
Scientific Models Too Often Prove Whatever the Grant Provider Wants Proven - SQL2219
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2019/12/17/scientific-models-and-myths-what-is-the-difference/
======
age_bronze
The most frequent misunderstanding of science, (and it applies to many other
fields such as cyber security security, politics, etc.) is that an imperfect
solution is worthless, that if a model is incomplete it's as good as no model,
etc.

Perfect is the enemy of good. At the core of science is settling for the least
errors model. You suggest solutions because doing them is better than doing
nothing at all. Of course they will be partial if the problem is of such a
large scale as climate change. That's not a reason not to do them.

So what if all the politicians are dirty scumbags? Voting for none is still
worse than voting for the least shitty politician.

You need to accept you can't have a perfect solution. I find a perfectionist
attitude to problems more common with religious people. Because once you
already have one single generalizing solution to so many questions (god /
religion), it is just so tempting to believe the same applies to other
problems.

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JorgeGT
Note that there is absolutely no evidence in the article for the HN title. The
only link in that section is to the Bible.

~~~
solveit
The title also fails to even type-check. Models don't prove things, scientists
using models do. While this may sound pedantic, it's not. A good part of the
title's shock value disappears if you replace it with "Scientists too often
prove...".

------
dane-pgp
The article says:

'Australia’s attempt to put renewable electricity on the grid has sent
electricity prices skyrocketing and resulted in increased blackouts. It has
been said that intermittent electricity has “wrecked the grid” in Australia.'

whereas reality is somewhat more nuanced:

[https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2019/dec/24/south...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2019/dec/24/south-australias-clean-energy-shift-brings-lowest-power-
prices-on-national-grid-audit-finds)

'Hugh Saddler, the author of the monthly audit and an associate professor at
the Australian National University, said wind and solar power supplied more
than 50% of the electricity generated in South Australia for most months over
the past two years. “That’s made electricity in SA the cheapest in the
national electricity market and dramatically increased reliability.”'

To give an idea of the quality of the analysis from "Our Finite World",
consider this post from 2017:

[https://ourfiniteworld.com/2017/01/10/2017-the-year-when-
the...](https://ourfiniteworld.com/2017/01/10/2017-the-year-when-the-world-
economy-starts-coming-apart/)

"Things could start falling apart badly in 2017, or alternatively, major
problems may be delayed until 2018 or 2019."

or this post from 2015:

[https://ourfiniteworld.com/2015/08/26/deflationary-
collapse-...](https://ourfiniteworld.com/2015/08/26/deflationary-collapse-
ahead/)

"The big thing that is happening is that the world financial system is likely
to collapse."

~~~
buzzkillington
>'Hugh Saddler, the author of the monthly audit and an associate professor at
the Australian National University, said wind and solar power supplied more
than 50% of the electricity generated in South Australia for most months over
the past two years. “That’s made electricity in SA the cheapest in the
national electricity market and dramatically increased reliability.”'

[...] the combination of significant network investment over the past decade,
recent increases to gas prices, more concentrated wholesale markets, __and the
transition from large scale synchronous generation to variable and
intermittent renewable energy resources __has had a more pronounced effect on
retail prices and number of offers in South Australia than any other state in
the National Electricity Market.

[http://theconversation.com/factcheck-qanda-are-south-
austral...](http://theconversation.com/factcheck-qanda-are-south-australias-
high-electricity-prices-the-consequence-of-renewable-energy-policy-93594)

------
caterama
Prompting purely from the HN headline "Scientific Models Too Often Prove
Whatever the Grant Provider Wants Proven" (to quote in case it changes), I
wanted to provide two small anecdotes. Preface: science rarely claim to prove
anything.

1) It is often the case that researchers "suspect" the result before they have
formally been given a grant to investigate. This ranges from forming a
hypothesis based on other experience to having stumbled upon something
interesting, and then afterward making a proposal for funding to thoroughly
investigate. Both of these cases might look like the scientist is proving what
the grant provider wants.

2) As @age_bronze hints at, models are often built to explain or reproduce
observations. Think: "all models are wrong, some models are useful". Modern
science tends towards "X is understood if X can be explained". Having a model
that reproduces X is the correct direction to understand X, so the observation
that "Scientists tasked with understanding X tend to produce models
demonstrating X" is... _shocking_?

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Tycho
I just assume most scientific research is worthless these days.

~~~
everdev
Fake news is working. If you saturate the information channels with enough
misinformation it overwhelms people and they give up.

One great thing about science is that it encourages reproducing results. Many
clickbait articles review un-reproduced or preliminary results. Those feel
free to disregard.

Science isn't perfect but peer-reviewed, reproducible experiments are still
the best data source we have.

~~~
buzzkillington
>One great thing about science is that it encourages reproducing results.

The replication crisis (or replicability crisis or reproducibility crisis) is,
as of 2020, an ongoing methodological crisis in which it has been found that
many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to replicate or reproduce.
The replication crisis affects the social sciences and medicine most
severely.[1][2] The crisis has long-standing roots; the phrase was coined in
the early 2010s[3] as part of a growing awareness of the problem. The
replication crisis represents an important body of research in the field of
metascience.[4]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis)

------
m3kw9
Probably in the contract it will say if you can prove it, it triggers another
$

------
everdev
TLDR; Religious person thinks religion is helpful and renewable energy isn't:
[https://ourfiniteworld.com/author/gailtheactuary/](https://ourfiniteworld.com/author/gailtheactuary/)

