In article <lsj4gnINNl6c@saltillo.cs.utexas.edu> turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes: >-*----- >I wrote: >>> ... Or, to use a phrasing that I think is more accurate, science  >>> is the investigation of phenomena that avoids methods and reasoning  >>> that are known to be erroneous from past foul-ups.  > >In article <C57Iu2.HBn@bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au> bd@psych.psy.uq.oz.au writes: >> I can agree with this if you are talking about the less fundamental >> aspects of scientific method. ... >    ... >> ... In fact, I don't see the alternative, as I don't think that the  >> fundamentals are capable of experimental investigation.  In saying >> this I am agreeing with the work of people like Kuhn (1970),  >> Feyerabend (1981) and Lakatos (1972). >      .... >While methodology cannot be subject to the same kind of "experimental >investigation," as that to which it is applied, it *can* be critically >appraised.  Methodologies can be compared to each other, sometimes by >the conflicting results they produce.  This kind of critical appraisal >and comparison, together with the inappropriateness of existing >methodologies for new fields of study, is what drives the evolution of >methodologies and how we think about them.    As usual, you are missing the whole point, Russell, because you are not willing to even consider questionning your basic article of faith, which is that science is merely a matter of methodology and that the highest purpose of science is to avoid making mistakes.    This is like saying that the most important aspect of business management is accurate bookkeeping.    If science were no more than methodology and not making mistakes, it would be a poor thing indeed.  What was the methodology of Darwin?  What was the methodology of Einstein?  What was, for that matter, the methodology of Jenner and Pasteur?     In an earlier article, Russell Turpin writes:    >None of the foregoing should be read as meaning that we should >open the door to practitioners of quackery and psuedo-science. >Modern advocates of homeopathy, chiropracty, and traditional >Chinese medicine receive little respect because, for the most >part, they use methods and reasoning that the kind of research >Lee Lady recommends has shown to be terribly faulty.  (This does >*not* imply that all their treatments are ineffective.  It *does* >imply that those who rely on faulty methodology and reasoning are >incapable of discovering *which* treatments are effective and >which are not.)  First of all, I think you are arguing against a straw man, because I don't think that anyone here is arguing that quackery, pseudo-science, homeopathy, chiropracty, and traditional Chinese medicine should be accepted as science.  I, in particular, think the basic ideas of homeopathy and chiropracty seem extremely flaky.    What some of us do believe, however, is that some of these things (including some of the flaky ideas) are deserving of serious scientific attention.    If in fact it were true, as you have stated above, that those who do not use the currently fashionable methodology can have no idea what is effective and what is not, then science today would not exist.  For all of current science is based on the past work of scientists whose methodology, by current standards, was seriously flawed.    It is certainly true that as methodology improves, we need to re-examine those results derived in the past using less perfect methodologies.  It is also true that the results obtained by people today who still rely on  those early methodologies needs to be re-examined in a more rigorous  fashion by those qualified to do so credibly.    But to say that nobody who fails to do elaborate double-blind studies is capable of knowing their ass from a hole in the ground and to say that no ideas that come from outside the scientific establishment could possibly be worthy of serious investigation ... this truly marks one's attitude as doctrinaire, cultist.  This attitude is not compatible with a belief in reason.    -- In the arguments between behaviorists and cognitivists, psychology seems  less like a science than a collection of competing religious sects.