But that’s not what this is about. In the end, it’s about increasing the
probability that we get things right over the way that we try to get
things right today. And the philosophies of science that served us so
well in our history of expensive, unavailable data will not serve us
well in our current history and its inheritors, who have to figure out
what data to delete, not what data to save.
Models will help. Open data will help. But a more supple, more finely
tuned
epistemology
of science, one that understands how data can drive the creation of
hypothesis, not simply emerge as part of its proof, is the real key.
Because the data, and the quantitative research that can emerge from it,
is often going to be better at making predictions than the gut instinct
that’s driven many of the narrative sciences (and I’m including both
biology and health in there, though not chemistry or physics).
But it will take the establishment class either getting with the
program, or getting swept away by the tide. Because in science and
health, the funding is controlled by the elites. And they’re still deep
in the grips of a pre-data way of knowing what they know.