Why Doubt Is Essential to Science - Sci. Am.

[tuga]

Interesting opinion piece from the Scientific American:

Why Doubt Is Essential to Science​

If people don’t understand how science works, they can’t properly understand how to think about new findings

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-doubt-is-essential-to-science/

...As a historian of science, I would argue that it’s the responsibility of scientists and historians of science to show that the real power of science lies precisely in what is often perceived as its weakness: its drive to question and challenge a hypothesis. Indeed, the scientific approach requires changing our understanding of the natural world whenever new evidence emerges from either experimentation or observation. Scientific findings are hypotheses that encompass the state of knowledge at a given moment. In the long run, many of are challenged and even overturned. Doubt might be troubling, but it impels us towards a better understanding; certainties, as reassuring as they may seem, in fact undermine the scientific process...

 

[amirm]

So you are going to challenge what your doctor tells you is wrong with you now?

 

[DonR]

Always keep an open mind but not so open that your brains fall out.

 

[tuga]

So you are going to challenge what your doctor tells you is wrong with you now?

I may. I will have to go through med school first, then several years practice and a bit of research... (sorry, I don't know how else to reply)

 

[Slayer]

Interesting opinion piece from the Scientific American:

Why Doubt Is Essential to Science​

Read this sometime ago. But i'm glad you posted it. I have no issues with the article. I think the articles title is spot on.

So you are going to challenge what your doctor tells you is wrong with you now?

Of course. I can't express enough how often doctors are wrong, sadly it seems to be more and more common.
If it is anything concerning, I always get a second opinion and sometimes a third.
If I listened to the first diagnosis and so called recommended treatment, I would have been dead and or wheelchair bound 20 years ago.
It is very healthy to question any and everything. Questioning something doesn't necessarily mean you are saying they are wrong, it's just another means to get all the information one can get to make an educated assessment of findings.

edit: Wasn't going to bring this up, but with such statements as the one made by Amir, i feel i must. On april 12th the doctors told my mother and our family there was nothing wrong with her except her dementia other than that she was healthy. On april 14th she died.
So you keep trusting doctors if you wish.

 

[LightninBoy]

My real name is Thomas, so doubting is in my nature.

 

[majingotan]

Isn’t the scientific method based on this “doubt” barring any political/for profit influences?

That’s why we have DBT to test the hypothesis

 

[kthulhutu]

So you are going to challenge what your doctor tells you is wrong with you now?

This is very tangential to the point.

 

[amirm]

I may. I will have to go through med school first, then several years practice and a bit of research... (sorry, I don't know how else to reply)

That was the right reply. Unless you are qualified in the field, you have no business complaining about said science. Don't confuse hobbyists complaining about professionally performed research over decades.

 

[amirm]

This is very tangential to the point.

It is exactly the point. OP wants to disagree with years of research based on the premise he posted. We don't invent new science here. We practice it just like your doctor does when treating you. You don't get to complain at every turn that his training in science is wrong because you say so.

 

[Vacceo]

Doubt in itself is useless. What matters is the method applied to doubt and the process to confirm or disregard. That is epistemology 101.

For doubt to be useful, it must show an argued contradiction that can be certified by other method that is not a priori. That is dialectics 101.

 

[MRC01]

That was the right reply. Unless you are qualified in the field, you have no business complaining about said science. Don't confuse hobbyists complaining about professionally performed research over decades.

This is good advice, yet taken too far leads to blind trust in authority. I question my doc, mostly "why" and "how" questions, so he can explain it. I trust him and respect his knowledge, but I keep asking until it makes sense. Trust but verify.

 

[Vacceo]

This is good advice, yet taken too far leads to blind trust in authority. I question my doc, mostly "why" and "how" questions, so he can explain it. I trust him and respect his knowledge, but I keep asking until it makes sense. Trust but verify.

Trust in authority can lead to an ad hominem fallacy. An amp is not good or bad because Amir had a bad breakfast, started this forum or is wise (whatever wise means). The amp is good because the tests he performed, under the methodology he follows, on the subject, show that measurements are X. And X measures correspond to a phenomenon that can be replicated and measured again, giving the same results under the same conditions.

Now, each one's job is to understand and correlate all the premises above.

 

[mhardy6647]

I would opine, upon reflection on decades of workin' in the biz, that skepticism is the key to "doing good science".
The best scientists should be (are, I'd opine) skeptical of everything, but in particular of their own ideas, experimental design, work, and interpretation of results. It is easy enough to be so convinced one knows what's going on as to completely miss the truth.

 

[Digby]

So you are going to challenge what your doctor tells you is wrong with you now?

Why not, if you believe you have good reason to do so?

Your doctor could be exceptional or incompetent or anything in between, he could be a highly lauded specialist in a particular field or someone who knows a little about everything. He is not omniscient though and there have been doctors who cause more harm than good.

The science of 60 years ago was giving schizophrenics insulin therapy and lobotomies. The science of today means that "surgeons" can perform "sex changes". In a hundred years, save some kind of total collapse, they will look back upon our fumblings and misunderstandings in the same vein we look upon ideas like the 4 humors.

I trust my doctor on the basis I believe he knows what he is doing, if I don't I ask questions, still no good, I try a different doctor.

 

[jkasch]

Although it will ultimately be exposed, some scientific research is done in a manner as to satisfy the entity funding the research. Unfortunately, media often doesn't wait for peer review validation in its ratings quest.

 

[Keened]

So you are going to challenge what your doctor tells you is wrong with you now?

If warranted. I have, and to my benefit because they were wrong in that instance.

@tuga
I would also put forth that very few people engage in pure science since pure science can only be conducted in a negative or falsification sense.

Karl Popper made this point very well and people have been very upset since to learn that they were engaged in engineering or *gasp* philosophy when they thought they were doing science.

 

[kthulhutu]

It is exactly the point. OP wants to disagree with years of research based on the premise he posted. We don't invent new science here. We practice it just like your doctor does when treating you. You don't get to complain at every turn that his training in science is wrong because you say so.

This is just the long way of appealing to authority, which is an informal fallacy.
Science is not immutable, not an entity nor is it a belief system. It is a method of empiricism used to reasonably prove inductive hypotheses via deductions based on observation. A very fundamental part of science is scepticism, peer review and rigorous methodology. Scientific consensus shifts often.

The point of the article can be neatly boiled down to: "don't blindly follow authority just because it claims to be scientific. review the cited research and studies and employ the scientific method yourself if need be to come to a sound and valid conclusion". There's a truckload of bogus studies, manipulated data and very convincing pseudoscience out there if you weren't aware.
Anyway, you seemed to be strawmanning OP from the start so you could make a snarky comment, hence I called you out for being tangential.

 

[Vacceo]

If warranted. I have, and to my benefit because they were wrong in that instance.

@tuga
I would also put forth that very few people engage in pure science since pure science can only be conducted in a negative or falsification sense.

Karl Popper made this point very well and people have been very upset since to learn that they were engaged in engineering or *gasp* philosophy when they thought they were doing science.

Science is a method to describe and quantify perceived phenomena. Hence, it is a form of phenomenology.

Science is always philosophy.

 

[_thelaughingman]

"Doubt" in science is usually attributed to lack of evidence or tangible proof to a hypothesis or a theory. Then there is the flip side of "doubt" which is sowed by individuals that do not want to validate a hypothesis or theory because it clashes against their known beliefs.