“Once-promising diabetes ‘breakthrough’ comes unglued with a major retraction”

Last updated on: January 2, 2017 at 1:32 pm by Dan Peterson

“Once-promising diabetes ‘breakthrough’ comes unglued with a major retraction” 2017-01-02T13:32:44-07:00 Dan Peterson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Science with a human face. (Wikimedia Commons image by Javad Alizadeh)

Once-promising diabetes ‘breakthrough’ comes unglued with a major retraction

Whether he says so or not, at least one of my readers will see my posting of this item as merely yet another instance of my religion-motivated fear and loathing of science. And he, or somebody like him, will immediately deploy the well-at-least-unlike-religion-science-recognizes-its-errors-and-is-self-correcting defensive device.

However, I’m actually posting this item for at least two reasons:

First, I find it interesting in and of itself. I like science. I actually began my undergraduate studies with the vague intention of being a scientist.

Second, it does, in fact, illustrate the human and fallible character of science as done by mortals. (I exempt those areas of science in which the work has been done by immortal superhuman.) Even in that most rigorously rational of disciplines, mathematical logic, human factors of culture and psychology and fashion and competition have had considerable historical effect (as William Barrett demonstrated at eye-opening length in his 1979 book The Illusion of Technique).

I’m not surprised by the fact that science tends to correct its own errors. That’s not necessarily because science is better than other fields of human endeavor, or because scientists are better people than non-scientists. Its because of the nature of what science does. It’s because of the character of what science studies.

Hammers are really good at driving nails. That’s because they were developed to drive nails. They’re less impressive at driving cars, or calculating interest rates, or applying bandages to cuts, or composing songs.

Science looks at things that can (at least in principle) be quantified, things that can be measured. Philosophy, piano performance, ethics, political theory, playwriting, jazz improvisation, human leadership, child-rearing, sculpting, psychological counseling, and many other fields of human effort (and of human excellence) cannot be so easily reduced to numbers or to replicable experiments. It might even be said that the nature of their objects is, from certain aspects, much more difficult than the nature of scientific objects. That’s why it’s pretty easy to recognize unmistakable progress in physics between Aristotle and Hawking, but not remotely as simple to see indisputable progress between, say, Praxiteles and Picasso, or between Virgil and J. K. Rowling. A modern astronomer need never actually have read Copernicus or Kepler or Newton, but a modern political theorist or a contemporary literary thinker absolutely must be familiar with Plato and Aristotle.

Science is cumulative. Modern scientists have incorporated (or, where appropriate, discarded) the insights and theories of Darwin, Kelvin, Wallace, Pasteur, Bacon, Cuvier, Maxwell, Curie, and Dalton. Unless they have particular historical interests, they needn’t go back to read the original works of those great pioneers. But modern composers would be vastly impoverished if they had never studied (let alone never heard) the works of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner.

In other words, the bottom line is this: The notion that science is better than religion because, unlike academic theology, it’s self-corrective and continually refining its understanding and always building international, cross-cultural consensus, is silly and shallow.

There’s no consensus among ethical theorists or between metaphysicians, no unified agreement on what’s good music and what’s bad music between Wagnerians and devotees of John Coltrane and people who favor steel guitar. You won’t find unanimous opinions in Bangkok, Sonora, Paris, Szechuan, Mumbai, Beirut, and Tehran about what makes for good cooking. Keynesians and monetarists in economics still disagree with one another, and with Marxists, and with the Vienna school. That’s not because those fields are without value, nor because they’re not talking about actual reality. The sciences are the outliers here — just as hammers are. Even so, there are disagreements, arguments, conflicting experimental results, and corrections in science.

Our predicament is called mortality. Not even scientists rise above it. Not in this life, anyway.

Posted from Carlsbad, California

Uncategorized

Previous Post

January 1, 2017

A member resigns from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir over the Trump inauguration

Next Post

January 3, 2017 Political Right, Political Left, Political Foolishness, and My Great Wisdom as a Young Man

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 March 2014 August 2013 February 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Jewish festival was occurring when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples in Acts 2?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Passover Pentecost Tabernacles Hanukkah