Limits of Science

Thanks to David Brooks of the New York Times for pointing me to this article -- a discussion of how the results in many scientific studies seem to be declining over time.  This finding is a problem with replication of results that goes beyond "regression to the mean," according to the article.  ("Regression to the mean" is a statistical rule that if enough results are compiled, results that are either strongly above or below the mean will be outweighed by the more common results.)  I have been thinking about science a little bit and how it defines terms for us in this modern age.  It's difficult to imagine a world that is not mediated by technology any more -- we have become so saturated with cars, planes, televisions, computers, smartphones, etc. that it's hard to imagine life without them.  Science and engineering have allowed the possibility of these inventions, and beyond that transformation, science has become a standard of truth for many people.  It's good to know that science's effort to define the world through empiricism has limits, as the article concludes.  That's important to note, not just because my Christian beliefs offer alternative explanations for certain things and competes with science for an explanation of big things like the origin of people, but also because our technology-saturated culture tends to forget that all of science's findings are supposed to be tentative and subject to change.