/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.16373236]

Briefly, the argument of this book is that real science is dead, and the main reason is that professional researchers are not even trying to seek the truth and speak the truth; and the reason for this is that professional ‘scientists’ no longer believe in the truth - no longer believe that there is an eternal unchanging reality beyond human wishes and organization which they have a duty to seek and proclaim to the best of their (naturally limited) abilities. Hence the vast structures of personnel and resources that constitute modern ‘science’ are not real science but instead merely a professional research bureaucracy, thus fake or pseudo-science; regulated by peer review (that is, committee opinion) rather than the search-for and service-to reality. Among the consequences are that modern publications in the research literature must be assumed to be worthless or misleading and should nearly always be ignored. In practice, this means that nearly all ‘science’ needs to be demolished (or allowed to collapse) and real science carefully rebuilt outside the professional research structure, from the ground up, by real scientists who regard truth-seeking as an imperative and truthfulness as an iron law.

[Anonymous No.16373242]

So, real science is smart and creative people working cooperatively on scientific problems. But science proved so useful that it became professionalized, and initially this seemed to accelerate progress considerably. The first few generations of professional scientists from the later 1800s into the twentieth century were immensely productive of significant scientific breakthroughs. Science seemed very obviously useful – the presumption was that evenmore science would be even-more useful... And so the growth of professional science continued, and continued... Until it out-grew the supply of creative geniuses and had to recruit from uncreative but very smart people - but continued growing... Until it then out-grew the supply of uncreative but very smart people, then it had to recruit from uncreative, only moderately smart but hard-working people – but continued growing... And so on and on, until ‘science’ consisted of whomsoever who would do specific narrow technical and managerial jobs at the wage and conditions on offer. That’s where we are now... *

[Anonymous No.16373249]

I began professional science in 1984 - or, at least, that's what I thought I was doing. Since then I worked in and across a variety of fields: neuro-endocrinology (brain transmitters and blood hormones) in relation to psychiatry; the anatomy and physiology of the adrenal gland (especially from 1989), epidemiology (statistics of health and disease, from about 1991); evolutionary psychology (evolutionary aspects of human behaviour including psychiatric illness and the psycho-active drugs, from 1994); systems theory (understanding complex biological organization, from about 2001); and from 2003-10 I edited an international journal of ideas publishing work from the whole of medicine – and sometimes beyond. * In all of these areas and some others I found serious problems with the existing scientific literature: errors, inconsistencies, wrong framing of problems. (I don’t mean serious problems in-my-opinion; I mean that problems objectively, undeniably serious to any honest, informed and competent observer prepared to think for more than five consecutive minutes or two steps of logic – whichever comes first.) I was not shocked - after all, this is what science is supposedly about, most of the time - providing the negative feedback to correct the wrong stuff. After all, science is not at any time-point supposed to be wholly-correct, rather it is conceptualized as a system of intrinsic self-correction. (Generating distinctive new lines of true and useful scientific work is what we would all prefer to do, in other words to be original - but only a few who are both very lucky and very able are able to achieve this.) * My assumption was that - as the years rolled by - I would have the satisfaction of seeing the wrong things tested, discredited, discarded and replaced with more-correct knowledge. Error would be eliminated; truth built-upon. So that overall, and in the long term, science would progress. That is what was supposed to happen. * Well, it hasn't happened.

[Anonymous No.16373255]

>>16373249
Pop

[Anonymous No.16373267]

Anyone who has been a scientist for more than 20 years will realize that there has been a progressive, significant and indeed qualitative decline in the honesty of communications between scientists, between scientists and their employing institutions, and between scientists and their institutions and the outside world. In a nutshell – science has gone from being basically honest to basically dishonest (and in the process gone from being real science to professional research). * Naturally enough, the pervasive atmosphere of dishonesty has long since led to scientists being dishonest with themselves - and once this happened the situation of endemic corruption itself became wholly deniable. (The primary and fundamental act of scientific dishonesty is: denial of the pervasive reality of scientific dishonesty.) The situation now is that what calls itself scientific research is essentially dishonest, not incidentally so; such that honest (real) science is on the one hand very rare and on the other hand it has negligible impact on the conduct of mainstream research. (From my experience it seems that real science is nowadays more likely to be actively-suppressed, and real scientists systematically persecuted, than for either to be influential.) * More exactly, mainstream research is not so much dishonest as non-honest: it is simply unconcerned by matters such as seeking truth and rigid truthfulness in its discourse. Mainstream research is not about truth – it is doing other things. * So of course modern ‘science’ is dishonest – why on earth should it be honest when it is not even trying to be honest? Research is not being done to find the truth, experiments are not done to test the truth, scientific ideas and results are not written-up in order to communicate the truth. Truth doesn’t go into it. Why on earth, then, should anybody imagine that truth will come out of it?

[Anonymous No.16373268]

professional research bureaucracy and scientists that "no longer believe there is an eternal unchanging reality beyond human wishes and organization which they have a duty to seek and proclaim to the best of their (naturally limited) abilities" can produce science(real) too.

[Anonymous No.16373273]

The most egregious domain of untruthfulness is probably where scientists speak or write about their own work. When modern researchers are preparing applications for funding, there is clearly no notion that they should be trying to communicate the truth. The idea would be regarded as ridiculous! The whole motive and rationale of the exercise is to write a successful application: in other words to get yourself money by selling (what you claim are) your research results and plans. The veracity of what is being claimed is merely a means to an end. The funder neither expects truth nor does the applicant expect to write truth – grantsmanship is thus a kind of game (albeit with high stakes) where one side sets up the rules, and the other side tries to be as dishonest as it can get away with, while sticking to the letter of the rules - then the first side tries to catch them out in an inconsistency. Modern research grant proposals therefore resemble the official accounts of organized crime – everyone knows that they are intentionally and carefully faked, but the auditors are allowed only to check for internal consistency among the lies. Consistent lying is fine – indeed admired and rewarded. So long as the information in grant proposals and research publications has been thoroughly laundered, then everybody is happy (well, ‘everybody’ who has influence over career success – and for modern researchers that is everybody-who-matters...).

[Anonymous No.16373276]

Truth is a positive value. However, at most, modern researchers are trying not to be factually incorrect – which is as different from trying to be truthful as a scandal-mongering tabloid ‘investigative’ journalist is different from Einstein. This is not a subtle matter. Nor is it a matter for debate. It is absolutely plain and obvious on a day-by-day level in the conduct and conversation of modern researchers. Compared with real scientists, the mass of modern researchers (including, perhaps especially, scientific leaders) are neither motivated nor regulated by truth, nor do they speak about truth, nor do they discriminate on the basis of truthfulness.

So pervasive are the petty misrepresentations and cautious lies, it is evidence that many scientists are now dishonest even with themselves, in the privacy of their own thoughts. Such things can happen to initially honest people either by force of habit, or because they never knew any better (never having met, leave-aside workedwith, a real scientist); and because lies breed lies in order to explain the discrepancies between predictions and observations, between claims and outcomes. * Lying to oneself may be one cause of the remarkable incoherence of so much modern scientific thinking, when coherence is evaluated across the whole range of human knowledge. (The coherence of modern science is restricted to the micro-specialty; where it is the artificial result of laundering rather than natural consequence of honestly reporting perceived reality.) It is much easier to be coherent, and to recognize incoherence, when discourse is uncontaminated by deliberate misrepresentations. There is less to cover-up. Most people can think-straight only by being completely honest with themselves and with everybody else. Maybe straight thinking doesn’t matter in some areas of life – but science is about straight thinking or it is nothing.

[Anonymous No.16373290]

So, in a bureaucratic context where cautious and consistent dishonesty is rewarded, strict truthfulness is taboo and will cause trouble for colleagues, for teams, for whole institutions. Because when everyone else is exaggerating their achievement then any precisely accurate person will be judged as even worse than their already modest claims. If every fourth rate scientist is claiming to be third rate – but after inflationadjustment is judged to be fourth rate; then honestly to label oneself as fourth rate would lead to being to be judged as fifth rate - on the assumption that you, like everyone else, must be indulging in hype. In this kind of situation, individual truthfulness will be interpreted either as simply stupid, or as an irresponsible indulgence. * Clearly then, even in the absence of the sort of direct coercion which prevails in many un-free societies, scientists may be subjected to such pressure that they are more-or-less forced to be dishonest; and this situation can (in decent people) lead to feelings of regret, or to shame and remorse. The only alternative is some species of martyrdom. * This is a situation which leads decent people to feel shame and remorse. Unfortunately, shame may not lead to remorse but instead to rationalization, to self-exculpation, to the elaborate construction of excuses - and eventually a denial of dishonesty. In other words, shame may lead to aggressive hypocrisy. But eventually the situation leads many to cynicism; hypocrisy is abandoned as ludicrously implausible – and there is a cynical advocacy of dishonesty. Such cynics feel they are merely being honest in advocating open dishonesty, because everyone is doing this anyway. Better – they think – to be a cynic advocating evil than a hypocrite pretending to good.

[Anonymous No.16373422]

>>16373236
>>16373242
>>16373249
>>16373267
>>16373268
>>16373273
>>16373276
>>16373290
tldr?

[Anonymous No.16373487]

>>16373236
this is not *entirely* true, as I have replicated the findings from a number of different recent papers off of Google Scholar across several different fields. so it's not all bunk. but there are indeed serious problems.

[Anonymous No.16373510]

>>16373236
This seems plausible. I think science in the 17th/18th century was more similar to a video game community figuring out glitches/tricks than a professionalized endeavor. At least mathematics is making significant headway with formal proof compilation and automated theorem proving, every other field is fucked.

[Anonymous No.16373545]

>>16373236
Eh, too long didn't read, but
>real science is dead
yes. I've done all the university career and stuff because in my teens and afterwards, I was hugely inspired by scientists and their achievements, baffled by the scientific method and how it leads to actual knowledge. Then came the PhD years and I came to realize university nowadays is simply about one thing and one thing only: money. Nobody cares about the scientific method, profs just want citations. The uni lets in anyone, because that makes them money and they're effectively economical endeavors. Politicians support it because higher rates of graduates means they performed well.
It's a bullshit system producing more shit as it goes on. Yes, real science is dead.

[Anonymous No.16373559]

>>16373545

[Anonymous No.16373913]

>>16373236
>regulated by peer review (that is, committee opinion)
it's usually just shitty spellcheck

[Anonymous No.16374195]

>>16373236
>Bruce Graham Charlton is a retired British medical doctor who was visiting professor of Theoretical Medicine at the University of Buckingham.[1] Until April 2019, he was Reader in Evolutionary Psychiatry at Newcastle University.[2] Charlton was editor of the controversial and not-conventionally-peer reviewed journal Medical Hypotheses from 2003 to 2010.

>From 2003 to 2010, Charlton was the solo-editor of the journal Medical Hypotheses, published by Elsevier.[5] In 2009 HIV/AIDS denier Peter Duesberg published a paper in Medical Hypothesis falsely arguing that “there is as yet no proof that HIV causes AIDS", leading to protests from scientists for the journal's lack of peer review. The paper was withdrawn from the journal citing concerns over the paper's quality and “that [it] could potentially be damaging to global public health.” Elsevier consequently revamped the journal to introduce conventional peer review, firing Charlton from his position as editor, due to his resistance to these changes.[6] In October 2012, 198 researchers signed a paper in Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics criticizing the changes made by Elsevier.[7]

You're reading a book written by a skitzo who doesn't even understand how to practice real science in the first place and has actively taken part in multiple attempts to corrupt it.