Re: This End Up
Posted: Thu May 21, 2015 5:32 pm
We can all learn something from this thoughtful study:
http://nautil.us/issue/24/error/the-tro ... scientists
Motivated Reasoning and cognitive bias. Stumbling blocks that trip up so-called objective scientists, time and time again.....
"Not only can poor data and wrong ideas survive, but good ideas can be suppressed through motivated reasoning and career pressures. The suggestions by geneticist Barbara McClintock in the 1940s and ’50s that some DNA sequences can “jump” around chromosomes, and by biochemist Stanley Prusiner in the 1980s that proteins called prions can fold up into entirely the wrong shape and that the misfolding can be transmitted from one protein to another, went so much against prevailing orthodoxy that both researchers were derided mercilessly—until they were proved right and won Nobel prizes. Skepticism about bold claims is always warranted, but looking back we can see that sometimes it comes more from an inability to escape the biases of the prevailing picture than from genuine doubts about the quality of the evidence. The examples of McClintock and Prusiner illustrate that science does self-correct when the weight of the evidence demands it, says Nosek, but “we don’t know about the examples in which a similar insight was made but was dismissed outright and never pursued.”
Scientists have some awareness of this, to be sure. Many sympathize with philosopher Thomas Kuhn’s theory that science undergoes abrupt paradigm shifts in which the prevailing wisdom in the entire field is undermined and a wholly new picture emerges. Between such shifts, we see only “normal science” that fits the general consensus—until a build-up of anomalies creates enough pressure to burst through the walls into a new paradigm. The classic example was the emergence of quantum physics at the start of the 20th century; the 18th-century notion of phlogiston in chemistry—a supposed “principle of combustion,” overturned by Lavoisier’s oxygen theory—also fits the model. A famous quotation attributed to Max Planck suggests another means by which such preconceptions in science are surmounted: “Science advances one funeral at a time.” New ideas break through only when the old guard dies"
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I stand by the analogy I cited, E.P.
http://nautil.us/issue/24/error/the-tro ... scientists
Motivated Reasoning and cognitive bias. Stumbling blocks that trip up so-called objective scientists, time and time again.....
"Not only can poor data and wrong ideas survive, but good ideas can be suppressed through motivated reasoning and career pressures. The suggestions by geneticist Barbara McClintock in the 1940s and ’50s that some DNA sequences can “jump” around chromosomes, and by biochemist Stanley Prusiner in the 1980s that proteins called prions can fold up into entirely the wrong shape and that the misfolding can be transmitted from one protein to another, went so much against prevailing orthodoxy that both researchers were derided mercilessly—until they were proved right and won Nobel prizes. Skepticism about bold claims is always warranted, but looking back we can see that sometimes it comes more from an inability to escape the biases of the prevailing picture than from genuine doubts about the quality of the evidence. The examples of McClintock and Prusiner illustrate that science does self-correct when the weight of the evidence demands it, says Nosek, but “we don’t know about the examples in which a similar insight was made but was dismissed outright and never pursued.”
Scientists have some awareness of this, to be sure. Many sympathize with philosopher Thomas Kuhn’s theory that science undergoes abrupt paradigm shifts in which the prevailing wisdom in the entire field is undermined and a wholly new picture emerges. Between such shifts, we see only “normal science” that fits the general consensus—until a build-up of anomalies creates enough pressure to burst through the walls into a new paradigm. The classic example was the emergence of quantum physics at the start of the 20th century; the 18th-century notion of phlogiston in chemistry—a supposed “principle of combustion,” overturned by Lavoisier’s oxygen theory—also fits the model. A famous quotation attributed to Max Planck suggests another means by which such preconceptions in science are surmounted: “Science advances one funeral at a time.” New ideas break through only when the old guard dies"
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I stand by the analogy I cited, E.P.
