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What is the scientific method? When the term is used, it assumes objective observation of some kind, and it is assumed by lay followers of TheScience™ that their superiors in lab coats have got that sort of basic stuff sorted. Unfortunately this is not the case. The scientific method is nowhere codified, and ideas about it are plied willy nilly by those who have earned the white robes of science. For example, as I learned it, the scientific method proceeds from hypothesis to design of an experiment to test the hypothesis. Moreover all experimentation must have a “control”—that is, a secondary experiment that lies outside the conditions of the main experiment to provide a back stop against confirmation bias.
If it were true and consistently applied, this model sounds plausibly robust and convincing. One imagines a scientist in a lab coat conducting carefully designed experiments meant to get to the bottom of a material question that will fill in some gap in our understanding of how something works, measuring various elements, reactions and behaviours and taking careful notes of the observations—i.e. collecting data—to later be tabulated and considered for interpretive value and conclusions.
Not only does science promise that this is the method with which it works, it also engages in peer review, whereby a group of other scientists critically scrutinise the experiments, review the data, and consider whether the conclusions drawn align with the scientific work.
The lay follower also imagines that since a cornerstone of science is that its experiments and conclusions are replicable that there’s a cohort of scientists across the globe recreating experiments to ensure that the motto of the Royal Society—nullius in verba—is satisfied.
Followers of TheScience™ believe these redundancies are ongoing in large part because of the simple, replicable experiments they perform in high school and college that imply analogically that this behaviour goes on in cases beyond the walls of the educational facility and in a much more sophisticated manner. Not so. The belief that science proceeds using these undeniably secure processes is a fiction.1
The scientific method is subject to broad interpretation, and to an investigator’s horror, control studies are not at all a rule—in fact they seem to be an exception, especially in the field of virology. Let that sink in.
Meanwhile in the fields of physics, astrophysics, as in the brand new field of climate studies, and in modern Darwinism (including game theory)—natural philosophy is entirely abandoned: lab experiments have been replaced with computer modelling where “theories” are confirmed through complex computations arising out of imagined assumptions and algorithmic parameters. Moreover experiments are seldom replicated because of the costs involved and general lack of interest in replication—for how is one to forge a reputation replicating another’s work, and who would supply the budget for such practices? And worse, when replication experiments are performed that contradict published outcomes, scientific journals are loathe to publish them because such work is unpopular. Still worse, peer review has all too often proven to be a corrupt process. I refer the reader to Horace Freeland Judson’s book The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science for a sobering review of this trouble.2
Science is a messy human endeavour afflicted by the same ailments that corrupt all human affairs. Science is not a sterile, clinical process of objective observation by stoic and sceptical minds motivated by the search for truth in the face of superstition and barbarism; it is not a shining example of transcendence of the human frailties that have dogged our history. Unfortunately it is instead among those social movements that have led to barbarism and superstition through story telling about its heroes and myth making about its special powers to know the one true Truth, leading populations and governments away from truth toward systems of power and control.
Asa Boxer’s poetry has garnered several prizes and is included in various anthologies around the world. His books are The Mechanical Bird (Signal, 2007), Skullduggery (Signal, 2011), Friar Biard’s Primer to the New World (Frog Hollow Press, 2013), Etymologies(Anstruther Press, 2016), Field Notes from the Undead (Interludes Press, 2018), and The Narrow Cabinet: A Zombie Chronicle (Guernica, 2022). Boxer is also a founder of and editor at analogy magazine.
See Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science. Ed. Ronald L. Numbers and Kostas Kampourakis. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2020. Daniel P. Thurs [Myth 26] pp. 210-218 and Michael D. Gordin [Myth 27] pp. 219-225.
Judson, Horace Freeland. The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2004. p. 7 & pp. 244-86.
My father was a family physician long, long ago when there was still such a thing as primary care. He was an old school doctor, making middle of the night house calls to patients and that sort of thing. But what impressed me most about him when I was a kid was how dispassionate he could be about illness and death. He didn't honey his words when sharing health diagnoses with his patients. When I asked him how, for example, he could tell a guy his cancer was terminal and death was immminent with such coolheaded directness, he said it was a doctor's ethical responsibility to keep his feelings separate from his work. He said this with evident pride, and it took me years to realize the irony of his belief. I mean, the idea that he could be without feelings filled him with powerful feelings! Anyway, it does seem that having the superhuman magical power to separate emotion from reason is part of the origin story of heroic science.
How dare you! "The Science" is owned by the UN... well, so they claim.
There are climate models and there were Covid models - the latter predicting millions of deaths. A sign somewhere on a peak in Yellowstone claimed there'd be snow there by 2020. The sign was pictured recently covered in snow. The sign was quietly removed. The de-signing had no media coverage, no grand rethink, or rethunk... which might've been more appropriate.
The Scientific Method reminds me of the cartoon of a person at a podium -discussing the latest scientific findings- who is holding cords connected to the necks of white coated types who are on their knees at the rear.
The truth is out - it's known. An old rotting tree, the sciences. When will it fall...