Why are the results of genetic paternity tests not inferences? The people in the courtroom (the judge and jury) tasked with reaching a conclusion certainly didn't observe the procreation event. The scientists who carried out the test and submitted their findings to the court certain didn't observe it either.
As long as you now understand that an event does not have to be repeated or directly observed in order for us to utilize the scientific method to draw conclusions about it.
If the predictions, hypothesis, inferences are not accessible by observation or experience, the hypothesis is not yet testable or experimental and so will remain to that extent unscientific in a strict sense.
One does not need to infer(best logical assumption or best logical guess) that one is the biological parent to a child. One can accurately state that they know someone is the biological parent of a child.
Why are the results of genetic paternity tests not inferences? The people in the courtroom (the judge and jury) tasked with reaching a conclusion certainly didn't observe the procreation event. The scientists who carried out the test and submitted their findings to the court certain didn't observe it either.
What you choose to believe or not is entirely upto you. Just pointing out evolution is as conventional a science as particle physics or inorganic chemistry in how it uses the scientific method, including inference to the best explanation. That's all. Accepting some science domains and rejecting others when they all deploy the same methods of knowing about reality creates consistency problems in my opinion.
The same methods of knowing about reality aren’t used. There is no set in stone scientific method. Some domains are much more difficult to come by, the quality of evidence isn’t as great, an inability to test and experiment an abundance such as in astronomy and evolution. Many predictive models have to be used, in which the bias function and all models are wrong come into play. A lot eventually comes down to probability and statistics, would you agree?
The same methods of knowing about reality aren’t used. There is no set in stone scientific method. Some domains are much more difficult to come by, the quality of evidence isn’t as great, an inability to test and experiment an abundance such as in astronomy and evolution. Many predictive models have to be used, in which the bias function and all models are wrong come into play. A lot eventually comes down to probability and statistics, would you agree?
No. I won't agree. The same methods are used with no diminishment in quality at all. The amount of testing and experimental opportunities available to ground inference to theory are also the same. The level of deployment of evolutionary science in technological applications are also the same as in physics and chemistry (biotechnology, genetic engineering, genetic algorithms, CRISPR etc.). The role of evolutionary principles in bio-engineering is like the role of thermodynamics in mechanical engineering, absolutely central.
By the way, you do know that both thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, chemical reaction science and things in computer science like search algorithms are entirely about the Mathematics of statistical probabilities? Folks in science education are telling schools to remove calculus and introduce linear algebra and statistics in the advanced levels as they are far more central to all hard sciences.
Science is simply different in its character from what is taught in schools, unfortunately. And this creates mistaken notions among people who don't go on to do science or advanced engineering in college. I have come to realize the enormity of this gap only recently as frankly, I wasn't listening to what was taught as science in school.
I am very interested in improving science education, as I think it's made unnecessarily confusing and hard. Hence the rant.
Science requires that its hypotheses be falsifiable and that observations used to derive its conclusions be reproducible. It doesn't need to call such results truth, a word that for many implies a complete, accurate, and immutable idea. The ideas from science are always considered tentative and amenable to change should new evidence suggest modifying the conclusions.
The standard for belief in science is based on an idea's utility in predicting and where possible, controlling outcomes. The word truth doesn't need to come up.
In no ways have I denied or not accepted the possibilities of certain concepts of evolution theory presented. I just am not swift to conform and commit based upon best guesses or assumptions.
That's fine. Others are more confident in their ability to come to sound conclusions. There are places where nonconformity is helpful, and others where it is a liability.
You seem to be unaware of how much we all make most of our decisions on a daily basis based on best guesses and assumptions. When you turn the key to start your car, which has started the last 200 times you tested it, You are assuming that it will start again, but your best guess is that although it is likely to start, it just might not. You have also correctly inferred that fact from previous experience (evidence).
Then you get into your car, and hopefully, conform with the traffic laws.
Sure it is, although apparently not for you. The theory of evolution could be adequately supported with just the genetic evidence. But you have to look at it, know what you're looking at, and understand the implications of what has been observed.
With all due respect, hopefully you agree that the conclusions reached or not reached by somebody with little or no understanding of the subject matter being discussed is not an opinion of much value to others, especially to those who have learned the relevant science. You really don't have to go very far into genetics to see smoking gun evidence for human from nonhuman evolution. You don't even have to get down to the level of the genetic code or the structure of the double helix. Chromosome morphology and banding techniques tell the story. They have been selling points for those who have learned about them and are willing to consider them dispassionately and open-mindedly, by which I mean with the ability and willingness to go wherever reason properly applied to the relevant evidence takes us.
If you haven't done that, what value should be placed in your comment that genetics hasn't sold you on evolution?
You are operating under a very fundamental misconception of how the scientific method works.
An event does not have to be directly observed or repeated in order for us to utilize the scientific method to reach conclusions about it. If that were so, we would never be able to say that the earth orbits the sun, or that the Valles Caldera is the result of an ancient volcano, or that the Missoula floods happened.
By your standards, any large-scale or pre-historic event could never be investigated via the scientific method.
It's perhaps one of the commonest mistakes we see from people unsophisticated in the sciences who choose to comment on it anyway. They don't know what observable and reproducible mean in science. Observable, as you know, refers to what has been observed before and can be observed again. Reproducible refers to what has been done before (and the results observed) and can be done again.
They want scientists to observe events in the past, which is no part of science. Scientists are perforce always and only observing the present.
I like your examples. One I like to use involves the orbiting of Pluto. Pluto was discovered in 1930, and has been tracked for a little over a third of an orbit since then. For the benefit of Set Free, it is possible to make inferences from the existing data to say that it completes an orbit about every 238 earth years, and to verify those inferences, as when sending a space probe, New Horizons, to where Pluto is expected to be at the time the prob arrives there, too.
Yet Pluto has never been observed to finish even one orbit.
This illustration is useful when discussing the alleged barriers between what the creationists call micro- and macroevolution. If there were biblical scrippture that forbid the possibility of Pluto completing an orbit, we would be hearing how micro-orbiting has been observed, but that nobody has observed or can reproduce an orbit by Pluto, therefore macro-orbiting is just an assumption or inference based on anecdote and conjecture.
We might then ask what barrier exists that could prevent micro-orbiting over shorter time scales from accumulating into macro-orbiting over longer durations, and there would be no cogent answer to that either - just a repetition that it has never been observed.
The scientific method is more than what the authors of scientific papers do to generate their findings - the method used within the laboratory or observatory to generate and analyze data - observation, hypothesis formation, experimentation, measurement, analysis, hypothesis modification, etc.. Let us call this the micro-scientific method. It may generate results that are inaccurate.
This micro-scientific method is a small part of the larger vetting process, which is a communal function. It's not science until it is vetted by the larger process
Studies are subject to peer review before implementation to decide if they are well designed and worth funding, then again afterward to decide if they are worthy of publication, where the interested scientific community can then read them and comment. The studies are often repeated and confirmed, or in some cases, disconfirmed, and errors identified (your fourth step).
The results may then be used to develop technology that may be used to predict and at times control nature, which, when it happens, confirms the validity of the new science they contain.
Multiple related studies are brought together and used to generate scientific theories, from which previously unexpected predictions are made, which, if confirmed, further validate the conclusions. These include the scientific “prophecies” we will be discussing next.
The theories may suggest new avenues of previously unconsidered exploration, which in turn may also bear fruit such as additional useful technology, or suggest even more areas of investigation further vetting the validity the discoveries.
With time, additional confirming observations using unrelated techniques are added, as with evolutionary theory, where 21st century DNA sequencing techniques arrive at the same conclusions as earlier paleontological and biogeographical studies.
After years of such vetting, over which no contradictory observations have been made, only then is it fully vetted science. Information that gets as far as what is described above simply cannot be overturned, just expanded. Scientific theories that have reached this stage include the germ theory of disease, the heliocentric theory, cell theory, the theory of evolution, the big bang theory, quantum mechanical theory, plate tectonic theory, and the theory of relativity.
At this point, they are what can be called settled science. We can call this greater process the macro-scientific method.
It should be noted that what an idea scientific, whether a hypothesis to be with an experiment or a full formed and vetted scientific theory is that it be falsifiable, meaning that if the idea is wrong, it is potentially possible to demonstrate that fact. Scientific theories are never proven – they can’t be – but they must potentially disprovable if they are wrong.
Intelligent design would be an example of an idea that might be wrong, and yet there may be no way even in principle of demonstrating that. Digging up the famous Precambrian rabbit or billion-year old human remains would seriously challenge Darwin’s theory, but no finding imaginable could contradict the claim that there is or was an intelligent designer.
It appears the body may have and more than likely came from chimps in a scientific sense. But I am not completely sold and am impartial and open to anything else.
It's intriguing reading your words and trying to decide whether you are a stealth creationist or not. You haven't explicitly stated that you are, and have even denied rejecting Darwin's theory. You just won't accept it.
Yet you have many of the characteristics I've only seen in creationists before. Are you one of them as well, or perhaps something different.
Of course, I'm alluding to your comment about the body rather than about man. It implies that you think that there is an aspect of man that didn't evolve - perhaps a soul. To be clear, I am not concluding that that is your belief, just that it's odd that you referred to mankind's bodies rather than mankind.
Incidentally, the scientific theory does not claim that man evolved from chimps, but rather, from a common man-chimp ancestor whose descendant bifurcated into two subtribes, one leading to modern chimps and bonobos, the other to man. The chimps changed much less since their ancestors' habitat remained jungles, and their living made as brachiating, quadrupedal herbivores.
Man's ancestors suffered a radical change in niche after the North and South American continents were joined by continental drift to form what is presently called the isthmus of Panama, cutting off an eastward oceanic current from the present Pacific to the Atlantic oceans and Africa. This altered the weather patterns there and converted jungle to savannah. With the loss of the trees, these chimplike creatures learned a new lifestyle, one charactorized by bipedalism, omnivorous diets, and articulate hands now freed up for tool making rather than swinging through trees.
One does not need to infer(best logical assumption or best logical guess) that one is the biological parent to a child. One can accurately state that they know someone is the biological parent of a child.
One has to draw inferences from the testimony of those claiming to be parents. You don't seem to understand what inference is and how wide ranging it is in human affairs (the beasts as well, who infer that a snapping twig and leaves suggests a predator or prey in the vicinity, leading to retreat or attack).
You say that like its a bad or unreliable thing. Statistics is a powerful tool for making good decisions, that is, decisions which result in desired outcomes..
If the predictions, hypothesis, inferences are not accessible by observation or experience, the hypothesis is not yet testable or experimental and so will remain to that extent unscientific in a strict sense.
Please pay closer attention to what I wrote. I specifically stated that the event in question need not be repeated or directly observed in order for us to apply the scientific method.
One does not need to infer(best logical assumption or best logical guess) that one is the biological parent to a child. One can accurately state that they know someone is the biological parent of a child.
In court cases where paternity tests are conducted, the question at hand is which specific person is the father of the child, not whether the child has a father at all.
In those cases, genetic samples are taken from the child and the prospective father. If the child has specific shared sequences with the prospective father, that is considered "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" that he is the child's father, even though no one making that decision directly witnessed him fathering the child. IOW, the conclusion is drawn via inference.
Please pay closer attention to what I wrote. I specifically stated that the event in question need not be repeated or directly observed in order for us to apply the scientific method.
In court cases where paternity tests are conducted, the question at hand is which specific person is the father of the child, not whether the child has a father at all.
In those cases, genetic samples are taken from the child and the prospective father. If the child has specific shared sequences with the prospective father, that is considered "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" that he is the child's father, even though no one making that decision directly witnessed him fathering the child. IOW, the conclusion is drawn via inference.
You failed to bring up your initial chimpanzee, false equivalence.
You’re grasping at straws rather than just admitting you may be mistaken. There is nothing wrong with being mistaken or erring. I for one would not think any less of you.
Sorry inferences are not "educated guesses". That may be the case when you do so, but that is not allowed in the world of science.
And of course evidence is no "proof". There is no "proof" in the sciences. There is a standard for evidence that creationists do not have and cannot meet. By the way, paternity tests are not "proof" either. They are merely extremely strong evidence. The same science that "proves" that You ARE the father! also "proves" that we are related to other apes. You can't have it both ways.
You failed to bring up your initial chimpanzee, false equivalence.
You’re grasping at straws rather than just admitting you may be mistaken. There is nothing wrong with being mistaken or erring. I for one would not think any less of you.
Sorry but you are the one grasping at straws. How is the evidence any different when it is used to support the claim that we share a common ancestor with apes?
In science, we are often faced with figuring out the details of events that we didn't directly witness (either due to it happening in the past or due to the scale of the event). To do that, we collect data relavent to the event and through inference we draw conclusions about the event.
In the example I gave (paternity testing), neither the judge nor the geneticists witnessed the child being conceived. So the scientists collect data relative to the child's conception (genetic samples from the child and alleged father) and compare specific regions of their genomes. If the child has the same specific sequences as the father, the scientists conclude that the man is indeed the child's father.
Now here's the important part.....that conclusion is an inference.
Why is it an inference? Because the conclusion that the man is the child's father was not the result of direct observation or replication of the event, but was instead drawn from analysis of indirect data.
Obviously the fact that the conclusion was inferred is not an issue since we base very important legal decisions on similar inferences, sometimes even matters of life and death.
Hopefully now you understand how objecting to scientific conclusions merely because they're inferred from indirect data isn't at all meaningful or valid.
