"Scientists claims about the natural world have been right about 17% of the time."?

2014-01-27 6:35 pm
How would you even start to justify a claim like this?



The statement was posted as part of an answer to this question:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20140126104824AAxt9Hh

The answer given (in full) was:
"For those who keep score - in it's entire history (1500 to the present) so far as we know today - Scientists claims about the natural world have been right about 17% of the time."
更新1:

@'NDMA": I'm glad you've tried to defend your claim. I'll try and point out some of the errors you have made... Lamarck's ideas are STILL largely considered correct (things that aren't used are lost, things that are used get passed on, and traits are inherited from ancestors), but was wrong about some of his suggestions regarding change (there is no evidence at all that the kinds of changes during a creatures lifetime that he suggested are inherited, and good evidence that they are not). He way only wrong about the details leading to inheritance. There is very little that Darwin put forward that is science now considers to be incorrect, in fact, when you discount some of the ideas he suggested as purely hypothetical guesses, there is virtually nothing that he is considered to have been wrong about - and then it is only minor details. Presumably you mean the law of segregation when you refer to "Mendel's Law"? Regardless, nothing Mendel disc

更新2:

...discovered had a real effect on the understanding of evolution, it just increased understanding of which inherited features appear in later generations. Inheritance of acquired characteristics was only ever dropped from evolution because of a lack of evidence that it did occur (but note that scientists never stopped testing the idea). Mendelian inheritance was included because of the evidence that it happens. "Unlimited" variation has always been dependant on existing characters, and is only unlimited when given a considerable amount of time. Still nothing much overturned as being "incorrect". The discovery of DNA did is not even slightly problematic to the idea of unlimited variation (again within reason). Studies of DNA have demonstrated that various types of mutations occur, some beneficial. Again, nothing rejected. I have no idea why you consider "The Selfish Gene" to be science, it is a book ABOUT science published for the general public, giving

更新3:

...OPINIONS of the author. If anything it contained was intended to be anything more then the details would have been published in peer reviewed literature. Regardless, none of the three "base claims" you list have been disproven (2 and 4 are basically the same thing). 1). There is no evidence that most mutations are NOT random. Some may not be, but no one has claimed that they always have to be random. 2). 4). Many acquired traits are known to NOT be inherited. There is some evidence that CERTAIN traits can be, but the details are still largely untested. Does "The Selfish Gene" argue that there is no possibility whatsoever of ANY acquired traits being inherited? 3). This has never been a mainstream scientific view, but it has also NOT been disproven. The hypothetical mechanism for evolution remains what it has always been: Organisms change over time because they inherit characteristics from their ancestors that are beneficial to survival in their environment. The

更新4:

...only changes over time have been to refine the details. We now know that the main 'units' that allow features to be passed on are contained in genes in DNA - but that there may be more to it than that. Mutations can cause random changes (which the environment may select for or against), with the possibility of other, perhaps not random, changes being introduced by things like viruses. In your example I would suggest that less than 17% of the scientific "claims" made were "wrong".

回答 (20)

2014-01-27 6:43 pm
✔ 最佳答案
By not understanding science. Science is usually right given the evidence available at the time. Newton was right about gravity as far as he went. Einstein peeled away another layer of our understanding of gravity. He did not prove Newton wrong, merely that Newton did not reveal the whole story. Now we know there is another layer beneath Einstein's understanding which we have yet to fully reveal.
This is a typical progression in science - our understanding deepens with increased knowledge but it is built on the foundations laid by our predecessors.
2014-01-27 6:37 pm
Well, you'd have to first define what constitutes a claim.

This person is probably saying that every scientific hypothesis that fails once it is tested constitutes a "claim made by scientists." I wouldn't agree with that.

Suppose you told me: "Your sweater is in either the washer or the dryer."

And, then it turns out that it was in the washer....it wouldn't be fair to say you were wrong 50% of the time. You just made two hypothesis based on the data you had....they had to be tested before you could determine which was correct.
2014-01-27 6:37 pm
Well, for starters, it's more than 16% better than religionists.
參考: .
2014-01-27 6:38 pm
Pathetic ignorance --- no doubt from a YEC or other "creationist"/biblical literalist/fundaMENTAList.

They are taught such lies, about science AND about scripture.

I'd like to see them submit their flawed theology to the "peer review" of mainstream Christian Biblical scholars.

EDIT: oh, THAT fellow ..... lol

Mark Twain: There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
參考: Educated Christian
2014-01-27 6:45 pm
Oh, good -- then we're 17% ahead of religions :)

Clearly, though, that person doesn't understand the scientific method -- and how it relies on modifying views based on new evidence *constantly.* Science doesn't seek to be "absolutely right" -- it seeks as much factual evidence as possible so we can *always* be as right as we possibly can, given what we know. Put in that context, science is "right" about 99% of the time. :)
2014-01-27 8:25 pm
I saw that when it was first posted. There's a few things behind that. Firstly, it's an exaggeration.

Then there is the eternal fundamentalist whine that science always changes and the Bible never does. I might point out that Confucius is older than much of the Bible and his words never change either. What he got right is still right, what he got wrong is still wrong. If the Bible were as clear and unambiguous as scientific results there would not be a dozen main sects of Christianity and hundreds of sub-sects. The melting point of aluminium metal is 660.32 centigrade plus or minus some small error and that's it. No amount of mental gymnastics is going to change that

All scientific results are limited by the technology available at the time they are found. It is not "true" that the volumes, temperatures and pressures of gases are strictly proportional, but at the time this "law" was formulated the technologies to produce very low temperatures and very high pressures did not exist. However the "law" is still true for most practical purposes.

Moving into biology, Darwin could not have known about genes in the detail we do because the chemistry needed to investigate them did not exist until almost a century after his death. He concluded that units of inheritance existed. He was correct.

Original poster claims that mutations are not random. I'd like to see a citation for that, not from apologetic material either. However the technology to determine exactly where mutations occur did not exist until 1977 - 78. But beforehand, it was clear that there were a vast number of mutations and vast number of possible mutations, so anyone might be forgiven if they saw mutations as essentially random on the evidence that they had.

Original poster is complaining because Galileo did not discover all the satellites of Jupiter and only saw four with his primitive, home made telescope. Therefore, Galileo was "wrong" about the satellites of Jupiter and so he cannot be trusted. That's his argument.
2014-01-27 6:45 pm
When you pull statistics out of your butt you can say anything you want.

Those liars even claim that "scientists said the world was flat" when it was the common people who believed that, and "scientists said the earth was the center of the solar system" when it was the religious who said that. Creationism is one blatant lie after another.
2014-01-27 6:42 pm
The Poster who answered that question provided no validating evidence or Link,,so we can easily see that he was Lying!
2014-01-27 6:41 pm
You can't. It is just something that they pulled out of their nether regions and hoped no one would notice.
2014-01-27 6:38 pm
I guess that the only way to justify that claim would be to list the instances and to define science in a way that it didn't start until the 16th century.
2014-01-27 8:47 pm
wow...that is literally one of the dumbest answers I have ever read...'

And I once had an answer from a creationist who tried to claim that unicorns did not get on Noah's ark, and became narwhals...

But THAT just took the #1 spot...
參考: Atheist
2014-01-27 8:34 pm
Yeah, I would need to see their methodology on coming up with that figure and see the data they based it off of.
2014-01-27 7:54 pm
It wasn't the Pope who flew to the moon, it was scientists. It wasn't the Dalai Lama who developed a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer. It was scientists. Jesus didn't build the Hoover Dam. Mohammed never knew why the sky was blue. Use your noggin for crying out loud.
2014-01-27 6:47 pm
Without addressing the veracity of the actual claim, it would be very easy to explain without suggesting that science is bad. Simply put, science is a process. Scientific conclusions are based on available evidence and experiments. As scientists have developed better tools and spent more time investigating the natural world, it's very rational to assume that ideas once considered correct, would become obsolete and be replaced with more refined conclusions.
2014-01-27 6:39 pm
It was spoken by someone who believes fictional characters are real. Those types of people shun justification.
2014-01-27 6:45 pm
It is almost impossible to quantify, but before they become theories they have to be guesses, and guesses are more often wrong than they are right.

I don't suppose that is what the poster meant though.
2014-01-27 6:40 pm
By scientist claims you mean the claims of theories? They aren't purported to be accurate so that figure wouldn't be out of line.
2014-01-27 6:39 pm
Ummm, because as our knowledge increases, we learn that past ideas were incorrect. *Learn* being the key word there. Past religions have been replaced and are now called "mythology." What's your point?

I think we can see science has some validity if you compare how we live now to how we lived thousands of years ago. We're doing something right.
2014-01-27 6:40 pm
Cite on 17%... or did you just invent it?
2014-01-27 7:07 pm
Lets look at just one theory..

Evolution..

1809 - Lamarck - Inheritance of acquired traits

Published by Darwin in November 1859..
Inheritance of traits
Added Natural selection
score 50% right

Mendel's Law accepted by scientific community in 1890;'

Darwin Reformulated:
Drop inheritance of acquired traits
Add - individual traits limited to patter of selection - new traits have unlimited possibilities to be added as old traits selected out of population (basically sleight of hand to get around Mendel's Law.
Vicemen Barrier.

Published 1901 - Status Right 33% of the time

1953 Watson & Crick discover DNA..

Unlimited possibility assertion crashed and burned. Reformulation 2.
Drop Unlimited possibilities
Add Helpful Mutations


Reformulation synthesized - The Selfish Gene - 1978 (Not very good seller, Second Edition 1989 sold better on heels of Hawkins A Brief History of Time. Score Correct 25% of the time..


2012.. All four base claims of Selfish Gene disproved
1. Mutations are not really random
2. Acquired traits can be inherited
3. Gene Centered View
4. Impossibility of inheritance of acquired characteristics

No current hypothetical mechanism for the process... Assuming a new formulation Evolutionary theory would have been right only 20% of the time. That means from 1859 to 2012 the theory was wrong!


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