for starters: the scientific method eliminates the subjectivity of the individual by various means. read up on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
nope. there is a difference between an observation and "eyewitness testimony". you will need to read the above link to understand this part... and also the other psych links i left regarding the eyewitness testimony and why it is so random and horrible
I don't believe that "the scientific method" even exists. I believe that it's a modern myth. It's the myth that a single infallible epistemological method exists that will always lead mankind inexorably to the truth. (Kind of like a certain kind of person once conceived of reading the Bible, a familiar faith repackaged for post-enlightenment moderns.) Wouldn't it be great if such a infallible source of Truth really existed? I don't believe that it does.
In real life, I think that scientists use all kinds of methods, ranging from direct observation (eyewitness testimony) common in paleontology, biological surveys and field geology, to big-data number crunching in bioinformatics and particle physics, to mathematical modeling of physical systems that we see in engineering, to mathematical derivations of theory from other pieces of theory (the theoretical physicists' game). What matters isn't that they are slavishly following some cook-book procedure, but whether what they are doing makes sense and is defensible logically, epistemologically, mathematically and in scientific terms that are often specific to the science in question. (Laboratory chemists, theoretical cosmologists and field geologists probably use very few methods in common.)
If we try to characterize the Scientific Method by identifying elements common to all examples of scientific practice, we arrive at common sense. And as everyone knows, common sense can occasionally be exceedingly fallible, just like eye-witness testimony.
If an individual person's observations are "random and horrible" then how does multiplying them through replication and corroboration improve matters? (Bullshit x 10 is still bullshit.) If the idea is that consensus can be reached by some averaging or common-denominator process and outliers eliminated, then one would still seem to be assuming that there's a valuable observational signal embedded in all of the noise.
So eyewitness testimony isn't complete bullshit at all. In fact, when it comes to the physical world around us, the evidence of our senses is arguably the best evidence we have (however imperfect it might be). What's the alternative? Imagination? Revelation?
I don't want to argue against the idea that eye-witness testimony can be made more reliable by bringing in multiple witnesses, physical evidence, recordings, statistical analyses and whatnot. That's all true. What I want to argue against is the far too aggressive suggestion that eyewitness testimony is worthless, that it's the worst kind of evidence possible, along with the implication that it can always be rejected with a contemptuous sneer
just because it's eyewitness testimony. That's just stupid, in my opinion. My assertion is that not only is personal experience valuable, it's the basis of ALL of our knowledge of the world around us.
I don't see how science can even occur if human beings and their awareness are removed from the process. I'm more inclined to perceive of science as fundamentally
empirical, as being dependent on what human beings can observe of the universe around them through their senses. That includes scientists' eye-witness testimony of what their experimental apparatus indicate and the collected eye-witness testimony of a whole community of researchers ideally replicating each other's results.
My biggest objection to these jihad-threads is that people are being told not to believe what they experience for themselves, the evidence of their own eyes. Instead they should just unquestioningly accept whatever the designated authorities tell them. (Authorities who weren't even there.)
It's nothing new. There's an historically-familiar intolerance for perceived heresy in all of these threads, an implicit demand that everyone conform to orthodox belief, a strange missionary drive to somehow make everyone believe the same things, a demand that people reject the evidence of their own senses, stop thinking about the world around them for themselves, stop producing their own ideas about it, and simply have... faith.
It troubles me.
(if we are being told that the house is haunted before we enter it, will we have a more frightening experience because we were given information beforehand?)
