• funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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      20 hours ago

      ignoring the other examples you’ve been given: it absolutely does even when it goes well. The scientific method is literally based on “other people must change and refine this, one person’s work is not immutable nor should be taken as gospel”

      Also what science is has changed. Science used to be natural philosophy and thus was combined with other non-scientific (to us) disciplines. Social sciences have only been around 200 years tops.

      Some would debate that applied mathematics is science, others would say all sociology isn’t science.

      • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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        13 hours ago

        I’d argue the scientific method does not have to include multiple people at all. All it is, is the process of coming up with a hypothesis, designing an experiment to check that hypothesis, and then repeating while trying to control for external factors (like your own personal bias). You can absolutely do science on your own.

        The broader field of academia and getting scientific papers published is more of a governance thing than science. You can come up with better hypotheses by reviewing other people’s science, but that doesn’t mean when a flat earther ignores all current consensus and does their own tests that it isn’t still science.

        • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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          12 hours ago

          I’d counter argue that a test that is not communicated, reported, described or otherwise transmitted to another party is identical to it not happening, therefore one needs to tell “someone” (even if that is a private journal), and while in theory falsifability is possible solo, it increases the problem of induction, and science is, in essence, a language: a description of phenomena not the phenomena itself.

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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      19 hours ago

      No True Scotsman argument sort of.

      Now, I’m not saying we ignore science or throw it out, but there are flaws.

    • SparrowHawk@feddit.it
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      23 hours ago

      But it does. Cigarettes were healthy and climate change didn’t exist 50 years ago

      • Leviathan@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        Neither of those things were backed by science. Confusing convincing lobbying with science is a problem today was it was then.

      • Draconic NEO@mander.xyz
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        23 hours ago

        I mean those things didn’t change, it was just about how research was manipulated by money and human biases.

        • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
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          22 hours ago

          The truth doesn’t change. Scientific consensus does. Scientific consensus has been wrong on countless things. After all, science is about getting things a little less wrong every time.

        • SparrowHawk@feddit.it
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          22 hours ago

          Yes but science is a process, not a thing, and that process is corruptible.

          There is a differentiation between the natural world for how it’s made and the human process that quantifies that knowledge.

          Science has always changed, just like human culture did