SCIENCE: -- "observational science" vs "historical science" vs ... science.

It's the same when she is discussing the Bible; she gets upset when you point out that what the Bible actually says refutes what she misrepresents it as saying.

I hate to see her slip back into those foot-stompin' ALL CAPS.

I don't think ranking those three is all that challenging. I'd put the order (most confident to least) as proton charge, earth age, and universe age. It would not be that great a challenge to our understanding of the universe if its estimated age were say only 13.7 or 13.5 billion years rather than 13.8.I doubt that our estimate for the age of the earth is off by 100 million years, but would that be an earth shattering revolution?As far as their effect on science is concerned, if the charge on a proton was different in any significant way from the 1e, the effect on physics and chemistry would be substantial. On the other hand, some minor tweaks to theory might make the universe between 12-15 billion years old. I still don't know what "statistical assessments" is supposed to mean. But statistics is a tool used in verifying hypotheses. Scientists don't reach conclusions regarding the preponderance of the evidence without using statistics. Edited by NoNukes, : Change 1 to 1eEdited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I agree with your qualitative ranking, but I was more trying to make the point that we didn't accept these ideas because we had a statistical measure of our confidence, say, that we're 99.9999% sure the charge of the proton is +1, 98.72% sure the Earth is 4.56 billion years old, and 97.36% sure the universe is 13.8 billion years old. Statistics were not a factor in the acceptance of these ideas. They only became accepted after consensuses formed in the relevant scientific communities. I don't think I can share this view. For me statistics is only a tool of science. Sometimes it's employed, sometimes not. I did provide the example of the Higgs Boson, where statistics was applied as a primary tool in identifying certain particle events as indicating its existence, but when Wegener noted the congruence of continental boundaries and the similarity of flora, fauna and geological formations on opposite sides of a broad ocean he wasn't using statistics. He didn't calculate the odds of land bridges versus his own ideas - no such statistical assessments were ever made.Or take the example of Watson and Crick's paper on the structure of DNA (A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acids), which also uses no statistics.I guess my main purpose was to quell the impression that scientific fields decide which theories or ideas to accept based upon statistical assessments of their accuracy. There's never any meeting where someone opens an envelope and announces, "Theory A has a 96.3% probability of being correct, Theory B has only a 92.8% probability of being correct, therefore our field officially accepts Theory A." There's not even a point in time that can be identified as when a consensus forms. Usually it just sort of happens and is only recognized as having happened gradually and over time. Rare are the times (such as when the universe's expansion was recognized as accelerating) that a consensus forms almost overnight.--Percy

Faith has replies to my point that she was lying. Apparently her excuse is that she can't remember the positions taken by her opponents so she's entitled to misrepresent them.The most laughable part is the end where she says: No Faith. There were NO endless arguments on that. Not at all.It seems also that the real reason that she can't remember is that she likes to forget her defeats. She wants to pretend that she has a good argument so she can't admit - even to herself - that she had no good answer to the rebuttals.But the details are really off-topic here, so I'll go no further. If Faith wants to come back and finally give some decent arguments then maybe there will be something worth discussion but by her post she still has nothing that has not been adequately answered.

Percy I think that you will find that any quantitative result - and that includes age estimates - will involve statistics. The presentation to the public may often omit them but they will be there in the scientific papers.

Surely you understand that those ages have error bars that you are not bothering to report? Where do you think those error bars come from?

As do many qualitative results. Is drug A a safe and efficacious treatment for disease B? Does this DNA test result rule out convict B as the perpetrator? Is this drainage system sufficient for this municipality?

No, it isn't the distinction a science minded person might use. But I am still surprised that the creationists posting here who want to distinguish between the sciences don't pick on it more as it seems to allow better separation over what they are willing to accept and what they must reject. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Hi PaulK,Both you and NoNukes have replied as if you thought my focus was the use of statistics in science. It wasn't. I tried to make clear that that wasn't what I was doing, for example, noting that statistics is a tool of science, and that it's appropriate for some things in science (for instance, the Higgs Boson) and not others (for instance, Wegener's ideas and Crick and Watson's paper on the structure of DNA).I was trying to distinguish this use of statistics from what I thought HBD was saying. My reply was intended to be interpreted in the context of HBD's question about whether I agreed that some fields of science lend themselves to statistical confidence factors, that scientific fields can be divided into those that that do and those that don't. Naturally I don't agree, but obviously my use of the age of the Earth and universe confused the issue, so let me say a little more.I wasn't saying that statistics aren't involved in the determinations of age. I was saying that age determinations, even when expressed as something like 13.798 0.037 billion years (Wikipedia article on the Universe) aren't accompanied by any confidence factor that the figure is right. And the confidence factor that does sometimes accompany these figures (for instance the age figure might have been specified as 13.798 0.037 billion years at 95% confidence) is not our confidence that the figure is correct, but our confidence that the incomplete data set that was studied (invariably we have to operate with incomplete data, the induction part of science) accurately reflects the full data set. It isn't the confidence factor that the figure is right. Plus underlying assumptions (inflation, gas absorption, etc.) and fundamental measures (the cosmic distance ladder) may change. For instance, one of the references for the Wikipedia article (Planck Reveals an Almost Perfect Universe) describes a revision to the Hubble Constant, and this is unlikely to be the last revision.The concept I'm talking about, and that I thought HBD was talking about, was a confidence factor for the 13.798 0.037 billion year figure, and my position is that no such confidence factor exists. In fact, if there's anything we can be confident in it is that the figure *will* be revised as research continues.But even beyond that, we cannot say something like we are 99.99% confident that the universe is older than 13 billion years, and that we're 99.9999% confident that it is older than 10 billion years, and 99.9999999999% confident that it is older than 6300 years, because there is no way to assign such numbers. We know we're very confident the universe is very ancient, but there are no statistical measures of that confidence.--Percy

By my understanding error bars imply a confidence limit (and are only meaningful if the confidence limit is stated).

Clearly we're talking about confidence in different things. You have to ask, "Confidence in what?" It could be confidence that the figure accurately reflects a full data set. Or it could reflect the accuracy of the measurement device or method. Even when you have a figure for something like the size of the proton of .84-.87 fm, the error range is a function of the method. Any confidence factor you might derive from this range does not reflect the possibility that other methods might give other values, which is precisely what has happened with the size of the proton (see Proton size puzzle reinforced!).What error bars and confidence factors do not reflect is our confidence the figure is right. To know that we'd have to know how and why the figure will change in the future, and we can't know that a priori.Confidence in the theories and basic ideas of a field derive from a consensus that does not derive from or lend itself to measurable confidence factors. We'll never be able to say anything like, "The confidence factor for a 4.56 billion year old Earth is 99.999% while that for a 6300 year old Earth is 0.0001%, therefore we can conclude the correct value is 4.56 billion years old." It just doesn't work that way.--Percy

I think that you are confusing the issue here.Let's keep with the simple point I made earlier. Statistics are used in almost all quantitative results. And if they give error bars statistics have been used to calculate those error bars, and there is a confidence figure associated with them. Any suggestion otherwise is simply wrong.

In the case of the estimate of the age of the universe, the error is based on the precision to which we can measure the parameters required to extrapolate to a universe of zero size using General Relativity.If we look at a scientific paper on the issue, we will see that not only are the error bars included, but also included is a label telling us what model the age corresponds to.Now you are correct that there is no percentage attached to tell us whether the particular model is correct, but the error bars are a confidence interval for our determination of the age of the particular model. Of course the lay press gets a hold of the number and reports it as the age of the universe. The confidence interval expresses the idea that we feel it unlikely that refinement of the input parameters will result in a change larger than the confidence interval for the particular model. But we know exactly what GR predicts given the inputs and the assumed beginning of the universe. Not of the general idea that the universe is old, no.I still have no idea what HBD meant. I hope he'll explain. But it is a bit risky to assign an interpretation that makes him clearly wrong without some clarification. In particular, the idea that we can assign probabilities to whether a particular model is correct is wrong. That concept would not even apply to the idea that the standard model is correct.As for the DNA determination not involving statistics, that seems a bit strange to me given the use of x-ray diffraction, but I simply don't know enough to comment more fully.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Me too. It's a holiday weekend, we'll probably hear from him within another day or two. What I actually said in reply to HBD was, "I don't really find much to agree with in the distinctions people have tried to draw between various fields of science." I didn't tell him he was "clearly wrong," especially since like you I'm unsure what he's saying. But you and PaulK replied and forced me to provide more details about my opinions on what I thought he might be saying before he had a chance to confirm.AbE: I included a link to the paper, here it is again: A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acids. The lack of statistics apparently was not a concern of the Noble committee.High confidence factors and tiny error bars or ranges give us confidence in the research and analysis. They do not translate into confidence factors that the research is correct.--PercyEdited by Percy, : AbE.