This as a response to a recommended book on Phlosophy of Science.
We need a whole series of blogs on this topic as even a conservative estimate says 14% of published science is outright fake. We know even more science concocts (with models), or plays with (statistics and processing) data. Joe Folley recommended "Philosophy of Pseudoscience", by Pigliucci and Boudry. I just began reading. But it does not look promising. I'm basically a Popperian (still). I believe science (or truth) must be validated with (empirical) evidence. Philosopher's call that Popper's demarcation. Those criticizing Popper tell us he's not up to it, and 'Popperian validation' (AKA: falsification) is an inadequate test for science. It may not be the ONLY test, but it's a key and necessary test.. Looking at the flood of trash, pretending to be science, or knowledge, coming out of academia, I prefer to stick with Popper. Empiricism gave us The Enlightenment, and modern civilization. We reject empiricism at our peril. By all means - ADD more guardrails. But some of the guardrails recently added: such as peer review - are fake. I see plenty of pseudo-scientific peer reviewed papers published. Empiricism may not be able to tell us what is true; but it's very handly at identifying what is clearly false. Basically: everything which avoids empirical validation should be considered fake. Demanding 100% empirical validation for all published studies may involve throwing out 0.001% of 'true' studies - yet by tossing all the other fake studies (the unvalidated ones) the net result will be much better science published. I genuinely believe 100% validation of all empirical studies, and 100% falsifiability criteria for all theoretical studies is the only way to avoid pseudoscience taking us back to the dark ages.
The scientific revolution and Enlightenment gave us modern empiricism. Criticize Popper at our peril. The burden must be on Popper's critics to show they have better tests for science.
I'll add some alternative (non philosophical) readings (to the book you cited):
- John Ioannidis, 2005, "Why most published research findings are false", ( identifies the size of the problem )
- Peter Boghossian, 2019, "Idea Laundering in Academia", ( identifies motives behind pseudo studies )
- Philip Stark and Andrea Saltelli, 2018, "Cargo-cult statistics and scientific crisis" (statistics and modelling are key tools used by pseudo-scientists).
- Andrew Gelman, 2016 "The winds have changed", (good historical overview tracing the issues back at least 6 decades)
- James Heathers, 2024, "Approximately 1 in 7 Scientific Papers Are Fake", ( included because: it's recent, he disagrees with Ioannidis, he gives clear criteria for good versus bad science )
Philosophy of science is irrelevant, and almost obsolete when one realizes it's contributed so little to exposing pseudoscience, and in many cases, it's actually legitimized trash studies, and bad science. I'll still read the book (as Joe recommended it, but my skeptical senses are heightened), and the book will be inadequate to the task in hand - which is - to shine light on why there's a flood of trash coming out of modern academia.
Detail:
"The lack of interest for pseudoscience in some philosophical quarters derives from the tacit assumption that some ideas and theories are so obviously wrong that they are not even worth arguing about. Pseudoscience is still too often considered a harmless pastime indulged in by a relatively small number of people with an unusual penchant for mystery worship."
--PoP
- <- It is not obvious, how a paper resting on cutting edge mathematics, obscure modeling, or Byzantine statistics is unscientific (AKA: it's wrong). Scientists who publish it often believe it's right. Few people have the wit to criticize the mathematics, the computer skills to see flaws in the modeling, nor the stats degree to call out bad statistics.
- <- Far from being 'obviously wrong', much of it is tendentiously wrong, and is, in fact: ingeniously wrong.
Q: What do I mean by ingeniously wrong? A: Recently, both William Happer and Richard Lindzen talked about
So far the best idea I have is for a new journals: either one, two or three sister journals - or - a journal with 3 sections. The first one will publish falsifiable hypotheses. The second will publish empirical studies which attempt to falsify these hypotheses. The third will publish replications. A final section will be devoted to summations - summaries of successes and failures. It need not be peer-reviewed as such, but everything must be publicly debated in web forums - in a constructive manner.
