Science and Pseudoscience - A Primer

Hi MacM,

"http://groups.msn.com/McCoinUniKEFThe......"

If you are going to post some of the summaries found there on this forum, you'd better be prepared for a truckload of criticism. I just overlooked two summaries and to be completely honest, they are plagued with incorrect interpretations, false extrapolations and plain wrong statements of/from the theory of special relativity.

Good luck!

Crisp

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Summaries

Crisp,

I would appreciate either a post on UniKEF or an e-mail regarding your concerns about the summaries. Any definitive flaws will be corrected. If it is a matter of interpretation or misinterpretation it will be considered.

Thanks for the heads up.

MacM

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Don't worry, I don't plan on discussing any science here anymore. I still read this forum now and again for laughs.

- Warren

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Warren,

Please don't give up entirely - at least not until Lethe's diff forms notes are complete. Fuxache - I rely on you guys for education in modern physics!

Cheers,,

Ron.

 

MacM,

I'll think I'll wait for you to post the summaries here (preferably in a new thread) because I don't want to hijack this sticky for discussing your theory, and I don't think it is appropriate for me to start a new thread "made especially for critising" your theory.

PS: I was refering especially to the "Relativistic Mass" and "Light speed is no limit" summaries on your site.

Bye!

Crisp

 

Hi,
I agree with you, about importance repeat-ability and so, but there is one problem: it's very easy to get theory, but not easy to seek it in the practice. "The gray is theory, the green is tree of life".
For example:
Most important for science (not for pseudo-science) is experiment. Eddington 1919. Repeat-ability is zero. We have better technology then E., but nobody is able to repeat measure, if difference is 2*10^-6 radian and environment has dither cca 1*10^-5 radian.
What are, by your opinion, contemporary cases with the biggest discrepancy? Who will repair it?

E Smejkal

 

Relation "scince - anti-science" is easy, and beautiful

James R
To see relation "scince - anti-science" is easy, and beautiful, but there are also other cases. Then relevant relation is "attitude or view by experience team A" versus "attitude or view by experience team B". Non-science is easy. Attitude influenced by one sophist is not so easy, and more dangerous. Do you agree?
Emil

 

James R

I totally agree with this requirement in the case of totally nontestable hypotheses however I want to stress the fact that we must be very cautious when rejecting testable hypotheses which have a great power of explanation (but virtually non falsifiable).Superstring theories are a good example here due to their huge number of variants,fully compatible with the observed reality.As Lee Smolin remarked once very well in one of his books they are basically non falsifiable,being in the same time capable to virtually explain everything.Even if some variants of the theory will be disproved virtually there will always remain some valid ones.The only chance to convincingly falsify the superstring hypotheses remain the direct 'observation' of 'things' at Planck scale.Not a very likely situation,at least in the light of what we know now.So that it is possible to never be able to soundly falsify the superstring theories.Still some sort of 'superstrings' could very well exist ontologically...

 

The only thing you have to consider in a theory is satisfaction of David Hilbert’s requirement for lack of self-contraction as a criterion for existence of the objects defined in its axioms.

Can you falsify a math theorem? Good physics should also go that way.

 

Peter

What you request is an impossibility.I see three causes for this:

1.Unfortunately science has to rely on a certain number of axioms,we do not have yet the first,true,principles,the dream of Aristotle...

2.Even if we had them scientific theories are based on logic,their predictions are deductions from a given set of premises considered true.Or logic is a characteristic of human minds,there is no necessity that nature should follow the rules of logic.

3.Even if nature does follow the rules of logic with necessity there is another problem linked with the completitude of a certain set of true premises.We know from Godel that all systems containing arithmetics inside are not complete.Or arithmetics is contained by all theoretical systems of premises used in science.Therefore there could still exist truths that cannot be deduced from a given set of true premises+the axioms of arithmetics.

 

metacristi,

quote:
"Or logic is a characteristic of human minds,there is no necessity that nature should follow the rules of logic."



I agree with you excluding this quotation, implying that mind does not belong to nature. The problem is that if we knew the structure of reality it will be more basic (more initial) than arithmetics and the math spaces we use in the current theories. This structure will follow the simple logic of existence that brings everything to life. It exists and should be found as it is attempted in Savov's theory of interaction. Theory based on the revealed structure of reality will stand like a math theorem. Eugene Savov's theory of interaction shows that self-similarity makes nature accessible to mind.

 

For all interested in science philosophy, I highly recommend

Chalmers, A F 1982, What is this thing called Science, UQ Press, Brisbane.

You should read it, James, it will enthrall and infuriate you!

Dr Chalmers's homepage:
http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/hps/staff/alan.html

 

this is a useful list and these really are important issues
redundancy is jusfiable for clarity and emphasis
many of the 8 questions are around the issue of testability (does it make predictions, is it falsifiable, is there evidence, does it
fit reality)

more can be said about 5. delineation: maybe the main gist of this is that
if a theory has several versions there should be some natural reason to exclude all but one version:
it cant be too mushy and amoeba-like, if it is going to be considered scientific

but here's another aspect of point 5 which the original post did not mention----if it is a scientific theory, a physical model should delineate its range of applicability.
it not only should predict numbers
it should you in what situations or at what scale its numbers are reliable

I dont suppose that these are hard-and-fast rules, there is probably some tolerance and wiggle-room for new theories----theories in development---which dont yet satisfy all the criteria. And there is an element of subjective judgement: are the developers making an honest good-faith effort to get the theory in shape to make predictions, and if it proves not amenable to making predictions, or predicts the wrong numbers, will they frankly chuck it on the scrap-pile (or keep on fudging)

 

some links

Peter Woit's website at Columbia where he teaches QFT

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/

His article published in American Scientist, April last year

"Is String Theory Even Wrong?"
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/18638


A recent paper by a couple of prominent string theorists
Tom Banks and Mike Dine (and someone else who is a new name to me)

http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0309170

"Is There a String Theory Landscape?"

An earlier critical review of the field by Woit, a mathematical physicist at Columbia:

http://arxiv.org/physics/0102051

"String Theory: an Evaluation"

Another recent article by Tom Banks:

"A Critique of Pure String Theory"

http://arxiv.org/hep-th/0306074

An article by Thomas Larsson:

"Symmetries of Everything"

http://arxiv.org/math-ph/0103013

There are quite a few articles and posts that have this common theme that after being worked on for 18 years string theory still does not predict numbers----is still not testable---exists in a plethora of different forms all seemingly at odds with reality in one way or another. Thus there is some soul-searching as well as some shrill voices denying anything is wrong.

This sticky that raises the issue of what is a scientific theory as compared with pseudoscientific is a great place to test this out. String theory is a prime example of a borderline pseudoscientific case where (as the articles show) a falsifiable well-delineated theory appears not to be forthcoming.

Probably the clearest statement of this is Peter Woit's American Scientist article, and the email reactions to it posted at his website---that I gave the url for earlier

MacM was the one, I think, who brought up stringtheory as an illuminating example to be studied in terms of these 8 questions James R listed. Really relevant!

 

chroot

Hi Warren,

Why aren't you discussing science here anymore (I am not a regular so haven't really followed that), and are you discussing science somewhere else?

 

chroot took off for physicsforums.com. see this thread and this one

 

I agree to the policy in the context that it is made in.

However, your point of repeatablility of the experiments has a little concern to me in that because the nature of time is duch that no moment can actually be repeated, and any experiment that relies of repeating a moment in time is doomed to fail.

I think this may apply when trying to prove very small differences in the quanta. AS time passes the ability to repeat using the same parrameters begins to fail.

Just a point I thought I would mention

 

*Scientific claims (in spite of their obvious flaws) have also been known to be made to appear genuine, often for ulterior motives such as monetary gain, political or ideological purposes, or to gain personal fame for their proponent(s).

Often when the discoveries within scientific claims of the past were found to contain a myriad of flaws and thus proven inplausable on numerous counts, when they were brought to the attention of the scientific communities on many occasions with heated debate, regardless of the concensus agreement findings and observations of these historical debacles, the incorrect versions of these scientific claims were never corrected and thus remain today viewed by many who are misinformed and continue to share a misinformed consensus that these flaws are still correct, What's wrong with this picture?