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The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo. Think of the way pe

The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo. Think of the way people are castigated for not believing in scientific "truths". I see signs in peoples yard saying that "in this house, we believe science is real". As someone who has studied biochemistry for years, this kind of reverence for science is truly troubling. The one thing you learn in high level science is that nobody really knows what they're talking about, paradigms shift, and further study is required. Blind devotion and rejection of different viewpoints is dangerous regardless of which cause is being dogmatically held. This article is ironically akin to the 'The Preaching of St Paul', except that instead of burning Galileo's work, the author is trying to burn religious texts and dissenting viewpoints to their "settled science".

justintrtle 8y ago
I usually take statements similar to "in this house, we believe science is real" as conveying the message that the people believe in the scientific method, rational inquiry, evidence-based arguments, etc, rather than a set of specific scientific theories.
- unknownkadath 8y ago
  I mean, it's obviously a joke, right? Also, the Simpsons did it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vxHkAQRQUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vxHkAQRQUQ
- ummonk 8y ago
  In my experience, the people who proclaim this are generally not talking about the scientific method, but about specific theories. Generally evolution and climate change (and the safety of vaccination is becoming an issue as well). It's amazing for example how many of these people will turn around and believe hormone-replacement therapy creates a level playing field in sports between trans-women and cis-women.
  - metalchianti 8y ago
    I agree. Believing in science seems to imply "dogmatism for the 4 or 5 highly politicized scientific talking points in the mainstream narrative."
    - ConceptJunkie 8y ago
      This is exactly right. The average non-scientist proclaiming his support for science is exactly that.
    - opportune 8y ago
      I don't see that as a bad thing. With religion, upwards of 90% of people don't really know shit about actual theology or anything of that nature (i.e. the reasoning behind beliefs). They just know some basic beliefs about their sect because their pastor told them so and their parents probably believing the same thing. Similarly, wre can't really expect everyone to know or care why evolution/heliocentrism is a settled topic but it's really helpful for them to trust the scientific process regardless.
      - icelancer 8y ago
        > trust the scientific process This would be fine (mostly). But this isn't what they mean. They believe scientists. Not the methods. This defeats the entire purpose of science.
  - happytoexplain 8y ago
    >It's amazing for example how many of these people will turn around and believe hormone-replacement therapy creates a level playing field in sports between trans-women and cis-women. I find it hard to believe that you've found such a specific correlation in a domain where the numbers are large and half the equation is so nebulous ("these people", i.e. people who often say out loud "we believe in science in this household"??). This is ripe with identity politics, and you're almost certainly projecting your feelings about "those people" as though there is a real correlation that makes "those people" worthy of condemnation.
- mensetmanusman 8y ago
  They are also usually the hardest to convince that coal plants release more radioactivity than nuclear plants.
devoply 8y ago
Episteme is always political once it gets societal acceptance and there is little difference between it and doxa. Techné is what actually does all the work and though you can find how to do it through episteme or doxa, it does not actually depend on them -- it does not matter what you believe as long as you know how to do something. At the end of the day humans really only have techné, everything else is political... and it's also obvious that the political is generally dysfunctional scientifically -- i.e. inability to manage stability of the environment through science... and also scientifically managing the political is fascist or totalitarian. We get stuck with a set of choices that don't lead to good outcomes... maybe can never lead to good outcomes.
- voidhorse 8y ago
  If you dig into some Philosophy of Technology you'll find that Techne, too, is often highly politicized and not easily separable from the knowledge or outcomes it is devised to produce. Techne is already political to the extent that it needs a motivation to get going in the first place--it's really impossible to think of technology's social effects in a way that is not informed by historical materialism. The hows are necessarily coupled with the whys and the belief systems behind them, especially when you consider the fact that in many cases there are multiple ways of getting things done, and the selection of one of these over the others comes down to value judgements (e.g. consider how many technical possibilities are deemed unsatisfactory because of exorbitant costs, this is the manifestation of a value judgement that places finances above other considerations that factor into a particular issue such as e.g. in some cases thoroughness or safety). Not to mention the whole field of techniques that don't make sense divorced from an epistemic context (e.g. the technicalities of performing a ritual sacrifice are partly determined by the belief system backing them--remove this belief system or exchange it with another and there's no way to even make sense of the practice as a technique. I.e. under the ancient greek religious system the procedure of visiting an oracle to glean information was technical and important. Within the context of modern beliefs such a procedure seems patently ridiculous, but it wasn't for the Greeks, and the deployment of the technique still had significant effects and consequences, and produced results in spite of its patent preposterousness from our modern day epistemic viewpoint). Some of Robert Moses's schemes are a great example. Consider, for instance, how he hoped to deny whole segments of the population in NY access to his parks by making overpasses en route to the spaces too low for buses (which serval poor folks relied on to get around) to travel under. The application of technology and techniques is fundamentally entangled with the wills of the subjects employing said techniques. I'd go as far as to say human life is inherently "political" in all its aspects. You can't really live and not be politicized in some way--the really baad state to be in is to be unconscious of the political implications of the way you live, which primes you for manipulation by parties that are more 'in the know'. This idea that certain realms of life are free from political influence or external factors doesn't really have any representatives in the real world. I think people often confuse our ability to treat something abstractly and divorced from the concrete situation of present reality with the ontological claim that said thing itself is abstract and can be wholly treated and solved in an abstract manner. That doesn't even hold in the case of a domain as fundamentally abstract as algorithmic time analysis, in which the concrete inputs have a direct impact on the performance of algorithms. In the jargon of historical materialist philosophy such a process is sometimes called reification--thinking the abstract representation of a concept is the thing itself, ignoring all its concrete manifestations. This leads to certain errors. E.g. thinking we can solve problems with schooling in a particular district without having to look at other issues, such as the population dispersion, the distribution of finances, the district's layout, etc. etc. We have to be vigilant of 'nounifying' abstractions and keep in mind that they are the products of thought and a helpful intellectual tool, and means of orienting and structuring the world, not latent realities.
cameronh90 8y ago
People may confuse believing in the scientific method for believing in the current scientific consensus, which as you point out is fluid. However, for the average person, a dogmatic belief in the scientific method would be a huge step up over religion.
- war1025 8y ago
  That wouldn't be a step up over religion, that would just be religion.
  - dymk 8y ago
    Religion and science derive understanding about the world in fundamentaly different and incompatible ways. To call it religion is just incorrect.
    - war1025 8y ago
      Science is just systematic problem solving. It is a very unremarkable thing. When people build it up to something more than that, then it takes on aspects of religion. A scientist doing science isn't religion. A non-scientist believing everything someone says "because science" is.
    - dnautics 8y ago
      As a scientist here's my take: 1) in the ultimate abstraction, science is a religion. It depends on the precept that the rules are more or less or measurably the same from today to yesterday to tomorrow. You can't bootstrap empiricism without begging the question, so, there is at least one item of faith at the core. 2) excepting this, science in the ideal is indeed a wholly different beast. So you could say it is this the weakest form of religion, or, at least, the religion with the fewest dependencies. 3) in practice, the edifice of science is quite full of people who are hypocritical and flagrantly breaking the rules which you expect would be necessary to maintain the high standard that marks the difference between religion and science. These violations are often swept under the rug quietly and even when they get really big the organization is incredibly good at closing its ranks. I'd say there are a lot of parallels between the science industrial complex and, highly organized religions (such as megachurches and hierarchical institutions like the Southern Baptist or Catholic Church) than most people who see science as a source of power ought to be comfortable with.
x220 8y ago
>The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo. I wish. In the US a huge number of people (large enough to be dangerous) reject climate change consensus, think that evolution shouldn't be taught in schools, are "skeptical" about vaccinating their children (I use quotes because skepticism implies reasonableness), think that the earth is 6000 years old, or think that abstinence-only sex education is effective. Blind adherence to current scientific consensus (whatever that may be) would be better than the hot mess is going on in the US right now. Not enough people in the US actually believe in scientific consensus in general for this to be a significant problem yet.
- jvreagan 8y ago
  > In the US a huge number of people (large enough to be dangerous) reject climate change consensus You just proved the parent's point...
  - x220 8y ago
    How so?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - dexen 8y ago
      Quoting verbatim from the GGP, >Think of the way people are castigated for not believing in scientific "truths" and > the author is trying to burn religious texts and dissenting viewpoints to their "settled science".
      - unknownkadath 8y ago
        If "skeptics" understood what the Navier-Stokes equations do, it would be easier to sympathize.
- gus_massa 8y ago
happytoexplain 8y ago
There is a difference between being skeptical of scientifically-arrived-at conclusions (which is healthy and I don't share your opinion that people are largely "castigated" for that) and explicitly ignoring science, and experts in general, based purely on the fact that their conclusions conflict with one's socio-political convictions, which I think is a real problem that people may feel castigated for falling into (which of course doesn't help). If anything has the ring of religious superiority to it, it's this trend of elevating skepticism to denial simply for political reasons.
- pdonis 8y ago
  > it's this trend of elevating skepticism to denial simply for political reasons Well, there's just as much of a trend of claiming your position is "science" when it isn't, simply for political reasons. For example, by any reasonable standards, economics is not a science; yet people who question the current orthodoxy in economics, for example by questioning whether having the Federal Reserve print money is really a good idea, are routinely castigated. Ron Paul became a nonstarter as a Presidential candidate for precisely this reason.
  - agent008t 8y ago
    The problem is the level of debate in society in general, and in particular when it comes to political economy. The debate is basically non-existent. You don't get it in Congress/Senate/Parliament. You don't get it on the news channels. You sometimes - very rarely - still get it on the radio. I want to see two people with opposing views debate a single issue for 2-3 hours, without being allowed to evade answering a question. Would happily pay a subscription fee to get that.
    - pdonis 8y ago
      I agree the level of debate in our society is typically awful. However, in many cases, better debate won't fix the problem, because the problem in many cases is not that the "right" views aren't getting air time. The problem in many cases is that we can't even do controlled experiments in the domain, so our understanding is very limited and we simply don't know enough about the domain to give useful input to public policy decisions. For example, I think that's true of economics; nobody knows enough about economics to give useful input about most public policies.
ConceptJunkie 8y ago
I would guarantee that someone who sees it necessary to state his or her attitude in this way about science has an attitude that is very colored by politics, and is likely not to know much about science in the first place. The trend of virtue signaling through yard signs is the most ridiculous thing I've seen in an era where ridiculousness has become the norm.
oarabbus_ 8y ago
When you're debating with someone about how the Higgs Field does or doesn't imply the existence of fundamental particles, or how neutrinos do or don't move faster than light, then yes, appeal to scientific authority is "troubling" as you mention. But when we are talking about vaccines, flat earthers, etc, then how can you possibly justify that it's bad for >people are castigated for not believing in scientific "truths". ? Perhaps flat earthers is a silly but harmless phenomenon, but there is real pain and suffering from other kinds of science denial such as the antivaxxers.
scotty79 8y ago
> The one thing you learn in high level science is that nobody really knows what they're talking about, paradigms shift, and further study is required. High level science is on the borders of vast body of scientific knowledge. It's only to be expected that people who work there don't know much about the things they try to figure out. What they know a whole lot about is the foundation of that vast body of scientific knowledge they try to build new understanding upon. Nobody expects reverence at high levels of science. But a little bit of reverence for scientfic method and for what vast knowledge science was able to establish without a dubt so far would be nice. Established science is not what's in the news. It's mostly what's in the textbooks. News pretty much broke the public relationship towards science.
- spraak 8y ago
  Pluto as a planet was established science for a long time. Textbooks are probably the biggest examples of "settled science" that is out of date.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    The definition of a planet is not science, it's just an arbitrary rule.
    - umvi 8y ago
      > it's just an arbitrary rule. Same with the definition of mental conditions. Yet people wield the DSM as science and use it to bludgeon people who are not politically in line with their worldview on mental health
      - XorNot 8y ago
        What in the heck are you even referring to here? Seems like there's a lot of context missing from this comment.
        umvi 8y ago
CharlesColeman 8y ago
> The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo. Think of the way people are castigated for not believing in scientific "truths". IIRC, the term for this is "scientism," and I don't think it's restricted to just members of the general public. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
mbostleman 8y ago
I think the problem is that increasingly science ends up getting used like a human shield to justify government action. When this happens the science ends up getting distorted in both directions - deniers and "believers" - based not on any actual science but on one's political bubble preference. If the data were available, it would be interesting to see the correlation between this distortion of science and the size of the government in relation to GDP.
balabaster 8y ago
I believe this is a public perception problem. The reason that a troubling number of people no longer believe in science isn't that scientific method is flawed or that people don't believe in scientific method. The bigger concern is the way that scientific studies are mounted, paid for by interested parties that have conflicts of interest to produce results favourable to a desired outcome and then they're presented as science instead of politics. When one can't trust the information they're looking at without having to dig into the political backing of the study and the results and without having to wonder which outliers have been trimmed to further hammer home the point of the stakeholders, we're no longer looking at science, we're looking at propaganda. So the problem isn't science. The problem is the manner in which science is being subverted for financial gain. That's not science. This is why science is losing credibility and authority outside of scientific circles. If you want credibility and authority, you have to not only act with integrity, you have to be seen to be acting with integrity. It does't matter how honest your study or how objective your results, if people look at your study and see that it was funded by Monsanto and makes Monsanto look good, it looks like Monsanto paid for a study to make Monsanto look good and therefore it's biased and can be ignored. This is life. If you want to be seen as having integrity, you have to act with integrity. And when people who were already distrusting of the way science is presented in the media are being told that they can't trust the media by authority figures, as ridiculous as those authority figures may be, eventually people stop listening until the furor abates.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  I would say that an even larger problem exists. Among the public, science has always had some portion of people who understood it's processes as those of a secular priesthood and those who understood it's processes as discovering the truth through skepticism and experimentation. Even among this working scientists, this division has existed (and given a society that never discarded religion, anti-science along with anti-intellectual views have naturally always been part of American thought). The problem today is two-fold. Aside from the corruption of scientific processes others have noted, the other aspect is the majority of people aren't seeing the material gains that science offers the world - science is broadly part of progress and when the average American's life expectancy and median income isn't increasing, why would they believe in progress?
hashmap 8y ago
Comparing book burning, jailing, and being murdered to getting made fun of on internet dot com is just not compelling. The whole "but science is just as bad as religion" argument rings quite hollow.
- yters 8y ago
  "Scientific authority" is the source of the genocides of the 20th century, mass sterilization, what we now consider crackpot science, and many social ills. I would say it is actually worse than the religious authority of the past.
  - salty_biscuits 8y ago
    "x authority" has been a large source of problems all through human history. Insert religious, ethical, scientific, political, etc, etc. Biggest problem with science is that it has enabled excesses for those in power (be it authoritarian, communist, capitalist, whatever), while somehow remaining meek and pretending to be amoral. It is easy to take the benefits of Science without bothering to learn what it has to say about anything else.
  - hashmap 8y ago
    Saying "the Nazis had doctors, therefore the lawn signs today are actually worse than religious atrocities of the past" is an equally unconvincing argument.
spraak 8y ago
Thank you for your insightful summary. I have heard very often lately that "the science is settled about X" and that this sentiment is exactly anti science is not observed. I agree, it troubles me. I don't advocate for the fallacy of futility that nothing of science can be built upon a potentially soon to be false idea, but it's equally frustrating that the opposite - an appeal to authority in the name of science? - is so widely held onto.
everdev 8y ago
> nobody really knows what they're talking about, paradigms shift, and further study is required People so often miss this. Science is a slow, evolving and never ending process. The day a new study comes out, people want to use it as evidence that something is 'settled science'. Even things as fundamental to our knowledge of the universe like gravity have evolved over time and are still being understood at deeper and deeper levels.
- notyourday 8y ago
  > People so often miss this. Science is a slow, evolving and never ending process. The day a new study comes out, people want to use it as evidence that something is 'settled science'. Unless it is AGW. That's settled science and 99.9% of scientists agree with Al Gore even though in 1970s we were heading for Global Cooling and that was settled science. That's the fundamental problem: how difficult is it to say "Based on the data that we currently have we are coming to a conclusion that there's X% likelihood we are heading towards a period where the global temperatures would be rise by Y degrees by year Z. Should we get different data we will re-evaluate our prognosis"
  - everdev 8y ago
    > Unless it is AGW That's the catch is that even things that have overwhelming scientific consensus are not "settled science". There's always more data to collect and more theories to test. I'm not saying that we shouldn't believe the data or act on the conclusions, far from it. I just don't agree with using the absolute term "settled science". It's not like there's an equation everyone agrees on or a reproducible experiment we can run. We're still learning as we go and revising projections frequently. But there's no shame in making personal or political decisions based on our best scientific understanding of the day, we do it all the time and it would be just as big of a mistake to act like we know nothing about climate change as acting like we already know everything.
    - notyourday 8y ago
      That's exactly the point: if one wants to be taken seriously one's predictions either have to pan out or the predictions should come with a caveat. When the predictions do not pan out one should not expect the population to trust one's future predictions as much.
buboard 8y ago
skepticism is in short supply nowadays
mwfunk 8y ago
Where have you seen a sign like that? Like what country, and what part of that country? If it's in America, I wouldn't interpret those sorts of signs as evidence of a religious attachment to science, but rather a reaction against the tsunami of anti-science sentiment that has taken over the Republican base and the people they vote into office. The Republican Party has spent the last 10/30/50 years (depending on which historical inflection points people focus on) courting Evangelicals (who themselves are a religious demographic almost entirely unique to the US) and feeding into all of their fears/hatreds/insecurities in order to get their votes and their money. If you've seen signs like that on American lawns, there's like a 99% chance that that phrasing is an intentional low-key troll vs. Evangelicals and their choice of words when they pick and choose what to believe in from both science and their own religion, and how they choose to defend those beliefs. People not "believing" in science is a huge freaking problem, and is just one of many symptoms of the hellbound handbasket America finds itself in right now. Science by definition is not something you choose to have faith in or not. The only way to disagree with science is more science that disproves the previously accepted science, it's not a choice of faith or belief. The way you can tell that science doesn't function as a faith-based enterprise is the fact that one of the greatest accomplishments a scientist could have is disproving long-held scientific assumptions, which itself can only happen with reproducible results. For example, a Pew Research poll from several years ago showed that fully 2/3 of self-identified Republican voters were Young Earth Evangelicals, meaning they believe that the planet is ~6000 years old and any evidence to the contrary is either wrong, or a literal test of faith by an apparently insecure deity who will only be satisfied by the basest, most unthinking fealty imaginable. That's obviously going to have an impact over the long term. What does this lead to? People like Lamar Smith being made the chair of the House Science Committee. Someone who literally doesn't "believe" in science, who has used his authority for the last 6 years to literally squash scientific research that didn't lead to the predetermined conclusions that his faith (and more likely, his donors and voters) assures him are true. TL;DR I am not at all remotely concerned about people putting signs on their lawns stating that their household believes in science. It's a couple decades too late but whatever. It's a sad world we live in where that's something that anyone feels like they need to publicly state support for.
libraryatnight 8y ago
I think people put signs up like that because there's a culture of anti-fact, anti-science, generally anti-thought growing and becoming more vocal and a sign or bumper sticker might make people feel like they're fighting back. I admire science, I'm aware that part of science is challenging itself and new understanding can unravel previous notion. I don't really know of any science enthusiasts that want to burn the religious or their texts (well, I did as a teenager, but they grew out of it), but I know more than a few religious who want science out of their schools, deeply believe religion should be more involved in our government, and let's not forget the anti-vaccination movement. These people are neighbors and co-workers, and while they themselves are generally not horrible people those sorts of ambitions feel dangerous at best. Anyway, my point is - I would rather have a problem with overenthusiastic science fans that could use some perspective, than a problem of people not vaccinating their children and "rolling coal"
- mensetmanusman 8y ago
  It’s really anti-authoritarianism. When people have lost faith in every institution, it is hard to trust the govt. to work nicely with massive corporations to inject needles in their children, especially in an environment where half the kids aren’t living in iron lungs.
  - libraryatnight 8y ago
    It's seems like a dumb brand of anti-authoritarianism. I think you're right, but so much of it is self defeating if it weren't actually causing problems it'd be comical. It's also a weird reaction to corporate distrust since a great many of these people are conservative, and the GOP seems slightly more up the butt of the mega corps.
    - mensetmanusman 8y ago
      The GOP leadership, for sure. The rank and file are conservative mainly for social reasons.
Barrin92 8y ago
>in this house, we believe science is real Or maybe those people, even if they don't have much of a grasp on the scientific method, see the material progress and results of scientific work and conclude that they're going to place trust in scientific authority? This is an entirely false equivalence. One can trust scientists even without understanding science, on the fact alone that research produces results that everyone can observe. To suggest that we have too uncritical of an opinion of scientific research in an age were medieval diseases make a comeback because people aren't getting vaccinated, climate change is routinely ignored, and an atheistic scientist would likely not be able to run for high office based on that fact alone, is a joke to be honest.
- yters 8y ago
  Isn't trusting authority contrary to trusting science? The point of science is that we can verify truths for ourselves without relying on authority. Hence, if any authority, 'scientific' or otherwise, asserts their authority instead of providing individually verifiable evidence of its claims, then we can say they are being unscientific, regardless of title.
  - Barrin92 8y ago
    I don't think that's the point of science at all to be honest. The point of scientific endeavour is to discover facts about the world. That's a really hard job, and the majority of people are not scientists, and even a trained scientist cannot verify the overwhelming majority of existing science by themselves, which means that science, like any other sufficiently large human collaboration, requires institutions, trust and authority. The difference between scientific and religious institutions is not that the former functions without authority or trust, it's that the success of the former is measured against observable and replicable results and material progress and not based on infallible spiritual promise. So if someone understands nothing about science at all, and worships it like a religion, at least they had the good sense of picking a religion that puts food on their table, makes their planes stay in the sky and makes them healthy again when they fall sick.
    - 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
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matthewdgreen 8y ago
I don’t think those signs indicate blind, unquestioning support for “scientific truths” as practiced by some mythical scientific priesthood. They are a response to a troubling political tendency that has made the evaluation of certain scientific findings into a question of political and tribal beliefs rather than one that involves proper skepticism, education and scientific investigation. If the situation was that there was a strong evidence-based disagreement about scientific findings, those signs wouldn’t be necessary. The situation is instead that a vast number of scientists are producing findings that contradict certain political preferences, and the response has not been a deeper investigation made in good faith — but rather an outright political rejection of the findings. “I support science” is not shorthand for “I take every scientific study as fact because scientists are gods,” but rather “I am inclined to give weight to scientific arguments in either direction as opposed to political arguments that reject those findings based on non-scientific reasoning.”
- weberc2 8y ago
  > The situation is instead that a vast number of scientists are producing findings that contradict certain political preferences, and the response has not been a deeper investigation made in good faith — but rather an outright political rejection of the findings. How does a layperson make a deeper investigation on their own? The research is typically paywalled, the jargon is inaccessible, the experiments are prohibitively expensive, etc etc. In effect, there is a priestly caste, and one which arguably excludes from the debate members of the skeptic's tribe (i.e., "people the skeptic might trust to address their concerns"). This is why heterodoxy and political diversity in the academy is soooo important. You might be inclined to say something like "conservatives select out of the academy" or "it's not my fault reality has a liberal bias" and you might even be right, but I don't think you'll find climate change very sympathetic to your position. In other words, this isn't affirmative action for conservatives, it's affirmative action (of conservatives) for the benefit of humanity. Disclaimers: I'm picking 'conservatives' and 'liberals' here because that's clearly the bent of the article. I'm also picking climate change since it seems to be the favorite example of science denialism. Of course, contrary to the angle of this article, science denialism isn't even an exclusively conservative phenomenon (blank slatism is a favorite of anti-science leftists--including leftist academics--and flat-earth and anti-vax are bipartisan beliefs).
shirakawasuna 8y ago
"We believe science is real" is not a statement of dogmatic belief in scientific conclusions, it is a reaction to anti-scientific movements that attempt to influence the public perception of science. It is usually primarily directed at the moneyed interests opposed to climate science and the impacts it predicts, though it also deals with related issues impacting health and the environment. If you spend a cursory time searching for that statement, you'll find that it's associated with the March for Science, which is, itself, a reaction to active and successful attempts at having persons in government distort, remove, and ignore science that flies in the face of moneyed interests. By the way, just about everything you know about Galileo re: perception and persecution is wrong.
root_axis 8y ago
Let's not be coy. Laypeople don't have a compelling reason or the expertise necessary to dispute or vociferously defend any scientific conclusions, at the end of the day, there is no science involved here, it's all about politics. Whichever side of the debate you come down on with regard to climate change, vaccines, evolution, the shape of the earth etc, the people in these debates don't really care about science, they only care about policy.
incompatible 8y ago
Alright, say I want to replace my dogmatic belief that scientific methods are the best way of understanding the Universe. What should I replace it with?
- effie 8y ago
  That there are also different methods, and sometimes they are useful.
realpeople 8y ago
Getting people to trust science is a matter of persuasion, not of “establishing scientific authority”. What's the difference? One is about acknowledging people and their needs and seeking their well-being; the other is viewing things as a political tussle for power and anxiety about people who don't seem to be on the same “side” as you. --- There's a beautiful article that I think serves as a model example. In the field of education, there's a certain idea that's believed by many teachers, but which scientists (in cognitive psychology / learning science) know to be a myth. Against this background, this article (“Why mythbusting fails”) discusses why the scientists' approach towards transmitting this knowledge fails to convince its audience. It is worth reading, because it is really about persuasion, about dealing with disagreements between people: https://deansforimpact.org/why-mythbusting-fails-a-guide-to-influencing-education-with-science/ https://deansforimpact.org/why-mythbusting-fails-a-guide-to-... --- Science is many things: 1. A wonderful method for arriving at reliable knowledge. The best we have. 2. The set of facts accumulated via that method. This set will always be tentative, incomplete and contain some fraction of false positives. 3. The set of facts believed by professional scientists today. What would be good for people to trust would be (1) > (2) > (3), but for people taking sides, the priority is inverted: they care more that people be on the side of science (against religion or whatever), than that they apply the scientific method wherever possible. --- In his books like The Mosaic Distinction and the Price of Monotheism, the author Jan Assmann discusses the idea of “counterreligions”. Though many people in Western society may no longer be religious in one sense, they still retain certain attitudes picked up from it, like the missionary/crusader zeal of treating those who do not believe in the same things as them as enemies needing to be either converted or fought, general condescension towards “heathens”, etc. We see this in discussions about politics or nearly anything, where people neatly get polarized into opposing sides rather than a gradual spectrum as one may expect. --- In this very article, see things like: > Science denial, however, is like crime: combating it requires… (treating disbelievers as heretics to be fought) > Galileo cleverly acknowledged the values of his enemies. I don't know about Galileo's views, but why view acknowledgement of others' values as merely a “clever” device? How about replacing “cleverly” with “sincerely”, and “enemies” with “real people we'd like to persuade”?
eplanit 8y ago
The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo. Yes; and, it's weaponized for political discourse. It's as though we're in some kind of new Puritan era -- this reminds me of how John Cleese was blasted for tweeting on this very topic (3 years ago)[1]. He blasphemed. [1] https://twitter.com/johncleese/status/683681888687538177?lang=en https://twitter.com/johncleese/status/683681888687538177?lan...
- tannerbrockwell 8y ago
  So good it must be quoted in it's entirety: "I would like 2016 to be the year when people remembered that science is a method of investigation,and NOT a belief system" @JohnCleese [1] 8:10 AM - 3 Jan 2016 [2] [1] https://twitter.com/JohnCleese https://twitter.com/JohnCleese [2] https://twitter.com/JohnCleese/status/683681888687538177 https://twitter.com/JohnCleese/status/683681888687538177
analog31 8y ago
During the time of Galileo, religion was a plurality of truths, all irreconcilable, and at war with one another. There was no settled religion in any broad sense.
x0f1a 8y ago
I’ve concluded something similar lately. Humans always needed stable shared rules that envolve slowly to have funcional societies with multiple generations. This was attained with a shared culture plus religion. The science was not considered the main driver for these social rules. Since the fall of the religions in the west we have been using science to partially rationalize our view of the world, as result science became a battleground for ideologies and consequently became corrupted, it lost its neutrality. Each side of the spectrum wants to use science to support their personal beliefs. I start to have this crazy idea that to save science we have to stop using it in political discussions, so far I think political discussions should rely only in democracy, continuity and shared values. Funny thing is that we tried before to replace replace religion during the French Revolution: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason Lacking common moral values from one authority we look for it in another, now we have science being used as religious authority instead of being the refuge of questioning and doubt.
8bitsrule 8y ago
Completely agreed. One analyzable example of this faith in 'the truths' of science can be found in the editing of Wikipedia. In my experience, there's low tolerance or regard for alternative hypotheses in its articles. That approach has long been highly costly for science. Even Sagan, now and then, recognized the necessity for caution ... and he put it on videotape. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system. The history of our study of our solar system shows clear that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong, and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources. - Cosmos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MlN7iVIuhk#t=4m09s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MlN7iVIuhk#t=4m09s)
tomrod 8y ago
People like to be right, and don't like to invest time in thought. Hence why the bandwagon effect works.
asabjorn 8y ago
The argument that science is a social construct is easily disproven by the device you are typing this on, which is build upon science. However, the claim that some science is more believable than other science is obviously correct. Science is a network of knowledge [1] where central nodes can be assumed to be more likely an accurate representation of something predictive. The literature critical theory claim that it is arbitrary does not acknowledge those relationships, effectively missing the forest for the trees which also explains the shoddy science done in critical theory’s name. Science is progressed by building new leaf nodes and supporting them through other nodes as evidence, or by showing that core nodes are not as predictive as you thought they were. [1] https://youtu.be/bxdBRKmPhe4 https://youtu.be/bxdBRKmPhe4
- tannerbrockwell 8y ago
  When you point to point to your computer, you are confusing a 'Technology' with Science. They are different. As for first principles, starting with Francis Bacon's Baconian method is the investigative method that would benefit here: [1] "Bacon suggests that you draw up a list of all things in which the phenomenon you are trying to explain occurs, as well as a list of things in which it does not occur. Then you rank your lists according to the degree in which the phenomenon occurs in each one. Then you should be able to deduce what factors match the occurrence of the phenomenon in one list and don't occur in the other list, and also what factors change in accordance with the way the data had been ranked." Thus we see that predictive is less important than reproducibility, which is currently in this era approaching a crisis point. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baconian_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baconian_method [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
  - asabjorn 8y ago
    I agree reproducibility is an issue, especially in psychology that is slowly becoming a science right now. There it’s actially a good sign, since now psychology has a methodology we can use as a standard bearer to spot issues. In other humanities that like to call themselves science we unfortunately even lack such a methodology. From first principles technology is definitely applied science through engineering, but technology is progressed through pushing the boundaries of science and science is the map of where to look. Eg quantum mechanics and optics helped create a map of where to look for new nano scale technology innovations. Technolofy shows the reproducibility of the theories it’s build upon. The computer is build by innovations created using the predictive powers of material science, quantum mechanics and chemistry. How do you think the optics used to create the processors were created? The advanced etching technologies to get to decreasing nm processor scale? Materials that respond reliably to store energy in batteries or power puxels in your screen?
lutorm 8y ago
"The one thing you learn in high level science is that nobody really knows what they're talking about, paradigms shift, and further study is required." That's true, but it's the best we've got. Not believing in science is different from disagreeing with conclusions of studies based on data. But just saying "science is flawed so I'm not going to believe it" makes no sense at all, because all other alternatives are worse.
jancsika 8y ago
> I see signs in peoples yard saying that "in this house, we believe science is real". As someone who has studied biochemistry for years, this kind of reverence for science is truly troubling. At least in the South, that sign would be in opposition to "teaching the controversy" of Creation vs. Evolution in high schools. Would it be "reverent" to fight to keep non-scientific and indeed proven bad faith attempts at undermining science out of the science classroom?
solipsism 8y ago
You know you're on shaky ground when you take the most absurd interpretation of something and then argue against it. "We believe science is real" is such a modest, uncontroversial statement. The idea that you'd see it and rail against some imagined dogmatic strawman really says more about you than it does about them.
justanotherjoe 8y ago
> The one thing you learn in high level science is that nobody really knows what they're talking about, paradigms shift, and further study is required When you wrote that, what were you thinking of, specifically? I don't know what you are referencing. Also I'm curious, are there any big mysteries left in the field of biochemistry?
dragonwriter 8y ago
> The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo. No, it's not. Heck, the way the public considers religion today is closer to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo than is the way the public considers science.

justintrtle 8y ago

I usually take statements similar to "in this house, we believe science is real" as conveying the message that the people believe in the scientific method, rational inquiry, evidence-based arguments, etc, rather than a set of specific scientific theories.

unknownkadath 8y ago
I mean, it's obviously a joke, right? Also, the Simpsons did it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vxHkAQRQUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vxHkAQRQUQ
ummonk 8y ago
In my experience, the people who proclaim this are generally not talking about the scientific method, but about specific theories. Generally evolution and climate change (and the safety of vaccination is becoming an issue as well). It's amazing for example how many of these people will turn around and believe hormone-replacement therapy creates a level playing field in sports between trans-women and cis-women.
- metalchianti 8y ago
  I agree. Believing in science seems to imply "dogmatism for the 4 or 5 highly politicized scientific talking points in the mainstream narrative."
  - ConceptJunkie 8y ago
    This is exactly right. The average non-scientist proclaiming his support for science is exactly that.
  - opportune 8y ago
    I don't see that as a bad thing. With religion, upwards of 90% of people don't really know shit about actual theology or anything of that nature (i.e. the reasoning behind beliefs). They just know some basic beliefs about their sect because their pastor told them so and their parents probably believing the same thing. Similarly, wre can't really expect everyone to know or care why evolution/heliocentrism is a settled topic but it's really helpful for them to trust the scientific process regardless.
    - icelancer 8y ago
      > trust the scientific process This would be fine (mostly). But this isn't what they mean. They believe scientists. Not the methods. This defeats the entire purpose of science.
- happytoexplain 8y ago
  >It's amazing for example how many of these people will turn around and believe hormone-replacement therapy creates a level playing field in sports between trans-women and cis-women. I find it hard to believe that you've found such a specific correlation in a domain where the numbers are large and half the equation is so nebulous ("these people", i.e. people who often say out loud "we believe in science in this household"??). This is ripe with identity politics, and you're almost certainly projecting your feelings about "those people" as though there is a real correlation that makes "those people" worthy of condemnation.
mensetmanusman 8y ago
They are also usually the hardest to convince that coal plants release more radioactivity than nuclear plants.

devoply 8y ago

Episteme is always political once it gets societal acceptance and there is little difference between it and doxa. Techné is what actually does all the work and though you can find how to do it through episteme or doxa, it does not actually depend on them -- it does not matter what you believe as long as you know how to do something. At the end of the day humans really only have techné, everything else is political... and it's also obvious that the political is generally dysfunctional scientifically -- i.e. inability to manage stability of the environment through science... and also scientifically managing the political is fascist or totalitarian. We get stuck with a set of choices that don't lead to good outcomes... maybe can never lead to good outcomes.

voidhorse 8y ago
If you dig into some Philosophy of Technology you'll find that Techne, too, is often highly politicized and not easily separable from the knowledge or outcomes it is devised to produce. Techne is already political to the extent that it needs a motivation to get going in the first place--it's really impossible to think of technology's social effects in a way that is not informed by historical materialism. The hows are necessarily coupled with the whys and the belief systems behind them, especially when you consider the fact that in many cases there are multiple ways of getting things done, and the selection of one of these over the others comes down to value judgements (e.g. consider how many technical possibilities are deemed unsatisfactory because of exorbitant costs, this is the manifestation of a value judgement that places finances above other considerations that factor into a particular issue such as e.g. in some cases thoroughness or safety). Not to mention the whole field of techniques that don't make sense divorced from an epistemic context (e.g. the technicalities of performing a ritual sacrifice are partly determined by the belief system backing them--remove this belief system or exchange it with another and there's no way to even make sense of the practice as a technique. I.e. under the ancient greek religious system the procedure of visiting an oracle to glean information was technical and important. Within the context of modern beliefs such a procedure seems patently ridiculous, but it wasn't for the Greeks, and the deployment of the technique still had significant effects and consequences, and produced results in spite of its patent preposterousness from our modern day epistemic viewpoint). Some of Robert Moses's schemes are a great example. Consider, for instance, how he hoped to deny whole segments of the population in NY access to his parks by making overpasses en route to the spaces too low for buses (which serval poor folks relied on to get around) to travel under. The application of technology and techniques is fundamentally entangled with the wills of the subjects employing said techniques. I'd go as far as to say human life is inherently "political" in all its aspects. You can't really live and not be politicized in some way--the really baad state to be in is to be unconscious of the political implications of the way you live, which primes you for manipulation by parties that are more 'in the know'. This idea that certain realms of life are free from political influence or external factors doesn't really have any representatives in the real world. I think people often confuse our ability to treat something abstractly and divorced from the concrete situation of present reality with the ontological claim that said thing itself is abstract and can be wholly treated and solved in an abstract manner. That doesn't even hold in the case of a domain as fundamentally abstract as algorithmic time analysis, in which the concrete inputs have a direct impact on the performance of algorithms. In the jargon of historical materialist philosophy such a process is sometimes called reification--thinking the abstract representation of a concept is the thing itself, ignoring all its concrete manifestations. This leads to certain errors. E.g. thinking we can solve problems with schooling in a particular district without having to look at other issues, such as the population dispersion, the distribution of finances, the district's layout, etc. etc. We have to be vigilant of 'nounifying' abstractions and keep in mind that they are the products of thought and a helpful intellectual tool, and means of orienting and structuring the world, not latent realities.

cameronh90 8y ago

People may confuse believing in the scientific method for believing in the current scientific consensus, which as you point out is fluid. However, for the average person, a dogmatic belief in the scientific method would be a huge step up over religion.

war1025 8y ago
That wouldn't be a step up over religion, that would just be religion.
- dymk 8y ago
  Religion and science derive understanding about the world in fundamentaly different and incompatible ways. To call it religion is just incorrect.
  - war1025 8y ago
    Science is just systematic problem solving. It is a very unremarkable thing. When people build it up to something more than that, then it takes on aspects of religion. A scientist doing science isn't religion. A non-scientist believing everything someone says "because science" is.
  - dnautics 8y ago
    As a scientist here's my take: 1) in the ultimate abstraction, science is a religion. It depends on the precept that the rules are more or less or measurably the same from today to yesterday to tomorrow. You can't bootstrap empiricism without begging the question, so, there is at least one item of faith at the core. 2) excepting this, science in the ideal is indeed a wholly different beast. So you could say it is this the weakest form of religion, or, at least, the religion with the fewest dependencies. 3) in practice, the edifice of science is quite full of people who are hypocritical and flagrantly breaking the rules which you expect would be necessary to maintain the high standard that marks the difference between religion and science. These violations are often swept under the rug quietly and even when they get really big the organization is incredibly good at closing its ranks. I'd say there are a lot of parallels between the science industrial complex and, highly organized religions (such as megachurches and hierarchical institutions like the Southern Baptist or Catholic Church) than most people who see science as a source of power ought to be comfortable with.

x220 8y ago

>The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo. I wish. In the US a huge number of people (large enough to be dangerous) reject climate change consensus, think that evolution shouldn't be taught in schools, are "skeptical" about vaccinating their children (I use quotes because skepticism implies reasonableness), think that the earth is 6000 years old, or think that abstinence-only sex education is effective. Blind adherence to current scientific consensus (whatever that may be) would be better than the hot mess is going on in the US right now. Not enough people in the US actually believe in scientific consensus in general for this to be a significant problem yet.

jvreagan 8y ago
> In the US a huge number of people (large enough to be dangerous) reject climate change consensus You just proved the parent's point...
- x220 8y ago
  How so?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - dexen 8y ago
    Quoting verbatim from the GGP, >Think of the way people are castigated for not believing in scientific "truths" and > the author is trying to burn religious texts and dissenting viewpoints to their "settled science".
    - unknownkadath 8y ago
      If "skeptics" understood what the Navier-Stokes equations do, it would be easier to sympathize.
gus_massa 8y ago

happytoexplain 8y ago

There is a difference between being skeptical of scientifically-arrived-at conclusions (which is healthy and I don't share your opinion that people are largely "castigated" for that) and explicitly ignoring science, and experts in general, based purely on the fact that their conclusions conflict with one's socio-political convictions, which I think is a real problem that people may feel castigated for falling into (which of course doesn't help). If anything has the ring of religious superiority to it, it's this trend of elevating skepticism to denial simply for political reasons.

pdonis 8y ago
> it's this trend of elevating skepticism to denial simply for political reasons Well, there's just as much of a trend of claiming your position is "science" when it isn't, simply for political reasons. For example, by any reasonable standards, economics is not a science; yet people who question the current orthodoxy in economics, for example by questioning whether having the Federal Reserve print money is really a good idea, are routinely castigated. Ron Paul became a nonstarter as a Presidential candidate for precisely this reason.
- agent008t 8y ago
  The problem is the level of debate in society in general, and in particular when it comes to political economy. The debate is basically non-existent. You don't get it in Congress/Senate/Parliament. You don't get it on the news channels. You sometimes - very rarely - still get it on the radio. I want to see two people with opposing views debate a single issue for 2-3 hours, without being allowed to evade answering a question. Would happily pay a subscription fee to get that.
  - pdonis 8y ago
    I agree the level of debate in our society is typically awful. However, in many cases, better debate won't fix the problem, because the problem in many cases is not that the "right" views aren't getting air time. The problem in many cases is that we can't even do controlled experiments in the domain, so our understanding is very limited and we simply don't know enough about the domain to give useful input to public policy decisions. For example, I think that's true of economics; nobody knows enough about economics to give useful input about most public policies.

ConceptJunkie 8y ago

I would guarantee that someone who sees it necessary to state his or her attitude in this way about science has an attitude that is very colored by politics, and is likely not to know much about science in the first place. The trend of virtue signaling through yard signs is the most ridiculous thing I've seen in an era where ridiculousness has become the norm.

oarabbus_ 8y ago

When you're debating with someone about how the Higgs Field does or doesn't imply the existence of fundamental particles, or how neutrinos do or don't move faster than light, then yes, appeal to scientific authority is "troubling" as you mention. But when we are talking about vaccines, flat earthers, etc, then how can you possibly justify that it's bad for >people are castigated for not believing in scientific "truths". ? Perhaps flat earthers is a silly but harmless phenomenon, but there is real pain and suffering from other kinds of science denial such as the antivaxxers.

scotty79 8y ago

> The one thing you learn in high level science is that nobody really knows what they're talking about, paradigms shift, and further study is required. High level science is on the borders of vast body of scientific knowledge. It's only to be expected that people who work there don't know much about the things they try to figure out. What they know a whole lot about is the foundation of that vast body of scientific knowledge they try to build new understanding upon. Nobody expects reverence at high levels of science. But a little bit of reverence for scientfic method and for what vast knowledge science was able to establish without a dubt so far would be nice. Established science is not what's in the news. It's mostly what's in the textbooks. News pretty much broke the public relationship towards science.

spraak 8y ago
Pluto as a planet was established science for a long time. Textbooks are probably the biggest examples of "settled science" that is out of date.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  The definition of a planet is not science, it's just an arbitrary rule.
  - umvi 8y ago
    > it's just an arbitrary rule. Same with the definition of mental conditions. Yet people wield the DSM as science and use it to bludgeon people who are not politically in line with their worldview on mental health
    - XorNot 8y ago
      What in the heck are you even referring to here? Seems like there's a lot of context missing from this comment.
      - umvi 8y ago

CharlesColeman 8y ago

> The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo. Think of the way people are castigated for not believing in scientific "truths". IIRC, the term for this is "scientism," and I don't think it's restricted to just members of the general public. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

mbostleman 8y ago

I think the problem is that increasingly science ends up getting used like a human shield to justify government action. When this happens the science ends up getting distorted in both directions - deniers and "believers" - based not on any actual science but on one's political bubble preference. If the data were available, it would be interesting to see the correlation between this distortion of science and the size of the government in relation to GDP.

balabaster 8y ago

I believe this is a public perception problem. The reason that a troubling number of people no longer believe in science isn't that scientific method is flawed or that people don't believe in scientific method. The bigger concern is the way that scientific studies are mounted, paid for by interested parties that have conflicts of interest to produce results favourable to a desired outcome and then they're presented as science instead of politics. When one can't trust the information they're looking at without having to dig into the political backing of the study and the results and without having to wonder which outliers have been trimmed to further hammer home the point of the stakeholders, we're no longer looking at science, we're looking at propaganda. So the problem isn't science. The problem is the manner in which science is being subverted for financial gain. That's not science. This is why science is losing credibility and authority outside of scientific circles. If you want credibility and authority, you have to not only act with integrity, you have to be seen to be acting with integrity. It does't matter how honest your study or how objective your results, if people look at your study and see that it was funded by Monsanto and makes Monsanto look good, it looks like Monsanto paid for a study to make Monsanto look good and therefore it's biased and can be ignored. This is life. If you want to be seen as having integrity, you have to act with integrity. And when people who were already distrusting of the way science is presented in the media are being told that they can't trust the media by authority figures, as ridiculous as those authority figures may be, eventually people stop listening until the furor abates.

joe_the_user 8y ago
I would say that an even larger problem exists. Among the public, science has always had some portion of people who understood it's processes as those of a secular priesthood and those who understood it's processes as discovering the truth through skepticism and experimentation. Even among this working scientists, this division has existed (and given a society that never discarded religion, anti-science along with anti-intellectual views have naturally always been part of American thought). The problem today is two-fold. Aside from the corruption of scientific processes others have noted, the other aspect is the majority of people aren't seeing the material gains that science offers the world - science is broadly part of progress and when the average American's life expectancy and median income isn't increasing, why would they believe in progress?

hashmap 8y ago

Comparing book burning, jailing, and being murdered to getting made fun of on internet dot com is just not compelling. The whole "but science is just as bad as religion" argument rings quite hollow.

yters 8y ago
"Scientific authority" is the source of the genocides of the 20th century, mass sterilization, what we now consider crackpot science, and many social ills. I would say it is actually worse than the religious authority of the past.
- salty_biscuits 8y ago
  "x authority" has been a large source of problems all through human history. Insert religious, ethical, scientific, political, etc, etc. Biggest problem with science is that it has enabled excesses for those in power (be it authoritarian, communist, capitalist, whatever), while somehow remaining meek and pretending to be amoral. It is easy to take the benefits of Science without bothering to learn what it has to say about anything else.
- hashmap 8y ago
  Saying "the Nazis had doctors, therefore the lawn signs today are actually worse than religious atrocities of the past" is an equally unconvincing argument.

spraak 8y ago

Thank you for your insightful summary. I have heard very often lately that "the science is settled about X" and that this sentiment is exactly anti science is not observed. I agree, it troubles me. I don't advocate for the fallacy of futility that nothing of science can be built upon a potentially soon to be false idea, but it's equally frustrating that the opposite - an appeal to authority in the name of science? - is so widely held onto.

everdev 8y ago

> nobody really knows what they're talking about, paradigms shift, and further study is required People so often miss this. Science is a slow, evolving and never ending process. The day a new study comes out, people want to use it as evidence that something is 'settled science'. Even things as fundamental to our knowledge of the universe like gravity have evolved over time and are still being understood at deeper and deeper levels.

notyourday 8y ago
> People so often miss this. Science is a slow, evolving and never ending process. The day a new study comes out, people want to use it as evidence that something is 'settled science'. Unless it is AGW. That's settled science and 99.9% of scientists agree with Al Gore even though in 1970s we were heading for Global Cooling and that was settled science. That's the fundamental problem: how difficult is it to say "Based on the data that we currently have we are coming to a conclusion that there's X% likelihood we are heading towards a period where the global temperatures would be rise by Y degrees by year Z. Should we get different data we will re-evaluate our prognosis"
- everdev 8y ago
  > Unless it is AGW That's the catch is that even things that have overwhelming scientific consensus are not "settled science". There's always more data to collect and more theories to test. I'm not saying that we shouldn't believe the data or act on the conclusions, far from it. I just don't agree with using the absolute term "settled science". It's not like there's an equation everyone agrees on or a reproducible experiment we can run. We're still learning as we go and revising projections frequently. But there's no shame in making personal or political decisions based on our best scientific understanding of the day, we do it all the time and it would be just as big of a mistake to act like we know nothing about climate change as acting like we already know everything.
  - notyourday 8y ago
    That's exactly the point: if one wants to be taken seriously one's predictions either have to pan out or the predictions should come with a caveat. When the predictions do not pan out one should not expect the population to trust one's future predictions as much.

buboard 8y ago

skepticism is in short supply nowadays

mwfunk 8y ago

Where have you seen a sign like that? Like what country, and what part of that country? If it's in America, I wouldn't interpret those sorts of signs as evidence of a religious attachment to science, but rather a reaction against the tsunami of anti-science sentiment that has taken over the Republican base and the people they vote into office. The Republican Party has spent the last 10/30/50 years (depending on which historical inflection points people focus on) courting Evangelicals (who themselves are a religious demographic almost entirely unique to the US) and feeding into all of their fears/hatreds/insecurities in order to get their votes and their money. If you've seen signs like that on American lawns, there's like a 99% chance that that phrasing is an intentional low-key troll vs. Evangelicals and their choice of words when they pick and choose what to believe in from both science and their own religion, and how they choose to defend those beliefs. People not "believing" in science is a huge freaking problem, and is just one of many symptoms of the hellbound handbasket America finds itself in right now. Science by definition is not something you choose to have faith in or not. The only way to disagree with science is more science that disproves the previously accepted science, it's not a choice of faith or belief. The way you can tell that science doesn't function as a faith-based enterprise is the fact that one of the greatest accomplishments a scientist could have is disproving long-held scientific assumptions, which itself can only happen with reproducible results. For example, a Pew Research poll from several years ago showed that fully 2/3 of self-identified Republican voters were Young Earth Evangelicals, meaning they believe that the planet is ~6000 years old and any evidence to the contrary is either wrong, or a literal test of faith by an apparently insecure deity who will only be satisfied by the basest, most unthinking fealty imaginable. That's obviously going to have an impact over the long term. What does this lead to? People like Lamar Smith being made the chair of the House Science Committee. Someone who literally doesn't "believe" in science, who has used his authority for the last 6 years to literally squash scientific research that didn't lead to the predetermined conclusions that his faith (and more likely, his donors and voters) assures him are true. TL;DR I am not at all remotely concerned about people putting signs on their lawns stating that their household believes in science. It's a couple decades too late but whatever. It's a sad world we live in where that's something that anyone feels like they need to publicly state support for.

libraryatnight 8y ago

I think people put signs up like that because there's a culture of anti-fact, anti-science, generally anti-thought growing and becoming more vocal and a sign or bumper sticker might make people feel like they're fighting back. I admire science, I'm aware that part of science is challenging itself and new understanding can unravel previous notion. I don't really know of any science enthusiasts that want to burn the religious or their texts (well, I did as a teenager, but they grew out of it), but I know more than a few religious who want science out of their schools, deeply believe religion should be more involved in our government, and let's not forget the anti-vaccination movement. These people are neighbors and co-workers, and while they themselves are generally not horrible people those sorts of ambitions feel dangerous at best. Anyway, my point is - I would rather have a problem with overenthusiastic science fans that could use some perspective, than a problem of people not vaccinating their children and "rolling coal"

mensetmanusman 8y ago
It’s really anti-authoritarianism. When people have lost faith in every institution, it is hard to trust the govt. to work nicely with massive corporations to inject needles in their children, especially in an environment where half the kids aren’t living in iron lungs.
- libraryatnight 8y ago
  It's seems like a dumb brand of anti-authoritarianism. I think you're right, but so much of it is self defeating if it weren't actually causing problems it'd be comical. It's also a weird reaction to corporate distrust since a great many of these people are conservative, and the GOP seems slightly more up the butt of the mega corps.
  - mensetmanusman 8y ago
    The GOP leadership, for sure. The rank and file are conservative mainly for social reasons.

Barrin92 8y ago

>in this house, we believe science is real Or maybe those people, even if they don't have much of a grasp on the scientific method, see the material progress and results of scientific work and conclude that they're going to place trust in scientific authority? This is an entirely false equivalence. One can trust scientists even without understanding science, on the fact alone that research produces results that everyone can observe. To suggest that we have too uncritical of an opinion of scientific research in an age were medieval diseases make a comeback because people aren't getting vaccinated, climate change is routinely ignored, and an atheistic scientist would likely not be able to run for high office based on that fact alone, is a joke to be honest.

yters 8y ago
Isn't trusting authority contrary to trusting science? The point of science is that we can verify truths for ourselves without relying on authority. Hence, if any authority, 'scientific' or otherwise, asserts their authority instead of providing individually verifiable evidence of its claims, then we can say they are being unscientific, regardless of title.
- Barrin92 8y ago
  I don't think that's the point of science at all to be honest. The point of scientific endeavour is to discover facts about the world. That's a really hard job, and the majority of people are not scientists, and even a trained scientist cannot verify the overwhelming majority of existing science by themselves, which means that science, like any other sufficiently large human collaboration, requires institutions, trust and authority. The difference between scientific and religious institutions is not that the former functions without authority or trust, it's that the success of the former is measured against observable and replicable results and material progress and not based on infallible spiritual promise. So if someone understands nothing about science at all, and worships it like a religion, at least they had the good sense of picking a religion that puts food on their table, makes their planes stay in the sky and makes them healthy again when they fall sick.
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matthewdgreen 8y ago

I don’t think those signs indicate blind, unquestioning support for “scientific truths” as practiced by some mythical scientific priesthood. They are a response to a troubling political tendency that has made the evaluation of certain scientific findings into a question of political and tribal beliefs rather than one that involves proper skepticism, education and scientific investigation. If the situation was that there was a strong evidence-based disagreement about scientific findings, those signs wouldn’t be necessary. The situation is instead that a vast number of scientists are producing findings that contradict certain political preferences, and the response has not been a deeper investigation made in good faith — but rather an outright political rejection of the findings. “I support science” is not shorthand for “I take every scientific study as fact because scientists are gods,” but rather “I am inclined to give weight to scientific arguments in either direction as opposed to political arguments that reject those findings based on non-scientific reasoning.”

weberc2 8y ago
> The situation is instead that a vast number of scientists are producing findings that contradict certain political preferences, and the response has not been a deeper investigation made in good faith — but rather an outright political rejection of the findings. How does a layperson make a deeper investigation on their own? The research is typically paywalled, the jargon is inaccessible, the experiments are prohibitively expensive, etc etc. In effect, there is a priestly caste, and one which arguably excludes from the debate members of the skeptic's tribe (i.e., "people the skeptic might trust to address their concerns"). This is why heterodoxy and political diversity in the academy is soooo important. You might be inclined to say something like "conservatives select out of the academy" or "it's not my fault reality has a liberal bias" and you might even be right, but I don't think you'll find climate change very sympathetic to your position. In other words, this isn't affirmative action for conservatives, it's affirmative action (of conservatives) for the benefit of humanity. Disclaimers: I'm picking 'conservatives' and 'liberals' here because that's clearly the bent of the article. I'm also picking climate change since it seems to be the favorite example of science denialism. Of course, contrary to the angle of this article, science denialism isn't even an exclusively conservative phenomenon (blank slatism is a favorite of anti-science leftists--including leftist academics--and flat-earth and anti-vax are bipartisan beliefs).

shirakawasuna 8y ago

"We believe science is real" is not a statement of dogmatic belief in scientific conclusions, it is a reaction to anti-scientific movements that attempt to influence the public perception of science. It is usually primarily directed at the moneyed interests opposed to climate science and the impacts it predicts, though it also deals with related issues impacting health and the environment. If you spend a cursory time searching for that statement, you'll find that it's associated with the March for Science, which is, itself, a reaction to active and successful attempts at having persons in government distort, remove, and ignore science that flies in the face of moneyed interests. By the way, just about everything you know about Galileo re: perception and persecution is wrong.

root_axis 8y ago

Let's not be coy. Laypeople don't have a compelling reason or the expertise necessary to dispute or vociferously defend any scientific conclusions, at the end of the day, there is no science involved here, it's all about politics. Whichever side of the debate you come down on with regard to climate change, vaccines, evolution, the shape of the earth etc, the people in these debates don't really care about science, they only care about policy.

incompatible 8y ago

Alright, say I want to replace my dogmatic belief that scientific methods are the best way of understanding the Universe. What should I replace it with?

effie 8y ago
That there are also different methods, and sometimes they are useful.

realpeople 8y ago

Getting people to trust science is a matter of persuasion, not of “establishing scientific authority”. What's the difference? One is about acknowledging people and their needs and seeking their well-being; the other is viewing things as a political tussle for power and anxiety about people who don't seem to be on the same “side” as you. --- There's a beautiful article that I think serves as a model example. In the field of education, there's a certain idea that's believed by many teachers, but which scientists (in cognitive psychology / learning science) know to be a myth. Against this background, this article (“Why mythbusting fails”) discusses why the scientists' approach towards transmitting this knowledge fails to convince its audience. It is worth reading, because it is really about persuasion, about dealing with disagreements between people: https://deansforimpact.org/why-mythbusting-fails-a-guide-to-influencing-education-with-science/ https://deansforimpact.org/why-mythbusting-fails-a-guide-to-... --- Science is many things: 1. A wonderful method for arriving at reliable knowledge. The best we have. 2. The set of facts accumulated via that method. This set will always be tentative, incomplete and contain some fraction of false positives. 3. The set of facts believed by professional scientists today. What would be good for people to trust would be (1) > (2) > (3), but for people taking sides, the priority is inverted: they care more that people be on the side of science (against religion or whatever), than that they apply the scientific method wherever possible. --- In his books like The Mosaic Distinction and the Price of Monotheism, the author Jan Assmann discusses the idea of “counterreligions”. Though many people in Western society may no longer be religious in one sense, they still retain certain attitudes picked up from it, like the missionary/crusader zeal of treating those who do not believe in the same things as them as enemies needing to be either converted or fought, general condescension towards “heathens”, etc. We see this in discussions about politics or nearly anything, where people neatly get polarized into opposing sides rather than a gradual spectrum as one may expect. --- In this very article, see things like: > Science denial, however, is like crime: combating it requires… (treating disbelievers as heretics to be fought) > Galileo cleverly acknowledged the values of his enemies. I don't know about Galileo's views, but why view acknowledgement of others' values as merely a “clever” device? How about replacing “cleverly” with “sincerely”, and “enemies” with “real people we'd like to persuade”?

eplanit 8y ago

The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo. Yes; and, it's weaponized for political discourse. It's as though we're in some kind of new Puritan era -- this reminds me of how John Cleese was blasted for tweeting on this very topic (3 years ago)[1]. He blasphemed. [1] https://twitter.com/johncleese/status/683681888687538177?lang=en https://twitter.com/johncleese/status/683681888687538177?lan...

tannerbrockwell 8y ago
So good it must be quoted in it's entirety: "I would like 2016 to be the year when people remembered that science is a method of investigation,and NOT a belief system" @JohnCleese [1] 8:10 AM - 3 Jan 2016 [2] [1] https://twitter.com/JohnCleese https://twitter.com/JohnCleese [2] https://twitter.com/JohnCleese/status/683681888687538177 https://twitter.com/JohnCleese/status/683681888687538177

analog31 8y ago

During the time of Galileo, religion was a plurality of truths, all irreconcilable, and at war with one another. There was no settled religion in any broad sense.

x0f1a 8y ago

I’ve concluded something similar lately. Humans always needed stable shared rules that envolve slowly to have funcional societies with multiple generations. This was attained with a shared culture plus religion. The science was not considered the main driver for these social rules. Since the fall of the religions in the west we have been using science to partially rationalize our view of the world, as result science became a battleground for ideologies and consequently became corrupted, it lost its neutrality. Each side of the spectrum wants to use science to support their personal beliefs. I start to have this crazy idea that to save science we have to stop using it in political discussions, so far I think political discussions should rely only in democracy, continuity and shared values. Funny thing is that we tried before to replace replace religion during the French Revolution: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason Lacking common moral values from one authority we look for it in another, now we have science being used as religious authority instead of being the refuge of questioning and doubt.

8bitsrule 8y ago

Completely agreed. One analyzable example of this faith in 'the truths' of science can be found in the editing of Wikipedia. In my experience, there's low tolerance or regard for alternative hypotheses in its articles. That approach has long been highly costly for science. Even Sagan, now and then, recognized the necessity for caution ... and he put it on videotape. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system. The history of our study of our solar system shows clear that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong, and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources. - Cosmos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MlN7iVIuhk#t=4m09s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MlN7iVIuhk#t=4m09s)

tomrod 8y ago

People like to be right, and don't like to invest time in thought. Hence why the bandwagon effect works.

asabjorn 8y ago

The argument that science is a social construct is easily disproven by the device you are typing this on, which is build upon science. However, the claim that some science is more believable than other science is obviously correct. Science is a network of knowledge [1] where central nodes can be assumed to be more likely an accurate representation of something predictive. The literature critical theory claim that it is arbitrary does not acknowledge those relationships, effectively missing the forest for the trees which also explains the shoddy science done in critical theory’s name. Science is progressed by building new leaf nodes and supporting them through other nodes as evidence, or by showing that core nodes are not as predictive as you thought they were. [1] https://youtu.be/bxdBRKmPhe4 https://youtu.be/bxdBRKmPhe4

tannerbrockwell 8y ago
When you point to point to your computer, you are confusing a 'Technology' with Science. They are different. As for first principles, starting with Francis Bacon's Baconian method is the investigative method that would benefit here: [1] "Bacon suggests that you draw up a list of all things in which the phenomenon you are trying to explain occurs, as well as a list of things in which it does not occur. Then you rank your lists according to the degree in which the phenomenon occurs in each one. Then you should be able to deduce what factors match the occurrence of the phenomenon in one list and don't occur in the other list, and also what factors change in accordance with the way the data had been ranked." Thus we see that predictive is less important than reproducibility, which is currently in this era approaching a crisis point. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baconian_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baconian_method [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
- asabjorn 8y ago
  I agree reproducibility is an issue, especially in psychology that is slowly becoming a science right now. There it’s actially a good sign, since now psychology has a methodology we can use as a standard bearer to spot issues. In other humanities that like to call themselves science we unfortunately even lack such a methodology. From first principles technology is definitely applied science through engineering, but technology is progressed through pushing the boundaries of science and science is the map of where to look. Eg quantum mechanics and optics helped create a map of where to look for new nano scale technology innovations. Technolofy shows the reproducibility of the theories it’s build upon. The computer is build by innovations created using the predictive powers of material science, quantum mechanics and chemistry. How do you think the optics used to create the processors were created? The advanced etching technologies to get to decreasing nm processor scale? Materials that respond reliably to store energy in batteries or power puxels in your screen?

lutorm 8y ago

"The one thing you learn in high level science is that nobody really knows what they're talking about, paradigms shift, and further study is required." That's true, but it's the best we've got. Not believing in science is different from disagreeing with conclusions of studies based on data. But just saying "science is flawed so I'm not going to believe it" makes no sense at all, because all other alternatives are worse.

jancsika 8y ago

> I see signs in peoples yard saying that "in this house, we believe science is real". As someone who has studied biochemistry for years, this kind of reverence for science is truly troubling. At least in the South, that sign would be in opposition to "teaching the controversy" of Creation vs. Evolution in high schools. Would it be "reverent" to fight to keep non-scientific and indeed proven bad faith attempts at undermining science out of the science classroom?

solipsism 8y ago

You know you're on shaky ground when you take the most absurd interpretation of something and then argue against it. "We believe science is real" is such a modest, uncontroversial statement. The idea that you'd see it and rail against some imagined dogmatic strawman really says more about you than it does about them.

justanotherjoe 8y ago

> The one thing you learn in high level science is that nobody really knows what they're talking about, paradigms shift, and further study is required When you wrote that, what were you thinking of, specifically? I don't know what you are referencing. Also I'm curious, are there any big mysteries left in the field of biochemistry?

dragonwriter 8y ago

> The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo. No, it's not. Heck, the way the public considers religion today is closer to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo than is the way the public considers science.