iowa61, if there's been anything at all worthy of your contributions to this thread, I'll give you credit for 'encouraging' me in taking some time to research the Scientific Method you exhaustively champion. Usually my approach to research and understanding starts with the 'cons' before the 'pros'. This approach is not for everyone and usually I prefer to be an optimist before a pessimist but in reality being a 'realist' has worked the best for me for many years. But when I'm skeptical of something, especially when that 'something' is being preached far too aggressively, I tend to look at the negative before the positive. But that's me.
That being said. Regarding the Scientific Method, I spent some time the last few days performing some research to reach some of the 'quoted' conclusions below. And fortunately these conclusions were nicely explained and easy to follow from a 'laymans' perspective.
"What flaws exist within the scientific method? Not surprisingly, the minute you try to answer this question, the present method's flaws begin to surface." The scientific method is great for what it does, but what it does is widely misunderstood. Science cannot prove anything, it only generates evidence that supports or disproves hypotheses.
"The Definition Problem: As the brilliantly acerbic philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein (of whom I've never heard of until now) so often pointed out, there can be no precision in words alone. And as the equally brilliant mathematician, Kurt Gödel wrote, no system of logic or numbers can ever be complete. (“Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove.”) The current scientific method chooses to ignore these two maxims and proceed as if they do not exist. And as a temporary answer, this is understandable. But to deny this problem exists or worse; to stop looking for a solution to this problem, is to forever infuse legitimate science with some of the worst defects present in a pseudoscience."
"The Measurement Problem: When Jacob Bernoulli wrote the first book on statistics (The Art of Conjecture, 1713), he warned against equating stochastics (statistically based predictions) to tangible evidence. Bernoulli literally wrote the book on statistics. Yet most scientists have never even heard of this man, let alone felt the need to heed his warning. Imagine if you used the current scientific method's pseudo mathematics to reconcile your checkbook? How long would it take for your financial life to be reduced to chaos?"
"The Real World Translation Problem: Most of the current method's efforts center on isolating a select few variables, then manipulating them to gain knowledge. In theory, this knowledge can then be used to reconstitute a useful picture of natural reality. Unfortunately, there are no real world settings in which such limited variables exist, let alone do not impinge on the entire setting. Thus most of science's theoretical knowledge cannot, and will never, translate well to real world settings."
"The "Starting with an Answer" Problem: The present scientific method requires you to begin with an educated guess; an answer; a hypothesis. Unfortunately, doing this creates yet another example of Gödel's circle. Indeed, the smaller science shrinks the circle, the more which gets left out. Science then uses statistics to mediate this deficiency, then claims these answers are "mostly true."
Would you be okay with "mostly true" as an answer to a pregnancy test? How about as an answer to whether your car brakes will work the next time you step on them? Or what about when, on the day of your picnic, meteorologists offer you science couched in words like "chance of" and "partly"? Does this feel like real science?
The point is, if you leave out even one number in a math problem, you guarantee uncertainty."
"The scientific method is a continuous process, which usually begins with observations about the natural world. Human beings are naturally inquisitive, so they often come up with questions about things they see or hear and often develop ideas (hypotheses) about why things are the way they are. The best hypotheses lead to predictions that can be tested in various ways, including making further observations about nature. In general, the strongest tests of hypotheses come from carefully controlled and replicated experiments that gather empirical data. Depending on how well the tests match the predictions, the original hypothesis may require refinement, alteration, expansion or even rejection."
So what do I feel are the 'pros' of the Scientific Method? For one the fact that no other method of inquiry comes remotely close to rivaling the scientific method from what I've researched. What science discovers, technology applies. we are surrounded by evidence for the efficacy of science. Wireless communications, GPS, the Internet, space exploration, DNA sequencing . . . the list goes on and on. These technologies prove the usefulness — but not the “truth” — of scientific discoveries.
"Since the Scientific Method relies to a great extent on reasoning by induction, there is no way we can be absolutely sure if a scientific theorem/ principle will fail to hold. No one can show conclusively that a scientific theory WILL NOT cease to hold true the next day or perhaps even the next minute. It's just an assumption made on the grounds of very obvious utility. Because Science is based mainly on inductive logic, it is in fact often considered to be INFERIOR to the pure logic of deduction characterized by Mathematics."
Confirmation bias not least of all. It mustn’t be supposed that scientists unlike other human beings are completely devoid of any kind of bias and could possible have NO agendas. i.e. Dr Jantz and R.G.
To sum up the ONLY reason the Scientific Method is believed, wrongly so, to be infallible by many is because it has been highly useful in the advancement of civilization. Although that is undeniably true, it does not constitute incontrovertible evidence for its infallibility.
So all the above has been my studies for the past few days with more research scheduled, and so far my faith in Dr Jantz paper being a 99.9% valid and conclusive paper regarding AE's alleged bones are no more stronger nor weaker than before. And as far as any other website(s) dedicated to the disappearance of AE, I'm certainly not convinced there's anything "astronomically" conclusive they have come up with either other than much longer blaw blaw blaw posts than this one. Bottom line is one I've preached and practiced all my life and that's "don't tell me what you'll do, show me what you've done" and in this case "don't give me your scientific conclusions, show me your concrete proof" ...
There's one thing I failed to state that's the most obvious conclusion of this whole AE debate, whether it be from the pro-TIGHAR camps or the anti-TIGHAR camps, and that's that no matter how many people who like to type these long-winded (yes even longer than this one) posts using all kinds brilliant words, fancy scientific formulas and text as long as a book with photos and diagrams to boot. No one, and I mean no one, anywhere has been able to prove what happened to the ole gal. Except of course to prove they haven't the foggiest fricken idea what happened to her. But they sure have gotten real good at wasting time (and WIX's time) trying to figure it out.
So much for the Scientific Method or TIGHAR or AE cult websites.
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