is happening to the gene pool), I hope you will be vindicated. I don’t have a degree in physics, no confirmation bias restricting my mind….therefore I can see clear logic in what you have said. Theories and ‘given truth’ of past science has been proven incorrect by new technology many times over and can do so for infinity…as long as open minds are available to ‘question’. What you posit certainly makes more sense than the magical thinking coming out of physics these days. It’s seems like a contest: who can come up with the most outlandish, most complicated theory to explain phenomenon…and get it published, get some press. Occam’s Razor indeed..
Remember…the world was believed to be flat, despite the fact that all the other objects in the heavens are round. Logic should have dictated that this planet would also be round…but the dogma of controlling forces prevailed. Who’s to say that the tribes before written language didn’t know the truth? Those forces can change.
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