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Re: [Phys-l] Scientists speaking outside their fields. Was... The Cause of Global Warming...

Jack,

I followed and agreed with most of your recent post, but you lost me when you got to your example.

Now I have no expertise whatsoever in her field. But
when she states:
A woman uses about 20,000 words per day while a man uses about 7,000.

Thoughts about sex enter a woman's brain once every couple of days but
enter a man's brain about once every minute>

I can certainly fall back on my knowledge of experimental technique and
statistics to convince myself that there is no possible way to falsify
such assertions, and they therefore lie outside of the domain of science.

Let's see. We could follow a sample of people around (or tape record them) for 24 hr and count the words they used. You could factor in other factors, like job, age, education if you wanted to get fancy. Compare the results to the hypothesis.

Sounds easily falsifiable to me.


The second statement sounds like hyperbole to me, but again it is at least partly testable. You could survey random people and ask "in the last hour (or day or minute), how often did you think about eating; work; sex; ...". Tabulate and analyze the results. I'm guessing there would be a significant difference, but not quite at the level suggested above.

Of course, how people answer and how they actually behave are two slightly different things, but SOME information about the topic is certainly accessible.


That brings up an interesting follow-up question. Does a hypothesis have to be falsifiable in PRACTICE or in THEORY to be considered scientific. For example, a larger particle accelerator would presumably be able to test hypotheses about particle physics that cannot be tested at teh moment. Does that mean that any such theories are not yet scientific?

Perhaps I could invent a machine that could tell what people were thinking and then test the second statement that Jack quoted.


Tim F