> once an article is published in some approved venue, it should be taken as truth
And I agree with the author that it shouldn't.
A good point is made about the arguments for releasing study findings in blogs, where discussions can be had in comments and perhaps the content of the blog amended as needed.
I definitely think that the old way of publishing studies needs to change. They need to allow discussion. Those that publish the studies and those that read them need to critique and possibly conclusions be amended. And to get this to happen at an intellectual level, students and others in academia and research should be funded more by taxes and possibly be required to do critiques and duplicate other studies to some extent.
For too long we've assumed the bodies of accumulated knowledge in the sciences to be fact without dispute; that's not science. Science is all about finding models that work and gathering data and trying to draw conclusions from it. Science was never meant to be about facts; it is all about understanding. Though some understanding may be innate, much of human understanding comes from experience. While we can build upon previous "knowledge", time over time we've seen what we held to be science fact proven false, e.g. earth is flat -> it's round but the sun goes around it -> it goes around the sun, and flies spontaneous generate from feces -> flies lay eggs in feces. If we'd never allow criticism, we'd never have progressed.
Science should be about keeping an open mind and accepting there is much we don't know, even if you believe and have faith in something. Einstein believed in God, and Hawking is an atheist. Both are scientists, and both have had theories proven and disproven. We are human, and we must continually strive for understanding knowing some ideas may be right, some may be wrong, and that ideas will change.
> For too long we've assumed the bodies of accumulated knowledge in the sciences to be fact without dispute
Who is this "we" who has assumed such a thing? Certainly no working scientist I know would agree that a result being published means it is necessarily correct. Nevertheless, some knowledge of the world scientists have accumulated has very strong support, and those who challenge it have invariably turned out to be in the wrong.
The 'we' could be a bunch of people who are no longer even alive. No longer alive in body but alive in spirit through the application of the law. I was listening to a building science podcast the other day.
In it they were talking about how they used to use, and still use, a 100 year old assumption about 'make-up air' in houses which is part of setting up an air conditioning system.
Turns out the original scientific papers were formalized into regulation or ASHRAE standards without double checking whether they were true.
Practically this means every single household in the country has a AC unit which is overpowered by 30% or 50%. For 100 years.
It also meant tens of millions of buildings suffered from dry rot because the systems weren't balanced correctly if I remember right. I'll look it up if anybody's interested.
Looks like it becomes a bigger problem as buildings become more airtight. Something to do with peak dewpoint in makeup air being all wrong, not sure because I'm not a HVAC expert.
And I agree with the author that it shouldn't.
A good point is made about the arguments for releasing study findings in blogs, where discussions can be had in comments and perhaps the content of the blog amended as needed.
I definitely think that the old way of publishing studies needs to change. They need to allow discussion. Those that publish the studies and those that read them need to critique and possibly conclusions be amended. And to get this to happen at an intellectual level, students and others in academia and research should be funded more by taxes and possibly be required to do critiques and duplicate other studies to some extent.
For too long we've assumed the bodies of accumulated knowledge in the sciences to be fact without dispute; that's not science. Science is all about finding models that work and gathering data and trying to draw conclusions from it. Science was never meant to be about facts; it is all about understanding. Though some understanding may be innate, much of human understanding comes from experience. While we can build upon previous "knowledge", time over time we've seen what we held to be science fact proven false, e.g. earth is flat -> it's round but the sun goes around it -> it goes around the sun, and flies spontaneous generate from feces -> flies lay eggs in feces. If we'd never allow criticism, we'd never have progressed.
Science should be about keeping an open mind and accepting there is much we don't know, even if you believe and have faith in something. Einstein believed in God, and Hawking is an atheist. Both are scientists, and both have had theories proven and disproven. We are human, and we must continually strive for understanding knowing some ideas may be right, some may be wrong, and that ideas will change.