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Again, you completely miss the point of the article. The article is not about Science! The article is about public perception of science. About how very valid

Again, you completely miss the point of the article. The article is not about Science! The article is about public perception of science. About how very valid criticism of bad science can be used to paint with an overly broad brush, and about how that rhetorical trick works well when convincing voters and/or policymakers to ignore good science. BTW, the piece quotes Steven Goodman -- one of the "good guys" leading the charge against unproducible social science -- making exactly this point. No one is making the case for letting bad science slide, least of all Steven Goodman. The things you are saying are true. But they have absolutely nothing to do with the article that they're attached to.

ghostcluster 9y ago
There is a whole paragraph from someone who "who researches the sociology of technology and scientific knowledge at Colorado State University, wrote in a 2008 paper about why objective knowledge is not enough to resolve environmental controversies" > These controversies are really about values, not scientific facts, and acknowledging that would allow us to have more truthful and productive debates. What would that look like in practice? Instead of cherry-picking evidence to support a particular view (and insisting that the science points to a desired action), the various sides could lay out the values they are using to assess the evidence. This is pushing the idea that the facts don't matter. What matters is "values" and emotions. It's an elaborate setup to push a view from certain segments of the humanities and social sciences to dismiss the epistemology of science and an "objective reality" entirely.
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  > This is pushing the idea that the facts don't matter Yes, but you seem to have confused the author's positive statement as a normative statement. The author of that quote is not saying that's how the world should ideally be. He's saying that's how the real world really fucking works. In other words, "The distinguished representative from Texas doesn't give a shit about science; he's made up his mind on climate change because there's a shitload of money at stake. If he can discredit good study X to weaken his opponent's point, or marshall shitty study Y to strengthen his own point, he'll do so. Because winning the political battle is more important than being 'correct'. So you're not going to convince him to change his mind by throwing science in his face." The author is NOT defending the not-so-hypothetical distinguished representative from Texas. He's just observing the fact that this is how certain people process scientific claims. Not as scientists, but as motivated reasoners and political operatives with a priori agendas. See also the discussion of the precautionary principle above for a less cut-and-dry example -- what's happening, in that case, is basically that two groups with different values are making different default assumptions about the level of confidence necessary to justify a decision. I.e., they have different values, and those values color the way in which they interpret the confidence intervals in studies on e.g. GMOs. You're confusing a description of the status quo for a defense of the status quo. This is a ridiculous straw-man. > What matters is "values" and emotions Again, the claim is not "values/emotions are objectively more important than science". The claim is "voters/lawmakers are more likely to be swayed by values/emotions than by science". Those are two very different claims. > It's an elaborate setup to push a view from certain segments of the humanities and social sciences to dismiss the epistemology of science and an "objective reality" entirely That's quite the conspiracy theory, given that the overall tenor of the piece is decidedly pulling in the other direction.

ghostcluster 9y ago

There is a whole paragraph from someone who "who researches the sociology of technology and scientific knowledge at Colorado State University, wrote in a 2008 paper about why objective knowledge is not enough to resolve environmental controversies" > These controversies are really about values, not scientific facts, and acknowledging that would allow us to have more truthful and productive debates. What would that look like in practice? Instead of cherry-picking evidence to support a particular view (and insisting that the science points to a desired action), the various sides could lay out the values they are using to assess the evidence. This is pushing the idea that the facts don't matter. What matters is "values" and emotions. It's an elaborate setup to push a view from certain segments of the humanities and social sciences to dismiss the epistemology of science and an "objective reality" entirely.

throwawayjava 9y ago
> This is pushing the idea that the facts don't matter Yes, but you seem to have confused the author's positive statement as a normative statement. The author of that quote is not saying that's how the world should ideally be. He's saying that's how the real world really fucking works. In other words, "The distinguished representative from Texas doesn't give a shit about science; he's made up his mind on climate change because there's a shitload of money at stake. If he can discredit good study X to weaken his opponent's point, or marshall shitty study Y to strengthen his own point, he'll do so. Because winning the political battle is more important than being 'correct'. So you're not going to convince him to change his mind by throwing science in his face." The author is NOT defending the not-so-hypothetical distinguished representative from Texas. He's just observing the fact that this is how certain people process scientific claims. Not as scientists, but as motivated reasoners and political operatives with a priori agendas. See also the discussion of the precautionary principle above for a less cut-and-dry example -- what's happening, in that case, is basically that two groups with different values are making different default assumptions about the level of confidence necessary to justify a decision. I.e., they have different values, and those values color the way in which they interpret the confidence intervals in studies on e.g. GMOs. You're confusing a description of the status quo for a defense of the status quo. This is a ridiculous straw-man. > What matters is "values" and emotions Again, the claim is not "values/emotions are objectively more important than science". The claim is "voters/lawmakers are more likely to be swayed by values/emotions than by science". Those are two very different claims. > It's an elaborate setup to push a view from certain segments of the humanities and social sciences to dismiss the epistemology of science and an "objective reality" entirely That's quite the conspiracy theory, given that the overall tenor of the piece is decidedly pulling in the other direction.