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The thing is, scientists really do have a greater chance of having an informed opinion of politics, or history, or any other subject than do actors or football

The thing is, scientists really do have a greater chance of having an informed opinion of politics, or history, or any other subject than do actors or football players because to be a scientist you have to know how to evaluate claims based on evidence. That doesn't mean that their opinions are 100% correct of course, but yes, being trained in the skill of thinking makes their opinions more valuable than those whose skills are in looking good or running fast. "Scientism" is a meaningless word because every question that can be answered is part of science in the broad sense (which includes history and social science in addition to laboratory science).

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
Very few people have even remotely informed opinions on politics or history. Both fields are rife with propaganda. While you can trust his scholarship to 11 nines, you have to be careful with Chomsky's conclusions. He's extremely good at framing the questions, so it's not like you have to disagree much. I just disagree with his understanding of simple venality, and a little public choice theory would explain much of what he misses.
RodericDay 10y ago
> "Scientism" is a meaningless word What do you mean by this? People prematurely assuming that science has a good explanation for something it doesn't has a long and storied history. Scientists saying women couldn't vote because blood flowing to their ovaries fled the brain causing poor decisions, saying that black people had lower IQs because they had smaller craniums, that the Irish were a totally different inferior race than whites, etc. And people latching onto their authority as justification. Most recently, many outlets have discussed the Clinton campaign's over-reliance on "data" and "science-like" methods, via their ADA "algorithm" and a refusal to go for grassroots tactics and instead trusting analysis of millenials or w/e. "Scientism" is alive and well. People who think more numbers == more truth, even without putting those numbers and their underlying generating assumptions to any scrutiny, are very very plentiful.
- jhbadger 10y ago
  But science is literally the only way we have of explaining anything. Yes, many 19th century opinions are now known as incorrect. But how do we know that? Because later science showed that ovaries don't work that way and so on. And while Clinton's campaign was unsuccessful, arguing the merits of various strategies that could have been taken is clearly a form of social science, not an alternative to science. If "scientism" is a real thing there have to be answerable questions that not addressable by science.
  - RodericDay 10y ago
    > If "scientism" is a real thing there have to be answerable questions that not addressable by science. No. The existence of scientism doesn't imply that some questions don't have scientific answers, any more than fanboyism implies nobody has any true talent. Scientism merely means that some people are extremely persuaded by "sciency" things, even if they lack the rigor and reproducibility of actual science. So, if I'm wearing a business suit and present an economic theory based on the history of people's behavior, you're skeptical. However, if I wear a professor's cardigan and present the exact same theory with some equations and graphs instead (generated using the historical assumptions), you suddenly think it's very believable and impervious to challenge. That's what scientism is. It's confusing the appearance of science, the language of science, for the essence of science (reproducibility, verifiability, empirical predicates, etc). Edit: Additionally, people who are hardcore fans of science as drivers of change usually ignore the reality that science came around to a political opinion, rather than the other way around. People protested the idea that they were inferior, got the political environment changed, and in this new environment, "new facts" came to light that came to challenge old conclusions. If bad science based on bad observations leads to bad policy that then creates more bad observations, you can easily end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy.
    - jhbadger 10y ago
      I think the suit story is cribbed from "The Little Prince", and you seem to arguing about something other than the universality or non-universality of the scientific method.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> The thing is, scientists really do have a greater chance of having an informed opinion of politics, or history, or any other subject than do actors or football players because to be a scientist you have to know how to evaluate claims based on evidence. That doesn't mean they are more likely to have an informed opinion, at best it means that if their opinion is informed to start with, it's more likely that they have applied information well. And even that's dubious outside of their specialty, because the issues with data collection and the tools to deal with them vary considerably between different areas of science.
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ArkyBeagle 10y ago

Very few people have even remotely informed opinions on politics or history. Both fields are rife with propaganda. While you can trust his scholarship to 11 nines, you have to be careful with Chomsky's conclusions. He's extremely good at framing the questions, so it's not like you have to disagree much. I just disagree with his understanding of simple venality, and a little public choice theory would explain much of what he misses.

RodericDay 10y ago

> "Scientism" is a meaningless word What do you mean by this? People prematurely assuming that science has a good explanation for something it doesn't has a long and storied history. Scientists saying women couldn't vote because blood flowing to their ovaries fled the brain causing poor decisions, saying that black people had lower IQs because they had smaller craniums, that the Irish were a totally different inferior race than whites, etc. And people latching onto their authority as justification. Most recently, many outlets have discussed the Clinton campaign's over-reliance on "data" and "science-like" methods, via their ADA "algorithm" and a refusal to go for grassroots tactics and instead trusting analysis of millenials or w/e. "Scientism" is alive and well. People who think more numbers == more truth, even without putting those numbers and their underlying generating assumptions to any scrutiny, are very very plentiful.

jhbadger 10y ago
But science is literally the only way we have of explaining anything. Yes, many 19th century opinions are now known as incorrect. But how do we know that? Because later science showed that ovaries don't work that way and so on. And while Clinton's campaign was unsuccessful, arguing the merits of various strategies that could have been taken is clearly a form of social science, not an alternative to science. If "scientism" is a real thing there have to be answerable questions that not addressable by science.
- RodericDay 10y ago
  > If "scientism" is a real thing there have to be answerable questions that not addressable by science. No. The existence of scientism doesn't imply that some questions don't have scientific answers, any more than fanboyism implies nobody has any true talent. Scientism merely means that some people are extremely persuaded by "sciency" things, even if they lack the rigor and reproducibility of actual science. So, if I'm wearing a business suit and present an economic theory based on the history of people's behavior, you're skeptical. However, if I wear a professor's cardigan and present the exact same theory with some equations and graphs instead (generated using the historical assumptions), you suddenly think it's very believable and impervious to challenge. That's what scientism is. It's confusing the appearance of science, the language of science, for the essence of science (reproducibility, verifiability, empirical predicates, etc). Edit: Additionally, people who are hardcore fans of science as drivers of change usually ignore the reality that science came around to a political opinion, rather than the other way around. People protested the idea that they were inferior, got the political environment changed, and in this new environment, "new facts" came to light that came to challenge old conclusions. If bad science based on bad observations leads to bad policy that then creates more bad observations, you can easily end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy.
  - jhbadger 10y ago
    I think the suit story is cribbed from "The Little Prince", and you seem to arguing about something other than the universality or non-universality of the scientific method.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> The thing is, scientists really do have a greater chance of having an informed opinion of politics, or history, or any other subject than do actors or football players because to be a scientist you have to know how to evaluate claims based on evidence. That doesn't mean they are more likely to have an informed opinion, at best it means that if their opinion is informed to start with, it's more likely that they have applied information well. And even that's dubious outside of their specialty, because the issues with data collection and the tools to deal with them vary considerably between different areas of science.

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