Just a quibble, but I don't think we should accept a blanket statement that biology or medicine can't predict what will happen to an individual. We do understand the mechanics about enough processes to know what will happen to certain people, such as those people with various genetic defects, such as for Huntington's disease.

Actually, the fact is that biology/medicine encompasses elements of "hard" science and "soft" science depending on the particular field or the question, so it's not so easy to give it a single label. Look at Watson and Crick, the discoverers of the structure of DNA. Using x-ray crystallography to tease out its structure is pretty "hard science".

I disagree that biology or medicine can predict what will happen to an individual. The problem lies in the fact that people, or biological systems in general, are not a uniform media. You can predict odds based on a population meeting X, Y, and Z criteria, but that's the limit of the science. The anatomy/chemistry/psychology of a single person is unique to that person, and a sample size of 1 is near useless without a complete understanding of the mechanisms (which we don't have).

The problem of variability also extends into pure hard sciences like metallurgy. A certain material, with a certain composition, unit cell structure, grain size and orientation, heat treat, forming process, etc. will still have variability in its properties. You can see the differences in A-basis (99% values with 95% confidence are greater then stated value), B-basis (90% values with 95% confidence are greater then stated value), and S-basis (industry specific) strengths for a particular material.

Somebody with medical credentials should step in to lead us through this maze. However, I seem to have accumulated information that the progress of any one person's disease is highly variable and unpredictable.



First, let recall that it was Rosalind Franklin who was the x-ray crystallographer, not Watson or Crick. It was only the no-postumous-Nobel rule that deprived her of that recognition for her DNA work. She went on to a distinguished career perhaps capped by her on Nobel prize for other contributions to science.

Second, you are right that there are aspects of science, hard, soft, or otherwise that permeate or invade their theoretical opposites.

One thing that tends to distinguish science is that it progresses over time, that is, it changes and tends to become more reliable and useful - even if it must do so by utterly disproving earlier things the same science postulated as true.

If you don't have falsifiable theories, you don't have science. "Social science" isn't a science. "Economic science" isn't a science. As a rule of thumb, if a discipline has "science" in its name, it's not a science.

Not everything has to be a science.

Because they make predictions that can be disproved. They can be wrong.

I am currently reading a bit about the development of "science" and find it is an evolving concept. What things are included as "sciences" is therefore somewhat in flux as well.

There are some areas of study not readily amenable to experiment because they are, at least for now, too complex or ethically out of bounds. Those things tend to be studied instead by many detailed observations generating data which are checked for statistical reliability. If deemed reliable, then theories can be propounded and old and new data can be examined to see if they are consistent with the theories.

Perhaps your definition of "experiment" is broader than mine, but to me, an experiment is a specific kind of activity involving tightly controlled conditions where only very specific variables can be adjusted. However, as I mentioned, you generally can't do such experiments on people. The core of research on human health involve other kinds of study designs (look at the whole field of epidemiology), and the analysis of those results also includes hypothesis testing. My point is not about the necessity of having a falsifiable hypothesis, but on how to go about obtaining the evidence to disprove these hypotheses.

So, either we have a definition of science that includes other methods of investigation besides a strict experimental design, or we concede that much of human medical knowledge is not based on "science," which perhaps is a view you subscribe to. (Although unorthodox, a case can certainly be made for that view on a number of points but that's another discussion...)

I agree that hypothesis testing is at the core of the scientific method, and we both concede that scientists can be wrong. There are certainly many people who complain about how researchers flip-flop about various topics when it comes to human health, such as various dietary guidelines. Eggs are good. No, eggs are bad. No, wait, eggs are good. Butter? Margarine? Soy, good? Soy, bad? Hormone replacement therapy is good. No, hormone replacement is harmful. Mammograms every year starting at 40. No, mammograms not necessary until 50, and then only every other year.

To the dismay of average folks, that happens quite a lot with human-related research and one reason is because we can't conduct experiments on people like we can with lab rats. But that's just the meandering path that science takes on its quest for Truth.