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There's a huge set of potentially politically fraught middle grounds that exist between Einstein -> Newton and random quack -> some modern distinguished scienti
by caddemon 4y ago
There's a huge set of potentially politically fraught middle grounds that exist between Einstein -> Newton and random quack -> some modern distinguished scientist. And by politically fraught I mean career politics that directly impact the scientific landscape, not "politics".
It is my impression that back in the day it was more common for academics with differing opinions to banter or at times straight up disrespect each other semi-publicly. This could be historical survivorship bias, but it is a fact that aspiring scientists had a much greater likelihood of becoming a tenured PI in previous generations, and usually reached that status much earlier in their lives.
I fear that with the state of the academic job market along with present cultural norms, it is less common now for an early career investigator to question the quality of an established PI's work, or even for PIs to meaningfully criticize each other in scientifically accessible formats.
Besides, questioning the work of past scientists is implicitly questioning the research of many modern scientists, at least if that questioning is to be considered remotely novel. There are socially acceptable avenues to question past science, but there are also cases where modern PIs of influence have built so much on an assumption from prior results, such that the impact of their work would indeed be threatened by questions of the foundation.
It is important that the latter situation is handled in a manner consistent with scientific ideals. I don't know what Feynman was exactly referring to with his quote, but I'd be surprised if he was focused on the behavior of random lay people. Someone immersed in science is probably going to be most concerned with the behavior of fellow scientists and emerging trainees.
- lisper 4y agoI think you are missing an important bit of the contemporary political landscape: Feynman's quote is used by today's quacks -- particularly young-earth creationists and climate-change denialists -- to discredit the entire scientific enterprise.
- caddemon 4y agoI assumed that was the intention of the comment but I don't think HN is really a board for young earth creationists or climate change denialists. Maybe I'm wrong about that but I think there are legitimate questions to be debated on this topic and it's annoying to see critical discussions of science regularly side tracked by concerns about how someone's random crazy uncle might misinterpret the criticisms. It's not like the OP posted the quote on a climate research thread, so I don't see why it's especially relevant.
- lisper 4y agoThere are a surprising number of YECs (many of whom are also climate-change denialists -- it's all part of the same ideology) lurking here. I suspect it's part of an organized covert effort to spread the doctrine. Part of the strategy is to discredit science and scientists in general.
- caddemon 4y agoI'd think YEC is a small subset of climate deniers even if most YEC are climate deniers. I can image a climate denier contingency here but I have a hard time believing that YECs bother with HN. I'm not up to date on conspiracy theorists though. Are there any threads you can point to about YEC here? Regardless, this is also a great way to stifle important scientific discourse. Nobody wants scientific commentary to happen hidden from public view, so more and more happens on preprint servers and social media. But then nobody wants to make even good faith criticisms because they don't want the general public to misinterpret, aided by bad faith spinning by other parties. Of course you will see criticisms related to e.g. labor conditions, but when it comes to criticism of scientific practice or even in some cases specific results, there are always a bunch of people ready to comment about how most critics are quacks and we need to be careful about extremism. This is awfully convenient for the scientists that are doing subpar work.
- lisper 4y ago> I have a hard time believing that YECs bother with HN. Hard to say. It's hard to get a YEC to come out of the closet here. Maybe I'm a little overly sensitized to YECs in particular because I spent some time on the YouTube YEC debate circuit. But it hardly matters. What matters is that there are a lot of anti-science ideologues out there, some of them are well organized and well-funded, they are developing a collection of stock rhetoric (including that Feynman quote) which can be very persuasive, and some of that rhetoric appears regularly here. Whenever I see it I try to smack it down, but sometimes it feels like whack-a-mole.