Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,sci.psychology,sci.physics,sci.philosophy.meta,sci.bio,rec.arts.books,comp.ai.philosophy,alt.consciousness
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!udel!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!jqb
From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: Why scientists popularize premature speculations?
Message-ID: <jqbD063oH.EC8@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <3bgf6c$a3d@tierra.santafe.edu> <3bkq33$k77@pobox.csc.fi> <3blf0e$b8u@tierra.santafe.edu>
Distribution: inet
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 1994 05:09:53 GMT
Lines: 66
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.skeptic:96869 sci.psychology:30802 sci.physics:102103 sci.philosophy.meta:15225 sci.bio:23612 comp.ai.philosophy:23017

In article <3blf0e$b8u@tierra.santafe.edu>,
Jeff Inman <jti@wijiji.santafe.edu> wrote:
>grohn@finsun.csc.fi (Lauri Gr|hn) writes:
>>jti@santafe.edu (Jeff Inman) writes:
>
>>>What about *mature* speculations?
>>>Is there any difference between these and good science?
>>
>>>It seems to me that what makes any speculations "mature" is their
>>>quality of being cognizant of available theories, their support,
>>>experimental evidence, sociological factors, etc.  In short, the
>>>context.
>>
>>	The matter was about why to make speculation in front of
>>laymen? And before having any peer reviews.
>
>My appologies.  I thought the matter was about whether it was ethical to
>publish "The Bell Curve", the argument being that the research was
>controversial and therefore unethical.  From my own (mere) browsing of
>the introduction, it seems to me that the authors start off on a very
>appropriately qualified footing.  By "qualified", I mean that they seem
>to be trying to place their position in context, and to make explicit
>their approach, and its limitations.

You are mixing threads.  The "immature speculations" stuff is about leading
scientists like Penrose, Prigogine, and Crick publishing speculation under
the color of their scientific reputations (although I'm not too sure how
accurate the charge is in any or each of those cases).  That is quite different
from "The Bell Curve", which presents itself as a fairly standard sort of
socialogical study, with lots of statistical data supporting conclusions.
There are also policy reccomendations, but that is (perhaps unfortunately)
not all that unusual in such studies.

>It seems to me that the claims of "bad science" are being made by people
>who are worried about the sociological consequences of this research,
>once it has been stripped of its context by passage through the
>grapevine.  I agree that there may be problems in that department, but
>it is not pertinent to the scientific validity of the study, *if* the
>authors take pains to make the appropriate qualifications, and to be
>forthcoming about what assumptions they are making.

The claims of bad science are based upon it being bad science, not on
undesirable sociological consequences (though there are people who oppose
the book solely on those grounds; I think that is a mistake).  Studies
showing the relative test scores of different groups only shows the current
situation of those groups; such data alone cannot be taken as an indication
of any inherent characteristic of those groups, or how they would score if
situated differently.  Such conclusions are fallacious (post hoc ergo propter
hoc).  In order to show that being black in and of itself affects test scores,
you would need to control all factors other than blackness; perhaps studies
of identical twins separated at birth where one twin was white and one was
black.  Think about it.  Even if such twins were possible, they would have to
be raised in an environment where the color of their skin had no effect on how
their environment responded to them (as opposed to how they responded to their
environment).  That isn't theoretically impossible, but it is currently
impossible in practice.


Again I apologize for continuing an inappropriately posted thread.  I'm not
too good at figuring out which of a bunch of groups that I don't read are
appropriate targets.  I would remove comp.ai.philosophy, but since that's
the only target group that I read, I wouldn't see any response.
I urge those who start these threads to restrict their crossposting to
appropriate groups.
-- 
<J Q B>
