Well, some people, including this theoretical physicist, must sure be hoping it is:
The second is that this knowledge equips people to better argue against antiscience forces that use the same strategy over and over again, whether it is about the dangers of tobacco, climate change, vaccinations or evolution. Their goal is to exploit the slivers of doubt and discrepant results that always exist in science in order to challenge the consensus views of scientific experts. They fund and report their own results that go counter to the scientific consensus in this or that narrow area and then argue that they have falsified the consensus. In their book Merchants of Doubt, historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway say that for these groups “[t]he goal was to fight science with science—or at least with the gaps and uncertainties in existing science, and with scientific research that could be used to deflect attention from the main event.”
Science studies provide supporters of science with better arguments to combat these critics, by showing that the strength of scientific conclusions arises because credible experts use comprehensive bodies of evidence to arrive at consensus judgments about whether a theory should be retained or rejected in favor of a new one.
Mano Singam, “The Idea That a Scientific Theory Can Be ‘Falsified’ Is a Myth” at Scientific American
There is nothing new about comprehensive bodies of evidence backed by overwhelming consensus being flat-out riddled with errors and misunderstandings, and therefore mostly wrong.
If propositions in science cannot be falsified by evidence, they aren’t propositions in science. They are simply things many scientists believe for a variety of reasons.
See also: Falsifiability is overrated, cosmologists say. Many cosmologists don’t like Karl Popper’s concept of falsifiability because it gets in the way of simply assuming that concepts like string theory and the multiverse are correct because, well, because they just must be. Many would like to loosen the concept of falsifiability to allow for such cool but unfalsifiable concepts in science.
I merely have to point to the failed replication studies and refusal to publish those failed replication studies of oxytocin and the schmuck is completely wrong
My argument is science is filled with these things called humans
And they’re very FLAWED
How about I just point to Covid research, that’s pretty recent and proves this nonsense absolutely wrong
Those were a bunch of experts that couldn’t get anything right about COVID (space cooties)
How about free will research? that was 60 years of scientific consensus demanding that we drop our free will and it wasn’t till recently that got shot down
I wish I could just post on their stuff and ask for answers to all of that
Oh and climate change, about that,
Does anybody ever kind of consider the fact that they have been screaming that we’re all going to die from climate change for at least 40 years and all of their predictions end up being wrong
I’m not saying we’re not damaging our environment
But I would like to point out that an old-time magazine said that our O zone was gonna crack open we be living in a desert wasteland by the year 2014
I believe that was published back in 1982
Why is it that I see that that didn’t come to pass I have no idea why I would think that
But they’re so blinded by their incredible intelligence to see that maybe they made some mistakes and everybody remembers those mistakes but them
Remember kids if you don’t like what science is doing well just shut up and listen they’re experts you don’t know anything you don’t get to question them. And if they make mistakes you still don’t get to question them, you just have to deal with it
Science can be wrong but they don’t have to be sorry
Oreskes and Conway are the direct descendants of Sprenger and Kremer. When the Church speaks, all falsifiers must burn.
AaronS 1978
That is the definition of fundamentalist religion , not science.
2 Polistra
Malleus maleficarum. 🙂
Those who monopolize knowledge , monopolize power.
The fight is savage.
Today’s priests wear white lab-coats.
1 AaronS 1978
Sshhh. A stake with your name carved on it might be on your way. 🙂
1
That Mario Singham would start off his article with Haldane’s pre-Cambrian rabbit as an example of a flimsy falsification criteria so as to show why falsification is, supposedly, not the gold standard for determining whether a theory is scientific or not, does not reflect well on Singham’s understanding of science.
Haldane’s pre-Cambrian rabbit is a joke of a falsification criteria.
First off, it is questioned whether Haldane ever made that ‘pre-Cambrian rabbit’ statement in the first place,
Secondly even if Haldane made the statement, Haldane’s own area of expertise was in helping formulate population genetics, not in paleontology.
Thus Haldane, (if he even said the phrase ‘pre-Cambrian rabbit’ in the first place), was commenting outside his area of expertise, i.e. population genetics. Thus for Singham to cite this particular example from Haldane as his lead off example of a flimsy falsification criteria is a joke. (which is just as well since population genetics itself, Haldane’s area of expertise, has now falsified Darwinian evolution, i.e. Haldane’s dilemma, mutational load argument, waiting time problem).
Richard Dawkins’ himself, author of ‘The Selfish Gene and ‘The Extended Phenotype’, (who was, apparently, also commenting outside his own area of expertise), also, like Singham, took the ‘pre-Cambrian rabbit as somehow being an objective falsification criteria for Darwinian evolution that should somehow be taken seriously. (Which is just as well since Dawkins’ entire ‘Selfish Gene’ concept has now been falsified by advances In genetics that show genes to exist in an extensive ‘holistic web’ of mutual interdependence rather than them existing as independent, i.e. ‘selfish’, entities)
It is almost embarrassing to point out why a ‘pre-Cambrian rabbit’ is a flimsy falsification criteria for Darwinian evolution.
The Cambrian explosion itself, all by its lonesome, falsifies the entire notion of gradualistic Darwinian evolution for crying out loud!
As Charles Darwin himself noted, the Cambrian explosion was “a valid argument against the views here entertained.”
The problem of the Cambrian Explosion, as Stephen Meyer documented in his book ‘Darwin’s Doubt’, has only gotten far worse, not better, for Darwinists since Darwin first wrote that statement back in the mid 1800s,
In his article, Singham stated that,
Which was a very interesting claim for Singham to make since the ‘preponderance of evidence’ from the entire fossil record itself, from the Cambrian explosion onward, directly contradicts Darwinian evolution.
As Dr. Jonathan Wells points out in the following video,
, as Dr. Wells points out, Darwin predicted that minor differences (diversity) between species would gradually appear first and then the differences would grow larger (disparity) between species as time went on. i.e. universal common descent as depicted in Darwin’s tree of life. What Darwin predicted should be familiar to everyone and is easily represented in the following graph.,,,
But that ‘tree pattern’ that Darwin predicted is not what is found in the fossil record. The fossil record reveals that disparity (the greatest differences) precedes diversity (the smaller differences), which is the exact opposite pattern for what Darwin’s theory predicted.
As Richard Lewin stated, “Several possible patterns exist for the establishment of higher taxa, the two most obvious of which are the bottom-up and the top-down approaches. In the first, evolutionary novelties emerge, bit by bit. The Cambrian explosion appears to conform to the second pattern, the top-down effect.”
And as Valentine stated,
And as Goldschmidt remarked
And as Chen stated,
Moreover, as Stephen Meyer pointed out, there are ‘yawning chasms’ in the ‘morphological space’ between the phyla which suddenly appeared in the Cambrian Explosion,,,
Moreover, this top down pattern in the fossil record, which is the complete opposite pattern as Darwin predicted for the fossil record, is not only found in the Cambrian Explosion, but this ‘top down’, disparity preceding diversity, pattern is found throughout the fossil record subsequent to the Cambrian explosion as well.
Thus according to Singham’s own criteria of the ‘preponderance of evidence’ being the defining rule for judging whether something is truly science or not, Darwin’s theory, according to entire field of paleontology itself, is falsified.
In fact, to repeat, the fossil record itself is completely upside down from what Charles Darwin himself had predicted it to be.
The fossil record is hardly the only place where the ‘preponderance of evidence’ has falsified Darwin’s theory:
Here are a few more falsifications of Darwinian evolution that Darwinists simply refuse to accept as falsifications of their theory,
Verse:
Besides Darwinists refusing to adhere to the criteria of falsification for their supposedly scientific theory, by any other reasonable measure that one may wish to judge whether Darwinian evolution even qualifies as a science or not, and as is shown in the following video, Darwinian evolution fails to meet those criteria as well:
There is simply nothing within Darwinian theory, (theoretical pre-Cambrian rabbits or otherwise). that Darwinists can point to and say, ‘and this is what makes Darwinian evolution a hard science instead of a pseudoscience’.
Simply put, Darwinian evolution is more properly classified as a pseudoscience, even as a religion for atheists, rather than ever being classified as a real and testable science.
Moreover, all of science, every nook and cranny of it, is based on the presupposition of intelligent design and is certainly not based on presumption of methodological naturalism as is presupposed by Darwinian atheists.
In fact, (as I have pointed out several times now here on UD), assuming Naturalism instead of Theism as the worldview on which all of science is based, (as Darwinists insist on doing), leads to the catastrophic epistemological failure of science itself.
Thus, although the Darwinist may firmly believe he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science, indeed more antagonistic to reality itself, than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
Bornagain77
Seversky does not like “people commenting outside their own area of expertise.” 🙁 Except when those commenters support his now failed worldview (“materialism” is no longer “a thing”).
Materialism’s Failures: Hylemorphism’s Vindication. (Aristotle is back).
9 Bornagain77
Oh the irony. “Materialists” married science and took a lover named “logic”. And now those 2 ladies have grown bored with the union and have decided to destroy their “materialistic” companionship WITHOUT mercy.
Epistemological failure anyone?
Materialism’s Failures: Hylemorphism’s Vindication. (Aristotle is back).
“[Copernicus’] goal is to exploit the slivers of doubt and discrepant results that always exist in science in order to challenge the consensus views of scientific experts.” That Copernicus is a fool. Someone should tell him that for 1,500 years the consensus view of scientific experts has been that the sun orbits the earth. Damned denier.