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Just like you, I think the above commenter points out that scientific consensus is not a scientific construct, but a political one. > politics: social relation
by madsbuch 3y ago
Just like you, I think the above commenter points out that scientific consensus is not a scientific construct, but a political one.
> politics: social relations involving intrigue to gain authority or power
You need politics when working multiple people together. But in particular in scientific communities, you need to be able to superseede political, or institutional, ideas. This is what the original post talks about.
The core scientific constructs is stuff like falsification, occam's razor, etc.
The "mistake" seems to be a juxtaposition of science and the scientific community.
- jltsiren 3y agoScience is fundamentally about convincing other scientists that you are doing good science. The scientific method is just a garbage in, garbage out process. If you don't get other people to challenge you, you can't tell the difference between doing science and fooling yourself. No matter how much you try to question your judgment, you are always the easiest person in the world to fool.
- madsbuch 3y agoconvincing other people that you are right is fundamentally politics. Not science. good science has objective criteria and does not require political justification.
- jltsiren 3y agoI didn't say anything about being right. You have to convince others that you are doing good science. The alternative is convincing yourself, which would mean that anyone who believes they are doing science is doing science. I've never heard of those so-called objective criteria. There are some procedures that could be described objectively, but they are garbage in, garbage out. The tricky part is in the details, in the assumptions and interpretations you make. Get them subtly wrong, and the sacred rituals of cargo cult science will simply lead you astray.
- madsbuch 3y agoscience is not just the analysis. it is also about carrying out experimentation, designing and a. plethora of other thing. i dont entirely know where the garbage in, garbage out comes from? it sounds like a data scientist who thinks there is no more to science than analysing the data they are provided. if garbage goes in, then you designed your experiment poorly. which is not good science. convincing is not science, but politics.
- jltsiren 3y agoExperiment design is largely about those assumptions and interpretations I was talking about. What do you consider to be the established truth? Which aspects you should take into account and which you can safely ignore? What do you expect to happen when you perform the experiment? What is the connection between the observations you make and the outcome of the experiment? Many of those answers will likely be based on your interpretation of the scientific consensus.
- madsbuch 3y agoso, you use the scientific community and consensus to lead your experimentation efforts? sure, why not. luckily, not everybody does that,otherwise we would not have superseded the Newtonian era. which is what the main post is about: we need to break out of the community and consent. Anyways, this reenforces the idea that we should distinguish between science and scientific communities.