Would you believe Republican Senator John Cornyn had the gall to mouth off about the scientific method? Of course you would, he’s an idiot.
After #COVIDー19 crisis passes, could we have a good faith discussion about the uses and abuses of "modeling" to predict the future? Everything from public health, to economic to climate predictions. It isn't the scientific method, folks. https://t.co/OYBm3CIUxX
— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) April 10, 2020
That’s just breathtakingly stupid. Does he have the slightest understanding of what a model is? It’s the core of the hypothetico-deductive process (which is not the whole of science, but it’s pretty essential). He’s been refuted in a couple of places by knowledgeable people already.
In a now-famous lecture, quantum physicist Richard Feynman similarly described to his students the process of discovering a new law of physics: “First, we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what… it would imply. And then we compare those computation results to nature… If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.”
Zach Weinersmith also has a 100+ panel comic describing epidemiology and models if Mr Cornyn needs pictures to go with the words.
If Cornyn actually wanted to have a “good faith discussion” about epidemiological modeling (I don’t believe he does), I have a couple of expectations: as someone who has no training in science at all — he’s a lawyer — he ought to be more humbly asking for information, rather than poisoning the well with nonsense, and he has to admit that the source he worships, Donald Trump, is a total incompetent at science and a worthless font of misinformation. Then we can begin.
Actually, I think I’d rather begin by seeing Cornyn evicted from his office.
I wonder how functional Mr. Cornyn would be, as a human, if he avoided models scrupulously in his day-to-day life ….
The problem is they’ve used “modelling” to demonise every scientific interpretation they don’t like for so long now that they can’t even think clearly about what the word means. How do they think NASA landed Apollo 11? How do they think artillery shells land on target?
@Aachen #1:
He could start by avoiding his inbuilt collision avoidance model and save the energy required for its iterative updates for the other brain functions he clearly so desperately needs.
@chrislawson #2:
Prayer.
But it is nice to see so many priests and pastors offing themselves to prove there are no gods to save them.
I get the honor of voting against him in November (assuming I live that long), but I can’t say I’m full of hope that we’ll evict him.
How do they think artillery shells land on target? — A magic sky faerie reaches down, pulls the shell from the barrel (the big BOOM! is the signal — starter’s gun — that it’s ready), carries it across the battlefield, and then gently puts it down on the ground, where it acts like a mine, waiting for someone to blunder into it…
Naval shells are similar (just add floats, without them, it’s a depth charge — provided the magic sky faerie is really really good at holding its/her/his/their breath).
Aeroplane bombs are much more complicated. So are anti-aircraft shells.
Cornyn’s concept of what science is is that whatever the president says must, by its very prestige and majesty, be the truth. Unless, of course, that president is from the other party and/or is black.
Zach Weinersmith also has a 100+ panel comic describing epidemiology and models
Oooh, that is a lot of crayons!
Wow, this place still exists…
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To slightly extent one variant of the mathematical principle of explosion – “any delusional parallel reality is completely parallel – each and every element of it, including basic concepts and meanings of words is radically different from ours.”
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So, he is basically telling us that his “reality”‘s “scientific” “method” doesn’t do hypotheses ( aka models )
I have a bad habit of listening to our local right wing radio, (just in brief doses though, despite an assumed life long immunity – the stuff has increased in toxicity of late + it’s truly disgusting, I’m washing my hands and ears).
Anyway I heard this same drivel used to demonize science. It’s extraordinary. Trump gives them some completely misguided notion and it becomes ok to shout lunacy in public. Unbelievable.
Their beloved oil and gas industry has relied on models to design secondary recovery shemes like waterfloods etc. as well as for production forecasting, for much longer than my now nearly moribund career in the industry.
I second Rich Woods recomendation @3.
A lawyer…hmmm. On the spectrum of professional disciplines and their relationship to physical/natural reality, the law is at the opposite extreme from science. Law is a purely artificial human construct with no connection to reality beyond what the law itself makes of it; and the legal profession is all about winning arguments by any means (debates), not necessarily about finding out the truth of a matter.
But look, folks! He cites Wikipedia! Surely that will impress everyone (who never took a freshman composition course)!
@13 ancient Sophists already walked that path to the bitter end – play every dirty trick you got and at the end play the nihilism card so that neither you nor your opponent can even make a case, never mind arguing it, rendering all debates a “draw” – which is basically a victory for the wrongdoer. Only to end up being disqualified, banned from any rational debate and becoming the definition of “foul play”.
He’s a Republican. They are physically incapable of doing anything in good faith.
Perhaps he thinks that science stopped around the time of Isaac Newton. Newton did not have access to computers; therefore, ipso facto, anyone who uses computers isn’t doing science.
Wikipedia didn’t exist when I took freshman comp.
I hope the Senator does’t wear a watch as they not completely accurate.
So by his logic they are of no use cos they are always ‘wrong’.
So rather than striving for a better time piece or find how accurate a time piece we really need for various scenarios we should abandon this whole idea of ‘telling the time’.
@17, Galileo Galilei was doing modelling of a sort with, e.g., his Salviati–Sagredo–Simplicio “dialogues” in Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems). And I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if, e.g., Archimedes, also engaged in what could be termed modelling.
I hope nobody tells this jackass how investment decisions are made.
@20 every hypothesis is a model by definition.
@22, Yes, a hypothesis is a model. But perhaps not modeling, not if one doesn’t seek to test or otherwise explore where it leads.
@23 Working out any prediction of a model is “modeling”. If one doesn’t do that, he is not doing science. And I am pretty sure Archimedes did.
Yep, he did. wikipedia :
He’s not trying to say things that are provably true. He’s trying to rile up the liberals. It’s good for his base.
Trying to educate him doesn’t help anything. That counts as being riled up.
Instead, try something like attacking him on his personal acceptance of bestiality even though it contradicts the law. There are some awfully skittish box turtles somewhere in Texas. Dress up in sexy turtle costumes and parade around him in an attempt to “out him” as a turtle diddler (or maybe he just likes to watch.) That would actually damage him.
The subtext here is the modelling done on covid-19 for the number of deaths wasn’t good because we are unlikely (not impossible) to get to 100,000 dead in the first wave. Our deaths are lower than projected because:
1) our behavior has changed via social distancing
and
2) social distancing was more effective than it was first thought.
I am a complete layman in this area but I have followed the models closely and the actual numbers. They have generally been right inline with each other day to day.
And your horrible president is now blaming the World Health Organisation for all the fuckupd.
So lets see
– federal government being dismantled
– loss of faith in democracy
– states becoming disunited
– science treated as just opinion like religion
– legal system commanded by corrupt law lords
Kotch brothers must be very happy.
28 Trump will do everything except take responsibility for his fuck up . It it means murdering millions of people he doesn’t care . Those 60,000 psychiatrists and psychologists who called him a sadist malignant narcissist called it correctly . This is typical narcissistic behavior which is why they called for his removal from office
Is a prism not a calculator? Wait.
No, no, no!
He’s absolutely right! Modeling is evil, wrong and worthless, as is anything and everything created with, especially, a computer model.
Therefor, we need to be rid of every aircraft designed after the F-15, as those were all modeled on a computer and many use computer modeling to fly. We also need to get rid of any weapon system made since 1980, as those are computer modeled as well and obviously worthless and unreliable.
We also need to get rid of all current nuclear and thermonuclear warheads, as every single one of those were designed and built using computer modeling.
When confronting an asswipe, use the asswipe’s own concepts and words against him or her, they’ll happily help digging themselves in deeper.
This comes under the same heading as “It’s only a theory”. Perhaps schools should teach not simply the results of scientific work, but put more emphasis on the scientific method. Still, there are a large number of parents, and conservative politicians and religious leaders, who emphatically do NOT want their children taught how to think.
First they came for the computer models, but I said nothing because I wasn’t a computer scientist. Then they came for the differential equations, but I said nothing because I wasn’t a mathematician. Then they came for me. If there was only a way to predict that.
Rich Woods
” ‘How do they think artillery shells land on target?’
Prayer.”
Prayer has more to do with the persons at the other end of the process—Don’thitmeDon’thitmeDon’thitme…
@nomdeplume, # 32: We should change that from “It’s only a theory” to “It’s only a hypothesis.”
@32 Not sufficient – what needs to be done is to drill “motivated reasoning is wrong*” into the children starting from the kindergarden. Otherwise “persons” like the one the article is about will just switch to a different set of sophisms.
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* not just meaning “incorrect”, but also morally wrong.
Pig-ignorant and cocksure. The perfect combination.