Clicked the link, first impression made me think of edge.org, clicked over there, and sure enough, its the top story, with responses from the likes of George Dyson and Stewart Brand. Scrolling down the current edge.org page I saw this, which i know is a pet love of Brad’s.
Seems to me that the article goes too far. The forming and testing of hypotheses is still vitally important for those of us who don’t have access to the full spectrum of data, which is to say everybody from you and I to the United States government.
Yeah, it’s overstating it for effect. And, in most ways that matter, the massive data-mining doesn’t overturn the scientific method so much as slightly broaden it. I think the most important facet that the article speaks to is the ascent in importance of pure statistics, rather then philosophy and theory (in both the casual and scientific senses of it). The supplanting in importance of the “why” behind complex phenomenon, replacing it instead with a kind of massive statistical exploration and cataloging disinteresting (or even slightly hostile to) the philosophy of science. The questioning of causes, motives, and triggering phenomenon won’t disappear, of course, but it may fall out of the purview of what’s considered “pure” science. “Leave it to the philosophers and pundits” becoming a mainstream scientific mantra regarding the “why” of things.
Adam would likely have a completely different take, as a lot of cosmology and physics sort of seems to be in the opposite direction at this stage (as the article mentions, in the grand “beautiful picture” sort of stage), but speaking from a social science perspective, things like psychology and sociology used to primarily revolve around philosophical modeling (you would come up with a grand model of behavior in some sphere or other, use it to test hypotheses and guide experimentation, and then eventually replace the old model with a newer, more refined model, and so on), but seem to be moving more and more to a pure statistical sport. Actually, I’d argue that there seems to be a forking of a lot of social science in the past, say, 20 years—one direction moving towards more philosophy and modeling (interesting in causation, say) and the other moving more towards data and math (interested in correlation, say). It used to be you could hardly extricate the two; now, you can hardly marry them.
It seems to me that the author is misunderstanding how science works and, indeed, what ’scientific method’ can actually mean anyhow:
There is now a better way. Petabytes allow us to say: “Correlation is enough.” We can stop looking for models. We can analyze the data without hypotheses about what it might show. We can throw the numbers into the biggest computing clusters the world has ever seen and let statistical algorithms find patterns where science cannot.
There’s nothing unscientific about that approach, so long as it produces testable predictions. If there is never any model, making interesting predictions outside of the immediate sphere of the results will be harder, but the correlations will generally be used to make a model.
I am unsure what he’s so excited about; there are definitely new opportunities in the data (good for me, as the new possibilities are important providers of my livelihood), but the same old tasks remain. It is most certainly not the end of the ’scientific method’, it’s just new ways to carry it out (and in principle there’s nothing really that new except the dataset is bigger and the ability to search it fast is available; both of those are Good Things, but it’s not breaking anything, any more than calculators and computers did).
Didn’t sound like he thought it was a bad thing at all. He was just making an observation (heh).
Speaking of data being good for you: boy, great month for Fermilab. 5 million dollar anonymous donation, and Congress literally gave back the cuts they made (and even specifically added “so bring back any people you laid off and let them know they still have jobs”).
I didn’t say that he was claiming it was a Bad Thing. Not that it’s important whether he thinks that it’s good or bad, because he appears to me at best to be misled as to what science is.
It’s good news for Fermilab, yeah. I knew that they’d had a 5 million donation (which isn’t huge, but it’s not bad at all) but I didn’t know that Congress have given the cuts back; has it been signed, and did it involve cannibalising something else? I remember end of last year when it looked like things would be good and then the rug was pulled at the last moment (as I’ve said before, veterans tell me that science research funding often does worse under Democrats than Republicans).
Actually (as you know I just researched this), both the NSF, Fermilab, and a number of other science programs were originally budgeted for last year, but Bush sent the budget back asking for a certain level of cuts, so Congress hit science (among other things). So, a victim of rare fiscal conservatism, was Fermilab.
This year:
The nation’s premier particle physics laboratory—Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Ill.—just got a new lease on life.
The U.S. Senate yesterday passed legislation that provides $400 million for science programs, including $62.5 million to the Office of Science in the Department of Energy (DOE), which oversees Fermilab. The measure, passed by the House last week, now goes to President Bush, who has indicated he will sign it.
Fermilab says the infusion will likely prevent layoffs in the works since December, when Congress slashed the lab’s 2008 budget from the $372 million requested by the DOE to $320 million, down $20 million from 2007.
To keep alive the lab’s hunt for the elusive Higgs boson—the long-awaited source of all mass in the universe—staff were forced to take mandatory work furloughs of one week a month, and lab officials planned to lay off approximately 140 employees. The furloughs ended in May after an anonymous donation of $5 million.
Today was the deadline for staff to decide whether to accept the lab’s buyout offer before layoffs begin. Fermilab Director Pier Oddone said in a statement that between those opting for the buyout and the additional funding, “I expect to announce the end of involuntary layoffs at the laboratory.”
“It’s been such a long road that until all the ‘t’s are crossed and the ‘i’s are dotted, I don’t think anyone’s breathed out yet,” Judy Jackson, a spokesperson for the laboratory, said. “People are really very, very pleased,” she added.
Fermilab said the added funds may allow researchers to begin new work on neutrinos, a type of subatomic particle that will become the lab’s main line of research in coming years after its Higgs hunt ends.
I forgot to add that a THIRD piece of good news hit them. There were those guys suing them saying that starting up a particle accelerator would run a risk of creating tiny black holes, or at least enough of a risk to warrant an injunction, and a judge dismissed it today. Although I can’t remember now that I think about it if that was fermilab of the French thing (which would make more sense I guess).
My very thin following of things scientific constantly conflates the two.
Anyway, it was a lawsuit against the American government to stop them from investing in Hadron. The government pointed out, among other things, that the money was already spent, so nyeh. They also pointed out that technically speaking, the Large Hadron Collider was not an organization, or a business, or an institution. It was a loose confederation of resources and thus, one couldn’t get standing against them in court.
Also, it probably wouldn’t create little black holes that would destroy all life in this galaxy. But I thought the institutional legal argument was particularly interesting.
Those lawsuits normally get thrown out after the thing they’re trying to stop has actually happened, after repeatedly failures to get injunctions. Large Hadron Collider does, I guess, pose new risks to the crazy people but rest assured that if anything bad really does happen, like a transition to true vacuum which will propagate at the speed of light, there’ll be no to little time to worry about it.
I don’t expect Fermilab to find the Higgs although they did find some indicators that it might be in their data. It’s a fantastically cool place, Fermilab. I hope they get to run the ILC if it gets built.
Is that actual extra DoE budget? Sometimes (such as last time, I think) facilities get funds allocated from a budget that doesn’t increase as much as is required, thus forcing the funding agency to make cuts elsewhere.
Clicked the link, first impression made me think of edge.org, clicked over there, and sure enough, its the top story, with responses from the likes of George Dyson and Stewart Brand. Scrolling down the current edge.org page I saw this, which i know is a pet love of Brad’s.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/singularity
Comment by Jerrod — 6/30/2008 @ 11:11 am
I got to meet Rodney Brooks a few times this year. Still hoping to bump into Kurzweil.
Comment by Brad — 6/30/2008 @ 11:13 am
Seems to me that the article goes too far. The forming and testing of hypotheses is still vitally important for those of us who don’t have access to the full spectrum of data, which is to say everybody from you and I to the United States government.
Comment by Rojas — 6/30/2008 @ 12:30 pm
Yeah, it’s overstating it for effect. And, in most ways that matter, the massive data-mining doesn’t overturn the scientific method so much as slightly broaden it. I think the most important facet that the article speaks to is the ascent in importance of pure statistics, rather then philosophy and theory (in both the casual and scientific senses of it). The supplanting in importance of the “why” behind complex phenomenon, replacing it instead with a kind of massive statistical exploration and cataloging disinteresting (or even slightly hostile to) the philosophy of science. The questioning of causes, motives, and triggering phenomenon won’t disappear, of course, but it may fall out of the purview of what’s considered “pure” science. “Leave it to the philosophers and pundits” becoming a mainstream scientific mantra regarding the “why” of things.
Adam would likely have a completely different take, as a lot of cosmology and physics sort of seems to be in the opposite direction at this stage (as the article mentions, in the grand “beautiful picture” sort of stage), but speaking from a social science perspective, things like psychology and sociology used to primarily revolve around philosophical modeling (you would come up with a grand model of behavior in some sphere or other, use it to test hypotheses and guide experimentation, and then eventually replace the old model with a newer, more refined model, and so on), but seem to be moving more and more to a pure statistical sport. Actually, I’d argue that there seems to be a forking of a lot of social science in the past, say, 20 years—one direction moving towards more philosophy and modeling (interesting in causation, say) and the other moving more towards data and math (interested in correlation, say). It used to be you could hardly extricate the two; now, you can hardly marry them.
Comment by Brad — 6/30/2008 @ 12:41 pm
It seems to me that the author is misunderstanding how science works and, indeed, what ’scientific method’ can actually mean anyhow:
There’s nothing unscientific about that approach, so long as it produces testable predictions. If there is never any model, making interesting predictions outside of the immediate sphere of the results will be harder, but the correlations will generally be used to make a model.
I am unsure what he’s so excited about; there are definitely new opportunities in the data (good for me, as the new possibilities are important providers of my livelihood), but the same old tasks remain. It is most certainly not the end of the ’scientific method’, it’s just new ways to carry it out (and in principle there’s nothing really that new except the dataset is bigger and the ability to search it fast is available; both of those are Good Things, but it’s not breaking anything, any more than calculators and computers did).
Comment by Adam — 6/30/2008 @ 1:31 pm
Didn’t sound like he thought it was a bad thing at all. He was just making an observation (heh).
Speaking of data being good for you: boy, great month for Fermilab. 5 million dollar anonymous donation, and Congress literally gave back the cuts they made (and even specifically added “so bring back any people you laid off and let them know they still have jobs”).
Comment by Brad — 6/30/2008 @ 4:05 pm
I didn’t say that he was claiming it was a Bad Thing. Not that it’s important whether he thinks that it’s good or bad, because he appears to me at best to be misled as to what science is.
It’s good news for Fermilab, yeah. I knew that they’d had a 5 million donation (which isn’t huge, but it’s not bad at all) but I didn’t know that Congress have given the cuts back; has it been signed, and did it involve cannibalising something else? I remember end of last year when it looked like things would be good and then the rug was pulled at the last moment (as I’ve said before, veterans tell me that science research funding often does worse under Democrats than Republicans).
Comment by Adam — 6/30/2008 @ 10:30 pm
Actually (as you know I just researched this), both the NSF, Fermilab, and a number of other science programs were originally budgeted for last year, but Bush sent the budget back asking for a certain level of cuts, so Congress hit science (among other things). So, a victim of rare fiscal conservatism, was Fermilab.
This year:
I forgot to add that a THIRD piece of good news hit them. There were those guys suing them saying that starting up a particle accelerator would run a risk of creating tiny black holes, or at least enough of a risk to warrant an injunction, and a judge dismissed it today. Although I can’t remember now that I think about it if that was fermilab of the French thing (which would make more sense I guess).
Comment by Brad — 6/30/2008 @ 10:42 pm
Ah, the other thing.
My very thin following of things scientific constantly conflates the two.
Anyway, it was a lawsuit against the American government to stop them from investing in Hadron. The government pointed out, among other things, that the money was already spent, so nyeh. They also pointed out that technically speaking, the Large Hadron Collider was not an organization, or a business, or an institution. It was a loose confederation of resources and thus, one couldn’t get standing against them in court.
Also, it probably wouldn’t create little black holes that would destroy all life in this galaxy. But I thought the institutional legal argument was particularly interesting.
Comment by Brad — 6/30/2008 @ 10:45 pm
Those lawsuits normally get thrown out after the thing they’re trying to stop has actually happened, after repeatedly failures to get injunctions. Large Hadron Collider does, I guess, pose new risks to the crazy people but rest assured that if anything bad really does happen, like a transition to true vacuum which will propagate at the speed of light, there’ll be no to little time to worry about it.
I don’t expect Fermilab to find the Higgs although they did find some indicators that it might be in their data. It’s a fantastically cool place, Fermilab. I hope they get to run the ILC if it gets built.
Is that actual extra DoE budget? Sometimes (such as last time, I think) facilities get funds allocated from a budget that doesn’t increase as much as is required, thus forcing the funding agency to make cuts elsewhere.
*Which won’t happen.
Comment by Adam — 7/1/2008 @ 7:05 am