One of the stock objections to miracles is that miracles aren’t replicable. They can’t be tested under laboratory conditions, with a control group.
Of course, this objection fundamentally misconceives the very nature of miracles. But there’s another problem internal to the objection, for the criterion of replicability is becoming an issue in contemporary science. Therefore, that can’t be used to so easily demarcate miracles from the scientific method.
The test of replicability, as it’s known, is the foundation of modern research. Replicability is how the community enforces itself. It’s a safeguard for the creep of subjectivity. Most of the time, scientists know what results they want, and that can influence the results they get. The premise of replicability is that the scientific community can correct for these flaws.
But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable. This phenomenon doesn’t yet have an official name, but it’s occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology. In the field of medicine, the phenomenon seems extremely widespread, affecting not only antipsychotics but also therapies ranging from cardiac stents to Vitamin E and antidepressants: Davis has a forthcoming analysis demonstrating that the efficacy of antidepressants has gone down as much as threefold in recent decades.
For many scientists, the effect is especially troubling because of what it exposes about the scientific process. If replication is what separates the rigor of science from the squishiness of pseudoscience, where do we put all these rigorously validated findings that can no longer be proved? Which results should we believe? Francis Bacon, the early-modern philosopher and pioneer of the scientific method, once declared that experiments were essential, because they allowed us to “put nature to the question.” But it appears that nature often gives us different answers.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=1
Steve said: " But there’s another problem internal to the objection, for the criterion of replicability is becoming an issue in contemporary science."
ReplyDelete.... which is why its fun to point out to 'scientists' that first-life (life from non-life) is also unreplicable and hence unscientific.
It's funny that contemporary scientists can be so selective where they apply this.
New Yorker Magazine: "If replication is what separates the rigor of science from the squishiness of pseudoscience, where do we put all these rigorously validated findings that can no longer be proved?"
ReplyDeleteIn the inbox of materialistic atheists?
There're responses out there that address this; such as: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=8987
ReplyDelete"Although Lehrer makes some good points, where he stumbles, from my perspective, is when he appears to conflate 'truth' with science or, more properly, accept the idea that there are scientific 'truths,' even going so far as to use the word in the title of his article. That is a profound misrepresentation of the nature of science, in which all 'truths' are provisional and all 'truths' are subject to revision based on evidence and experimentation. The decline effect–or, as Lehrer describes it the title of his article, the 'truth wearing off'–is nothing more than science doing what science does: Correcting itself."
"Of course, this objection fundamentally misconceives the very nature of miracles."
ReplyDeleteVery true, and definitely amusing. It reminds me of a teenager who once argued that a specific spy organization did not have a website they used to communicate, *because he looked for it and couldn't find it.*
His whole argument was ridiculous - what kind of spy website would it be if someone could easily find it? Similarly, what kind of "miracle" would an event be if a human could replicate it anytime he wanted to??