5 ms·
A powerful reminder that “science” and “scientists” don’t say anything. There are organizations & researchers. They don’t speak with one voice, or have the sam
by sirspacey 5y ago
A powerful reminder that “science” and “scientists” don’t say anything.
There are organizations & researchers. They don’t speak with one voice, or have the same threat assessment, and they respond to different incentives.
It would be a gift to humanity to move beyond the antiquated idea that there are “FACTS” - static statements of truth that require no context or qualification.
Not only does context matter, it matters that we can have exploratory conversations in ambiguous contexts.
- throwntoday 5y agoHow many do you think are scared of becoming pariahs by saying anything counter to popular narrative? I'd say it's a significant number. Wouldn't want to lose the chance to ever get a research project funded again.
- shapefrog 5y agoI would go with a negative number - by definition every scientific discovery is replacing the null hypothesis or as you say - "popular narrative" (wtf does that mean anyway? is this like 'main stream media' or some other made up dog whistle?).
- throwntoday 5y agoYou seem confused. Popular narrative is not driven by scientist, it's driven by saber rattling morons who will crucify anyone that speaks against them. For example, what the scientific community understood about efficacy of masks, and how utterly useless cloth masks are, disappeared overnight with covid. Perhaps your memory is failing you but I can recall people being chastised for even suggesting they might be useless. And don't even bother trying to spin some bullshit about it's better than nothing. Attaching a cloth to your face and exposing it to warm/wet air all day is a great way to start a personal mold culture you can breathe in later. And before you try to say "well you should wash them after each use", how many people do you think actually do that? And if you wanna get real spicy, let's talk about the "science" behind transgenderism. Discovered by your favorite tumblr user, and beaten into pop culture by the woke mob.
- shapefrog 5y ago
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoCloth masks are not as good as properly fitted KN95/99 masks, but they are not utterly useless. There's a ton of evidence supporting this, and it doesn't help your argument to deny it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7510705/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7510705/
- nradov 5y agoCloth masks do very little. I recommend you listen to the explanations by infectious disease experts Dr. Monica Gandhi and Dr. Michael Osterholm. https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/ https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/ https://open.spotify.com/episode/5VSukFrMYGae1ILd0e4HuR?si=FEwYWMPWQ72FwsqddgKung https://open.spotify.com/episode/5VSukFrMYGae1ILd0e4HuR?si=F...
- shapefrog 5y agoCloth masks do very little > utterly useless. Litterally orders of magnitude.
- throwntoday 5y agoWhen the potential downsides are greater than the upside, I would classify it as useless if not outright dangerous.
- shapefrog 5y agoYou seem to be one of those drivers of "popular narrative"
- throwntoday 5y agoIt truly is easier to fool someone than convince them they have been fooled. Best of luck to you lad.
- adrianN 5y agoIf they have the data that supports their claims, papers who counter the popular narrative are about the most valuable thing a scientist can publish to further their career. Nobody cites papers that just reproduce existing results.
- nicky0 5y agoIt's not so much the popular narrative, but rather the profitable narrative, that is difficult to go against.
- jleyank 5y agoNo, there are facts. Better to state “please stop politicizing uncomfortable facts”. Some facts are essentially absolute such as the speed of light in a medium. Some are statistical in nature and so can change as additional information appears (population response). And some are only inferences. The problem appears when people fail to differentiate these categories through ignorance or point of view. Remember that “news” is at best entertainment and at worst performance art. If somebody says “the current situation is bad, assuming our model is correct”, it’s reported as “the current situation is bad” so any change is seems as nefarious. It’s just the lizard brains overpowering the neocortexes.
- programmarchy 5y agoFacts are carefully constructed human artifacts, not ideal platonic forms. Since they are usually formed by a consensus, or at least the appearance of a consensus, they are inherently political. The scientific method will tend to produce facts which are "eventually consistent" with reality, but since humans are involved, it's not a guarantee, especially in the short term.
- rcoveson 5y agoNo, facts are true statements. We don't know which statements about this collectively observed reality are facts. Coming up with new statements about reality and figuring out how likely it is that they are facts is the point of science.
- programmarchy 5y agoSure, I’ll concede that definition. But I’m referring to truth claims presented as facts.
- adrianN 5y agoAbsolute skepticism works well in philosophy lectures, but it's not a good heuristic in real life. Most facts we find by scientific short term consensus are quite close to reality.
- spookthesunset 5y agoAlso facts alone cannot determine a course of action. What actions we do are a combination of facts and social values. You cannot “follow the science” to a course of action, especially a myopic focus on a small subset of science to the exclusion of literally everything else. Our myopic focus on Covid to the almost literal exclusion of everything else had a disastrous outcome. Government refused to balance Covid against other problems in society. And the result is the mess we will be cleaning up for quite some time.