7 ms·

? At some stage the science must be condensed into someones head and becomes opinion. Even if that opinion is 'What is the current scientific view of this?', i

• jbooth 14y ago
  It's one thing to have a considered opinion based on facts, statistics and reason. It's another thing to be confronted with a mountain of scientific evidence, shake your head haughtily, and announce "Well I believe differently."
  • tezza 14y ago
    I agree. Sometimes it is clear-cut like you describe. Often, though, it is a judgement call between one's gut feeling and the science facts mentioned by advisors. There are limits to what people can communicate, and I think that an expert opinion can be better than a list of scientific evidence enumerated by lesser experts. Please see the DNA / ballistics courtroom argument made by Dreyfus. http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/html/paper_socrates.html http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/html/paper_socrates.h... "It is ironic that judges hearing a case will expect expert witnesses to rationalize their testimony, for when rendering a decision involving conflicting conceptions of what is the central issue in a case and therefore what is the appropriate guiding precedent, judges will rarely if ever attempt to explain their choice of precedents. They presumably realize that they know more than they can explain and that ultimately unrationalized intuition must guide their decision-making, yet lawyers and juries seldom accord witnesses the same prerogative."
    • Retric 14y ago
      While most people are irrational that does not mean irrationality is a good thing. As a side note, people who do court room testimony are rarely scientists. Most Doctors, Forensic Exports, Medical Examiners, etc may have scientific training, but rather than looking for 'universal' answers there applying theory to a specific case. The problem is subtle but opens people up to a lot of biases.
      • 001sky 14y ago
        Rational and irrational are not a complete set of descriptors. One can be rational and quite ignorant, for example, simultaneously without contradiction. It all comes down to levels of abstraction, frames of reference, and perspective. Unless, of course, you believe in an all-knowing intelligence. Which would be ironic for a scientist.
        • Retric 14y ago
          Except, when a rational person does not know something they are far more likely to say those magic words 'I don't know'.
          • 001sky 14y ago
            This isn't necessarily so. Uttering the words "I don't know" too often damanges your credibility and social standing. A "rational person" thus avoids this type of behaviour. It is particularly damaging for "experts" to do this. That is, if they were being 'rational'.
            • Retric 14y ago
              Your fooling yourself, people say it all the time. I don't know Ubuntu, but it's I have plenty of Red Hat experience so this should be easy. And even if your clueless there are ways around that: 'What's your thoughts on Darfur?' I am a Physicist, so the political situation in Darfur is really outside my area of expertise. However, from what I herd on NPR last night it sounds bad. Why? PS: I work as a consultant and pretending to know more than you do is one of the fastest ways to ruin your reputation.
              • 001sky 14y ago
                Your fooling yourself... -- This is a bit presumptuous. To say the least. Your counter examples are cynical. It's like ou're happy to admit your greatest weakness is you're too smart and you work too hard. Great. I'm not impressed. Avoiding admitting your wrong in your (professed) area of expertise through (trivial) abstraction might seem clever (to you) but assumes your talking down to you're audience.
    • npsimons 14y ago
      Often, though, it is a judgement call between one's gut feeling and the science facts mentioned by advisors. Maybe a cause of some our problems is because people too often trust their gut feeling over cold hard scientific facts.
  • tomjen3 14y ago
    I love that argument, because it completely ignores the reality of politics. Politics is a war with words rather than bombs, but if you limit yourself to always speaking the truth, you would be like a commander who never feigns an attack in one place to keep the enemy from attacking somewhere else -- in other words, a very poor commander. I don't have any doubt that there is something going on with the environment, I am somewhat more sceptical with regards to the long projections (50+ years), but I can't admit that in public, because the automatic response to issues about greenhouse gasses are that we must cut down and degrade our livestyle, rather than build the necessary dikes and compensate for lost farmland by irregating and better management (most useful in the developed world). However as there is no political consensus for that plan, I have become forced to support the anti-science guys.
    • deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
      • mseebach 14y ago
        When the wheels of politics hit the ground, all science is out the window. Many politicians love to claim that the science overwhelmingly supports their policy prescriptions, when it most often can't be said to either support or oppose any particular policy (which is a central point of the article). If you disagree with the policy, and want your voice to count, sometime you have to hold your nose and join forces with people who are wrong in different ways. If you've ever voted for a politician with a reasonable chance of winning, you've had to make the same tradeoff.
    • AnthonyMouse 14y ago
      >the automatic response to issues about greenhouse gasses are that we must cut down and degrade our livestyle, rather than build the necessary dikes and compensate for lost farmland by irregating and better management (most useful in the developed world). I kind of wonder how much of that is just idiots talking over each other. I have no doubt that there are some people advocating the position you're ascribing to your opponents, but I think it would be a mischaracterization of your more reasonable opponents. Example: Suppose we implement a revenue-neutral energy cross-subsidy. Tax equivalent of ~$50/barrel only on fossil fuels, distributed back to all forms of energy, including fossil fuels. As long as fossil fuels continue to make up a large proportion of our energy consumption, the result will not be a large immediate increase in the price of fossil fuels, because you'll end up paying ~$50/barrel and then getting, say, $40 of that back (the rest going to subsidize non-fossil energy sources). On the other hand, build a wind turbine and you get the same $40/barrel equivalent without paying into the pool, so the market incentive is to build a ton of wind turbines (and solar arrays and nuclear power stations etc.) We end up with a large market incentive for generating less from fossil sources very quickly, which, when acted upon, naturally reduces the amount of the cross-subsidy because it's funded by a fixed-rate tax on fossil fuel use which is now lower, thereby over time making fossil fuels substantially more expensive but only after the replacements have already been developed, constructed and brought online. The result would be a modest short-term increase in energy costs (because fossil would become somewhat more expensive before renewable construction completes) and most likely a long-term reduction (because maintaining an already-constructed renewable power generating facility is less expensive than maintaining the equivalent fossil fuel facility plus having to buy the ever-scarcer fuel). I don't see how it would result in any unreasonable decrease in quality of life. On the other hand, it still isn't likely to happen before the deleterious effects of climate change are felt -- we're already there -- so we still need to take mitigation measures for that like you're describing. But I can't imagine any sound reason why the two should be mutually exclusive.
  • paulhauggis 14y ago
    Many times there are scientists with differing opinions on the same evidence. The world is rarely black and white.