Tuesday, June 23, 2009

They call this science?

... Party Animals: Early Human Culture Thrived in Crowds.

Note that nothing here can be based on direct observation. The study, such as it is, is a large conditional proposition: If this, then that. The data, so called, on which the conditional premise is based, is speculative and hypothetical. That is no way to get to know anything.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:06 PM

    Without wishing to comment on this particular study, computer (or any kind of) modelling is a valid branch of science, extremely common in many types of scientific endeavour. Like any scientific discipline or subdiscipline, it has rules determined by physical laws and constraints. It is true that many people (some scientists included!) don't understand and/or misuse modelling - which is essentially statistics by another name.

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  2. Thanks, Maxine, for explaining that for someone whose scientific expertise is, to put it mildly, limited. Presumably, most computer modeling makes use of field data, or something similarly sound.

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