4 ms·

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 sec

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?

balabaster 8y ago
It's like hearing that science says that fat is bad... and then eggs are bad for you... and alcohol is bad... and then another study says that a glass of wine a day is good for your heart... and salt is bad... then sugar is bad... then carbohydrates are bad... and now fat is good as long as you don't overdo carbohydrates... and eggs have good cholesterol and are really good for you... and salt is necessary to balance hydration... and sugar isn't bad as long as it's balanced with fibre. When the studies say so many different things, all contradictory and all purporting to be good and then bad and then good again, people give up trying to understand. Why should I believe that anything I eat today is bad when tomorrow you're just going to tell me that it's good for me again? People are tired of listening to science that appears to ebb and flow like the tides.
- mjevans 8y ago
  Oversimplification for sound bytes (and headlines/click-bait) is the primary cause for this. News outlets are eager to 'report first' and don't bother correctly framing the science in a proper context of one study //which suggests more research and confirmation is necessary//. Publish or perish, along with the lack of replication rather than trying to find something exciting to publish, or even enshrining the effort of replicating results (repudiating or confirming) to more strongly establish fact and carefully observe to see if there may be other causes/effects; is ruining the integrity of the scientific methods. Finally, a lack of stable funding for maintaining and improving what should be public domain (established facts about nature) and the work of students of all ages to re-study and double check as they learn, is nearly the ultimate root cause. The true root cause being greed and the increasing likelihood that as we as a species approach 'abundance' that capitalism ceases to be a good means for wisely allocating resources. Surely that is the case when we are to the point of automated micro-transaction harvesting HFT and fractions of a second of advantage translating to profits in a financial sector that is a vastly over-sized portion of the GDP.
  - chiefalchemist 8y ago
    Most of the time the news outlets / pulishers don't understand the difference between correlation and causation. Frankly, I'm not even sure if many scientists understand the difference. Get some data. Beat it up until you get something attention grabbing. Publish. Get paid. Worry about any fallout later.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  That's not science though - that's a single study or two being blown out of proportion. It's an element of science, a snapshot of knowledge, but the scientific method requires that we continually refine those messages and ideas, and that's not happening - we do an experiment, and then without any more corroboration or reproduction it's released to the public. We are seeing tiny pieces of science, but the problem is we're seeing every step and going "oh look, there's science!" and treating it as absolute truth instead of giving time for things to develop and figure out what it is we're looking at.
  - aeternus 8y ago
    Yes, but the scientific community has in-part brought this upon themselves. The actual research is inaccessible to the public, hidden behind paywalls in subscription-only journals, and written in a form that is very difficult if not impossible for the general public to understand. For most of the general public, the output of the scientific community is just a poorly translated and often misleading headline.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      It's also become incredibly complex and utterly alien to even practitioners in the fields - I can't read computer science doctoral dissertations with any degree of understanding. That's not a failing of the language, that's an evolution of it - we're at a point now where we need years and years of education to be able to be able to speak the language required for the research. It absolutely is difficult for the general public, but that's not a failing, that's the state of the art.
      - kian 8y ago
        I’d argue that this is, in fact, a failing of the language of description, and that going back and refactoring terms and systematizing the folk knowledge of a given field would go a long way towards fixing the public attitudes towards that field. We should give more respect to people who make existing concepts easier to understand, or simpler and cheaper to prove or demonstrate. Then maybe we wouldn’t have to spend so much time bemoaning the poor state of education.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  The media quoting random science study pushing X claim and then Y claim is a fundamental problem of media (society), not science. The problem of science is that it doesn't have the outlet of, say, high school students learning real science and knowing how it works, that the products of science and technology is wind-up cut-off from the broad processes of experimentation that gave rise to them.
cat199 8y ago
show me the science that says that religion is against science and intellect. many of those responsible for science as a discipline throughout the centuries sought to know more of their creator rather than to debunk religion
- nitrogen 8y ago
  See the book Faith vs Fact by Jerry Coyne for an exploration of the topic
- balabaster 8y ago
  If science can't prove that we're not existing inside a simulation, or whether we have multiverses, how could we prove or disprove the existence of God? Even if as most atheists agree the Bible is a fallacy, that still doesn't prove there isn't a God, or multiple Gods. Nor does it even prove our own existence. It just proves our abilities to contemplate and interpret the laws of the physics we appear bound inside this universe. The only rules we can discover and prove are the ones that constrain the environment we are confined to. Anything outside this environment is opaque to us, which may include a God... or not.
foobarian 8y ago
> the other aspect is the majority of people aren't seeing the material gains that science offers the world I'm afraid this last bit is a big problem. I suspect there is a certain lag from discovery to perception. And then starting in the 1800 we had wave after wave of discovery, from electricity, magnetism, cars, airplanes, wireless, nuclear bombs, computers... stopping around the 1980s. At this point we can keep talking up science all we want but I fear something like fusion reactors or true AI would be needed to boost the faith.
balabaster 8y ago
There was an episode of CSI:Miami (I know, corny, hyperbolic, whatever, it raises a really salient point) I recall a line where Caine makes the point that we don't find evidence to support a narrative, we chase the evidence to find the truth. Too many of the studies today are funded to look for evidence to support a narrative instead of chasing the evidence to find the truth. The former is propaganda. The latter is science. When I say too many, I mean to say that there are enough that people are very very aware of this. This fact alone is a problem because it damages people's perception of what is going on in the scientific community. If people cannot trust scientists to deliver truth rather than deliver support for a narrative, we have a problem. Whether this perception is fair or not, it is so. If perception is that we cannot trust the scientists delivering the test results, nor the providence of the testing, then how can we trust the information we're being shown? People need to see integrity before they can trust anything else.

balabaster 8y ago

It's like hearing that science says that fat is bad... and then eggs are bad for you... and alcohol is bad... and then another study says that a glass of wine a day is good for your heart... and salt is bad... then sugar is bad... then carbohydrates are bad... and now fat is good as long as you don't overdo carbohydrates... and eggs have good cholesterol and are really good for you... and salt is necessary to balance hydration... and sugar isn't bad as long as it's balanced with fibre. When the studies say so many different things, all contradictory and all purporting to be good and then bad and then good again, people give up trying to understand. Why should I believe that anything I eat today is bad when tomorrow you're just going to tell me that it's good for me again? People are tired of listening to science that appears to ebb and flow like the tides.

mjevans 8y ago
Oversimplification for sound bytes (and headlines/click-bait) is the primary cause for this. News outlets are eager to 'report first' and don't bother correctly framing the science in a proper context of one study //which suggests more research and confirmation is necessary//. Publish or perish, along with the lack of replication rather than trying to find something exciting to publish, or even enshrining the effort of replicating results (repudiating or confirming) to more strongly establish fact and carefully observe to see if there may be other causes/effects; is ruining the integrity of the scientific methods. Finally, a lack of stable funding for maintaining and improving what should be public domain (established facts about nature) and the work of students of all ages to re-study and double check as they learn, is nearly the ultimate root cause. The true root cause being greed and the increasing likelihood that as we as a species approach 'abundance' that capitalism ceases to be a good means for wisely allocating resources. Surely that is the case when we are to the point of automated micro-transaction harvesting HFT and fractions of a second of advantage translating to profits in a financial sector that is a vastly over-sized portion of the GDP.
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  Most of the time the news outlets / pulishers don't understand the difference between correlation and causation. Frankly, I'm not even sure if many scientists understand the difference. Get some data. Beat it up until you get something attention grabbing. Publish. Get paid. Worry about any fallout later.
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
That's not science though - that's a single study or two being blown out of proportion. It's an element of science, a snapshot of knowledge, but the scientific method requires that we continually refine those messages and ideas, and that's not happening - we do an experiment, and then without any more corroboration or reproduction it's released to the public. We are seeing tiny pieces of science, but the problem is we're seeing every step and going "oh look, there's science!" and treating it as absolute truth instead of giving time for things to develop and figure out what it is we're looking at.
- aeternus 8y ago
  Yes, but the scientific community has in-part brought this upon themselves. The actual research is inaccessible to the public, hidden behind paywalls in subscription-only journals, and written in a form that is very difficult if not impossible for the general public to understand. For most of the general public, the output of the scientific community is just a poorly translated and often misleading headline.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    It's also become incredibly complex and utterly alien to even practitioners in the fields - I can't read computer science doctoral dissertations with any degree of understanding. That's not a failing of the language, that's an evolution of it - we're at a point now where we need years and years of education to be able to be able to speak the language required for the research. It absolutely is difficult for the general public, but that's not a failing, that's the state of the art.
    - kian 8y ago
      I’d argue that this is, in fact, a failing of the language of description, and that going back and refactoring terms and systematizing the folk knowledge of a given field would go a long way towards fixing the public attitudes towards that field. We should give more respect to people who make existing concepts easier to understand, or simpler and cheaper to prove or demonstrate. Then maybe we wouldn’t have to spend so much time bemoaning the poor state of education.
joe_the_user 8y ago
The media quoting random science study pushing X claim and then Y claim is a fundamental problem of media (society), not science. The problem of science is that it doesn't have the outlet of, say, high school students learning real science and knowing how it works, that the products of science and technology is wind-up cut-off from the broad processes of experimentation that gave rise to them.

cat199 8y ago

show me the science that says that religion is against science and intellect. many of those responsible for science as a discipline throughout the centuries sought to know more of their creator rather than to debunk religion

nitrogen 8y ago
See the book Faith vs Fact by Jerry Coyne for an exploration of the topic
balabaster 8y ago
If science can't prove that we're not existing inside a simulation, or whether we have multiverses, how could we prove or disprove the existence of God? Even if as most atheists agree the Bible is a fallacy, that still doesn't prove there isn't a God, or multiple Gods. Nor does it even prove our own existence. It just proves our abilities to contemplate and interpret the laws of the physics we appear bound inside this universe. The only rules we can discover and prove are the ones that constrain the environment we are confined to. Anything outside this environment is opaque to us, which may include a God... or not.

foobarian 8y ago

> the other aspect is the majority of people aren't seeing the material gains that science offers the world I'm afraid this last bit is a big problem. I suspect there is a certain lag from discovery to perception. And then starting in the 1800 we had wave after wave of discovery, from electricity, magnetism, cars, airplanes, wireless, nuclear bombs, computers... stopping around the 1980s. At this point we can keep talking up science all we want but I fear something like fusion reactors or true AI would be needed to boost the faith.

balabaster 8y ago

There was an episode of CSI:Miami (I know, corny, hyperbolic, whatever, it raises a really salient point) I recall a line where Caine makes the point that we don't find evidence to support a narrative, we chase the evidence to find the truth. Too many of the studies today are funded to look for evidence to support a narrative instead of chasing the evidence to find the truth. The former is propaganda. The latter is science. When I say too many, I mean to say that there are enough that people are very very aware of this. This fact alone is a problem because it damages people's perception of what is going on in the scientific community. If people cannot trust scientists to deliver truth rather than deliver support for a narrative, we have a problem. Whether this perception is fair or not, it is so. If perception is that we cannot trust the scientists delivering the test results, nor the providence of the testing, then how can we trust the information we're being shown? People need to see integrity before they can trust anything else.