A Crisis In Science?
Note: This is based off of a discussion I recently lead titled “Science vs. Bayes.” Portions of this were inspired by Overcoming Bias.
Some believe that science is facing a crisis. I don’t mean those who argue that we are approaching “the end of science.” I mean that some physicists are disturbed that those damn kids believe in kooky, untestable theories like String Theory, which isn’t science. Or that some people believe in the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics rather than the Copenhagen interpretation. To these scientists, the acid test is falsification: is there some way of making a prediction with the theory that can be demonstrated to be wrong? If it cannot be falsified, it is not a scientific theory.
Others argue in response that while falsification is definitely important to science, it is not the end all, be all of it. Other factors must be taken into account when considering what theory to adopt to explain a given phenomena. Sometimes these people are called Bayesians, named for their use of Bayesian Inference, which depends on using Bayes theorem to calculate the probability of a theory being true given a set of other probabilities.
I’d like to argue here that the supposed differences between Bayesians and Scientists are actually non-existent, and that the Bastian’s are simply making explicit certain actions scientists take in the course of doing science.