Science has become a Religion…
When I think about scientific proof, I envisage a person hunkered down in a medieval lab surrounded by colourful, smoking test-tubes, the occasional ‘flash-bang’ and a ‘Eureka’ moment. I don’t visualise persons sitting at computers, data-mining and poring over graphs; still the whole idea of ‘scientific proof’ has me wondering…
THE BIG QUESTION: Are all scientific ‘proofs’ valid? or is Science just another religion that many people follow blindly? I know several people who think it is, in fact, I argue with them when they mention Science ‘fact’ — surely there is only science ‘theory’?
What do you think, or is it a case of belief drummed into us from an early age, such as 2+2=4?
Stumbling upon a YouTube video this week, I had my naive scientific world rocked by what was discovered in June, 2023 — it was shocking, I must admit. But before I go there, follow my line of thinking:
- Any scientific theory is based upon a series of experiments devised by the experimenter.
- The experiments are carried out under scientific prescribed conditions via collection of data.
- Deductions are made based on certain perceived results as being correct, data perceived as being incorrect is discarded.
- How do we know that the data preceived as correct proves a scientific theory? Surely this is bias of the ‘scientist’? Is repeatability the only proof of a theory?
Returning to the shocking news… I watched a YouTube video: Academia is BROKEN! — Harvard Fake Data Scandal Explained
In the video details it refers to three blog articles showing (in great detail) how the Harvard Business School Professor, Francesca Gino, fraudulently manipulated data in four academic papers she co-authored. There may be more papers but these four papers showed the strongest evidence of tampering with the results. Gino has now gone on “administrative leave”, and the name of her chaired position at HBS (Harvard Business School) is no longer listed.
To read the three articles, visit datacolada HERE
In the video, Pete Judo explains that this professor was extremely well known for her work in the field of behavioural science (her results have been received as ‘almost too good to be true’) he had recommended her books to his clients, had referenced her work in his essays while at University and basically feels that academia is no longer credible, indeed, it is BROKEN by this revelation.
The results of the investigation are shocking… watch the 20 min video HERE
Eliabeth Holmes (Theranos scandal) comes to mind too, she duped some pretty influential people. They completely believed in her ‘Science Fact’. She’s now languishing in prison, serving an 11 year sentence. Even worse than egg on the face for all who believed, a biochemist, Ian Gibbons, committed suicide while working for Theranos.
…Fearing he would be fired if he told the truth about the company’s technology in an upcoming court deposition, she said he took an overdose of acetaminophen and died 8 days later, at age 67… read article HERE (Widow of Theranos scientist blames Elizabeth Holmes for her husband’s death: “She has shown no remorse”
I searched the internet and found an interesting paper: How reliable are scientific studies? (Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018)
The summary is as follows: There is growing concern that a substantial proportion of scientific research may in fact be false. A number of factors have been proposed as contributing to the presence of a large number of false-positive results in the literature, one of which is publication bias. We discuss empirical evidence for these factors…
A substantial proportion?
Now I’m transported back to the 1970s, I’m reciting time-tables at school, and I’m being indoctrinated to believe that 2+2=4. I was taught to believe in gravity, yet apparently this depends on space-time curvature and we know that science is being turned on it’s head with its findings in the field of quantum mechanics.
Is universal gravity an absolute truth?
It is relative in the sense that the equations describing gravity follow from the Theory of General Relativity. Universal gravity is really a THEORY. Let’s look at what’s happening at CERN.
Peter Higgs came up with an idea, there is a particle that is responsible for a field that gives matter mass, and if it was discovered, it had certain qualities. CERN tried to find a particle (which is labelled as the Higgs Boson) that had to be a certain mass and a certain energy… well, they found something, and in doing that, they found initially that the mass of the Higgs Boson was perhaps not as the theory suggested.
In view of this evidence, Riccardo Barbieri (Theoretical Physicist University of 2IS4) in the video Particle Fever said, that if the findings were within certain parameters, he’d basically ‘fade away’. Why? I guess those findings would affect the cosmological constant… all that he believed to be true would be defunct, it would mean going back to the drawing board…
Particle Fever 1:12.55 (Riccardo makes the statement…)
It’s exciting for me because I know science is only based on ever changing theories but for those who have invested decades in science fact as a belief, ‘Science has become a Religion’.
