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She’s wrong though, everything following the scientific method is science. The fact that you didn’t pay out of your ass to publicize your research doesn’t matter. Of course it reaches less people, but that’s a separate issue.
Does it require independent peer review though? How do you achieve that
withwithout publication? The predatory publication system is a different point.Edit: fix without
Wouldn’t this imply that science didn’t exist before academic publication existed? Was zero science conducted before the ~1600s then?
Possibly. I can’t come up with any major results that wasn’t either logic, engineering or tradition. But it’s an interesting question. What might count as science before then?
Pretty sure it was like this:
Fair point, I should specify “modern science”. There’s quite a gap of scientific quality between traditional medicine and modern science based medicine for example.
Was zero science conducted before the ~1600s then?
I mean, yes. The framework of studying things that we understand as science did not always exist.
Every time someone thinks science and studying natural phenomena are the same thing Newton sheds a single tear from his non-poked eye.
not as a discipline. If you publish an experiment to the extent it can be reproduced, it is science, so its happened before but in a less intentional fashion
everything following the scientific method is science
I’m fairly certain “report conclusions” is a pretty big deal in the scientific method. Principle of verifiability and all that.
True a lot of science is done in industry and the corporate world and not published to keep it a trade secret. It is still science but not shared.
The rules and conventions to do science today are quite well known and understood by educated people (including of course Helen Mosque) … but any rules have exceptions :
Project Manhattan to produce the atomic bomb was secret science : in many countries military will have secret science development. Pharmaceutical companies will do as well.
People in those projects will not have recognition by the wider public but they will have recognition from their group.Heck, I can think of a half dozen other examples of things that aren’t published and/or can’t be reproduced but would be considered science.
If I had an unpublished workbook of Albert Einstein, would I say the work in it “isn’t science”?
If I publish a book outlining a hypothesis about the origins of the Big Bang, is it not science because it doesn’t have any reproducible experiments?
Is any research that deadends in a uninteresting way that isn’t worthy of publication not science?
I like dunking on Elon as much as the next guy, but like, “only things that are published get the title of ‘science’” seems like a pretty indefensible take to me…
i agree because what I usually mean when i talk of science is scientific work even if this work doesn’t result in proving that an hypothesis is right so that it becomes a scientific theory.
For me the main criteria is to follow the scientific method.I’d say it’s just research. Science is a group activity by necessity, even if the scientific method is not.
What makes science a group activity by necessity?
Why is one person employing the scientific method to better understand the world around them “not doing science”?
Well, modern science is interdisciplinary, it relies on resource sharing and peer review to reach consensus, which all require many people. In practice, it’s merely research without collaboration if contributions aren’t being made because Science isn’t defined when you apply the scientific method. Science is what we do collectively. So when offshoot research is vetted, it becomes part of the science.
This reminds me of a few people I’ve met who believe themselves to be scientists who claim to do science by themselves, but in reality, it’s numerology nonsense. They’re arguably researching a system they invented but nobody worth their weight would take them seriously.
Why is one person employing the scientific method to better understand the world around them “not doing science”?
Why is “research” not the appropriate label?
So, first and foremost it is important to recognize we are having a definition argument. The crux of our disagreement is over the definition of “science,” specifically as it relates to the act of doing it.
Now, obviously anyone can claim that any word means anything they want. I can claim that the definition of “doing science” is making grilled cheese sandwiches. That doesn’t make it so.
So, as with all arguments over the definition of words, I find appealing to the dictionary a good place to start. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science Which, having read through all the possible definitions, does not seem to carry any connotation of mandatory collaboration.
Now, the dictionary is obviously not the be all and end all. Words have colloquial meanings that are sometimes not captured, or nuance can be lost in transcribing the straight meaning of the word. But I think that the onus is on you to justify why you believe that meaning is lost.
And note, what I’m not arguing is that science isn’t collaborative. Of course it is. There are huge benefits to collaboration, and it is very much the norm. But you have stated an absolute. “Science isn’t science without collaboration.” And that is the crux of our disagreement.
And as to why I wouldn’t just call it “research.” First, I see no reason to. By both my colloquial definition and the one in the dictionary (by my estimation), it is in fact science. But, more importantly, if we take your definition, you are relegating the likes of great scientists like Newton, Cavendish, Mendel, and Killing to the title of mere “researchers.” And I find the idea of calling any of those greats anything short of a scientist absurdly reductive.
I mostly agree with you.
But you have stated an absolute. “Science isn’t science without collaboration.”
I don’t think that’s what I’m saying, at least, that’s not my stance. I’m trying to say that how we formally define Science is one thing. But in practice, Science can only be collaborative because of the complexity of topics, the nuance that needs to be captured in experimental design, and the human error that needs to be avoided. There’s also the connotation that science is the collective body beyond its works that encompasses a community, a culture, a history, a way of thinking, and so on. If you’re “doing science”, then we have the mutual understanding that you’re participating in all of the above, because otherwise, you’re just conducting independent research that could eventually find its way into the whole.
But if it doesn’t ever find its way into the greater body of science, how can we label that as doing science if it hasn’t made an impact besides personal profits? And even if those findings work as advertised in a product, how do we know that the hand-waiving explanation in this black box isn’t true? It does nothing for our understanding. I won’t argue that it works as a colloquial term because a theory could mean whatever possibility popped into someone’s head even if it’s wrong. Strictly speaking, a theory is much more than a plausible thought and I think that analogy carries on.
you are relegating the likes of great scientists like Newton, Cavendish, Mendel, and Killing to the title of mere “researchers.”
That’s a relic of what worked back then but their independent research eventually made it into the science, which is consistent with what I’m saying. Labeling them as researchers takes nothing away from their great achievements. I see no issue with calling an apple a fruit when broadly speaking.
If you aren’t saying that “science isn’t science without collaboration,” can you give an example of something that is science without collaboration? I only ask because you state that’s not what you’re saying, but follow it up with what, to my attempt at reading comprehension, is you just restating the thing you said you aren’t saying.
And I would argue science done in secret can have enormous impacts beyond “simply profits.” The Manhattan Project for example. I think it would be absurd to say what was going on there was anything but science, but there was no collaboration with the greater scientific community or intent to share their findings.
And look, of course you can be a researcher without being a scientist. Historians are researchers but not scientists obviously. But when what you are researching is physics and natural sciences, you are a scientist. That’s what the word literally means. When your definition requires you to eliminate Sir Isaac Newton, maybe it’s your definition that’s wrong.
You say you see no problem with calling an apple a fruit when broadly speaking. Neither do I. But that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be absolutely delusional to insist that an apple wasn’t actually an apple.
The Manhattan Project, being a project with no end game but genocide, really shouldn’t fucking be considered science; not unless you’re gonna crack out and try and tell me that indiscriminate, horrific mass murder deserves to be acknowledged in the same breath as mathematics and medicine.
If you science in a lab and no one is around to review it did you make a science?
The difference between science and fucking around is writing it down - Adam Savage
The second, implied part, is that writing it down is for OTHER people to learn from.
So, although I hate the eletist gatekeeping language… I think I agree more with the professional scientist than I do the professional clown.
Corollary: If it can’t be reproduced you’ve failed to write down something critical.
That is to say: it’s fucking around and, if you’re good at it, finding out.
well it still goes back to the original arguement that it has to be published and reproducible.
else it would be forgotten and re-discovered again at a later stage.
some scientific discoveries of the mordern era were actually discovered by earlier ancient people before mordern science started recording such discoveries.
Does it have to be a new discovery to qualify as “science”?
No
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Academic Journals frantically spinning up botnets to retweet this
Fuck, I really hate to agree with Elon on anything, but that is a ridiculous argument. LeCun must also really believe that trees only fall in the woods when someone is around to see it happen.
Also how transparently published and reproduced was Pfizer’s vaccine trials, considering a judge had to force the contents released, yet it was science right away. You can’t have cake and eat too.
Science is just the process of testing things in the world in a reproducible way.
LeCun’s argument is good career advice (you only get credit for what others know you did), but it’s not factual correct.
how about you figure out how to make a gas pedal that doesn’t try to kill people before you talk shit?
I’ve seen published scientific papers that were written by chatgpt, complete with prompts.
Yann LeCun is not a good person, but at least he’s significantly smarter than Elon
I wish he was even smarter so that he would choose not to play chess with a pigeon.
He bought a blue checkmark.
I’m too lazy to edit it, but you get the idea:
Every time I see Elon’s picture in one of these posts, my brain tells me he’s wearing an Ant Man costume.
it’s worse than that, he’s in a WoW costume or something similar.
Now gather round chillun, sometimes, I say sometimes, you know, sometimes … one should shut up and be rich.
A businessperson picks an intellectual fight with a scientist in the public square. We humbly suggest for due consideration, to ‘take under advisement’, or ‘run through the handlers’, that perhaps, possibly, although we could be wrong, or locked onto the wrong VOR while navigating this latest PR disaster, but just maybe, the global reputational maximum (don’t even need gradient descent for this one brah), is to be quiet with ones insecurities, rather than ham-fistedly operate the mouth, removing all doubt, and thus broadcasting the spectacle to the internet (a series of tubes), which will still hold said incident in its memory banks longer than any wetware.
Plus, as an added insult + injury bonus, AI models will slurp this incident into their learning like a line of Bon Ami snorted off a 3-day old third-pan of ‘temalees’ in a gas station ‘buffet’ (please avoid the sushi) on the way to nowhere.
All nibbles and bytes are immortal now and forever more!
DWord to your motherboard.
I like the cut of your jibes, sir or ma’am.
What the fuck is LeCum thinking about? I work in academia and I couldn’t give a shit about being remembered, I just want to live to fight another day like the next guy.
This feels like billionaire banter.
Science, real science like Elon is describing, happens when you write stuff down. “Published science” is where the glamor is but that’s, quite obviously, not what Elon was talking about.
So sad to see bitter people lash out at the successful. (projection is also a classic trait)
Science requires peer review, so just keeping it all private isn’t doing much for the scientific community as a whole
Published science requires peer review. Big difference.
“good for the community” isn’t relevant to being science.
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