From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Tue Aug 25 1998 - 19:21:55 MDT
> Several times I have found that I need a very simple
> explanation of what makes something scientifically
> sound and what doesn't.
In the final analysis, science is just precise,
methodical, HONESTY. It is simply the commitment
to see things as they are, not as we wish them to
be or as we have been told they are. It is the
moral commitment to use every means you know to
try to prove yourself wrong, rather than trying
to prove yourself right.
Sometimes it is hard to find the exact spot at
which a particular pseudoscience fails, but there
is always such a spot: at some point, if you dig
deep enough, there is _something_ the mystic
believes _in spite of_ eir own observations, and
not because of them. There is some point at
which ey uses ignorance as an excuse to believe
rather than as a problem to be solved. There is
some point at which you can spot the dishonesty.
In most pseudosciences, that dishonesty is the
unwillingness to perform tests that will clearly
invalidate them (or unwillingness to believe the
results of those tests that have been performed).
Take, for example, astrology. It is quite easy
to devise a test for it: give an astrologer all
the information ey wants about a set of people.
Then create a set of Yes/No (or other quantizable)
questions for the astrologer to answer about each
person. Give those same questions to each person,
then compare the results. Astrology will do no
better than chance at predicting anything that is
properly measured and controlled. Experiements
like this have been done hundreds of times by
science classes and others, and the results are
predictable every time: astrology is proven bunk.
The astrologer then, is willingly choosing to
believe what has been disproven by the simplest
tests. Ey is being willfully dishonest.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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