6 ms·

There is some danger in publicly adopting a "science has become religion" position. Just as "trust the science" can be used as a rhetorical weapon, "science has

by sriku 6y ago

There is some danger in publicly adopting a "science has become religion" position. Just as "trust the science" can be used as a rhetorical weapon, "science has become another religion" can be too .. and usually to more dangerous effect because a lot of what is essentially known bullshit (see https://www.callingbullshit.org https://www.callingbullshit.org) gets accommodated by the latter compared to the former. There are reasonable accepted empirical approaches in accepted use today. Any team that follows these methods and reports honestly can be trusted more than a team that doesn't. Also "trust" is a loaded word .. but mostly we just mean "predictability" - ex: to "trust someone" means to be sure that if you know what they've said, you can predict what they'll do. Much of empirical science is about offering up data and models that aid such predictability, so declaring "trust the science is extinct" is an outright rejection of these empirical methods (ex: randomised control trials) that have taken a long time to mature and take root as standard practice. What is needed though is to be able to separate the science from policy making. As Dietrich Dörner has shown in "The Logic of Failure" [1], folks in the hard sciences don't fare very well when policy making in systems with complex causally interconnected parts is tasked upon them due to learnt heuristics that don't fare well in that world. Let science do its thing - which is inform and educate. Let policies be made by those with more full understanding of the system into which changes need to be effected. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Failure-Recognizing-Avoiding-Situations/dp/0201479486 https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Failure-Recognizing-Avoiding-Si...

notsureaboutpg 6y ago
>Let science do its thing - which is inform and educate. Let policies be made by those with more full understanding of the system into which changes need to be effected. But what about when scientists collaborate with the policy-makers to shape public perception about how to inform and educate people? One prime example is last years long and detailed study on how there was no "gay gene". In effect, homosexual activity and inclinations could not be shown to be the result of any specific gene expression after many trials and searches for such. The scientists, worried about how this result would look to the public, worked with LGBTQ advocacy groups to shape how the paper would be released to the media and explained to the public[1]. Now, a sizable portion in HN's demographic will feel this is all well and good, but how far should this go? The uncomfortable truth here is that people are not "born gay" as we have been told so often. And that has been a very important talking point in the past two decades when debating about gay rights. Many people were convinced to support gay rights for this reason alone (however we might feel about that, it's true). They very well may feel duped by scientists and no longer "trust the science". How far should scientists go to shield the public from uncomfortable truths? And how much will the public continue to trust them when such veiling of the truth is made known to them? [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02585-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02585-6
- sriku 6y ago
  > But what about when scientists collaborate with the policy-makers to shape public perception about how to inform and educate people? That isn't a problem with science. It is politics .. as @AnthonyMouse noted.
  - Ambolia 6y ago
    It's generally cheaper to buy a scientist than to buy a politician.
- epgui 6y ago
  While you appear to suggest that reference [1] is a bad thing, or even a slippery slope, there's not really any indication that these consultations had an adverse impact on the quality of the results. Communication is an incredibly tricky thing. Even when the science is sound, shortsighted approaches at communication can have serious repercussions, even potentially causing deaths (think public health guidance being misinterpreted, misunderstood, or decontextualized, for example). Being conscious of this doesn't dilute the truth of the message, and being respectful/mindful of others doesn't mean we need to compromise on the science either. For clarity: this is not a response to any part of your comment other than the reference to the nature article.
  - notsureaboutpg 6y ago
    My point was never about the quality of the results. In this discussion about science as a religion, I made it clear that working with activists to communicate science means people need to believe the non-scientific claims of those activists as much as they believe the results of the experiment described in a paper. And in many situations even HN readers will believe it's necessary to massage truths to the public in order to avoid science being read one way or another. This is what turns science into a religion. One must believe the publicly sanctioned, regionally accepted version of science communication if they are to be said to "trust the science". Had this same study been done in, say, Iran, the science communication would be vastly different, the results the same, and one's reaction to the vastly different communication would still be gauged as a commitment to "science" and how much one believes in it.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> There are reasonable accepted empirical approaches in accepted use today. Any team that follows these methods and reports honestly can be trusted more than a team that doesn't. The underlying problem isn't actually a problem with science, it's a problem with politics. You need to hire some scientists to do your experiments. If they follow the scientific method, you get results using the best system we know how. But if they follow the scientific method then the Republicans work to defund climate science research and the Democrats work to cancel any scientist whose results challenge the orthodoxy on race or gender. And if politics interferes then it's not science anymore. If research leading to politically inconvenient results has its funding withdrawn or scientists are intimidated into self-censorship then it's all just selection bias and fudging the numbers. Maybe what we need is to do something like the court system, where you have multiple research funding "judges" which have lifetime appointments and each get a given amount of research money to dole out every year, and their job is to decide how to spend it. Then they can spend it however they like and can only be removed for e.g. corruption, not for funding research somebody doesn't like.
- dataduck 6y ago
  This is the fundamental problem with "evidence led policy". As soon as science can reliably affect policy outcomes, people who want to change policy outcomes will corrupt the science.
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    It won't matter. Eventually the governments who support technology will win - either via war or economic advantage.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      How is that not mattering? So if China uses science and the US descends further into hyper-partisan culture war, that doesn't matter? It matters kind of a lot whether the winner is a liberal democracy with free speech and civil liberties or a totalitarian communist dictatorship.
paganel 6y ago
At the beginning (early March 2020) we were told that the lockdowns would last for at most a month or two, in order to "flatten the curve", at least that's what "science" was telling us. I know I believed in that, even though I'm no scientist. One year on and that "prophecy" (because that's what that was, just a prophecy) turned out to be pretty damn false. Nevertheless, we still let the people/scientists who deceived us back in March 2020 to take "science"-based decisions that will affect the lives of hundreds of millions going forward. Nobody will be held responsible, apart from a few politicians.
- falcrist 6y ago
  "Flattening the curve" definitely worked, and you can see that in the data. However, what you're not accounting for is what happened AFTER the lockdowns were effective. Experts worked on detailed plans for staged re-opening after the lockdown. I don't know about Europe, but the US did not follow such a plan. Different states reacted differently, and politics had a bigger say in how reopening was done than any epidemiologist.
  - collyw 6y ago
    I think you are very mistaken if you think that. Lockodwn appeared to work, but given that it takes at least 20 days from catching covid to dying, you can see in many countries that the curves for deaths were flattening off well before lockdown could have been the cause. Uruguay, Japan, Sweden, Belarus didn't lockdown, and don't stand out in any way for their numbers.
    - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      Japan has a far different culture than the US, people wear masks in normal times there. And Sweden wasn't exactly a success, and has done far worse than their nordic neighbors, say, Norway. The numbers do not lie here. Belarus had a very effective plan - they tested far earlier and more often, and have far more hospital beds per person. Straight up country comparison is just a fool's game. We will have to learn from this as best we can - what worked, what didn't work, where, and why. If everyone wore masks properly, was lockdown necessary? We need time to study and find answers.

by sriku 6y ago

notsureaboutpg 6y ago

>Let science do its thing - which is inform and educate. Let policies be made by those with more full understanding of the system into which changes need to be effected. But what about when scientists collaborate with the policy-makers to shape public perception about how to inform and educate people? One prime example is last years long and detailed study on how there was no "gay gene". In effect, homosexual activity and inclinations could not be shown to be the result of any specific gene expression after many trials and searches for such. The scientists, worried about how this result would look to the public, worked with LGBTQ advocacy groups to shape how the paper would be released to the media and explained to the public[1]. Now, a sizable portion in HN's demographic will feel this is all well and good, but how far should this go? The uncomfortable truth here is that people are not "born gay" as we have been told so often. And that has been a very important talking point in the past two decades when debating about gay rights. Many people were convinced to support gay rights for this reason alone (however we might feel about that, it's true). They very well may feel duped by scientists and no longer "trust the science". How far should scientists go to shield the public from uncomfortable truths? And how much will the public continue to trust them when such veiling of the truth is made known to them? [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02585-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02585-6

sriku 6y ago
> But what about when scientists collaborate with the policy-makers to shape public perception about how to inform and educate people? That isn't a problem with science. It is politics .. as @AnthonyMouse noted.
- Ambolia 6y ago
  It's generally cheaper to buy a scientist than to buy a politician.
epgui 6y ago
While you appear to suggest that reference [1] is a bad thing, or even a slippery slope, there's not really any indication that these consultations had an adverse impact on the quality of the results. Communication is an incredibly tricky thing. Even when the science is sound, shortsighted approaches at communication can have serious repercussions, even potentially causing deaths (think public health guidance being misinterpreted, misunderstood, or decontextualized, for example). Being conscious of this doesn't dilute the truth of the message, and being respectful/mindful of others doesn't mean we need to compromise on the science either. For clarity: this is not a response to any part of your comment other than the reference to the nature article.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  My point was never about the quality of the results. In this discussion about science as a religion, I made it clear that working with activists to communicate science means people need to believe the non-scientific claims of those activists as much as they believe the results of the experiment described in a paper. And in many situations even HN readers will believe it's necessary to massage truths to the public in order to avoid science being read one way or another. This is what turns science into a religion. One must believe the publicly sanctioned, regionally accepted version of science communication if they are to be said to "trust the science". Had this same study been done in, say, Iran, the science communication would be vastly different, the results the same, and one's reaction to the vastly different communication would still be gauged as a commitment to "science" and how much one believes in it.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> There are reasonable accepted empirical approaches in accepted use today. Any team that follows these methods and reports honestly can be trusted more than a team that doesn't. The underlying problem isn't actually a problem with science, it's a problem with politics. You need to hire some scientists to do your experiments. If they follow the scientific method, you get results using the best system we know how. But if they follow the scientific method then the Republicans work to defund climate science research and the Democrats work to cancel any scientist whose results challenge the orthodoxy on race or gender. And if politics interferes then it's not science anymore. If research leading to politically inconvenient results has its funding withdrawn or scientists are intimidated into self-censorship then it's all just selection bias and fudging the numbers. Maybe what we need is to do something like the court system, where you have multiple research funding "judges" which have lifetime appointments and each get a given amount of research money to dole out every year, and their job is to decide how to spend it. Then they can spend it however they like and can only be removed for e.g. corruption, not for funding research somebody doesn't like.

dataduck 6y ago
This is the fundamental problem with "evidence led policy". As soon as science can reliably affect policy outcomes, people who want to change policy outcomes will corrupt the science.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  It won't matter. Eventually the governments who support technology will win - either via war or economic advantage.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    How is that not mattering? So if China uses science and the US descends further into hyper-partisan culture war, that doesn't matter? It matters kind of a lot whether the winner is a liberal democracy with free speech and civil liberties or a totalitarian communist dictatorship.

paganel 6y ago

At the beginning (early March 2020) we were told that the lockdowns would last for at most a month or two, in order to "flatten the curve", at least that's what "science" was telling us. I know I believed in that, even though I'm no scientist. One year on and that "prophecy" (because that's what that was, just a prophecy) turned out to be pretty damn false. Nevertheless, we still let the people/scientists who deceived us back in March 2020 to take "science"-based decisions that will affect the lives of hundreds of millions going forward. Nobody will be held responsible, apart from a few politicians.

falcrist 6y ago
"Flattening the curve" definitely worked, and you can see that in the data. However, what you're not accounting for is what happened AFTER the lockdowns were effective. Experts worked on detailed plans for staged re-opening after the lockdown. I don't know about Europe, but the US did not follow such a plan. Different states reacted differently, and politics had a bigger say in how reopening was done than any epidemiologist.
- collyw 6y ago
  I think you are very mistaken if you think that. Lockodwn appeared to work, but given that it takes at least 20 days from catching covid to dying, you can see in many countries that the curves for deaths were flattening off well before lockdown could have been the cause. Uruguay, Japan, Sweden, Belarus didn't lockdown, and don't stand out in any way for their numbers.
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    Japan has a far different culture than the US, people wear masks in normal times there. And Sweden wasn't exactly a success, and has done far worse than their nordic neighbors, say, Norway. The numbers do not lie here. Belarus had a very effective plan - they tested far earlier and more often, and have far more hospital beds per person. Straight up country comparison is just a fool's game. We will have to learn from this as best we can - what worked, what didn't work, where, and why. If everyone wore masks properly, was lockdown necessary? We need time to study and find answers.