Conceptions, science, and other human beings

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http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/f ... feat/all/1

A recent article I read about the scientific process.

There were a few interesting take-aways:

More than 50 percent of the data found by labs in a study was unexpected information, and most of this information is ignored by scientists.

The believed reason for ignoring this data is because it does not work in our mental framework for conceiving the world, and for that reason, we tend to discount this information.

Finally, different thinkers can help us understand and see the world in ways that we wouldn't originally come up with on our own, and a group of different thinkers might even be more effective than a group of thinkers with more expertise in some cases. (some cases doesn't mean all cases by any means)

In any case, I wanted to post this so that way people could express their thoughts on the matter.

Interesting. I should try to get in some research before my prefrontal cortex develops any further.

That is fascinating. So much for objectivity in science. We have a long ways to go.

Scientists are humans embedded in a working society and when mice or monsters creep in under the door they have a tendency to chew away at at accepted reality. Our universe continuously cascades information into our intellectual filters and only so much can be digested. I am grateful for the monsters since they bring gifts but gifts can be enriching or can explode in your face so caution is important as you untie the string.

Wow sand, that was very poetic.

Autism "research" is where the subjectivity of science is the most obvious because in this field the ignored data screams at you
Not that it makes any different
Nothing can penetrate a scientist that mistakes is subjectivity for objectivity

Interesting to see a neuroscientific take on this old perpective. Take theory of mind in autism research. Most research endorse it yet the majority of people with Asperger's Syndrome pass theory of mind tests easily. Rather than abandon the theory, they sort of just ignore it.

However, the article was unfairly critical of philosophy of science. Duhem in the 1890s first saw that scientists ignored and filtered out data not fitting their theory, Quine the in 1950's mergered this with an account of how logic still functions, Kuhn and Feyerabend in the 1960's added sociological account, Lakatos in the 1970s merger Quine's observations about logic with Kuhn and Feyerabends sociological observations. Contrary to the article, even Popper tried to incorporate this into his theory although certainly failed. However, it was in the 1990's that Cartwright really developed these notions by linking them to models and idealisations.

Sorry for name dropping but this is my field. In many regards, this is precisely what interests me, how science can provide truths from false assumptions.