I did like the video in this, from Brian Cox on the Marr show this morning. The putdown is extremely well done:
https://twitter.com/littlegravitas/status/1254339789177962502?s=11
And let's also be clear: there is no such thing as objective science.
We choose the science we want to believe.
It's just a shame politicians aren't honest about that.
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“there is no such thing as objective science.”
I’d argue that stating it “could be one thing or it could be another” is objective. It only becomes subjective when you choose one and even then given overwhelming impirical evidence it’s reasonable to claim, say, the world is round without being overly subjective.
So when we are told that the science of climate change is irrefutable & any one who disagrees is a ‘denier’ – that must be wrong as it’s not objective & the ‘deniers’ have a right to be heard as doubt is to be welcomed?
I think we can accept some basic facts
But when the edges of science – such as that on coronavirus – are being discussed it is clear that there is no one science
That was the point
“But there is always wide disagreement on a lot of science”
There can be but not always. Climate science is a good example. Although there are a few emeritus cranks and the occasional paid-for scientist like Willie Soon, the literature and the weight of opinion within the community severely restrict the scope for disagreement.
Graham,
‘the science’ of climate change is not just one discipline of science, and it is broadly irrefutable because nearly all scientists in the appropriate disciplines are in agreement on the broad scope of climate change: it is happening; it is man-made; it will have devastating consequences if it is allowed to continue. There will be disagreements on the detail, but it is a rare thing to see such agreement within the scientific community. The deniers should be listened to if they have a reliable scientific foundation on which to base their denial – but there is very little reasonable doubt in this case, because there is so much data.
There is not much data for the pandemic, so doubt is needed so that everyone keeps questioning – but the fact is there are different disciplines in science, and you need the expertise of the appropriate ones to do the questioning, but there are no ‘correct’ answers as yet.
I think I’d have to disagree. The literature – the set of published papers which has not yet been refuted – is an objective reality. Also the current range of opinion within the scientific community ie those who are currently working & publishing in the given field.
Any valid, science-based policy must exist within these limits. If we find a government at odds with the majority view then we know it is either cherry-picking tame “experts” in order to pursue an agenda (dishonest) or it doesn’t understand how science works (incompetent).
But there is always wide disagreement on a lot of science
That was the point
So a choice is wlays made
Applied science is then, de facto, political
I think it would be fair to say that the science label covers a great multitude of knowledge that is believed with a confidence level ranging from 50:50 to 1000000:1.
Human biology is extremely complex. Most scientists I would trust always begin with, this is a new virus and there is so little we understand as yet.
Brian Cox is of course spot on, but he and I can still disagree on the interpretation of quantum mechanics (which is allowed because there are definite experiments that rule out all but one interpretation). So even physics has areas where the scientists do not all agree, which backs up his point.
Thanks Charles
Science is best summed up by the Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. If I remember correctly from school ( a long time ago so memory is a bit fuzzy on this) The uncertainty principle implies that it is in general not possible to predict the value of a quantity with arbitrary certainty, even if all initial conditions are specified. That’s science.
So when “the science” is wheeled out daily, there remains alot of uncertainty and politicians do so like to cherry pick what helps their argument even more so now.
I suspect “the science” can be best summed up by Donald Rumsfeld who said:
“We know, there are known knowns (covid19 is running riot through the UK); there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns (we don’t know how many people have it or have had it); that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns (whether you have had it or not until tested (and perhaps not even then) –the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.
This is how we should approach the “Political” science presented to us daily.
@Bryan
Science is an exploration of objective reality. Like writing a map. The more we explore, the more detail we can fill in on the map. Many parts of the map have been thoroughly explored and knowledge obtained at very high levels of certainty.
The main thing we needed to know about Sars-CoV-2 in order to judge the threat and formulate a response was how infectious is it? A highly infectious disease is very dangerous at any fatality rate. Even a small percentage of a very large population is a big number.
As soon as the virus broke out of China it should have been obvious there was a huge risk of a global pandemic. It’s not rocket science, just basic epidemiology. Governments which failed to act promptly & decisively have failed their citizens badly.
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle actually posits that you can’t know /both/ the velocity and position of a particle at the same time, beyond a certain degree of precision – a naive explanation would be that in the process of measuring the position of a particle you affect its velocity enough that you can no longer know it precisely, and vice-versa. It’s about the /limits/ to how well you can observe the universe, and yes that’s fundamental to science but not quite in the way you’ve described.
You can’t determine the reality of the universe in any objective way – there are always things that pull your observations some distance away from giving you certain knowledge about the universe. Science is a /process/ of developing /contingent/ knowledge about the universe, /in the face of/ that inability to develop certain knowledge. It’s impossible to say something for certain, but if you go about the process carefully enough you /can/ say something within well defined bounds of certainty – any observation which /doesn’t/ mention the bounds of its certainty is incomplete, and failing to take uncertainty into account when designing your experiments is a sure fire way to come up with useless results. This is fundamental to the operation of science – not just the acknowledgement of uncertainty, but going to great lengths to /understand/ it, and incorporate it into everything you do.
The problem with “The Science(tm)” regarding SARS-CoV-2 at the moment is that no one has any real understanding of the uncertainty that we’re dealing with. That means that there’s a wide range of real world states that could fit within the bounds of our uncertainty – a range that at one point could have stretched from killing 1 in 20 of the entire world’s population to knocking off a few thousand unlucky elderly people. That range is getting smaller and smaller over time, but when you add in the effects of our changed behaviour (and the uncertainty in the implementation of those changes) you end up with a situation where what you might call “hard data” simply doesn’t answer the kinds of public policy questions that are being asked.
This is where we need to fall back on human experience rather than scientific certainty, combined with a large dollop of risk management. The human experience of epidemiologists and virologists and immunologists and population health experts, and the risk management skills of government health bureaucracies and (unfortunately) economists who have no f*cking clue. That human experience is what said that we should be practising social distancing and things like that to reduce the reproduction rate of the virus (even when we were far from certain what the actual reproduction rate /was/); it was human experience that said we should be expanding our emergency health capacity, and building up stocks of essential medical equipment; it was human experience (and basic scientific principles) that said we desperately needed more information, more testing, better testing, in order to reduce the enormous levels of uncertainty that were making it hard to know what the best approach is.
Science is all about understanding exactly how uncertain you are about what you think is true. Public policy is all about making the best decisions you can manage in the face of uncertainty. Unfortunately, far too few politicians have any grasp of those two critical facts, as can be seen in their habit of constantly waving about “The Science(tm)”.
Thanks
Have always thought that Heisenberg would have had something to say about modern management and the obsession with measurement (invariably of the wrong things).
As so many of us recognise, the process of measurement Invariably tends to distort the behaviour driving what is being measured, invalidating the results!
@Simon Fowler
I don’t mean to be provocative but this really is nonsense.
We can basically sum it up like this: the limits of reasonable claim re matters of science (ie objective reality) are defined by the set of published papers which have not yet been refuted.
The literature defines the best of what we currently know about objective reality. Sometimes there is a lot of uncertainty, sometimes less. Sometimes none at all.
well I suppose most politicians aren’t scientists so they don’t really know what science is,
I stumbled upon a clip of Frau Merkel on twitter with her explaining the rationale of flattening the curve,
the point being she was speaking with the understanding and scientific authority gained from her education and scientific career prior to entering politics,
https://twitter.com/BenjAlvarez1/status/1250563198081740800
now compare that to a non scientist like Mr Trump talking at an official briefing,
https://twitter.com/sarahcpr/status/1253474772702429189
Two questions I would like to ask and would welcome an answer and that is whether as part of “this government’s pandemic science” an NHS rule is in operation preventing elderly residents of care or nursing homes being admitted to hospital ICU’s if they are experiencing severe effects from the coronavirus. If so what is the reasoning supporting this ruling.
You’ve got that completely upsidedown. The whole *point* of science is that it *is* objective, that it is specifically *NOT* subjective. That it is irrelevant whether you believe in it or not, that does not change things. It’s irrelevant whether I beleive in tables or not, that does not change the fact of the existance of tables, tables do not care what I believe in.
I’m sorry – but actually no science would ever have changed if it was not a reflection of our current subjective understanding and I am assured by those who know more than me about the subject that a great deal of science has changed over time
Science /can’t/ be objective – it’s performed by human beings who are basically incapable of being objective, using tools that can’t measure reality reliably, and building on models of reality which are known to be wrong. Which is why science is actually a /process/ which is designed to develop /contingent/ knowledge in the face of the all that lack of objective knowledge – it’s all about knowing the limits to your understanding of reality, and the limits to your ability to make observations of reality. So the point of the scientific method and all the associated processes is to /acknowledge/ the lack of objectivity and to work around it.
Of course, science basically /can’t/ work if there isn’t an objective and internally consistent reality out there to observe – the table has to be /able/ to exist whether or not you believe in it for science to function. But proving the existence of the table within some bounds of uncertainty is in some sense a side effect of science – the collection of contingent knowledge is something you get from science, but it’s not science itself, because science is the /process/ that produced that contingent knowledge.
From my perspective you have nailed it, spot on, in both your posts Simon. Must be something to to do with the Surname?
@Simon
I’m sorry but you have failed to understand how science works. Individuals can be subjective, sometimes more, sometimes less. But, strictly speaking, individuals don’t do science. Science is a community effort.
When a new study is written up it first has to get through the basic sanity check of peer review. After that the real test: scrutiny by the wider community of people who are active in the given field (or a related field).
No-one can simply get up on their hind legs and announce a new discovery. It’s a group decision and a group decision is actually a great way to eliminate subjective biases. There’s even a study to prove it 🙂
OK some fields of study are pretty corrupt. Pharmacology for example. But as a rule the group will be composed of people with genuine expertise in a given field and a life-long passion for their subject. They’re not politicians. Bias in a dedicated, principled academic community is certainly possible but much, much harder to sustain than any individual biases.
If science was as subjective as you claim then the evidence would be visible all around us. Where are the cars with square wheels? Or the regular “miracles” which nobody knows how to explain? The culture of science — evidence-led group decisions made by people with real expertise — is actually very good at discovering objective truths. It’s the gold standard for the human race.
“there is no such thing as objective science”? We certainly all choose what we want to believe, but science does not care whether you believe it or not.
Science is the way (or at least one of the ways) we attempt to understand the universe better. We have to hope there is some objective truth underlying everything (for example, that we are not brains in a jar being given stimuli to keep up amused) otherwise we might as well give up.
The scientific method is how scientists make that attempt – they make observations, create hypotheses by induction from those observations, make predictions from those hypotheses, test those predictions with further experiments and observations, and repeat, hoping that the hypotheses work just as well or better the next time (or at least are not rejected).
You know when you are wrong (the earth does orbit the sun rather than the other way around, or rather they both orbit their barycentre, which is in the Sun; there is no luminiferous aether; most disease is not caused by “bad air” and prevented by nosegays; puppies of dogs that lose a leg in an accident do not inherit their parent’s three leggedness, and so on). It is much more difficult to say when you are right, but scientists have a keenly developed sense of uncertainty. I’d like some error bars on the graphs the politicians keep showing us, for example, or some confidence intervals.
When a hypothesis makes predictions that are repeatedly upheld by observation, then you might have a piece of “the science”, or at least something closer to it: some knowledge that can stand as our best current explanation of a phenomenon, that has passed every test that has come its way. It is all contingent: someone else might come along with a better hypothesis. But it should be objective: if someone else does the same experiment in the same way, they should get the same result as you.
Theologians – and philosophers, and dare I say it politicians and economists, the other PPE – take a rather different approach.
I dread to venture my tuppence on the subject.
What Cox was trying to say is that there is only ‘scientific method’ not what he airily and in a trained media friendly way did say – ‘a mind set’. Of course it is the same thing but a mind set sort of implies there are other settings available!
He is right about embracing ‘doubt’ but he means science progresses only by having a theory and then testing it rigorously to see if its predictions are right or wrong – you don’t know till it is tested.
I have been gobsmacked at seeing the basic illiteracy of numbers, statistics and graphs at other sites when discussing covid excess deaths that many are still in denial about. Trying to explain a line graph is not just some artist making up a line to reflect data points or that a bar graph made of multiple elements is not trying to make it look bigger…
All that maths education did not get us far, did it?
Politicians certainly choose the science that suits them. That’s why the extreme controller Dominic Cummings attended the SAGE group
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfLVxx_lBLU&t=16s
“Science”: what is science? A science might be defined, not very helpfully, by the tautology that a science by its adherence to or operation of the scientific method – which itself is a disputable proposal. In the popular imagination, and indeed in this particular blog, science is stuff like physics, chemistry, biology, madical science, meteorolgy, geology, ecology. i.e. the “hard” science, physical science, the behaviour of matter and energy. But what of social science? Is economics a science? What of sociology? Psychology? Anthropology and ethnology? All the “ologies” as Maureen Lippman used to say in the BT ad. And it is surely indisputable that these social sciences cannot and do not produce objective truths about the operation and processes of social systems and the human mind. They are inspired by a rational quest for truth, but they are not infallible sources of truth. And so it is good to hear Prof Cox explain that the physical sciences, science is described as a mindset, and that doubt is welcome and essential.
Oh dear. Relativism rears its ugly head and it’s open house for confirmation bias.
Of course we should be wary of politicians’ use of science, but as so often happens, different meanings of ‘objective’ get confused. People confuse ‘objective’ meaning ‘value-free’ with ‘objective’ meaning ‘true’. Value-laden statements are not necessarily untrue: e.g. ‘millions are suffering in Syria’ or ‘this child has been abused’ are statements that involve value/valuation but could well be true as claims about what is happening. You can’t have living things without some things being good or bad for them, so description of their state must involve evaluation.
Of course, values can sometimes mislead us but they can also sometimes help us discover objective knowledge: e.g. valuing an oppressed group may lead us to find out some hitherto unrecognized facts about them.
As American philosopher Elizabeth Anderson said, the problem is not values but dogmatically held values.
Direct parallels with economics here, where politicians and others have chosen the economic advisors and theories that supported their own agendas. Carefully ignoring dissenting views, even where they might be in the majority, as with austerity.
The utterly bonkers Patrick Minford being a prize example
This has been a fascinating thread – in all honesty now – really thought provoking.
As someone who likes to get to ‘the truth of the matter’ I have asked myself ‘Where do I stand if I accept the presence of my own inherent ideology or bias?’.
It is chastening I can tell you.
The answer for me is that there is one thing missing from this discussion and that is the factor of Ethics?
Is it ethical to have people unemployed in order that certain other economic objectives (inflation) are met?
What are the ethics of the science of ‘herd immunity’?
And I wonder what will the ethics of post-Corvid austerity be based on?