4 ms·

It is amazing the blatant nonsense people will believe if you dress a pig in a lab coat and call it science. There's been instances of politicians unironically

It is amazing the blatant nonsense people will believe if you dress a pig in a lab coat and call it science. There's been instances of politicians unironically calling to ban the dangerous drug 'dihydrogen monoxide' for example, the general public's understanding of the scientific method is probably far worse than most on HN think it is. There really needs to be a term for this widespread inability to differentiate between 'the science' as in the correct application of the scientific method to arrive at empirical conclusions about the world around us and 'The Science' as in the socio-political institution of various experts and technocrats. One is a powerful tool in humanity's toolbox for getting shit done, the other is subject to all the fallibility of human social institutions - perhaps even moreso because people will blindly trust it meaning there's fewer checks on it than other social institutions. Usually people going up against 'The Science' are cranks which means there's a tendency for people to believe anyone who goes up against the status quo is a crank. You see this in commentary about climate change, people blindly trust 'The Science' to fix everything in a glorious deus ex machina without the tiniest scrap of evidence 'The Science' even has the power do to such a thing in one fell swoop. That's not saying we shouldn't pursue efforts like geo-engineering etc but we should at least keep things in the realm of what the current scientific evidence is saying which is we need to heavily cut our emissions no matter what rather than relying entirely on speculative mega-projects. Ultimately you should never trust anyone who claims to have a monopoly on truth or that $group or $profession has a monopoly on truth.

hguant 5y ago
>There really needs to be a term for this widespread inability to differentiate between 'the science' as in the correct application of the scientific method to arrive at empirical conclusions about the world around us and 'The Science' as in the socio-political institution of various experts and technocrats. The issue is that, at least in the US, it has become politically advantageous to claim that the socio-political institution of 'The Science' has given its imprimatur to the policies they wish to enact. It's advantageous to combine the institution with the process, so why would anyone stop? Couple that with a media environment that seems fundamentally incapable of reading beyond the headline of any scientific publication, and the proliferation of p-hacking and less then replicable studies being churned out by academics who need N articles to have a chance at tenure this decade and...you get a situation where 'The Science' is whatever a bureaucrat in a lab coat says it is.

hguant 5y ago

>There really needs to be a term for this widespread inability to differentiate between 'the science' as in the correct application of the scientific method to arrive at empirical conclusions about the world around us and 'The Science' as in the socio-political institution of various experts and technocrats. The issue is that, at least in the US, it has become politically advantageous to claim that the socio-political institution of 'The Science' has given its imprimatur to the policies they wish to enact. It's advantageous to combine the institution with the process, so why would anyone stop? Couple that with a media environment that seems fundamentally incapable of reading beyond the headline of any scientific publication, and the proliferation of p-hacking and less then replicable studies being churned out by academics who need N articles to have a chance at tenure this decade and...you get a situation where 'The Science' is whatever a bureaucrat in a lab coat says it is.