In my last post, I scolded the editor-in-chief of Science, Holden Thorp, for an op-ed, though I largely agreed with his conclusion. It didn't take long for him to provoke the DTLR hornet's nest again, and this time I can't say I agree with him. The April 11 issue features another op-ed by him, titled "Teach Philosophy of Science". He points out the risk of the erosion of public trust in science, pointing specifically to survey results indicating that 92% of Americans "felt it important that scientists show they are 'open to changing their minds based on new evidence,' which is of course what they must do," Thorp writes. He claims that the "history of science is a powerful narrative of this culture of self-correction" and laments that "Resetting the public's understanding of how science works will be a big job." His proposed solution is to teach philosophy of science to undergraduate science majors!
I regard that proposed solution as a non-sequitur. Using Thorp's own argument, I say it is the history, not the philosophy of science that should be taught. To be honest though, when I was a young student, I was interested in history, but not the history of science. I was busy learning the science itself. I am much more receptive to history of science now, for the reasons Thorp suggests. I have not found philosophy of science to be insightful or to help me think about doing science. Earlier this year I finished reading A Philospher Looks at Science, by Nancy Cartwright. While I admire her support for the views of Kay and King's Radical Uncertainty, her book hardly made a dent on my way of thinking about science, and how to do science, whereas Kay and King helped me substantially clarify my thinking on probability models applied to the real world.
Returning to Thorp, the bigger problem in his argument is that somehow the public will trust science more if only they understood better how scientists change their views and "self-correct". Unfortunately the history of science has plenty of examples of abject failures as well as successes. Consider the wholly unnecesssary resistance to such figures as Ignaz Semmelweiss (who contributed to the germ theory of disease), Dan Shechtman (discoverer of quasicrystals), and Katalin Kariko (mRNA pioneer). Consider also the crisis of non-reproducible research that I mentioned in my last post. Science won't self-correct if no one bothers doing the self-correcting. There are no financial or professional incentives either to reproduce others' work, nor to do one's own work with sufficient care and sound methodology to ensure it will withstand the test of time.
At its most cynical, science is merely a self-propagating exercise in securing endless piles of grant money for "research" of limited value and interest, as noted in this recent video by Sabine Hossenfelder, who points out that it is public tax money that fuels the seemingly joyless cycle of beg, spend, and publish. If the public saw science this way, rather than in the romanticized way Thorp imagines, would they really trust scientists enough to allow their taxes to be spent as such? Personally I would not, and I am a scientist!
I assert that the number one thing scientists can do to increase public trust in science is to reform their own house. Only then will they deserve public support and trust.
Digression. I last wrote about Sabine Hossenfelder nine years ago this month. Although in that post I largely disagreed with her on one particular topic, I've since come to admire her devastingly blunt contrarian views on physics research. For some time, I was also a financial supporter of hers on Patreon, though I am not longer financially able to support any of the deserving people I admire on Patreon.
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