• qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website
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    6 months ago

    I like the sentiment, but there are non-peer reviewed papers that are real science. Politics and funding are real things, and there is a bit of gatekeeping here, which isn’t really good IMHO.

    Also, reproducibility is a sticky subject, especially with immoral experiments (which can still be the product of science, however unsavory), or experiments for which there are only one apparatus in the world (e.g., some particle physics).

    • CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The things you’re describing are not science. This might seem nit picky but the scientific method as we know it today require that peer review and require methods of reproduction. Whether you can reproduce results is a different story.

      The entire difference between research and science is whether or not you engage in the process of peer review and review often requires method of replication. So you usually can’t have one without the other. If you aren’t trying to have your paper reviewed by your peers, that’s fine, but that isn’t science.

      To address the gatekeeping, I get it. We shouldn’t be using the word to demean people who do valuable research but don’t strictly engage in the scientific process. That’s really not important to do. However we should all be interested in preventing the scientific process from being muddied to include every R&D process under the sun. That’s all research, not science, and we call them separate things for a reason.

      • kernelle@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I think the word you’re looking for is merit, publication which are cited and peer reviewed hold much more merit than those who don’t.

        Science is a rigorous, systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world. 1

        Nothing in this quote requires external publication. Following the scientific method, publishing, peer reviewing and reproduction can all happen internally in organisation using independent teams. Those private publications hold but a fraction of the merit of publications in recognised journals, but are science nonetheless.

      • WhatIsH2O4@lemmy.ml
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        6 months ago

        Counterpoint: the scientific method is much simpler than you described.

        1. Fuck around
        2. Find out
        3. Write it down

        The rest are details of the above or elitism.

        • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I think the sticking point is this: if people can’t reproduce it then you missed writing down an important detail and therefore didn’t finish step 3.

          The elitism is thinking peer review suffices for reproducibility.

          • WhatIsH2O4@lemmy.ml
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            5 months ago

            I agree with you last point, and I really, really want to with the first.

            Sometimes science feels more like an art, for chemistry at least. I suppose the counter-point to this is: if you provide sufficient detail to reproduce but your results are still difficult to reproduce reliably by others, then your process wasn’t very robust and should have undergone more development before publishing. Those details may be so minor that you don’t even realize that you overlooked something.

            • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              I mean that makes sense. I guess it would be fairer to say that enough should be written down its still usable in tracking down what is missing.

    • refalo@programming.dev
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      6 months ago

      honestly LeCun should know better than to argue with a crazy person.

      it doesn’t matter how right he is, musk will turn everything around and have fun while doing it.

  • zod000@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    Fuck, I really hate to agree with Elon on anything, but that is a ridiculous argument. LeCun must also really believe that trees only fall in the woods when someone is around to see it happen.

    • Drewelite@lemmynsfw.com
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      6 months ago

      Yeah, they’re both pretty wildly off base. Publishing papers that are vetted and used as a foundation for other work is science. Also, sorry, but developing advancements behind closed doors is still science. Oppenheimer’s secret research for the government is pretty fucking foundational. Thomas Edison wasn’t interested in sharing his ideas, but rather in selling them. Everyone remembers him.

      This argument reads like two people having an ego trip past each other.

  • TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    Seems like a very elitist and gatekeeping perspective, specially considering how closed off the academic world is for the rest of society in some places, never mind expensive to publish. It’s also basically saying that if you, say, come up with a groundbreaking hypothesis, that that’s not science until you get a research paper out, and that might require mastery that goes beyond the hypothesis.

    Sure, this might stop most of the looney theories from being called Science, but it also prevents public access in favor of those with the means and capacity to sustain an ever more complex geocentric model of the fashion of the times, from which any divergent theories must generally part from or involve renown in.

    You think the person who made that hypothesis will die bitter and forgotten? Is that the general view of people who are not Scientists by Scientists? They might know what’s up, and might not want the gatekeeper to take all the credit, as is often the case in academic circles, and might just feel satisfaction in seeing their hypothesis gratified. They might place more importance in exploring and understanding reality than compensating for personal insecurities. Perhaps it is science itself that might stagnate by stalling until it itself is able to discover these hypothesis under the properly accepted emeritus when they are eventually able to get to it.

    Mostly it’s just looney theories, but given Musk is involved, I imagine this discussion involves proprietary patents that do have a lot of research involved and under peer review of teams under non-disclosure agreements. Then again, it’s Musk, could be mostly looney theories too. But the fact that it involves Musk, the man living off of Nikola Tesla’s fame, a man whose demise could have been described to have occurred under the circumstances of a bitter and forgotten end, makes the gatekeeping particularly ironic.

    • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world
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      6 months ago

      Science is a specific social activity that humans engage in (emphasis on social). Science is not the same as fact-finding, or philosophizing, or reasoning. It’s a particular method of peer review that generates shared public knowledge.

      Again, “science” is something humans do together. Experimenting, investigating, puzzling, hypothesizing, intuiting, discovering, and knowing are all things you can do alone.

      • thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        Science is a particular method of peer review…?

        This thread prompted me to revisit what I think “science” means, and I’ve been through a number of different Wikipedia pages, dictionary definitions, etc. but that inquiry just reinforced that this “science == participation in the institutions/communities of science” idea just doesn’t seem to hold up.

        Where does this idea come from? I keep seeing this “science is this very particular thing, it’s not just forming falsifiable hypotheses and then testing them,” but then when I look it up, the sources I find say exactly the opposite.

        EDIT: To respond, backwards, to the edit below, I guess…? That’s not really a gotcha, and not really what I was saying, lol. Please read the whole thread.

        • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world
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          6 months ago

          See any textbook on the Philosophy of Science.

          For example, here is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

          “Science is a complex epistemic and social practice that is organized in a large number of disciplines, employs a dazzling variety of methods, relies on heterogeneous conceptual and ontological resources, and pursues diverse goals of equally diverse research communities.”

          Your desire to collapse all fact-finding into the concept of “science” is misguided. If everything is “science” then nothing is “science.”

          • thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            Your desire to collapse all fact-finding into the concept of “science”

            Well that’s a reach. I had to buy a new laptop charger and find facts about what voltage, etc. I needed… I certainly don’t consider that fact-finding exercise to be science, and I don’t think I said anything to suggest that.

            But okay, I don’t have a textbook handy, but let’s see what we can find out about the Philosophy of Science:

            Philosophy of Science - Wikipedia

            Seems to pretty clearly indicate “lots of interesting and useful ideas, no consensus.” Peer review mentioned 0 times. The “Defining Science” section links to a page for the demarcation problem, so let’s go look at that.

            Demarcation Problem - Wikipedia

            “The debate continues after more than two millennia of dialogue among philosophers of science and scientists in various fields.”

            And the article basically continues to that effect, IMO: Demarcation is difficult, unclear, and there is no consensus. Peer review mentioned 0 times.

            Maybe it’s just Wikipedia that has this misconception. Let’s check some other sources.

            The Philosophy of Science - UC Berkeley, Understanding Science 101

            “Despite this diversity of opinion, philosophers of science can largely agree on one thing: there is no single, simple way to define science!”

            Re: Demarcation problem:

            “Modern philosophers of science largely agree that there is no single, simple criterion that can be used to demarcate the boundaries of science.”

            Starting to sound familiar. Lots of opinions from Aristotle to Cartwright, none of whom highlight peer review or acceptance by the institutions as criteria. The page does talk about empiricism, parsimony, falsification, etc. though, consistent with other sources.

            Glossary - “science” - UC Berkeley, Understanding Science 101

            This one is simple:

            Our knowledge of the natural world and the process through which that knowledge is built. The process of science relies on the testing of ideas with evidence gathered from the natural world. Science as a whole cannot be precisely defined but can be broadly described by a set of key characteristics. To learn more, visit A science checklist.

            Let’s look at the checklist.

            Science is embedded in the scientific community - UC Berkeley, Understanding Science 101

            The page heading sounds pretty prescriptive, and that’s about the closest I can find that claims “if it’s not peer reviewed, it’s not science.” The body (IMO rightfully) describes the importance of community involvement in science, but doesn’t say anything like “it’s not science unless it involves the community.”

            Take this excerpt about Gregor Mendel:

            However, even in such cases [as Gregor Mendel’s], research must ultimately involve the scientific community if that work is to have any impact on the progress of science.

            So yes, sharing his findings with the world was why it was able to have an impact, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to interpret that he wasn’t doing science while he was working in isolation, or that it only became science retroactively after it was a) shared, and b) accepted.

            Let’s take a look at another textbook and see what it says:

            1.6: Science and Non-Science - Introduction to History and Philosophy of Science

            This chapter suggests that you can take two approaches to demarcation:

            • What makes a theory scientific or non-scientific?
            • What makes a “change in a scientific mosaic” scientific?

            For theories - They’re clear that there are no clear universal demarcation criteria, but offer these suggestions:

            • Suggestion 1: An empirical theory is scientific if it is based on experience.
            • Suggestion 2: An empirical theory is considered scientific if it explains all the known facts of its domain.
            • Suggestion 3: An empirical theory is scientific if it explains, by and large, the known facts of its domain.

            For changes - This pertains specifically to whether a change to “a scientific mosaic” is scientific or not, which necessarily pertains to a scientific community. But I’d argue that this analysis seems pretty clearly downstream of a priori participation in a scientific community, not attempting to define science as such.

            Didn’t read the whole textbook, so I might still be missing something, but the focus in the chapter is still definitely on the properties of the inquiry, not on the scientific institutions surrounding it.

            Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Also looked at the entries for Scientific Method and Pseudo-science, which seem to be consistent with the other sources

            TL;DR/Conclusion

            So I’m still getting a really strong signal that:

            • Science/non-science doesn’t have a clear demarcation line, and that problem is called the Demarcation Problem. It has a special name because it’s still a big deal.
            • Ideas about what is science vs. non-science focus mostly on the properties of the inquiry: Is it a testable, falsifiable hypothesis that can be investigated with empirical observations?
            • Scientific communities are still super important, and you can make statements about how scientific activity should interact with communities, but community involvement is not usually a factor in demarcation
            • Peer review is useful and stuff, but has little interaction with the science/non-science demarcation question… I don’t think it came up in any of the sources I looked at

            So… Do I still seem misguided? Are Wikipedia and UC Berkeley and this textbook called “Introduction to History and Philosophy of Science” and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy all also misguided? Or am I just interpreting them wrong?

            Like I started this investigation feeling 100% ready to learn that my concept of “what Science is” was misguided… But idk, I did a bunch of reading based on your suggestion, and I gotta say I feel pretty guided right now.

            If you wanna throw something else to read my way though, I’ll happily have a look at it.

            • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world
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              6 months ago

              I did follow your link to UC Berkeley (the first one I clicked), and wouldn’t you know it, as I expected, they claim the following:

              Huh, look at that. Apparently involving “the scientific community” is part of science.

              • thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca
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                6 months ago

                That’s not like a big gotcha, lol… I actually said “Let’s go look at that checklist,” and had a link to it (in a quote). Those checklist items correspond directly to section headings, and I quoted and responded to the even-more-strongly-worded section heading directly.

                In fact, I included it as the best evidence I found for your point: That if I read any textbook on the philosopy of science, it will spell out how “science” is “a particular method of peer review.” Well… I found some evidence that kind of points that way, and a whole boatload that suggests that that isn’t really thought of as part of the Demarcation Problem. I wasn’t going in trying to “be right,” that’s just what I found.

                Like I put quite a bit of work in good faith to try to understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t feel like you’re trying to meet me half way.

                • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world
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                  6 months ago

                  When I look around my University I see people doing something, let’s call it “science.” I’d like to define this activity to distinguish it from other, similar activities. The fact that my efforts encounter a Demarcation Problem means the definition is more convoluted than simply “empirical investigation” or “fact finding”. If science could be captured with such broad strokes, there wouldn’t be a demarcation problem!

                  Elon Musk seems to “think” (and I use this word loosely) that science is when people do experiments or try to figure out the truth, apparently without reproducibility or peer review. But if that were the case, there would be no debate, no demarcation problem, no counter examples.

                  What we need to do is describe what scientists do that non-scientists don’t do with sufficient rigor to distinguish the two groups. As I said, peer review seems to be an indispensable feature of science. Do you have your own definition or suggestions?

                  P.S. just for future discussions, please don’t use Wikipedia for philosophy or mathematics. It’s a good resource of dates and names but that’s about it. For philosophy you can use textbooks or the Stanford Encyclopedia.

          • thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            Oh thanks for editing in an example-- that wasn’t there when I wrote my reply, but what did you think of the other Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy links I provided?

            That article that you linked (Scientific Pluralism) is an interesting read, but it’s more about the importance of diversity in the scientific community… it doesn’t really address the Demarcation Problem, and it doesn’t discuss peer review or anything as far as I could tell.

            Mentioning in passing that “science is social” (which is IMO uncontroversially true in a non-demarcation way, btw) is a few shades away from “any textbook will tell you that science is a particular process of peer review.” I think the Science and Pseudo-Science entry that I linked is more germane.

            • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world
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              6 months ago

              I’m not sure what we are arguing about here. The concept of “science” is fairly new and most people we would think of as “scientists” throughout history, such as Newton, actually considered themselves natural philosophers, hence the P in PhD. The modern concept of science arose as a kind of description of something humans do together. “Science” doesn’t mean figuring out the truth. That wouldn’t make any sense, because philosophy, logic, mathematics, etc, are all concerned with figuring out the truth as well. Science is an institution, a social endeavor (except when it isn’t — need counter examples). The Royal Academy of Sciences was created for that reason, funny enough — because Francis Bacon had pointed out that “science requires an intellectual community” (let’s be honest, humans are fairly dumb on their own — standing on the shoulders of giants and all that).

              Anyway, in the mid 1950s there was a now famous work by Thomas Kuhn called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions which added an extra layer to the debate when he pointed out aspects of “science” that seem to be… not about finding the truth at all. But I’m guessing you already know that. Human beings are driven by many motivations, after all, and finding the truth is rarely one of them.

              Anyway, the demarcation problem, yes: it’s very difficult to come up with a definition that perfectly picks out legitimate science without also applying to pseudo nonsense (see Pigliucci‘s Nonsense on Stilts). That said, we know what is and isn’t science. We are just having trouble coming up with a perfect definition that works every time.

              Incidentally, having trouble defining science is literally my position. Science is something we do that isn’t as tidy and uncomplicated as “figuring out the truth.” It clearly involves some sort of methodology and it clearly involves people checking each other’s work and so on and so forth, and it’s different from math and different from astrology. You tell me how you want to define it, but it sure as shit isn’t “doing stuff in one’s garage alone without writing it down or reproducing the results,“ which is what Elon Musk seems to think.

  • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    There are differences between “experimenting”, “research”, “analysis” and “science”. You can do the first three at your home, scribbling some notes that no one will ever read or know about, but science, in its hard definition, is a methodology that requires the specific dynamics that are expected of the scientific community, where plenty of people check each other’s work for faults, blind spots, biases, lazy interpretations and so on.

    This is fundamental because everyone, including universally recognized geniuses, do sometimes fuck up. Have you heard of Einstein’s famous phrase “God does not play dice with the universe”? This refers to his conviction that the laws of physics were fundamentally deterministic, which was put in question by the early experiments that were opening the way for quantum physics. Einstein found himself at odds with a new generation of physicists that weren’t as inflexible as he was on this issue, and whenever there were indications that extremely small particles may behave in a non-deterministic way, Einstein would argue and push for the most hostile interpretation possible, which did lead other physicists to put his interpretations to the test, which did ironically further prove the non-deterministic pillars of quantum physics.

    Science is necessarily a social endeavor because it is meant to help us overcome the fact that each individual human is doomed to be, sooner or later, at one specific issue of many, an inflexible idiot.

  • RBG@discuss.tchncs.de
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    6 months ago

    I am a bit worried the response to this here is not a unified everyone’s an asshole in this screenshot.

    Academic publishing is in a very sorry state for a long time by now. A lot of research that is published is not reproducible. A lot of actual research is also in fact never published like that because companies base their products on it and publish those results only as patents.

    So just by trying to be smug and oppose the Muskie you show yourself to be an idiot. Well done.

  • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    They both come across as pompous asses in this one.

    If you develop a product in secret, take it to market, and make a fortune off it, far more people will know your name than almost any scientist.

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      They’ve been feuding for a while so I’d be surprised if they both didn’t try to one-up the other insufferably.

    • Marcbmann@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Yeah who is Elon? I’ve never heard of him or SpaceX or Tesla. I guess this Musk guy will die in obscurity. Too bad he didn’t publish a paper.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    6 months ago

    I’ve read plenty of times about bullshit published papers that disprove it must be correct and reproducable to get published.

    Edit: Where did I claim it was or wasn’t science? I’m pointing out the statement that “to be published it must be checked for correctness” simply isn’t true.

    • originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Some published papers are not reproducible. All unpublished papers are not reproducible. You’re creating a dangerously wrong equivalence.

      • kernelle@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I feel like I’m missing something here so I’ll be the devil’s advocate, why can’t unpublished papers be reproducible? Multiple teams could independently be verifying hypotheses and results under the same organisation, adhere to the same standard but never publish, that would still be science no? Not doing humanity any favours, but science nonetheless.

        • originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          Because science is about objective, provable fact following a known and public method. An organization can say their findings are reproducible, but reproducibility is more than just getting the same results every time the same lab runs the same PCR on the same machine. To be truly reproducible your results need to be able to be replicated by anyone with appropriate materials and equipment.

          What you are describing is research, not science. It’s not that research is bad, but that science is a philosophical adherence to a method as much as it is that method itself.

          The tobacco companies conducted research when they realized smoking caused cancer and hid those findings from others. That’s not science even if their internal researchers were consistent with each other.

          • kernelle@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Seems like the only difference is that if it’s public or not ie published. I think it becomes a matter of opinion then, because independent teams within the same organisation can absolutely peer review eachother, use completely different methodology to prove the same hypothesis and publish papers internally so it can be reproduced internally.

            Science should be made public, but just because it’s not doesn’t mean it’s not science. When the organisation starts making public claims they should have to back that up along the official route, but they could just as well keep their findings a secret, use that secret to improve their working formula and make bank while doing that. Not calling their internal peer reviewed studies science just seems pretentious.

            • originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee
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              6 months ago

              No, they can’t. Peer review is not the peers you determine - it’s the peers of your community. Science that is not public is not science, because it cannot be independently verified and reproduced. It is not a small point, it’s one of the foundations of the disciplines of science.

              • kernelle@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                An organisation with fully independent teams tackling the same problems can absolutely be defined as peer review. Not in the traditional sense, but reviewing, confirming and replicating nonetheless. Following the scientific method is what makes something scientific, not the act of publishing.

                You can argue of the merits of those papers, an organisation can never make public statements about private research. But saying that what their doing is not science, then you’re just needlessly gatekeeping.

                • originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee
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                  6 months ago

                  No it literally cannot be so defined. The last part of the scientific method is “report conclusions.” That means public scrutiny free of bias. Internal groups are not public.

                  This is akin to saying that a corporation doesn’t need to use the courts because it has internal judges. They might have trials, but by definition they are not doing justice.

  • A_A@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    The rules and conventions to do science today are quite well known and understood by educated people (including of course Helen Mosque) … but any rules have exceptions :
    Project Manhattan to produce the atomic bomb was secret science : in many countries military will have secret science development. Pharmaceutical companies will do as well.
    People in those projects will not have recognition by the wider public but they will have recognition from their group.

    • testfactor@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Heck, I can think of a half dozen other examples of things that aren’t published and/or can’t be reproduced but would be considered science.

      If I had an unpublished workbook of Albert Einstein, would I say the work in it “isn’t science”?

      If I publish a book outlining a hypothesis about the origins of the Big Bang, is it not science because it doesn’t have any reproducible experiments?

      Is any research that deadends in a uninteresting way that isn’t worthy of publication not science?

      I like dunking on Elon as much as the next guy, but like, “only things that are published get the title of ‘science’” seems like a pretty indefensible take to me…

      • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I’d say it’s just research. Science is a group activity by necessity, even if the scientific method is not.

        • testfactor@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          What makes science a group activity by necessity?

          Why is one person employing the scientific method to better understand the world around them “not doing science”?

          • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Well, modern science is interdisciplinary, it relies on resource sharing and peer review to reach consensus, which all require many people. In practice, it’s merely research without collaboration if contributions aren’t being made because Science isn’t defined when you apply the scientific method. Science is what we do collectively. So when offshoot research is vetted, it becomes part of the science.

            This reminds me of a few people I’ve met who believe themselves to be scientists who claim to do science by themselves, but in reality, it’s numerology nonsense. They’re arguably researching a system they invented but nobody worth their weight would take them seriously.

            Why is one person employing the scientific method to better understand the world around them “not doing science”?

            Why is “research” not the appropriate label?

            • testfactor@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              So, first and foremost it is important to recognize we are having a definition argument. The crux of our disagreement is over the definition of “science,” specifically as it relates to the act of doing it.

              Now, obviously anyone can claim that any word means anything they want. I can claim that the definition of “doing science” is making grilled cheese sandwiches. That doesn’t make it so.

              So, as with all arguments over the definition of words, I find appealing to the dictionary a good place to start. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science Which, having read through all the possible definitions, does not seem to carry any connotation of mandatory collaboration.

              Now, the dictionary is obviously not the be all and end all. Words have colloquial meanings that are sometimes not captured, or nuance can be lost in transcribing the straight meaning of the word. But I think that the onus is on you to justify why you believe that meaning is lost.

              And note, what I’m not arguing is that science isn’t collaborative. Of course it is. There are huge benefits to collaboration, and it is very much the norm. But you have stated an absolute. “Science isn’t science without collaboration.” And that is the crux of our disagreement.

              And as to why I wouldn’t just call it “research.” First, I see no reason to. By both my colloquial definition and the one in the dictionary (by my estimation), it is in fact science. But, more importantly, if we take your definition, you are relegating the likes of great scientists like Newton, Cavendish, Mendel, and Killing to the title of mere “researchers.” And I find the idea of calling any of those greats anything short of a scientist absurdly reductive.

              • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                I mostly agree with you.

                But you have stated an absolute. “Science isn’t science without collaboration.”

                I don’t think that’s what I’m saying, at least, that’s not my stance. I’m trying to say that how we formally define Science is one thing. But in practice, Science can only be collaborative because of the complexity of topics, the nuance that needs to be captured in experimental design, and the human error that needs to be avoided. There’s also the connotation that science is the collective body beyond its works that encompasses a community, a culture, a history, a way of thinking, and so on. If you’re “doing science”, then we have the mutual understanding that you’re participating in all of the above, because otherwise, you’re just conducting independent research that could eventually find its way into the whole.

                But if it doesn’t ever find its way into the greater body of science, how can we label that as doing science if it hasn’t made an impact besides personal profits? And even if those findings work as advertised in a product, how do we know that the hand-waiving explanation in this black box isn’t true? It does nothing for our understanding. I won’t argue that it works as a colloquial term because a theory could mean whatever possibility popped into someone’s head even if it’s wrong. Strictly speaking, a theory is much more than a plausible thought and I think that analogy carries on.

                you are relegating the likes of great scientists like Newton, Cavendish, Mendel, and Killing to the title of mere “researchers.”

                That’s a relic of what worked back then but their independent research eventually made it into the science, which is consistent with what I’m saying. Labeling them as researchers takes nothing away from their great achievements. I see no issue with calling an apple a fruit when broadly speaking.

                • testfactor@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  If you aren’t saying that “science isn’t science without collaboration,” can you give an example of something that is science without collaboration? I only ask because you state that’s not what you’re saying, but follow it up with what, to my attempt at reading comprehension, is you just restating the thing you said you aren’t saying.

                  And I would argue science done in secret can have enormous impacts beyond “simply profits.” The Manhattan Project for example. I think it would be absurd to say what was going on there was anything but science, but there was no collaboration with the greater scientific community or intent to share their findings.

                  And look, of course you can be a researcher without being a scientist. Historians are researchers but not scientists obviously. But when what you are researching is physics and natural sciences, you are a scientist. That’s what the word literally means. When your definition requires you to eliminate Sir Isaac Newton, maybe it’s your definition that’s wrong.

                  You say you see no problem with calling an apple a fruit when broadly speaking. Neither do I. But that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be absolutely delusional to insist that an apple wasn’t actually an apple.

  • MuchPineapples@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    She’s wrong though, everything following the scientific method is science. The fact that you didn’t pay out of your ass to publicize your research doesn’t matter. Of course it reaches less people, but that’s a separate issue.

  • Xephonian@retrolemmy.com
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    6 months ago

    Science, real science like Elon is describing, happens when you write stuff down. “Published science” is where the glamor is but that’s, quite obviously, not what Elon was talking about.

    So sad to see bitter people lash out at the successful. (projection is also a classic trait)

    • Zetta@mander.xyz
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      6 months ago

      Science requires peer review, so just keeping it all private isn’t doing much for the scientific community as a whole

      • Xephonian@retrolemmy.com
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        6 months ago

        Published science requires peer review. Big difference.

        “good for the community” isn’t relevant to being science.