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Xachariah comments on I Stand by the Sequences - Less Wrong
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My default answer for anything regarding Hanson is 'signaling'. How to fix science is a good start.
Science isn't just about getting things wrong or right, but an intricate signaling game. This is why most of what comes out of journals is wrong. Scientists are rewarded for publishing results, right or wrong, so they comb data for correlations which may or may not be relevant. (Statically speaking, if you comb data 20 different ways, you'll get at least 1 thing which shows a statistically significant correlation, just from sheer random chance.) Journals are rewarded for publishing sensational results, and not confirmations or even refutations (especially refutations of things they published in the first place). The rewards system does not set up coming with right answers, but coming up with answers that are sensational and cannot be easily refuted. Being right does make them hard to refute, which is why science is useful at all but that's not the only way things are made hard to refute.
An ideal bayesian unconstrained with signaling could completely outdo our current scientific system (as it could do for in all spheres of life). Even shifting our current system to be more bayesian by abandoning the journal system and creating pre-registration of scientific studies would be a huge upgrade. But science isn't about knowledge, knowledge is just a very useful byproduct we get from it.
But Grognor (not, as this comment read earlier, army1987) said that "we mere mortals can do better with Bayes", not that "an ideal bayesian unconstrained with signaling could completely outdo our current scientific system". Arguing, in response to cousin_it, that scientists are concerned with signalling makes the claim even stronger, and the question more compelling - "why aren't we doing better already?"
I had taken “we” to mean the 21st-century civilization in general rather than just Bayesians, and the question to mean “why is science doing so bad, if it could do much better just by using Bayes”?
I'm fairly confident that "we" refers to LW / Bayesians, especially given the response to your comment earlier. Unfortunately we've got a bunch of comments addressing a different question, and some providing reasons why we shouldn't expect to be "doing better", all of which strengthen cousin_it's question, as Grognor claims we can. Though naturally Grognor's intended meanings are up for grabs.