Scientism

Another example of scientism, from the comix "Non Sequitur." This illustrates why the translation of the term "Science," in the lexicon of some folks, is "Look how much smarter I am than you peasants."

Several points want making:

"vs. Everything else." Does that include haute cuisine, English lit, the Parthenon, history, mathematics, etc.? Everything?

"Answers." Is it really and truly only "answers" that are sought? Might not some folks be seeking insight? Understanding? Wisdom? Or does the whole world want only to be told answers.

"Simple but wrong." Are the two arrows the only options? Might not some answers be simple by right? Others, complex but wrong? How do we classify eugenics or phlogiston or natural selection? The last is eminently simple -- an interesting side-effect of death. Does that mean it's wrong? What about simple but wrong answers in history regarding Galileo, Bruno, Hypatia, or the Library of Alexandria? How does "simple but wrong" square with Ockham's Razor, which urges simplification upon us, or the development of scientific theories based on perfect elastic collisions, point-source gravitation, ideal gasses, etc.?

"Complex but right." Is science about being right or are its theories paradigmatically falsifiable and therefore mooted with the expectation that they will one day be superceded? What about complex conspiracy theories?

Winding road. Is it TOF's aging eyesight, or does that road less traveled still wind up going over the cliff in the distant background?

Scientism redux

Stick or switch?

Some years ago, reading Case Studies in Sample Design by A.C. Rosander and some other books on sampling practice by W. Edwards Deming, TOF was offered this particular nugget of information.  On any particular problem there will be statistical aspects and non-statistical aspects and the practicing statistician's task is to provide advice on the former.  The statistics is not the be-all and end-all of the problem in view.  There may be a wide number of other aspects to it.  A statistical analysis may shed light on some of these, and that is all to the good.  But the important thing to remember is that not all problems are simply statistical problems.

Consider the Monte Hall problem, which puzzled even pros because they forgot that the problem was not probabilistic.  Monte Hall did not use random chance to choose which door he would open.  Let us call this tendency to apply the rules of probability even in non-random situations probabilism.  Which serves as today's lead-in.

ISMism

Back in the Olde Days, when TOF was a practicing Quality Engineer, there was a popular three-step process for implementing the techniques known as "statistical process control" -- or better yet: SPC.  (The benefit of TLAs is that you don't have to think about what the words mean.)  The three steps were:

1. The massive training of everyone in sight
2. The great control chart race
3. Beating up the vendors

SPC, Science™, and other panaceae

Of special interest are the first two steps.  Statistical process control -- which meant only that one should take account of the variable nature of manufacturing processes and not make adjustments unless there are reasonably certain evidences that the process has actually shifted -- was seen by some as a panacea.  Convinced of the great value of this technique, they would go hog-wild and start hanging charts everywhere.  Management would mandate that everyone would have charts; departments vied to see how many charts they had hung.  Yee-haw! 

It was belief in magic.  It was "control chart-ism."  If only we hang these Shewhart charts, magic will happen.  Magic did happen.  Whoever hung the charts eventually disappeared.

The Allegory of the VCD Machine

Once upon a time, TOF had the occasion to visit a computer assembly plant.  He was proudly shown the Great Wall of Charts.  See how many charts we have!  It is only a matter of time before our problems go away.  Huzzah!

TOF examined one of the charts.  It was replete with signals of assignable causes: that is, causes not normally part of the cause-system.  What was the assignable cause of this pattern?  Blank looks.  Did you investigate to discover the causes?  Investigate?

These were not foolish people.  They were quite bright.  But they had forgotten that the operative word in "control chart" was "control," not "chart."  They had confused the instrument with the objective.

A visit was paid to the process, which was currently rejecting many circuit boards.  It was a VCD machine (variable-center distancing).  The jaws plucked a component off a paper strip, inserted the leads through the holes in the circuit board, and crimped them on the other side.  Then the circuit board re-centered two other holes under the jaws, ready for the next component off the tape.  Behold its majestic glory:

(Geez, you really can find everything on the intertubes.)

TOF noticed a peculiar thing.  As each board was stuffed, the operator would remove the board, place a yellow sticky arrow on it, then inspect the board.  Sometimes he saw a smashed component (or whatever) and he placed a second sticky-arrow pointing to this.  The number of defects was counted and plotted on a u-chart as defects per 100,000 insertions. 

A question formed in the brain of TOF.  Neurons crackled.  Why did the operator place the first arrow before he inspected the board?

I don't know, the Host of TOF replied.

Shall we ask the operator?  The Host was reluctant that he, an Engineer, should ask a lowly Machine Operator, but his curiosity eventually triumphed.  The Operator pointed to the first marked component.  That's the wrong component, he said.  Design Engineering revised the board layout and changed the component to a different rating.  But no one reprogrammed the Sequencer that tacks the components in order on the paper tape, so we're still inserting the old component here.

Every time they ran that board, 100% of them had to be reworked.  Reprogramming the Sequencer was boring, and so after the excitement of board re-design and Engineering Change Orders and all the rest of the foo-foo, it fell between the cracks.  The Solution?  Reprogram the freaking Sequencer so it plucks the right component out of the bins.  Duh?  Additional solution: prepare a checklist for board re-design to flag all equipments and documentation that are to be revised or adjusted or reprogrammed as a result of the change. 

Despite all the charts, they had not had statistical process control, but statistical wallpaper.

Yet their enthusiasm had been undoubted.  Like the person who worships the intellect instead of using it, they admired the control charts without using them for actual, you know, control.  Like cargo-cultists, they thought that by replicating the outward forms and rituals they could achieve the same results achieved by those who had mastered the substance. In effect, although the charts were crying out to them, things the chart did not show -- the specific defects involved, the lack of configuration control at the Sequencer, etc. -- had become invisible.  They thought the answers were statistical!  But a thermometer only tells you you're sick.  It doesn't cure the sickness.  Instruments do not act on their own.

For those who might want to noodle the substance of the SPC methodology, TOF recommends the classic work: The Western Electric Company SQC Handbook, by a writing committee headed by the revered Bonnie Small, who once received a standing ovation at a conference of the American Society for Quality Control, when a speaker noticed her in the audience and pointed her out.  SQC was what SPC was called in its early days, but that word "quality" kind of spooked the turkey herd. 

TOF also modestly notes that when he worked summers at Mack Printing Company, this was one of the many technical publications that were then printed there.  TOF's father was pressroom superintendent, but this was not, repeat not, of any benefit to TOF, who received what we might call "character-building" work assignments, many of them involving steel wool and kerosene. 

Which leads us to today's topic. 

A Passing Comment

TOF ran across this comment in a comm box during his morning Internet run-through:

gxxxxxreader101
From what I hear in the mainstream media, and what I hear from scientists themselves, they and their adherents are pretty certain that science is the only sensible way of looking at the world.  Scientists may believe that there is an infinite amount to discover, but they are absolutely certain that it can be discovered through science...and nothing else.

The which neatly summarizes the coherence problem. 

Quote of the Day

The essence of what Jerry Pournelle calls 'the voodoo sciences' is pithily encapsulated in this bon mot:

The word 'science' is used equivocally in the academy to describe both what a chemist does and what a psychiatrist does, even though the chemist would be laughed out of his profession were he to base his claims on 'insights' like those of the psychiatrist.

-- Joseph Moore, Yard Sale of the Mind
Another way to Think About Science in Academia

Notes from the Untergang

In an audio conference entitled Why Get Married? author Masha Gessen had this to say:

“It’s a no-brainer that (homosexual activists) should have the right to marry, but I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist. …(F)ighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there — because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie. 
The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist. And I don’t like taking part in creating fictions about my life. That’s sort of not what I had in mind when I came out thirty years ago. 
I have three kids who have five parents, more or less, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t have five parents legally… I met my new partner, and she had just had a baby, and that baby’s biological father is my brother, and my daughter’s biological father is a man who lives in Russia, and my adopted son also considers him his father. So the five parents break down into two groups of three… And really, I would like to live in a legal system that is capable of reflecting that reality, and I don’t think that’s compatible with the institution of marriage.”

And speaking of polygamy...

While the Supreme Court and the rest of us are all focused on the human right of marriage equality, let’s not forget that the fight doesn’t end with same-sex marriage. We need to legalize polygamy, too. Legalized polygamy in the United States is the constitutional, feminist, and sex-positive choice. More importantly, it would actually help protect, empower, and strengthen women, children, and families.

 Slippery slope?  What slippery slope? 

Meanwhile, life gets really, really complicated:

But despite their commitment to gender equality, many feminist institutions have long had trouble seeing trans women as part of the movement. Cisgender feminists of the 1970s often viewed their trans sisters with suspicion, as though they were men in dresses trying to invade “real” womanhood. Some women’s centers, rape-support organizations, and lesbian-rights groups have gone as far as expelling trans women from their midst. The legendary Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival has always barred trans women from entry (and still does). Second-wave thought leaders like Mary Daly called them “Frankensteins” and in her book, The Transsexual Empire, radical anti-trans feminist Janice Raymond accuses trans women of “appropriating” the female body and many other much less pleasant things.

Cisgender?  Transgender?  Sigh.  Who knew there were such terms?  LGBT life can be complicated, apparently.

What next?  Normalizing pedophilia?  Oh, wait.

Like many forms of sexual deviance, pedophilia once was thought to stem from psychological influences early in life. Now, many experts view it as a sexual orientation as immutable as heterosexuality or homosexuality. It is a deep-rooted predisposition — limited almost entirely to men — that becomes clear during puberty and does not change.   

Well, as long as it's a natural sexual orientation...  The article makes no outlandish pleas, and is actually a reasonable analysis - simple word substitution suggests itself - yet one cannot help but wonder.  How long to Tolerance?  How long after that to Celebration?  After all, when orthodoxy becomes optional it will eventually become outlawed.  

Perhaps we can simplify by dividing folks into Eloi and Morlocks:

The buzzword among cognoscenti is “post-person,” defined in a much-cited 2009 Philosophy and Public Affairs paper by tenured Duke professor Allen Buchanan, as those “who would have a higher moral status than that possessed by normal human beings” (emphasis original). Buchanan admits crafting chromosomal übermenschen “might be profoundly troubling from the perspective of the unenhanced (the mere persons) who would no longer enjoy the highest moral status, as they did when there were only persons and nonpersons (‘lower animals’).” 

Oh, those whacky cognoscenti....

Better yet, the neuroscientists can help out, because Neuroscience™ can tell us whether a criminal is more likely to lapse back into crime! 

Identification of factors that predict recurrent antisocial behavior is integral to the social sciences, criminal justice procedures, and the effective treatment of high-risk individuals. Here we show that error-related brain activity elicited during performance of an inhibitory task prospectively predicted subsequent rearrest among adult offenders within 4 y of release (N = 96). The odds that an offender with relatively low anterior cingulate activity would be rearrested were approximately double that of an offender with high activity in this region, holding constant other observed risk factors. These results suggest a potential neurocognitive biomarker for persistent antisocial behavior. 

 Aren't they cute when they pretend to do Science™?  Never mind what you have or have not done.  The Brain Scan™ does not lie! 

Or maybe not.

Weak statistics are the downfall of many neuroscience studies, according to researchers that analyzed the statistical strategies employed by dozens of published reports in the field. Especially lacking in statistical power are human neuroimaging studies—especially those that use fMRI to infer brain activity—noted the coauthors of the analysis, published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience last week (April 10).

Phrenology has been rediscovered and really-truly scientificalized.  Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we substitute correlation for causation.  But that's what happens when we try to apply methods devised to study inanimate matter to matter that can talk back. 

A Darwinist Mob?

Hitting the Nagel on the head

The New Republic, a magazine evidently inspired by an H.G.Wells essay of the same name, has published an essay entitled "A Darwinist Mob Goes After a Serious Philosopher," by Leon Wieseltier.  Immediately (you guessed it) a Darwinist mob went after him in the comment section.    All the while blinking incredulously saying What Darwinist mob?  We don't see no Darwinist mob!  Nobody here but us chickens. 

What most of the commenklatura seemed to miss was that Wieseltier's essay did not concern itself with whether Darwinism per se is true or false - the answer is clearly 'yes' - but with the crypto-religious reaction of the Darwinistas to the whiff of heresy sniffed out from Thomas Nagel’s book Mind and Cosmos.  Now Nagel is one of the top philosophers of consciousness in the modern world and he is adamantly opposed to religion.  It is not that he thinks the existence of God is wrong, but that he hates and fears the whole idea that God exists.  This would seem to put him on the side of the angels (in a manner of speaking) insofar as readers of TNR are concerned.