Limits of the scientific method

[firecat]

"The Truth Wears Off: Is there something wrong with the scientific method?" by Jonah Lehrer

...all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable. This phenomenon doesn’t yet have an official name, but it’s occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology.

Comments

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

There is 100% something wrong with Mr. Lehrer's understanding of the scientific method, but that is not the same thing!

The steady decline in observed phenomena from initial experimental results has been a known issue for a long time. The issue is that scientists fudge their results, knowingly and not. They frequently just do not publish results that differ too much from the previous literature in the field. So someone gets an exciting result, publishes it, it is talked about as the Next Big Thing. Someone else tries to replicate the experiment. They do not see that result - but there are always error bars - they end up publishing a smaller result. The next person does the same thing, etc., and you get a slow and embarrassing regression to the mean. But that is science working; i.e., making errors, checking on them, and correcting them.

[firecat]

There may be something wrong with the title of the article. The article discusses most of the things you mention.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Yes, all of that is pretty much what the article says!