5 ms·

It is a real shame not to be able to trust "science" anymore. We'll have to come up with a new word for what we used to call science because I don't think corpo

by eadz 9y ago

It is a real shame not to be able to trust "science" anymore. We'll have to come up with a new word for what we used to call science because I don't think corporations and media set on manipulating public opinion and laws will give it back.

yourapostasy 9y ago
It may take a shift in how we share information and perform science before we find a way to trust as much again. Beyond the existing standing question of why more science papers don't publish information like the computer code they used, I've wondered why there isn't a push for "science-as-code". For example, if there was a common DSL that describes science lab automation, then a futuristic science paper would come with some a package that would drive another lab's robots and equipment to do the exact same experiment with the same steps, and let other labs alter the steps as they see fit once they reproduce the same results to toy with the experiment's findings. Then all the calibration steps of each piece of equipment, all the sampling steps, all the measurement steps, etc. are all completely reproduced as code. Steps only expressible as "human hands do [insert-motions-here]" are translated to waldo motions, pressure sensing, etc. Then a lab notebook would be filled with human interpretations of what scientists are seeing, hypotheses, etc., alongside a time-series recording of every step taken, environmental metrics measured, expressed in that DSL.
- hyperpape 9y ago
  Scientists should publish more detail about methods in general, but we're a long way from the kind of precision that would enable robots to duplicate everything. A good deal of science happens with graduate students literally building their own apparatus.
throwaway5752 9y ago
Science is a process and is close to an infallible thing as we have created as humans. There is no problem with science. What is happening here is "lying". The people creating false and misleading scientific results are liars and it becomes a question of taking skeptical views towards sources and knowing who to trust.
- meric 9y ago
  Christianity is belief in Christ and is close to an infallible thing as we have as humans. There is no problem with Christianity. What is happening here is "corruption". The people using Christianity to further their own egos and desires are liars and it becomes a question of taking skeptical views towards authoritative figures and knowing who to trust. Be careful about making Science™ a religion. Nothing in this world is infallible.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - julianj 9y ago
    I believe Christ is infallible.
    - meric 9y ago
      God is not in this world. This is the creation.
- battwell 9y ago
  > Science is a process and is close to an infallible thing as we have created as humans. There is no problem with science. Wouldn't you say mathmatics is the most infallible thing human's have come to creating? The level of rigor in mathematics is much higher and there aren't as many repeatability issues.
  - throwaway5752 9y ago
    I would say mathematics is the language of science. Science is the process of extending knowledge; logic provides the tools for inference, and number allow experimentation/reproduction to be quantifiable. I also subscribe to the idea that mathematics exists independently and is discovered.
lumberjack 9y ago
It's not like it was hard to figure out what was going on. On one hand you have scientists publishing letters of concern regarding glyphosate arguing for more studies to be done because of hints of carcinogenic properties. On the other hand you have a full blown shill campaign on Reddit and other website, being all like, "there is absolutely nothing to worry about, why do you hate science!". And lobbyists bullying the EFSA into publishing a statement in support of glyphosate so that it could be relicense for further use within Europe. You can trust science. You just have to be aware of the conflicts of interests. Monsanto hasn't bought every single scientist out there.
- eip 9y ago
  The funniest/saddest part of this is that even the people that catch on to the probable poison that is glyphosate and the shill campaign behind it will still angrily defend the safety and efficacy of IG Farben vaccines while happily eating Monsanto GM Frankencorn grown with glyphosate. Depopulation is necessary and luckily it's also fairly easy.
- driverdan 9y ago
  > On the other hand you have a full blown shill campaign on Reddit and other website, being all like, "there is absolutely nothing to worry about, why do you hate science!" [citation needed]
  - joatmon-snoo 9y ago
    Seriously. Whenever I see stuff like this on Reddit or the like I always challenge it because the anti-Monsanto attitude is so easy to buy into - it's the classic corporate bully, storybook Goliath caricature - and so many claims are unsubstantiated. Skimming this link definitely raises some serious red flags for me with Monsanto, but there's also some very stupid shit in there, e.g. the highlighted "you cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen" - hell, I bet the same is true of most foods in the freezer aisle.
  - Sone7 9y ago
    Pfft. You want a citation, go make a vaguely anti-GMO comment on a major sub. Include keywords. See what happens.
grecy 9y ago
> It is a real shame not to be able to trust "science" anymore. I agree. My brother (Aerospace Eng.) and I (Software Eng.) talk often about this with our Dad (Electrical Eng.). Given that big business and BIG money has now been proven to have hidden the truth about Monsanto Chemicals, sugar and many other things, how many other things in our would would big business pay billions or even trillions to cover up if they had a study that showed it was somehow harmful? Just to throw out some ideas, how many trillions would they spend to hide that cell phones are bad, or TVs or "new car smell", or plastic containers for food. It's quite clear that almost everything in our society that is sold for profit is now backed by trillions and trillions of dollars, and they would hide any ill effects if they could. It's not that "science" failed us, it's that we let money buy it out, much like democracies too (i.e. unlimited campaign contributions)
- bamboozled 9y ago
  So basically, it's becoming harder to know which science to trust ?
gehwartzen 9y ago
I don't think the problem is with Science or rather the scientific method. Instead it is largely a problem of how scientific data is published and then ultimately presented to the public. In order for science to truly work in advancing our understanding of a given problem all studies both with positive and negative results need to be published. However, that is often not what happens. In academia often only the 'interesting' results end up getting submitted to journals and published. In the private sector the problem is even more pronounced because there is a vested interest in only publishing results with a certain outcome. I work in R&D and we often do scientific studies that don't get published because they don't advance our companies viewpoint or could harm sales. And of course that makes perfect sense when you are not required to do so. So in the end you have to take that into account when evaluating a study, especially when coming from industry. There could be contradictory results that never saw the light of day. Now there is a very simple fix to this which would greatly alleviate this problem: Have a requirement for publishing that forces the researcher to submit the scientific hypothesis, planed research methods, and variables to be studied before submitting the final results, no matter what they may be. This also prevents a researcher from cherry picking results after the fact and leaving out variables that cast doubt on the original hypothesis.

by eadz 9y ago

yourapostasy 9y ago

It may take a shift in how we share information and perform science before we find a way to trust as much again. Beyond the existing standing question of why more science papers don't publish information like the computer code they used, I've wondered why there isn't a push for "science-as-code". For example, if there was a common DSL that describes science lab automation, then a futuristic science paper would come with some a package that would drive another lab's robots and equipment to do the exact same experiment with the same steps, and let other labs alter the steps as they see fit once they reproduce the same results to toy with the experiment's findings. Then all the calibration steps of each piece of equipment, all the sampling steps, all the measurement steps, etc. are all completely reproduced as code. Steps only expressible as "human hands do [insert-motions-here]" are translated to waldo motions, pressure sensing, etc. Then a lab notebook would be filled with human interpretations of what scientists are seeing, hypotheses, etc., alongside a time-series recording of every step taken, environmental metrics measured, expressed in that DSL.

hyperpape 9y ago
Scientists should publish more detail about methods in general, but we're a long way from the kind of precision that would enable robots to duplicate everything. A good deal of science happens with graduate students literally building their own apparatus.

throwaway5752 9y ago

Science is a process and is close to an infallible thing as we have created as humans. There is no problem with science. What is happening here is "lying". The people creating false and misleading scientific results are liars and it becomes a question of taking skeptical views towards sources and knowing who to trust.

meric 9y ago
Christianity is belief in Christ and is close to an infallible thing as we have as humans. There is no problem with Christianity. What is happening here is "corruption". The people using Christianity to further their own egos and desires are liars and it becomes a question of taking skeptical views towards authoritative figures and knowing who to trust. Be careful about making Science™ a religion. Nothing in this world is infallible.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- julianj 9y ago
  I believe Christ is infallible.
  - meric 9y ago
    God is not in this world. This is the creation.
battwell 9y ago
> Science is a process and is close to an infallible thing as we have created as humans. There is no problem with science. Wouldn't you say mathmatics is the most infallible thing human's have come to creating? The level of rigor in mathematics is much higher and there aren't as many repeatability issues.
- throwaway5752 9y ago
  I would say mathematics is the language of science. Science is the process of extending knowledge; logic provides the tools for inference, and number allow experimentation/reproduction to be quantifiable. I also subscribe to the idea that mathematics exists independently and is discovered.

lumberjack 9y ago

It's not like it was hard to figure out what was going on. On one hand you have scientists publishing letters of concern regarding glyphosate arguing for more studies to be done because of hints of carcinogenic properties. On the other hand you have a full blown shill campaign on Reddit and other website, being all like, "there is absolutely nothing to worry about, why do you hate science!". And lobbyists bullying the EFSA into publishing a statement in support of glyphosate so that it could be relicense for further use within Europe. You can trust science. You just have to be aware of the conflicts of interests. Monsanto hasn't bought every single scientist out there.

eip 9y ago
The funniest/saddest part of this is that even the people that catch on to the probable poison that is glyphosate and the shill campaign behind it will still angrily defend the safety and efficacy of IG Farben vaccines while happily eating Monsanto GM Frankencorn grown with glyphosate. Depopulation is necessary and luckily it's also fairly easy.
driverdan 9y ago
> On the other hand you have a full blown shill campaign on Reddit and other website, being all like, "there is absolutely nothing to worry about, why do you hate science!" [citation needed]
- joatmon-snoo 9y ago
  Seriously. Whenever I see stuff like this on Reddit or the like I always challenge it because the anti-Monsanto attitude is so easy to buy into - it's the classic corporate bully, storybook Goliath caricature - and so many claims are unsubstantiated. Skimming this link definitely raises some serious red flags for me with Monsanto, but there's also some very stupid shit in there, e.g. the highlighted "you cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen" - hell, I bet the same is true of most foods in the freezer aisle.
- Sone7 9y ago
  Pfft. You want a citation, go make a vaguely anti-GMO comment on a major sub. Include keywords. See what happens.

grecy 9y ago

> It is a real shame not to be able to trust "science" anymore. I agree. My brother (Aerospace Eng.) and I (Software Eng.) talk often about this with our Dad (Electrical Eng.). Given that big business and BIG money has now been proven to have hidden the truth about Monsanto Chemicals, sugar and many other things, how many other things in our would would big business pay billions or even trillions to cover up if they had a study that showed it was somehow harmful? Just to throw out some ideas, how many trillions would they spend to hide that cell phones are bad, or TVs or "new car smell", or plastic containers for food. It's quite clear that almost everything in our society that is sold for profit is now backed by trillions and trillions of dollars, and they would hide any ill effects if they could. It's not that "science" failed us, it's that we let money buy it out, much like democracies too (i.e. unlimited campaign contributions)

bamboozled 9y ago
So basically, it's becoming harder to know which science to trust ?

gehwartzen 9y ago

I don't think the problem is with Science or rather the scientific method. Instead it is largely a problem of how scientific data is published and then ultimately presented to the public. In order for science to truly work in advancing our understanding of a given problem all studies both with positive and negative results need to be published. However, that is often not what happens. In academia often only the 'interesting' results end up getting submitted to journals and published. In the private sector the problem is even more pronounced because there is a vested interest in only publishing results with a certain outcome. I work in R&D and we often do scientific studies that don't get published because they don't advance our companies viewpoint or could harm sales. And of course that makes perfect sense when you are not required to do so. So in the end you have to take that into account when evaluating a study, especially when coming from industry. There could be contradictory results that never saw the light of day. Now there is a very simple fix to this which would greatly alleviate this problem: Have a requirement for publishing that forces the researcher to submit the scientific hypothesis, planed research methods, and variables to be studied before submitting the final results, no matter what they may be. This also prevents a researcher from cherry picking results after the fact and leaving out variables that cast doubt on the original hypothesis.