5 ms·

Which is a great shame as I found the article itself to be very balanced and well written. But just as Scientism has become a religion, so has anti-expertise (

Which is a great shame as I found the article itself to be very balanced and well written. But just as Scientism has become a religion, so has anti-expertise (whether legitimate or not) become a countervailing, and as you say, equally as dangerous movement. I have no idea what the solution is...

ggm 5y ago
Yes. I also enjoyed reading it, and worry about how we get out of this conundrum.
- thomasjbevan 5y ago
  Sadly it does bring to mind Pandora and her box.
brandmeyer 5y ago
Dude, this is not a balanced take on the situation. It is an appeal to emotion dressed in only the thinnest trappings of reason. > Over the past year, a fearful public has acquiesced to an extraordinary extension of expert jurisdiction over every domain of life. A pattern of “government by emergency” has become prominent, in which resistance to such incursions are characterised as “anti-science”.
- ggm 5y ago
  That's his conclusion. The premise going in, that a corruption of science is being used to drive political ends appears a reasonable initial line of reasoning. I can differ in where I take the conclusion but agree about this initial premise. Johnson wants economic outcomes which drive him to claim science backed policy when the science does not actually support what he is doing in the UK (for instance) and I do think a perpetuated economic and health crisis is being used to achieve political goals in a lot of ways. Enabling legislation is being rushed through parliaments in a lot of places to post hoc legitimate a form of rule by ministerial decree.
mannykannot 5y ago
This article appears to be the work of an author who has been preoccupied with his thesis for too long. Having noticed some flaws and studied them, all he can see now is corruption. Meanwhile, in the real world, science and technology has, in little more than a year and mostly apolitically, developed several different vaccines against covid-sars-2, tested them, and we are in the process of vaccinating the world's population. People are getting vaccinated, not because they are being forced to, but because they want to. I strongly suspect that, over the next year, a preponderance of those who are currently hesitant will quietly, and individually, choose to be vaccinated. The biggest problems right now are in delivering doses to where they are most needed, and that is a geopolitical problem that has nothing to do with the allegedly corrupt and authoritarian nature of science. If we are all going to hell in a handbasket, it is not because science has become corrupt.
- ggm 5y ago
  Overall I agree. But the underlying pressure not to publish negative results, the commercialisation of publication, the publish or perish retrace has got worse. The politicisation of science has also got markedly worse. Az got lambasted by sectoral interests, promoting pfizer and modena. Not that mRNA isn't amazing, but the sheer amount of crap decision making around Az is telling. The fuckup around aerosol dispersion is one room of science and disease theory disrespecting the specialists in another room. The work on aerosols was compelling good science months before the WHO backtracked and accepted it (this is a QuT specialist research area so its a story I know from Australia where I live. Prof Lidia Morowska's and others work getting the reconsideration of aerosol risk took a lot of pushing.) AGW antoscientism was weaponised by big oil. Anti nuke fever has added metric tonnes of cost to any rational discussions of nuclear power and green energy. Meanwhile, antibiotic use is rampant. We know the science here. We know what's coming.

ggm 5y ago

Yes. I also enjoyed reading it, and worry about how we get out of this conundrum.

thomasjbevan 5y ago
Sadly it does bring to mind Pandora and her box.

brandmeyer 5y ago

Dude, this is not a balanced take on the situation. It is an appeal to emotion dressed in only the thinnest trappings of reason. > Over the past year, a fearful public has acquiesced to an extraordinary extension of expert jurisdiction over every domain of life. A pattern of “government by emergency” has become prominent, in which resistance to such incursions are characterised as “anti-science”.

ggm 5y ago
That's his conclusion. The premise going in, that a corruption of science is being used to drive political ends appears a reasonable initial line of reasoning. I can differ in where I take the conclusion but agree about this initial premise. Johnson wants economic outcomes which drive him to claim science backed policy when the science does not actually support what he is doing in the UK (for instance) and I do think a perpetuated economic and health crisis is being used to achieve political goals in a lot of ways. Enabling legislation is being rushed through parliaments in a lot of places to post hoc legitimate a form of rule by ministerial decree.

mannykannot 5y ago

This article appears to be the work of an author who has been preoccupied with his thesis for too long. Having noticed some flaws and studied them, all he can see now is corruption. Meanwhile, in the real world, science and technology has, in little more than a year and mostly apolitically, developed several different vaccines against covid-sars-2, tested them, and we are in the process of vaccinating the world's population. People are getting vaccinated, not because they are being forced to, but because they want to. I strongly suspect that, over the next year, a preponderance of those who are currently hesitant will quietly, and individually, choose to be vaccinated. The biggest problems right now are in delivering doses to where they are most needed, and that is a geopolitical problem that has nothing to do with the allegedly corrupt and authoritarian nature of science. If we are all going to hell in a handbasket, it is not because science has become corrupt.

ggm 5y ago
Overall I agree. But the underlying pressure not to publish negative results, the commercialisation of publication, the publish or perish retrace has got worse. The politicisation of science has also got markedly worse. Az got lambasted by sectoral interests, promoting pfizer and modena. Not that mRNA isn't amazing, but the sheer amount of crap decision making around Az is telling. The fuckup around aerosol dispersion is one room of science and disease theory disrespecting the specialists in another room. The work on aerosols was compelling good science months before the WHO backtracked and accepted it (this is a QuT specialist research area so its a story I know from Australia where I live. Prof Lidia Morowska's and others work getting the reconsideration of aerosol risk took a lot of pushing.) AGW antoscientism was weaponised by big oil. Anti nuke fever has added metric tonnes of cost to any rational discussions of nuclear power and green energy. Meanwhile, antibiotic use is rampant. We know the science here. We know what's coming.