Science Suffers From an Excess of Significance
Want to win a political argument? Want to get your spouse to change a health habit? Want to get your story on page one? Flash a scientific study
http://johnstodderinexile.wordpress.com/2007/09/15/science-suffers-from-an-excess-of-significance/
brent comment:
The above statement, exemplifies the fundamental problem.
Viz: a perception of “science” as a source of authority, rather than simply an investigative tool.
Why pray tell do we hear constant plaintive cries that” science” is under attack? What is it that supposed scientists fear that they are being attacked by ? What is it they think they are in competition for or with ?
The problem IMO is that certain elements in science want to be a new “Priesthood” (and I do mean that literally).
As someone who’s education is in an Applied Science discipline, and who is very scientifically oriented ( science to me is merely an investigative tool, not a religion eg Scientism, Gaianism etc), I cringe every day at the highfalutin, overblown , overconfident claims which are not only misleading, but intended IMO to exalt science and scientists as the new source of authority, the new “Priesthood”
Example:
DailyKos Essay: Weinberg, Dawkins, Tyson, Porco, Sloan, and Harris – Idiots of Science on Parade
This is about the idiocy and the idiots at the La Jolla meeting, “Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival.” The idiots of science were in attendance: Steven Weinberg, Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carolyn Porco, Richard P. Sloan, and Sam Harris. I thought some of them were intelligent, until now.
Science is the best hammer in humanity’s toolkit. It is the most useful tool we have.
Because a few religious extremists have irritated the grand idiots of science, they propose to set up science as a religion. This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. It’s like a guy who has mice in his house. Instead of setting a few traps for them, he blows up the house.
snip
Please note the names of the idiots of science. If you run into them on the street, be sure to explain how their attempt to “save” science could destroy science.
http://thesciencenetwork.org/docs/TheConversationContinues.pdf
Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions
http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html
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Briggs Dissects Sam Harris:
Can fMRI Predict Who Believes In Santa Claus? Or God? Part I
Did you know that “regions” of your brain light up when you think about Santa Claus or God? And that these “regions” are thought to be “associated” with various behaviors like excess emotion, schizophrenia, and other, gentler forms of nuttiness?
It’s all true. Scientists regularly stick people’s heads inside machines, ask the people to think of this or that, and then watch as the machines show “regions” of the brain glowing orange. The scientists then employ statistical methods guaranteed to generate over-confidence, but which allow the scientists to write papers which contain broad, even bracing, claims about all of humanity and of how everybody’s brain functions.
This sort of thing is all the rage, so much so that hardly a week passes without new headlines about what secrets the Whitecoat Brigade have uncovered in the brain (this week: Study shows how scientists can now ‘read your mind’).
It is therefore of great interest to us to examine this phenomena and see what it means. I have chosen one paper which I believe is representative of the worst excesses of the field. My goal is to show you that the conclusion, as stated by the authors, and one the authors believe they have proved, is actually far from proved, is in fact scarcely more likely to be true given the experiment than it was before the experiment, and that what was actually proved was how likely scientist’s are to find in their data their own preconceptions.
Warning: I mean this critique to be exhaustive, at least in major theme, so while I run the risk of exhausting your patience, my excuse is that the length of this piece is necessary to do a full job (it will be spread across Parts, and not all on one day). I especially want to hear from those who support the paper’s position, and who claim that the criticisms I advance are not as damning as I believe they are.
fMRIs and God
The paper is “The neural correlates of religious and nonreligious belief,” published in PLoS One by Sam Harris and others in association with UCLA’s Staglin Center for Cognitive Neuroscience.
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=4923
Seven part Series:
WRAP UP: Can fMRI Predict Who Believes In Santa Claus? Or God? Part VII
There are a number of serious difficulties with this study. The experimental protocol is unusual; the “stimuli” used were gathered form a dubious source and were not as simply interpretable as Harris believed they were, nor were they always relevant; Harris’s definition of Christian is extraordinarily narrow; results that were not desired were removed after the experiment ended, yet we never learn how many or what effect this removal had; i.e., would leaving these data in change the results?
The answers to stimuli were averaged within people, a dubious statistical procedure that is nowhere justified; we never learn how many questions each person received, nor how many questions from each person were tossed, nor did (apparently) every person get the same questions. The student volunteers were first subjected to some kind of purity test, yet the details of this were never explained: only 15 “committed” Christians were used and only 15 non-Christians mistakenly called “nonbelievers”, presumably non-committed. There is good evidence the selection of these students and the kind of “stimuli” used introduced a bias in the direction of the results Harris expected; i.e. the suspicion of confirmation bias is strong.
The raw fMRI data was first statistically manipulated before being subjected to further analysis; the fMRI pictures were all ad hoc comparisons, with loose, just-so stories of what this or that region of the brain does; none of the regions that glowed orange1 were noted beforehand, but those areas that did glow were given a story after the fact. (See dead salmon fMRI study.)
The paper is sloppy and disorganized. It passed “peer review”, but we know how weak a filter for truth this is. It is telling that the paper was not only published, but enthusiastically cited by other authors. Well, scientists often don’t have time to read anything but abstracts of papers. Worst of all, no other group could take this paper and re-produce the experiment: there are simply too many unknowns.
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=4942
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/fmrisalmon/
) warming that might be attibuted to greenhouse gases is 0.1 degree C/decade – do you get this distinction? 
). I’d go with free markets, economic growth as absolutely essential and democracy. The limits to growth argument is always about chessboards and grain. Obviously – any grain doesn’t stay long enough on the board to stockpile so the argument is moot. It shoeveled into hungry mouths. We are impoving supply a lot with something called conservation farming – the current super green revolution sequestering humungous amounts of carbon in the process. Just part of the technological prowess of humanity on which we increasingly depend and which is in large part the heritage of the western enlightenment. Freedom and science are marvelous things (h/t Fan – 
). What say we forget this limits to growth nonsense – feed, clothe and educate humanity instead and head out to space for whatever other resources we might need in future. After all – if we survive this century we have a billion year future. 
) – it is now a matter of some import to be less reactive and more pro-active.
