{"id":33855,"date":"2016-05-30T11:20:23","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T17:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=33855"},"modified":"2016-05-30T11:20:23","modified_gmt":"2016-05-30T17:20:23","slug":"1500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2016\/05\/1500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility.html","title":{"rendered":"“1500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Eyring Science Center at Brigham Young University
(A photo by Mark A. Philbrick of BYU; Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Science is a marvelous enterprise that has contributed enormously not only to our comfort, health, and convenience but to our understanding of the universe. \u00a0Despite my religious beliefs \u2014 and contrary to the suggestions of some \u2014 I don\u2019t minimize the value of science at all. \u00a0Quite the contrary. \u00a0I celebrate it. \u00a0I even find it religiously significant.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, albeit an extraordinarily effective one, science remains a human enterprise, involving humans, constrained by human limitations, with a quite human history. \u00a0And it has achieved its remarkable results by means of such measures as narrowly focusing on a relatively small (though fascinating and important) range of questions and by excluding teleology or \u201cpurpose\u201d from its investigations. \u00a0To put that another way, it has ignored three of Aristotle\u2019s four \u201ccauses\u201d \u2014 material, formal, and final \u2014 in order to concentrate very fruitfully on the fourth of them, \u201cefficient causality.\u201d \u00a0(It was the decision to so concentrate that, in a sense, created modern science.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

When science is virtually deified, however, when everything looks like a nail to the person wielding a supposedly scientific hammer (often, ironically, a person who is not a scientist herself at all), when claims are made for science that are beyond science\u2019s purview and even beyond its self-defined scope, this isn\u2019t science. \u00a0It\u2019s scientism. \u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0a deformed ideology that bears no more intrinsic connection to genuine science than Social Darwinism bears to evolutionary biology.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

With that preface in mind, I offer this item, on the currently raging controversy about peer review, accuracy, reliability, self-interest, bias, objectivity, and even honesty in science:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility-1.19970<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

To repeat myself: \u00a0I\u2019m not \u201cattacking science.\u201d \u00a0I\u2019m not trying to weaken science in order to defend my religious beliefs. \u00a0I don\u2019t see science and my religious beliefs as competitors. \u00a0(I also don\u2019t see baseball as the born enemy of accounting, nor Lake Powell as the natural predator of poetry, nor redwood forests as rivals to Ming vases, nor ethics as competing with photosynthesis.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But I am<\/em>\u00a0taking aim at scientism<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Science is a marvelous enterprise that has contributed enormously not only to our comfort, health, and convenience but to our understanding of the universe. \u00a0Despite my religious beliefs \u2014 and contrary to the suggestions of some \u2014 I don\u2019t minimize the value of science at all. \u00a0Quite the contrary. \u00a0I celebrate it. \u00a0I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"1500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    Science is a marvelous enterprise that has contributed enormously not only to our comfort, health, and convenience but to our understanding\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, 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