The author clearly cares about both science and progress in the abstract, and how applicable science and progress are to daily living. The author does have a po

The author clearly cares about both science and progress in the abstract, and how applicable science and progress are to daily living. The author does have a point: scientific research is both a) slow, and b) confirmatory. This means that it necessarily lags behind what people can think up, surmise, and hypothesize. Yes, people who blindly believe in Science are missing part of the point. But that isn't a problem with Science. Unfortunately, the writing in this post is not compelling -- it is overly emotionally charged (rather than analytical), contains contradictions, is not backed up by any citations or links, and has weird grammar. Some examples: > Of course, much like the Greek Gods, we cannot seem to speak to "knowledge" directly, or to mentally murky academics, but only to official mediators: journalists and "science communicators" and the like. Every academic has a publicly accessible email address. Some may not respond to a honest inquiry, but in my experience, many do! Of all the academics I've emailed, I'd say my response rate is ~8/10. > And scientific models, from our models of the atom, to models of the Earth's weather and climate, to models of our body are highly circumstantial, and as a rule, will nearly all inevitably be proven false. The Bayesian interpretation of probability in the context of hypothesis testing suggests that "True" and "False" are not useful conceptual predicates for thinking about models. Newton's laws are "False" if you want to be persnickety, but they describe how things move on Earth to an astonishing degree of accuracy. > We know nearly nothing of how the brain works. This is a hyperbolic claim. The visual system, detailing how information in the form of light wavelengths are transformed at various stages of processing and location is remarkably well worked out. Especially given that researchers have only been tackling the problem for a little more than a hundred and twenty years. > The reality is that these demigods really just went to graduate school because they were lazy and initiativeless, and even in the abstract, most of their real work has nothing to do with your life whatsoever. > Science journalists, much like journalists generally, are people too incompetent and emotional to work in the private sector... It always saddens me to read writing from an author who doesn't seem to be very happy. Would he say that MD-PhD researchers who went to grad school are lazy and lacking in initiative? ... While it would be great to be alive to benefit from, say, another 100 years of medical research and development, that's a counter-factual fantasy. Science is our best guess. It is also an imperfect process. But hey, the author is more than welcome to think of a better way to do generate new, accurate, and useful knowledge.