New Apartment
by JS
We are moving to a new apartment this weekend. That combined with some rather stressful events this week have delayed part three in my series on science. I wanted to hoist the following from the comments (from commenter Dad):
Scientists do more than just try to falsify theories, they also formulate new ones when they have falsified an old one. (In the process of falsification they may not succeed, essentially that’s verification.) They also spend a lot of time making sure their data, instruments, data analysis methods (statistics most importantly) etc. are collecting valid and correctly interpreting information so that falsification, verification (or new theory formulation) is based on true empirical evidence and sound methodology.
At least that’s how its supposed to work. Agree that its a human enterprise and often the actual doesn’t live up to the ideal, but that’s no reason to stop insisting on the ideal, is it? Once you start down that path its a slippery slope to no standards at all, and I don’t think we (humans) really want to go there.
I basically agree with this. Commenter Dad happens to be an engineer, which is really just a scientist who rolls up his or her sleeves and does some real work. The point of my series on science, is that Michael Crichton’s argument is subtly but dangerously different from this, and is ultimately an argument that is destructive to the difficult process of bringing scientific knowledge into the world.
