It isn't a metric of success. It is an example, one of many in the biological sciences.
Then at what grounds do you claim that the field is succesful? How would you know if it weren't succesful?
Obesity is not due to a lack of theoretical underpinnings in biology.
I'm not saying that theory lacks theoretical underpinnings but that the underpinning is of bad quality.
The question isn't is the field very good. The question is are the problems which we both agree exist due at all to not enough theory? File drawer effects, cognitive biases, bad experimental design are all issues here, none of which fall into that category.
Question about designing experiments in a way that they produce reproduceable results instead of only large p values are theoretical issues.
The question is are the problems which we both agree exist due at all to not enough theory?
Enough theory sounds like as attempt to quantify the amount of theory. That's not what I advocate. Theories don't get better through increase in their quantity. Good theoretical thinking can simply model and result in less complex theory.
Then at what grounds do you claim that the field is succesful? How would you know if it weren't succesful?
That's a good question, but in this context, seeing a variety of novel discoveries in the last few years indicates a somewhat successful field. By the same token, I'm curious what makes you think this isn't a successful field?
Question about designing experiments in a way that they produce reproduceable results instead of only large p values are theoretical issues.
I've already mentioned the file drawer problem. I'm curious, do you think that is a...
For those who haven't heard, NIH and NSF are no longer processing grants, leading to many negative downstream effects.
I've been directing my attention elsewhere lately and don't have anything informative to say about this. However, my uninformed intuition is that people who care about effective altruism (research in general, infrastructure development, X-risk mitigation, life-extension...basically everything, actually) or have transhumanist leanings should be very concerned.
The consequences have already been pretty disastrous. To provide just one, immediate example, the article says that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has shut down. I think that this is almost certain to directly cause a nontrivial number of deaths. Each additional day that this continues could have huge negative impact down the line, perhaps delaying some key future discoveries by years. This event *might* be a small window of opportunity to prevent a lot of harm very cheaply.
So the question is:
1) Can we do anything to remedy the situation?
2) If so, is it worth doing it? (Opportunity costs, etc)