I’m clearly saying that is necessary, but not sufficient.
“More than” I said, in fact.

Flights of fancy is one pejorative way of characterizing the missing ingredient. It’s clearly something more than that – art, intuition, direct experience, you name it – something hard to pin down with logic and objectivity (obviously, by definition) but not to be ignored just because it doesn’t fit the objective mould.

Yes, they are crucial to disproving hypotheses empirically, but much progress in developing hypotheses involves thinking out of the box, outside the straight-jacket of received wisdom.”

This second bit is a bit like saying “the BEST piano players have always known that playing the piano involves MUCH more than being a technically skilled pianist” … and ignoring the fact that you have to be technically skilled pianist FIRST to play like Andras Schiff. So in science you must have the basic technical knowledge, background and grasp, and understanding of logic and evidence and data, before your flights of fancy are going to take you anywhere

One of the things working in science teaches you is that ideas are cheap. You can have loads of “Maybe..” “What if…” moments a day, but sitting around thinking grand thoughts doesn’t really get you very far (unless you are RP Feynman). After you have had your grand idea you have to ask “What is the evidence for it?” “What is the evidence against it?” “What would the critical experiment be?” and so on.

who did you have in mind?

It’s a pity so many scientists cannot see that there is more to scientific thinking and knowledge than objectivity and logic. Fortunately the best scientists always have.

Yes, they are crucial to disproving hypotheses empirically, but much progress in developing hypotheses involves thinking out of the box, outside the straight-jacket of received wisdom.

Ian

EBM may be the “lowest form of acceptable clinical practice” though in the taxonomy above it, evidence-sensitive medicine, evidence-aware medicine and patient-centred medicine may be worthy and achievable ? Each requires varying degrees of reflection, awareness, creativity and communication beyond the standard guideline, RCT or meta-analysis.

Popperian, hypothetico-deductive “science” clearly has its place, as does Kuhnian inference, and, Bohmian creativity. There are many other ways of “knowing” as many contributions have already suggested. EBM was a fashion, that was embraced by politicians, and has distorted the essence of clinical practice, and, the “art” of medicine – lets hope its days are numbered !

On the other hand, maybe you really think that there is one immutable way to be rational and critical, which is a little disturbing in the light of the evidence from human history. All science proceeds according to current power structures and people find it very hard to extract their thought processes from their social environments. I know psychiatry is an easy target but there are plenty more examples (e.g. the ones above).

Coracle – I did mean ‘apprehension’. Are you sure that scientists don’t ‘portray the world’ in different ways? Sure, its not ALL that scientists do but it is part of it, and part of being a scientist is getting your mind in to a state where you can apprehend things that are not intuitive or common sense and come to see things anew.

I am sure you wouldn’t say that scientists can say everything there is to say or apprehend all things. I guess I am saying that there is more to be said than science but that it is a vast error to think that this in some way means that science is of itself bad or to be bypassed.

And Dr. Aust – well, yes, in science the intention is to communicate so that others can replicate. But that isn’t (clearly) what the authors of the original article were trying to do. I think they were trying to create a mood (they even start by saying that using the term fascist will provoke a response). I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. What’s wrong with the article from my perspective is that it parades as novel and important a rather banal claim – that we wouldn’t want to focus on the ‘evidence-based’ to such an extent that we automatically reject in advance any claim made in within a different framework. Their worst offence is to assume that this would be news to scientists – the best of whom have always ‘thought outside the box’.

James

“Clarity is not the only possible virtue of writing.”

I agree for writing in the broad sense, but we are NOT talking here about poetry or literature, or in any way building an “atmosphere” through language. Quite the reverse: we are talking about writing in an arena where the goal is to communicate one’s thoughts, meaning and logic as cleary as possible. So in scientific writing, clarity as an aim far exceeds any other goal/virtue.

I often get accused of extreme literal-mindedness, but, on this occasion, I was using the word “incomprehensible” in its broader, less literal sense, as it is often used, and as I made clear by adding “make it even harder” — not impossible — “for their readers to understand them.”

> It took a great effort to work out what he had to say, and having done so, I judged that he could have expressed it more directly and accessibly, but chose not to. That’s why I think his style is *wilfully* obscure.

Yes, that’s what I said.

> you cannot judge at a glance that a writer has cranked up the jargon needlessly.

I didn’t. I took your word for it.

However, you can judge at a glance that a writer has not put sufficient effort into piercing through the jargon.

> The mere fact that you do not understand something does not show it to be unintelligible. Proof: try to read a text written in a language that you personally do not know.

Wow. That’s some serious condescension you’ve got there. Teach a lot of primary-school kids at Hertfordshire, do you?

If you were bothered to find out a little about postmodernism, you’d find that psychiatry was one of its main targets, precisely due to its reliance on supposed expertise that was actually the exercise of social power. Postmodernist thought and practice has transformed society, and particularly medical practice, and it is in no way incompatible with a rational, materialist worldview. The letter from Colin Holmes, the one that had everyone applauding, goes some way to revealing EBM as including that ‘critical thinking’ rather than in opposition to it.

That’s a lovely discourse on philosophical writing.

But in the context of Holmes’ article you are missing one crucial point: what they have written is simply untrue.

One can write with as flowery prose as one wishes if a)what you are saying is true or b)what you are saying is subjective.

Not that I claimed science is entirely free of subjectivity, simply that it places high value on minimising subjectivity, unlike the authors of microfascism.

Apprehension or appreciation? Paragraph 6 line 3

Different ways of portraying the world are fine for art, but not for scientific discourse where evidence and not subjectivity is critical.

An excellent thread I thought. I particularly appreciate the fact that there were several rants, of different perspectives, yet to your collective credit apologies flowed forth when offense was unintentionally given. So much more constructive than merely labelling those who don’t agree with you. Also enjoyed James’ and others’ efforts to educate us on Deleuze etc. Thank you for your patience.

Deleuze’s philosophy is very interesting indeed. He was an impressive thinker with a very wide reach and a singular vision of how the world might be experienced and lived in. His work is difficult but I think not deliberately obscure – though certainly esoteric.

Firstly, because like a lot of philosophical writing (though not all) it is very conscious of the way in which it is responding to other, prior, philosophers and the way they used concepts and terms. For that reason one needs to know a lot about the history of philosopy to read Deleuze (to know, for instance, that the sentence quoted by Ben is addressing a large ongoing dispute about the philosophical concept of structure – and I specify ‘philosophical concept’ because it isn’t concerned with the engineers’ concept of structure).

Secondly, because Deleuze like many, but not all, philosophers uses a style of writing intended to give readers a particular experience – this is true of Plato, or Spinoza, or Hegel and many othes. In Deleuze’s case he does indeed want to disorient readers somewhat. Not all people – perhaps Tessa is one – care for that experience. But it is not illegitimate. Asking why Deleuze writes in this difficult not – clear way is the same as asking why Joyce wrote Ulysses the way he did, or why Shakespeare sometimes has people speak in verse rather than in the way people ordinarily speak. Ask it in order to find out an answer rather than as a rhetorical objection to what someone has written.

Clarity is not the only possible virtue of writing. Shakespeare could have written ‘Juliet, you look really nice’ which would have been clearer than what he did write. And that takes us onto Tessa K.s and Dr. T’s mocking of the idea that there may be ‘other ways of knowing’. That was the most depressing part of these comments. I certainly think that I come to know something about the world from a Wordsworth poem just as I come to know something about it by studying botany. And just because I think some works of art help me understand something about some illness I have doesn’t mean that I am stupid and won’t go to a properly trained doctor. One apprehends the world at many levels.

What some ‘humanities-inclined’ people are guilty of is not appreciating the immense insight and even emotional as well as intellectual power of the scientists apprehension of the world – and what it can enable us to do in the world. They haven’t read enough Francis Bacon. But they won’t be brought to see that if the scientific community treats them with unscientific prejudical contempt.

I particularly object to the attacks on the word normative – attacks clearly made as showy polemic that, in the way they respond to Spinoza’s polite attempts to inform, indicate that those posting them are not actually interested in sharing and learning from each other at all.

Is it really hard to understand the difference between these two sentences –

Normally people are heterosexual.
Normal people are heterosexual –

and the implications behind each of them?

The specialisation of knowledge has become very intense. I expect that there are areas of scientific discovery that are somewhat opaque to some of the scientists who comment here. But if we respond to that specialisation by putting up walls, by treating others with contempt or by saying that nobody can possibly have anything to say about my subject unless they say it in exactly the way I specify – then we we all doomed.

Can’t the bad-science community do better?

James