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> We have too many people thinking it's okay to discredit scientists and scholars because they don't understand how research works. And a similar number of peo

> We have too many people thinking it's okay to discredit scientists and scholars because they don't understand how research works. And a similar number of people who elevate science to the level of religion, marching in its name and developing a brand of hero worship for scientists when they too know nothing at all about the scientific process. Both are forms of anti-intellectualism that are growing in our polarized political environment.

smallnamespace 9y ago
I've seen this form of scientism playing out frequently on Reddit and other Internet forums lately. Discussion will be about some piece of controversial research, e.g. GMOs or vaccines. People who want to discuss the merits of the research are shouted down by what I can only describe as 'science fanbois' -- anything that is 'against science' must be wrong. They're missing the inherent tension in science between a received body of knowledge and the skepticism it takes to produce new knowledge.
- 0xfeba 9y ago
  > Some piece of controversial research, e.g. GMOs or vaccines Who or what determines what is controversial? To me, vaccines are not controversial at all. You can pick and choose specific ones to argue about, but the concept of vaccines is literally proven, beyond a doubt. As for GMOs, there's a lot more room but even still, the fundamentals are nothing controversial. This is also proven in pretty much anything you can buy in a grocery store today.
  - wutbrodo 9y ago
    Controversial literally just means that there's strong, polarizing disagreement. It's fairly well-defined, and vaccines definitely qualify. This doesn't mean that examining the actual positions of each side would lead you to conclude that they're of equal worth: it just describes the significant disagreement that exists. (As opposed to, say, the heliocentric model)
- simias 9y ago
  I don't think it's really about science, it's more about reddit. You'll find the same thing on any discussion on any somewhat popular subreddit regardless of the subject. There's almost always a reddit hivemind sanctioned Good Answer to any issue and if you stray away from the Good Path you'll get buried in downvotes, regardless of how much effort you put into arguing your point. Conversely if you make a completely useless one-liner comment agreeing with the Good Answer then you'll be showered with upvotes and propelled to the top of the page. Upvote/downvotes are de-facto agree/disagree buttons on reddit. As a forum it's completely useless to discuss anything beyond cat pictures and funny gifs.
  - RyanZAG 9y ago
    HN isn't all that different, so it's probably about more than just reddit. For example, you can post the same remarks criticizing functional programming in a post about C# or Java and get upvotes, while the same post in a Haskell discussion will be downvoted. You can try the experiment yourself to verify it. This applies to companies as well - you will be upvoted for pro-Microsoft or anti-Google posts in a news topic about Microsoft, and the reverse in a news topic about Google. This is because people who use Microsoft products will be very interested in Microsoft news, but not interested enough in Google news to go and downvote opinions they disagree with there.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > For example, you can post the same remarks criticizing functional programming in a post about C# or Java and get upvotes, while the same post in a Haskell discussion will be downvoted. It's simply unreasonsble to think that the value of a comment is independent of its context.
      - RyanZAG 9y ago
        Certainly, although it's clear that the largest part of the context would be the audience that the comment is exposed to. And it also shows that the upvote and downvote feature is not used correctly here either - it's used to promote or hide comments that the viewer agrees or disagrees with. Just the same as Reddit. It's a deeper issue than just being 'reddit', and it's more about online discussion in general.
- xenihn 9y ago
  >Discussion will be about some piece of controversial research, e.g. GMOs or vaccines. People who want to discuss the merits of the research are shouted down by what I can only describe as 'science fanbois' -- anything that is 'against science' must be wrong. Discussions on reddit (and all sorts of other social platforms) are being influenced and manipulated by people who are being paid to do so, and anyone who denies that at this point is delusional. Source: I know people who run firms that provide this service.
- Fomite 9y ago
  It's always fascinating to me how little some of these people understand science. There was a forum I frequented where there was a prolific "scientism" poster, and pretty much every time several of the working scientists on the site, myself included, were like "Um...that's not how this works."
- umbrellathorn 9y ago
  I was referring to the work one has to go through to get your research recognized in the scientific community, for example. I'm not "worshipping" science. I had in mind people who go on planes to disprove the earth being round, who believe crystals have actual healing powers, or people who refuse proven cancer treatment.
ardit33 9y ago
Say what? I'd say a "propper scientist" will know about the "scientific process" pretty well. Sure, there are plenty of pseudo scientists out there that promote their political or economic agendas, but you can't discredit all science because of that. Right now "hard" science is the best way to explain things around us and the universe. Sure, often it is wrong as new science gets discovered, but that's how human knowledge evolves. As for the "soft" sciences (anything social/psyc, etc), that's a completely different matter. They are more prone to trends, fads and more personal biases, hence I would put them in a different category.
- lazyasciiart 9y ago
  I think the sentence is meant as 'too many people who don't understand research and are therefore willing to discredit scientists'
- cloakandswagger 9y ago
  That was poor wording. It was in reference to the science "cheerleaders" who, from my own observations, are often equally as clueless about science as there anti-science counterparts.
- czep 9y ago
  > They are more prone to trends, fads and more personal biases This is not necessarily true, and I would urge caution when making such generalizations. There is junk social science and there is also plenty of junk "hard" science. Examples of fake data, political and personal biases interfering with the scientific method, occur in all fields. Some "fads" eventually become accepted fact. It took 100 years before plate tectonics was accepted by the majority of the scientific community, there are many such examples. Don't universally discount social science: it is just as important as physical science. We actually need more social scientists to help understand the reasons behind anti-science movements in the first place, and to help legitimize science as a process, critial thinking, and to debunk illogical arguments.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
    When you have prominent social scientists arguing that pointing out statistical errors in papers is "Methodological Terrorism" (http://andrewgelman.com/2016/09/21/what-has-happened-down-here-is-the-winds-have-changed/ http://andrewgelman.com/2016/09/21/what-has-happened-down-he...), I call that junk science. And if social scientists want to "help legitimize science as a process, critial thinking, and to debunk illogical arguments.", they should start with fixing their own reproducibility crisis and p-hacking crisis before instructing other people on science as a process.
simias 9y ago
"A similar number of people" developing a brand of hero worship for scientists? Maybe I'm hugely biased but that doesn't really mirror what I see online and elsewhere. Are you telling me that for every climate change denier, for every anti-vaxxer, for every creationist, for every chemtrail/tap water/moon landing/flat earth conspiracy theorist there's a rabid scientist who elevates the current scientific consensus to the level of religion? That's borderline whataboutism IMO.
- cloakandswagger 9y ago
  The "March for Science" that happened earlier this year had estimated attendance of 1.07 million. Now go to Google Images and search for "March for Science". Nearly every sign I see is either political in nature, elevating science to a level of religion/infallibility, or casting science as a fashion/meme ("Scientific is the new chic", "Science isn't wrong", "In science we trust").
  - dmschulman 9y ago
    Similar to Twitter, it's hard to nuance a complex thought on a garish protest sign. With the example of a sign reading "Sciences isn't wrong", that's not literally a statement of science's infallibility, it's just something some guy wrote on a sign. If you had a conversation with the individual I'm sure they would espouse to you what they meant with their sign. It feels like an act of willful ignorance to interpret the few words or catchy phrase on a protest sign and ascribe them as that person's core beliefs.
    - Domenic_S 9y ago
      That's part of the problem now though, there's no room for nuance. You almost HAVE to take an extreme position in order to be heard. For instance, the GP mentioned anti-vaxxers. There are many different kinds of "alternative" stances on vaccinations, and only one (very) extreme position is "vaccines cause autism". But if you mention anything about vaccines that isn't 100% of vaccines are amazing 100% of the time you are considered an "anti-vaxxer", lumped in with the vaccines-cause-autism crazies. Consider: I haven't made a judgement on vaccines in this comment, yet I guarantee you have a feeling/judgement about what you think I believe. Like I said, no room for nuance.
Fomite 9y ago
One thing I noticed going to a major conference in my academic field last year (IDWeek for those interested). Each and every one of the plenary speakers had some reference in their talks that betrayed a classic liberal arts education. The titans of a scientific field still valued arts, and history, and culture. And derived value from it. Hell, I'm a working scientist and one of the most valuable classes I ever had for thinking about the world was a feminist art history class.

smallnamespace 9y ago

I've seen this form of scientism playing out frequently on Reddit and other Internet forums lately. Discussion will be about some piece of controversial research, e.g. GMOs or vaccines. People who want to discuss the merits of the research are shouted down by what I can only describe as 'science fanbois' -- anything that is 'against science' must be wrong. They're missing the inherent tension in science between a received body of knowledge and the skepticism it takes to produce new knowledge.

0xfeba 9y ago
> Some piece of controversial research, e.g. GMOs or vaccines Who or what determines what is controversial? To me, vaccines are not controversial at all. You can pick and choose specific ones to argue about, but the concept of vaccines is literally proven, beyond a doubt. As for GMOs, there's a lot more room but even still, the fundamentals are nothing controversial. This is also proven in pretty much anything you can buy in a grocery store today.
- wutbrodo 9y ago
  Controversial literally just means that there's strong, polarizing disagreement. It's fairly well-defined, and vaccines definitely qualify. This doesn't mean that examining the actual positions of each side would lead you to conclude that they're of equal worth: it just describes the significant disagreement that exists. (As opposed to, say, the heliocentric model)
simias 9y ago
I don't think it's really about science, it's more about reddit. You'll find the same thing on any discussion on any somewhat popular subreddit regardless of the subject. There's almost always a reddit hivemind sanctioned Good Answer to any issue and if you stray away from the Good Path you'll get buried in downvotes, regardless of how much effort you put into arguing your point. Conversely if you make a completely useless one-liner comment agreeing with the Good Answer then you'll be showered with upvotes and propelled to the top of the page. Upvote/downvotes are de-facto agree/disagree buttons on reddit. As a forum it's completely useless to discuss anything beyond cat pictures and funny gifs.
- RyanZAG 9y ago
  HN isn't all that different, so it's probably about more than just reddit. For example, you can post the same remarks criticizing functional programming in a post about C# or Java and get upvotes, while the same post in a Haskell discussion will be downvoted. You can try the experiment yourself to verify it. This applies to companies as well - you will be upvoted for pro-Microsoft or anti-Google posts in a news topic about Microsoft, and the reverse in a news topic about Google. This is because people who use Microsoft products will be very interested in Microsoft news, but not interested enough in Google news to go and downvote opinions they disagree with there.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > For example, you can post the same remarks criticizing functional programming in a post about C# or Java and get upvotes, while the same post in a Haskell discussion will be downvoted. It's simply unreasonsble to think that the value of a comment is independent of its context.
    - RyanZAG 9y ago
      Certainly, although it's clear that the largest part of the context would be the audience that the comment is exposed to. And it also shows that the upvote and downvote feature is not used correctly here either - it's used to promote or hide comments that the viewer agrees or disagrees with. Just the same as Reddit. It's a deeper issue than just being 'reddit', and it's more about online discussion in general.
xenihn 9y ago
>Discussion will be about some piece of controversial research, e.g. GMOs or vaccines. People who want to discuss the merits of the research are shouted down by what I can only describe as 'science fanbois' -- anything that is 'against science' must be wrong. Discussions on reddit (and all sorts of other social platforms) are being influenced and manipulated by people who are being paid to do so, and anyone who denies that at this point is delusional. Source: I know people who run firms that provide this service.
Fomite 9y ago
It's always fascinating to me how little some of these people understand science. There was a forum I frequented where there was a prolific "scientism" poster, and pretty much every time several of the working scientists on the site, myself included, were like "Um...that's not how this works."
umbrellathorn 9y ago
I was referring to the work one has to go through to get your research recognized in the scientific community, for example. I'm not "worshipping" science. I had in mind people who go on planes to disprove the earth being round, who believe crystals have actual healing powers, or people who refuse proven cancer treatment.

ardit33 9y ago

Say what? I'd say a "propper scientist" will know about the "scientific process" pretty well. Sure, there are plenty of pseudo scientists out there that promote their political or economic agendas, but you can't discredit all science because of that. Right now "hard" science is the best way to explain things around us and the universe. Sure, often it is wrong as new science gets discovered, but that's how human knowledge evolves. As for the "soft" sciences (anything social/psyc, etc), that's a completely different matter. They are more prone to trends, fads and more personal biases, hence I would put them in a different category.

lazyasciiart 9y ago
I think the sentence is meant as 'too many people who don't understand research and are therefore willing to discredit scientists'
cloakandswagger 9y ago
That was poor wording. It was in reference to the science "cheerleaders" who, from my own observations, are often equally as clueless about science as there anti-science counterparts.
czep 9y ago
> They are more prone to trends, fads and more personal biases This is not necessarily true, and I would urge caution when making such generalizations. There is junk social science and there is also plenty of junk "hard" science. Examples of fake data, political and personal biases interfering with the scientific method, occur in all fields. Some "fads" eventually become accepted fact. It took 100 years before plate tectonics was accepted by the majority of the scientific community, there are many such examples. Don't universally discount social science: it is just as important as physical science. We actually need more social scientists to help understand the reasons behind anti-science movements in the first place, and to help legitimize science as a process, critial thinking, and to debunk illogical arguments.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
  When you have prominent social scientists arguing that pointing out statistical errors in papers is "Methodological Terrorism" (http://andrewgelman.com/2016/09/21/what-has-happened-down-here-is-the-winds-have-changed/ http://andrewgelman.com/2016/09/21/what-has-happened-down-he...), I call that junk science. And if social scientists want to "help legitimize science as a process, critial thinking, and to debunk illogical arguments.", they should start with fixing their own reproducibility crisis and p-hacking crisis before instructing other people on science as a process.

simias 9y ago

"A similar number of people" developing a brand of hero worship for scientists? Maybe I'm hugely biased but that doesn't really mirror what I see online and elsewhere. Are you telling me that for every climate change denier, for every anti-vaxxer, for every creationist, for every chemtrail/tap water/moon landing/flat earth conspiracy theorist there's a rabid scientist who elevates the current scientific consensus to the level of religion? That's borderline whataboutism IMO.

cloakandswagger 9y ago
The "March for Science" that happened earlier this year had estimated attendance of 1.07 million. Now go to Google Images and search for "March for Science". Nearly every sign I see is either political in nature, elevating science to a level of religion/infallibility, or casting science as a fashion/meme ("Scientific is the new chic", "Science isn't wrong", "In science we trust").
- dmschulman 9y ago
  Similar to Twitter, it's hard to nuance a complex thought on a garish protest sign. With the example of a sign reading "Sciences isn't wrong", that's not literally a statement of science's infallibility, it's just something some guy wrote on a sign. If you had a conversation with the individual I'm sure they would espouse to you what they meant with their sign. It feels like an act of willful ignorance to interpret the few words or catchy phrase on a protest sign and ascribe them as that person's core beliefs.
  - Domenic_S 9y ago
    That's part of the problem now though, there's no room for nuance. You almost HAVE to take an extreme position in order to be heard. For instance, the GP mentioned anti-vaxxers. There are many different kinds of "alternative" stances on vaccinations, and only one (very) extreme position is "vaccines cause autism". But if you mention anything about vaccines that isn't 100% of vaccines are amazing 100% of the time you are considered an "anti-vaxxer", lumped in with the vaccines-cause-autism crazies. Consider: I haven't made a judgement on vaccines in this comment, yet I guarantee you have a feeling/judgement about what you think I believe. Like I said, no room for nuance.

Fomite 9y ago

One thing I noticed going to a major conference in my academic field last year (IDWeek for those interested). Each and every one of the plenary speakers had some reference in their talks that betrayed a classic liberal arts education. The titans of a scientific field still valued arts, and history, and culture. And derived value from it. Hell, I'm a working scientist and one of the most valuable classes I ever had for thinking about the world was a feminist art history class.