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0 pointsNmAmDa4y ago0 comments

Actually I don't think science has democratic nature. Yes we do somehow do that as a theory would still need to be accepted widely. But in reality one person can have the correct idea while all others disagree. Still this person is doing it right.

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6 comments · 2 top-level

lmohseni4y ago· 3 in thread

I believe science is a democratic process. If someone has the correct idea but communicates it poorly, so poorly that others in the field disagree, then this person is doing it wrong. (Thinking specifically of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Mochizuki )

nextaccountic4y ago

The participation ought to be democratic in the sense of being open to everyone to participate. But, you can't do a vote and use it to decide who is right. Deep down we know that being right or wrong is independent from the scientific consensus. Mochizuki may be interacting with the scientific community in the wrong way, but it has no bearing on whether his theory is correct.

The consensus itself has some democratic features, but it's weighed by prestige and adherence to the current paradigm. I think Kuhn described its mechanism pretty well. It's far easier to convince people of a wrong result if you follow the established paradigm, than convince people of something right if you go against it. What really saves science from being pure dogma is that there are paradigm shifts, revolutions in which the scientific consensus change.

hugoroussel4y ago

All and all it is a non trivial problem. You have at the very least have to attach some kind of form of reputation system into the verification process. Even with that you will still have the "misunderstood genius" issue, or the "excellent reputation professor" that everyone trust without (enough) verification.

elcritch4y ago

But at least there’s be a system for other researchers to record “failed to replicate” that could give a channel to critique reputable professors that’s not controlled by the same professors (as they often can in journals).

wongarsu4y ago· 1 in thread

Scientific consensus is democratic in nature (even though votes are not distributed evenly). The ideal is that through reproducible experiments and application of the scientific method the scientific consensus moves to increasingly accurate models of reality over time. But obviously the speed at which that happens varies, and some right ideas took annoyingly long to get accepted into scientific consensus.

kloch4y ago

Sure the right answer will eventually prevail but the process is much worse than we like to admit. Many breakthrough advances were outright rejected by contemporary peers when first proposed.

"Fermi first submitted his "tentative" theory of beta decay to the prestigious science journal Nature, which rejected it "because it contained speculations too remote from reality to be of interest to the reader." Nature later admitted the rejection to be one of the great editorial blunders in its history. ... Fermi found the initial rejection of the paper so troubling that he decided to take some time off from theoretical physics, and do only experimental physics" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi%27s_interaction

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