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AVincentInSpace@pawb.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

If I had an unpublished workbook of Albert Einstein, would I say the work in it “isn’t science”?

I would say it isn’t science yet. I’d say once you published it and other people confirmed he was right, then it would be science. Until then it’s just research. Stating that it must be right just because Albert Einstein said it is disrespectful to the work of a lot of people, not least of whom is Albert Einstein

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testfactor@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Do you also assert that my other two examples aren’t science?

If so, why?

If not, then I feel like my point still stands and don’t feel strongly enough to argue semantics over this particular one.

Ultimately this is a fight over the definition of words, and I think 99.9% of people (and the dictionary) would define all my examples as science. If you want to split the hair of saying, “that wasn’t science, it was just scientific research,” have at it, but I’ll just call you a pedant, lol.

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- AVincentInSpace@pawb.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  If I publish a book outlining a hypothesis about the origins of the Big Bang, is it not science because it doesn’t have any reproducible experiments?
  
  Yes. It’s just a hypothesis. If you could reproduce conditions similar to the big bang and see the same thing happen, then it would be science. It would be a provable fact. If all it is is speculation, then what is there to base the science on?
  
  Is any research that deadends in a uninteresting way that isn’t worthy of publication not science?
  
  I disagree that there could be such research. An anticlimactic conclusion is an important conclusion nonetheless, and no less worthy of publication than an earthshaking one. If people who edit scientific journals disagree they can take it up with me.
  
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  - testfactor@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Fair enough. I’ll engage, lol.
    
    Would you say that Sir Isaac Newton was a scientist? His research was almost entirely solo and was of limited release until much later.
    
    Stephen Hawking has no published reproducible experiments as far as I’m aware. Is he not a scientist?
    
    Is someone conducting research into a scientific field a scientist, or are they required to publish something before they can claim that title?
    
    Honestly, I find arguments over how words are defined kind of exhausting, so maybe we should just cut to the heart of the matter. None of the definitions of science I can find in any dictionary include the word collaboration. Do you think that that’s a failure of the dictionary? And even if you do, do you think people who are operating under the belief that the dictionary definition is correct are wrong for doing so?
    
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    Honytawk@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You mean Sir Isaac Newton, who believed in Alchemy and wrote many things on the subject?
    
    He became only a scientist after his work was peer reviewed.
    
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    AVincentInSpace@pawb.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Semantic arguments (which, as you say, do not, ultimately, matter) aside, the point that the Twitter user in the post we’re commenting on was trying to make is that science is best when it’s shared, and that when the results of an experiment are not published, mankind is the lesser for not knowing them. The poster chose to do this in a somewhat drastic way by redefining “science” to exclude experiments whose results were not shared. As many commenters on this post (including yourself) pointed out, this new definition is unnecessarily strict, and that there were much better alternative ways of making this point.
    
    I do, however, agree with the point.
    
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