What are Laws of Nature?

[vulcanlogician]

I think this is basically taking a drunkard's walk around Hume's point that we don't see causes and effects, only correlations -- regularities.  I think if I read you correctly, not having watched the video, regularity people want to say that's an unsurpassable barrier to saying anything more about what we see.  I'm not sure Hume is right, but I think it's another one of those things in philosophy like knowledge or truth around which there is room for debate because nobody's broken through to a compelling description of what is actually happening.  Nobody has 'nailed it', so to speak.  We've got the important bits, but the special sauce that would make our conceptions rigorous and cogent is missing.  Scientists want to say that they can identify cause and effect, but if you press them for what more than correlation is required to show causation, they tend to get irritable.

Thoughtful reply, as usual, Angrboda. I'm not sure if I put things properly to begin with. Maybe I was injecting more Hume into my analysis than the subject matter warrants. Or... maybe... the question amounts to a simple restating of Hume as you suggest. It's above my paygrade to answer. I'm pretty much working off of one YouTube lecture.

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No big deal but just call a spade a spade. If you don't think its philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/laws-of-nature/

And you're correct, I don't want to be part of a discussion of what is considered as a law of nature. That's a philosophical discussion that I simply have little stomach for.

Yeah. It's philosophy. I almost posted it in the philosophy subforum. Then I thought "Hey, this might fit in the physical sciences forum." There really isn't such a stark line between disciplines as university course catalogs would have us imagine. Much of chemistry and biology is molecular physics. David Deutsch has published works in scientific journals that discuss things typically reserved for epistemology. In the end, I didn't even consider the fact it might matter to someone where the thread was placed, so I put it here on a whim. Like I said, this topic would be at home in the philosophy subforum. No disagreement there.

[The Architect Of Fate]

They often do but that sort only points out the problem. After all, why would you need to do that if there wasn't a bias? Plus I wasn't just talking about publication. The research itself in these fields have been highly male-centric

For instance medical trials 
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...cal-trials

https://theconversation.com/gender-bias-...isk-156495

First, let's separate the sciences that study humans from those that do not.

For the sciences that do not, are the conclusions invalidated because women are under-represented in the sciences?

I would say not, although because of lack of diversity (and thereby for alternative explanations), the progress will be slower. Any time intelligent people are excluded from participating, the progress of science will slow. But, I also believe the correct conclusions eventually arise, are tested, and are accepted.

It should be pointed out that new ideas in science are *always* challenged and 'put through a wringer'. That is how it should be and does not, in and of itself, represent bias. It is important that the new ideas be challenged, compared to available evidence, be subject to criticism (even harsh criticism), etc. This is how science is, and should be done. And it is true for men who propose new ideas (Gould and Eldridge for Punctuated Equilibria come to mind) as it is for women and other groups.

For those sciences that *do* study humans, the male bias is much more pronounced and dangerous. Again, lack of diversity is the basic problem, along with the default assumption that 'all people are like me'. Because of this, situations where men and women differ in their responses (diseases, social responsibilities, etc) will not be studied in the ways necessary for the correct application to women. As your articles point out, the health of women is harmed by this bias. But, in the same way, the health of those of under-represented races is also harmed for the same reasons.

These are situations where, because the studies are not suitably designed, the conclusions derived can be wrong and dangerous for those not part of the study. To some degree, it comes down to realizing that race or gender can be a relevant factor for care.

But let's be clear. The basic ideas of science: that we need to test our ideas and challenge them in as many cases as possible, and that conclusions should always be seen as current approximations are *still* good and required. The problem comes when biases mean we don't test as fully as we should or consider alternatives when we should.

But the scientific method itself isn't gender dependent, nor race dependent.

Which why in my earlier post I said I was unsure if this applied to  physics

[polymath257]

that’s why we test things, and don’t just assert things based on what we think are powerful logic.
okay, but you don't think that who is allowed to perform the testing, and who is excluded from the process, makes any difference whatsoever to the reliability of the results?

I think this effect is minimal.

What is much more relevant is that having *hypotheses* proposed from only one viewpoint is much more likely to miss other relevant interpretations of the data. The more people from different backgrounds and training that can look at the data and propose ideas to explain it, the faster the process will converge to a workable, tested system.

[Rahn127]

Laws of nature are our current understanding about an aspect of the natural world that appears to be consistent day after day given the exact same conditions.

When we account for the variable environmental conditions, every experiment should have the exact same outcome.

This consistent outcome we call a law of nature.
Chemical reactions are very consistent.
The speed of light in a vacuum is very consistent.
Material construction and the consistency of engineering principles allow us to consistently construct buildings, bridges, highways, airplanes and everything else we have manufactured in the world.

It's that consistency of being able to replicate the outcome of every experiment to such a degree that we can label that consistency a law.