Newsgroup: it.cultura.filosofia
Titolo: il falsificazionismo, ovvero: predicare bene e razzolare male.

Popper vs Odifreddi:
 
"Sir Peter Medawar called it one of the most important documents of
the twentieth century. In it, Popper argued that science should adopt
a methodology based on falsifiability, because NO NUMBER OF
EXPERIMENTS CAN EVER PROVE A THEORY, BUT A SINGLE EXPERIMENT CAN
CONTRADICT ONE."
(Wikipedia inglese, alla voce "The Logic of Scientific Discovery")
 
"la relatività è confermata da miliardi di esperimenti, E NON NE
BASTERA' UNO SOLO A SCALZARLA."
(Piergiorgio Odifreddi)
 
==============================
 
La Sociologia della Scienza Ortodossa:
 
"Given a theory A self-called orthodox or standard, and a
non-orthodox or non-standard theory B. if the observations achieve
what was predicted by the theory A and not by the theory B, this
implies a large success to the theory A, something which must be
divulged immediately to the all-important mass media. This means
that there are no doubts that theory A is the right one. Theory
B is wrong; one must forget this theory and, therefore, any further
research directed to it must be blocked (putting obstacles in the way
of publication, and giving no time for telescopes, etc.).
 
If the observations achieve what was predicted by theory B
rather than by theory A, this means nothing. Science is very complex
and before taking a position we must think further about the matter
and make further tests. It is probable that the observer of such had
a failure at some point; further observations are needed (and it will
be difficult to make further observations because we are not going to
allow the use of telescopes to re-test such a stupid theory as theory
B). Who knows! Perhaps the observed thing is due to eff ect `Soand-
so', of course; perhaps they have not corrected the data from
this e ffect, about which we know nothing. Everything is so complex.
We must be sure before we can say something about which theory
is correct. Furthermore, by adding some new aspects in the theory
A surely it can also predict the observations, and, since we have
an army of theoreticians ready to put in patches and discover new
e ects, in less than three months we will have a new theory A (albeit
with some changes) which will agree the data. In any case, while
in troubled waters, and as long as we do not clarify the question,
theory A remains. Perhaps, as was said by Halton Arp, the informal
saying `to make extraordinary changes one requires extraordinary
evidence' really means `to make personally disadvantageous changes
no evidence is extraordinary enough'."" (Lopez-Corredoira 2008)
 
--
Alexander

 (Piergiorgio Odifreddi)
 
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferenza_bayesiana
 

Nel mio post non alludevo al recente esperimento sui neutrini, ma in
generale a come gli esponenti della scienza ortodossa cambino
filosofia della scienza a seconda di quale tesi vogliano sostenere di
volta in volta.
Quando si tratta di rigettare fenomeni cosiddetti "paranormali",
sostengono che non possono essere reali perchè privi di ogni
spiegazione scientifica. Quando
però si tratta di evitare domande scomode sulle teorie accreditate,
invece argomentano che la scienza non serve a spiegare i fenomeni, ma
solo a descriverli.
Quando si tratta di combattere le cosiddette "pseudoscienze" le si
critica dicendo che non sono falsificabili, ma ogni volta che arriva
una prova contraria
alla Relatività o alla Meccanica Quantistica, ecco che il
falsificazionismo vola fuori dalla finestra e le prove favorevoli
prendono la precedenza.
Ovviamente non è detto che una singola prova contraria debba bastare a
confutare una teoria, ciò non toglie che una prova contraria DOVREBBE
ricevere un
peso di gran lunga superiore rispetto a una prova favorevole... ma (a
giudicare da affermazioni esaltate del tipo "miliardi di esperimenti",
che sanno di propaganda piuttosto che di scienza) pare che le cose
vadano in maniera diametralmente opposta.
--
Alexander