Bad philosophy or just an urge for glory?

I haven't read many of Carlo Rovelli's works, but I did enjoy an essay he published this month in Nature.  "There is a healthy sense of crisis in fundamental physics" he says, but he is dismayed by commonly seen demands for physics "beyond" the standard model, conventional quantum theory, and general relativity.  He thinks this is because of "bad philosophy" or mis-readings of philosophers of science such as Kuhn and Popper, who he claims are understood to endorse radical "overthrows" of existing theories and treating all speculative theories equally seriously until they've been falsified.  He argues that previous "paradigm shifts" are actually more "conservative" than commonly understood, and that despite this, radical new theories are driven primarily by confronting data not currently understood, as well as apparent contradictions among different pieces of knowledge.

It is a good and thought-provoking essay.  I basically agree with his point that the history of science is far more methodologically valuable to study than philosophy of science.  However I surmise that he's overthought the explanation for the craze for "physics beyond the standard model" (such as supersymmetry and string theory).  I think the more radical alternatives just have greater potential for scientific glory than more "conservative" approaches (such as loop quantum gravity, a field he worked in and seems to think is a "proof of concept" for an approach more closely tied to existing quantum theory and gravitational theories, though he points out some of its "radical" features).  Thus, the appeal of following the wilder approaches is the chance to attain heroic status.

I haven't summarized Rovelli's essay very eloquently; he writes very well and I recommend reading it.  Even though his should not be the final word (I'm certainly not convinced that the wilder speculative theories should be completely abandoned) but it's a good counterpoint to much of what we read, especially in accounts of popular physics.

Another howler from Science Magazine

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.

Partisan Science in America

Last Tuesday's edition of the Wall Street Journal featured an op-ed by Gary Saul Morson titled "Partisan Science in America".  Among the topics discussed are the origins of COVID-19, Dr. Fauci's pronouncements about masks and "attacks...on science", and climate change.  While DTLR does not take a position on the "lab leak" theory, which is discussed at the center of Morson's piece, in my view the rest of the article is on point.  Though Morson is a professor of Slavic languages and literature, according to Wikipedia he is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and had a youthful interest in physics.  Much of what he writes here is accurate, though sadly not well understood even by scientists themselves.

Here are some of the best lines of the piece:

If science is treated as a solid block, each part of which is as indubitable as all the others, then science has been misunderstood.  Science always contains some propositions less firmly grounded than others:  on the frontier, newly discovered, based on experiments not readily replicated.

and,

Some scientific statements prove false:  that's how science works.  Those who claim that to doubt any part of the consensus is to be "antiscience" or "a denier" are themselves being antiscientific.

and,

To doubt a scientist is not to doubt science.  Quite the contrary, personal authority is precisely what science dispenses with, as much as possible....To be sure, nonscientists often have to trust scientists to inform them what the science has discovered.  But that is all the more reason that scientists bear the responsibility of not letting political or other nonscientific criteria affect their explication.

and finally,

If scientists expect their statements to be trusted, they must themselves be trustworthy in making them.  One had better be scrupulously honest before asking people to surrender their own judgment and simply believe what they are told.  Scientists should be especially careful not to misrepresent political or policy judgments as being scientific.  And they must protest vigorously and loudly when other influential people claim to speak in the name of science while misrepresenting it.

I've heard multiple politicians say "I believe in science".  Anyone who makes such a statement has no understanding of the scientific process, as the first quote above alludes to.  This kind of talk pollutes our collective ability to think critically about science and science policy.  

 

Matt Ridley on "What the Pandemic has taught us about Science"

This weekend's issue of the Wall Street Journal features an insightful essay by Matt Ridley, in the Review section, titled "What the Pandemic has taught us about Science".  Two of the best passages are the following very simple observations:

"Seeing science as a game of guess-and-test clarifies what has been happening these past months.  Science is not about pronouncing with certainty on the known facts of the world; it is about exploring the unknown by testing guesses, some of which prove wrong."

"The health of science depends on tolerating, even encouraging, at least some disagreement.  In practice, science is prevented from turning into religion not by asking scientists to challenge their own theories but by getting them to challenge each other, sometimes with gusto."

I strongly recommend the article to DTLR readers, even if you may nit-pick a few details.

Escape From Model-Land

Earlier this week, Mark Buchanan's column in Nature Physics featured "The Limits of a Model" , concerning  the pitfalls of epidemiological forecasting, of course a topic very much in the news in the last few months.  Near the end Buchanan cites an intriguing paper by Thompson & Smith (2019), "Escape From Model-Land", a bracing discussion of why one should be very humble about using mathematical/empirical models.  It calls to mind another entertaining piece from over a decade ago, the "Financial Modeler's Manifesto" by Emanuel Derman and Paul Wilmott.

DTLR strongly recommends the Thompson & Smith piece, a candidate for required reading by every applied mathematician, applied statistician, and mathematical/computational modeler in every discipline.

Reference

Erica L. Thompson and Leonard A. Smith, 2019:  Escape From Model-Land.  Economics:  The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, 13:  2019-40.

Science is done in an artificial environment

I would like to recall a Physics Today "Reference Frame" column from a number of years ago by distinguished particle physicist, Helen Quinn (2009), "What is Science?"  This is a particularly philosophical piece, which among other things introduces the term "scientific metaphysics" to deal with extrapolations of scientific theory and speculation into regimes that are not, in principle, empirically testable, such as the" many worlds" interpretation of quantum theory.

However, another part of the article calls my attention today.  I would like to quote an entire paragraph:

Science is done in an artificial environment, where its logic can develop without a need for immediate action.  That unnatural environment allows science to yield powerful and unexpected new options for eventual action.  It is important to note, however, that some applications of science, such as medicine, cannot wait until all questions are resolved.  Medical practice can be based on the best available scientific knowledge and theory, but it must often apply them in untested regimes.  Much of the public's feeling that science is always changing its conclusions comes from changes in medical advice that occur when new scientific knowledge overrides the previously best guesses of medical practice.

I've long agreed that "Science is done in an artificial environment," and I have gravitated towards applied science, partly as a result of discomfort with the ivory tower nature of basic research.  The aspect of science that Quinn describes above is one that has not been emphasized much by others, in my experience.  However, I think it is important for both scientists and non-scientists to understand this point, and Quinn puts it more eloquently than I could have.

I would only disagree with the gist of the final sentence.  In medicine, much of the flip-flopping conclusions that Quinn speaks of are due to the prevalence of studies based on observational, not experimental, data.  Lacking any attribution to causality, such studies really do give the impression of changing conclusions, which is detrimental to both scientists and non-scientists alike.

Reference

Helen Quinn, 2009:  What is Science?  Physics Today, 62 (7):  8-9.