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I don't think the problem here is the actual scientists. The problem is the "I Follow The Science™" laypersons. A scientist can speak on a subject with some d

• notahacker 3y ago
  They're wrong an awful lot less often than the "The Science Conflicts With My Strongly Held Opinions So I Reject It" laypersons though.
  • MightyBuzzard 3y ago
    [dead]
  • advael 3y ago
    I really seldom ever see them though. Like the vast overwhelming majority of people who reject what may be the broad scientific consensus these days will not outwardly claim to be rejecting "the science", they'll say they believe some alternate source who also claims to be doing "the science"
    • notahacker 3y ago
      There are a whole lot of rants about "scientific establishments", "naturopaths" etc that suggest otherwise. Whether "the science" is the correct label for broad scientific consensus is something of a moot, semantic point anyway. Either way you have a bunch of laypeople largely ignorant of the details saying they trust the scientific consensus and a bunch of ignorant laypeople largely ignorant of the details saying they don't agree with the scientific consensus [because someone else who may or may not be a researcher says some other thing]... but unless the evidential value of the weight of research that results in "scientific consensus" is on average worthless, the "trust the science" blind followers of scientific consensus followers have the better heuristic than the blind rejectors of scientific consensus.
  • jpk 3y ago
    I mean, sure, but literally every avenue of human endeavor endures ignorant and/or contrarian criticism. Science certainly isn't spared from this, but it generally doesn't prevent good science from getting done. However, the premise of this thread is that scientism's blind dismissal of dissent _does_ impede the process because it turns a fluid search for truth into an ossified political position, which can, in turn, provoke actions that chill dissent. So there's dumb dissent and smart dissent, but if there's a large contingent of scientism zealots who are indiscriminately dunking on _all_ dissenters, then that's a problem.
    • notahacker 3y ago
      That does rather depend on whether the scientism zealots have any influence on the practice of science (I'm really not sure why ignorant people who agree with the mainstream consensus would be any more likely to prevent good science from being done than ignorant people who dissent from it, especially since the latter often hold political power too). And for that matter what the net impact is, given that being a dissenter is a route to outsized fame and influence as well as outsized criticism on many topics. I mean, I don't think it was members of the public endorsing the scientific consensus that ossified the divide between mainstream medical professionals and homeopaths, or added political implications to debates on anthropogenic global warming. And whilst lots of laymen shouted at each other over whether Invermectin was a miracle cure that Big Pharma were trying to suppress or an unproven Covid remedy most loudly promoted by quacks and anti-lockdown politicos, lots of studies on its efficacy were carried out and I suspect the career implications for those developing world doctors who carried out studies on their patient base, found some benefit and continued to prescribe it even after other studies suggested it was not a cure for COVID symptoms[1] were generally very positive. [1]it probably helps that, being scientists rather than campaigners, they might have been capable of reaching agreement with the scientific invermectin-sceptics that it quite possibly was only protecting against parasite-related comorbidities, but that still meant it made sense to prescribe to their at-risk patient group