3 ms·

Because of the effect of politics on intellectual honesty. Once a debate triggers our "political" brain, it seems to scramble the kind of intellectual honesty

Because of the effect of politics on intellectual honesty. Once a debate triggers our "political" brain, it seems to scramble the kind of intellectual honesty science requires. An even more insiduous cousin of the maxim: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I think the use of the phrase: "scientific consensus" indicates to jeff (it does to me) that we are having that kind of a conversation, and its likely to be quickly misused to the point where it makes reaching a political/societal "consensus" even more difficult. I don't think it's possible to seperate science and politics either, but I think "Science" needs to be wary of speaking for science, instead of speaking as well informed and interested individuals. It's fine to speak for science on purely scientific matters. When it comes to policy, especially social policy like this, it's preferable if they don't push the boundary towards rhetorical cheating. For the record, I agree with this article and most others on the "scientific consensus" side.

jeffdavis 9y ago
""Science" needs to be wary of speaking for science, instead of speaking as well informed and interested individuals." Well said. "It's fine to speak for science on purely scientific matters." The thing about science is that one high-quality study is often all you need to have a lot of confidence. They don't need 100 experiments confirming the Higgs boson, they just needed one really good experiment. And bad studies can be summarily ignored for the purposes of fact finding. 100 bad studies are no better than one or zero. The only thing they tell you is an area that may be interesting to conduct a good study later. If there are a hundred high-quality studies saying one thing, and one high-quality study saying something else, then something very interesting is going on and everyone should pay close attention and get ready to learn something new. But this is very rare and is certainly not a situation where you want to inject politics. So the only time when it makes sense for science and politics to intersect is when you have one good study concluding something relevant to the policy decision, and no high-quality studies to the contrary. And in that case you only need to cite one study and be done with it -- you don't need to "speak for science". There is room to argue over the quality of experiments and studies, of course. And that's where the sparks should fly -- not over signatures on a report. If the results of one study are contended, it could go through some kind of extreme peer review that can re-analyze the results or question the data collection methods. The great thing about this is that laypersons will back out and wait, and the scientists and statisticians can argue in peace among their peers. When the smoke clears, then you can take those facts to the bank. This doesn't for scientific fields where study quality is a major problem (social sciences are hard and don't usually have nearly enough funding to produce quality studies -- or have funding from overly-interested parties). But in that case, you definitely should not lend undue weight to the claims by speaking for science.

jeffdavis 9y ago

""Science" needs to be wary of speaking for science, instead of speaking as well informed and interested individuals." Well said. "It's fine to speak for science on purely scientific matters." The thing about science is that one high-quality study is often all you need to have a lot of confidence. They don't need 100 experiments confirming the Higgs boson, they just needed one really good experiment. And bad studies can be summarily ignored for the purposes of fact finding. 100 bad studies are no better than one or zero. The only thing they tell you is an area that may be interesting to conduct a good study later. If there are a hundred high-quality studies saying one thing, and one high-quality study saying something else, then something very interesting is going on and everyone should pay close attention and get ready to learn something new. But this is very rare and is certainly not a situation where you want to inject politics. So the only time when it makes sense for science and politics to intersect is when you have one good study concluding something relevant to the policy decision, and no high-quality studies to the contrary. And in that case you only need to cite one study and be done with it -- you don't need to "speak for science". There is room to argue over the quality of experiments and studies, of course. And that's where the sparks should fly -- not over signatures on a report. If the results of one study are contended, it could go through some kind of extreme peer review that can re-analyze the results or question the data collection methods. The great thing about this is that laypersons will back out and wait, and the scientists and statisticians can argue in peace among their peers. When the smoke clears, then you can take those facts to the bank. This doesn't for scientific fields where study quality is a major problem (social sciences are hard and don't usually have nearly enough funding to produce quality studies -- or have funding from overly-interested parties). But in that case, you definitely should not lend undue weight to the claims by speaking for science.