Well, let’s file this under the category of obvious research findings?
back
2 comments
Hindsight Devalues Science.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WnheMGAka4fL99eae/hindsight-...
Would you really have been surprised if the study's conclusion had been the opposite, or would you just rationalize that obviously there are a lot of introverts out there, and hugs stress them out disproportionately?
This is, in my opinion as a wedded empiricist, one of the main problems with science: it is extremely chauvinistic about forms of knowledge that did not originate in its chain of authority. A key function of the scientific culture is to establish the authority of a group who is qualified (according to the estimation of the members of the group) to rule on matters of evidence and methodology and, via their general approbation, to pronounce into existence new knowledge, which we then call "scientific" knowledge. Membership in this community is mostly through direct descent - graduates of the laboratory system.
This system, it is my observation, is extremely intolerant of knowledge produced by other systems. Other sources may be examined, but they must be interpreted, and more importantly tested, according to the established "scientific" methodologies (a collection of various inductive techniques, but, mostly, the use of complex physical and mathematical instruments), and then presented in the appropriately hallowed place using scientific jargon. Until such approval is given, the system is unwilling to acknowledge the validity of other kinds of knowledge. Thus, we have to once again "prove" what is already well-known to everybody.
A secondary problem is that the "acceptable methodology" criterion of scientific knowledge is subject to the latest vogue, and people don't read old papers, so everything we know must be re-proved or re-packaged using contemporary methodology every thirty years.
Isn't that a bit like saying that chess clubs are extremely intolerant of card games? I mean, science is science because it follows those methods. Other methods for producing knowledge may be perfectly valid, they're just a different thing.
Maybe we need a discipline which has the purpose of merging the knowledge from science with other source, but I don't think it's fair to criticize scientists for not doing that work - it's none of their business.
I'm not necessarily making a criticism, just observing a deficiency in the structure of the scientific apparatus. Scientists have constructed themselves and their polity in a fashion that does not allow them to merge knowledge from other sources. That is, to use your phrase, they have made it none of their business. This might have certain advantages, if we believed that scientific methods yielded unequivocally superior epistemological outcomes; but I don't think this is true across all kinds of knowledge. In this case, I think what's being demonstrated is that sometimes, those methods go through ponderous effort to demonstrate what can be learned efficiently through other means (viz., getting a warm hug when you need it).
I disagree with your premise. I believe there are advantages to having a body of knowledge built around consistent principles even if we don't believe that scientific methods yield unequivocally superior epistemological outcomes - in fact, even if we believe it yields inferior outcomes.
Scientism is certainly a problem, but the solution is not to jumble the methods of obtaining knowledge with science in an attempt to bleed some prestige from it. It should be to valorize those other methods separately, recognizing their particular advantages (and disadvantages) over science.
I'm not sure what advantage you think to obtain from inferior, but consistent, principles. For example, the "like cures like" principle is used to ill effect in many medical systems around the world. The only reason to support such a practice is prejudice - the conviction that the conclusions reached are, by themselves, superior merely because of the methodology used to produce them.
I don't advocate jumbling the methods of obtaining knowledge (although I think the notion of methodological purity in science is incorrect, I think the consistent principle in science is the establishment of authority, and not the methods applied by that authority, which change over time) - naturally every system must have its own internal consistency, or else it would not be a system. I advocate instead something close to what you are saying. It is fine to read scientific literature, but it is also useful to recognize that science can't tell you everything, and that its epistemology more or less fails at discovering certain things.
This doesn't make much sense to me. Science and the scientific method is a specific way of acquiring knowledge, why would a method used to acquire knowledge be interested in other ways of acquiring knowledge. Scientific knowledge tends to be regarded highly when it comes to many subjects because of the rigourous way it must be acquired and tested.
I'm not saying this is the best example of a study i've ever read, but the scientific method as we use it today was developed over a long time and is used because as of right now, this is the best way we've found to acquire useful knowledge. Is it the best? Maybe, maybe not. Has it given humanity consistently better and more accurate knowledge than other methods throughout history....personally i'd be willing to say yes.
Doing research, writing and presenting a paper don't exist to make science a special club. They're written the way they are to ensure all methodologies and results are clearly laid out and given, allowing others to repeat the process, the discussion giving the author's conclusion is kept separate from the rest.
The peer review system, while definitely flawed and full of problems, exists to ensure submitted papers followed reasonable methodologies and that the reported results and conclusions make sense.....
Now....that's the way it's supposed to be. In my experience, science isn't the problem it's scientists. Personally, the biggest problem I noticed, at least among biologists is worked with, was emotional attachment to personal theories and other things to the point where inconsistent or straight up contradictory data would be ignored or resampled until the desired results were found.
Money was also a pretty big problem especially when it comes to grants and continued funding. Again, inconsistent or contradictory data would be ignored to ensure the desired results and continued funding. Proposals would need to provide economic justification for funding. So there had to be an economically viable reason to do the study. And honestly, a lot of petty arguments and bullshit between scientists over the small amounts of funding available for different projects.
Science itself is great, the institutions we've built up around them not so much. They've corrupted it pretty heavily to the point where depending on who's funding a study you can already give a pretty good guess as to what the biases will be.
What kind of "knowledge produced by other systems" are you talking about?
For example, the colloquial knowledge that hugs make you feel better. Everyone knows this, that's why you say "I need a hug" when you're having a bad day. But this is not "scientific knowledge", because it wasn't produced by scientific methods, and cannot be acknowledged as valid knowledge by science (i.e., suitable basis for further scientific inquiry, or more precisely, a citation source in a reputable scientific journal) until it has been re-demonstrated that way. This translation of knowledge proceeds at the sometimes slow pace of scientific curiosity, and also at the limit of empirical methodology, which might struggle to reproduce what seems elementary knowledge ("hugs are nice").
"Everyone knows" a lot of things that testing has proven to be untrue. Everyone used to know that the Sun traveled around the Earth.