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The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

nature.com

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Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#131

Post by buboard »

> Galileo lived in an era that knew two principal sources of authority:

For a counterpoint: Galileo went to prison for his convictions. Do scientists nowadays project the same force of argument and power of will? There is widespread distrust from scientists themselves about a lot of the science being published. Most sciences leech off credibility from the success of physics. But credibility ranges from "most findings being published are likely false", to being unable to reproduce, to liberal arts where "everything goes". When scientists can't be even arsed to publish their preprints on a public repository, are they willing to stand by their science like galileo, and is it a surprise that laymen have started having their doubts? Also, I follow a bunch of scientists of my field on twitter and half their tweets are political. Perhaps if some scientists were not so overly political, the public would not respond in kind.

> The authority of science rested on people, not on tools or methods or charts and data.

But Mustafa Kemal was a military general, and it was the military that took it upon them to guard the secular state in Turkey, up to this day (last coup was 2 years ago). It's not easy for science to win over people. it takes work

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#132

Post by everdev »

charliesharding wrote: post #5

The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo. Think of the way people are castigated for not believing in scientific "truths". I see signs in peoples yard saying that "in this house, we believe science is real". As someone who has studied biochemistry for years, this kind of reverence for science is truly troubling. The one…

> nobody really knows what they're talking about, paradigms shift, and further study is required

People so often miss this. Science is a slow, evolving and never ending process. The day a new study comes out, people want to use it as evidence that something is 'settled science'.

Even things as fundamental to our knowledge of the universe like gravity have evolved over time and are still being understood at deeper and deeper levels.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#133

Post by spraak »

scotty79 wrote: post #103
charliesharding wrote: post #5

The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo. Think of the way people are castigated for not believing in scientific "truths". I see signs in peoples yard saying that "in this house, we believe science is real". As someone who has studied biochemistry for years, this kind of reverence for science is truly troubling. The one…

> The one thing you learn in high level science is that nobody really knows what they're talking about, paradigms shift, and further study is required. High level science is on the borders of vast body of scientific knowledge. It's only to be expected that people who work there don't know much about the things they try to figure out. What they know a whole lot about is the foundation of that vast body of scientific k…

Pluto as a planet was established science for a long time. Textbooks are probably the biggest examples of "settled science" that is out of date.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#134

Post by buboard »

charliesharding wrote: post #5

The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo. Think of the way people are castigated for not believing in scientific "truths". I see signs in peoples yard saying that "in this house, we believe science is real". As someone who has studied biochemistry for years, this kind of reverence for science is truly troubling. The one…

skepticism is in short supply nowadays

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#135

Post by thedaemon »

x220 wrote: post #32
war1025 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wouldn't be a step up over religion, that would just be religion.

You seem to think that "religion" means "blind adherence to something ", which is really, really narrow. Is COBOL a religion?

Then the translation of "religion" is "faith".

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#136

Post by Majromax »

pdonis wrote: post #121
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy if you're deciding between two masses for an electron. In that case you've already decided that some theory which describes electrons is the one for you--so in that context one is a fact that the other is just plain false. But it gets tricky in cases where you're deciding between facts whose enclosing theories are incompatible. Is gravity a force, or is it an acceleration? Each is a fact in its own theory--…

> it gets tricky in cases where you're deciding between facts whose enclosing theories are incompatible. Is gravity a force, or is it an acceleration? This isn't deciding between facts. It's deciding between different theoretical interpretations of the same facts. The facts of gravity didn't change when Einstein discovered General Relativity. All that changed was the theoretical model. > Your epistemology appears to…

> But in the world of today, where all of those diseases are extremely rare--precisely because of such a huge fraction of the population getting vaccinated in the past--the probability of catching the disease if you aren't vaccinated is much lower. So now even a much lower probability of some kind of harm from the vaccine itself can justify not getting vaccinated.

I think this is also a good example of the exact opposite point, however, that there is a decline in authority.

What you describe here is a rational assessment of risks, but it is also a collective action problem: the individual risk of infection is low precisely because everyone else vaccinates their children.

A Nash equilibrium generates a suboptimal outcome, where disease prevalence increases to the point where the perceived risks are equal. Worse yet, this has negative externalities for others, such as those too young to take a vaccine or who are allergic, since they can no longer rely on herd immunity.

Collective action problems like this are usually resolved with some kind of coordinating authority. In some environments that authority can be normal social suasion, but in others it needs to be explicitly regulatory.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#137

Post by identity-haver »

phd514 wrote: post #22

The opening paragraphs of this article are just another example of what appears to be an ongoing attempt to manufacture conflict between "religion" and "science". The books that were burned at Ephesus were explicitly identified in Acts 19:19 as sorcery books, not "books of nature". Stuff like this gets published in Nature and people wonder why "science" is losing its credibility?

I don't understand why Nature has decided to dilute its brand by posting these poorly researched, non-peer reviewed blogs.

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#138

Post by unknownkadath »

Fellshard wrote: post #120
unknownkadath wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, well, as long as it was sorcery. Burning those books is a completely normal thing for completely normal people to do.

Have you... read the passage, or done the slightest research into the historical context in which it was set?

Have you? Did you read the article? What in god's name is phd514 arguing with?

No where in the damn fine article is the phrase "books of nature" mentioned. The article is describing the context in which modern scientific thought gained currency among the educated and the powerful, both in 17th century Europe and the 19th century Ottoman Empire, how that authority waned in the mid-20th century and today, and how we can work to use those historical examples to "break the whack-a-mole" machine rather than playing whack-a-mole with vaccine deniers, flat-earthers, and so forth.

Here is the context from the fine article the poster is upset with:

"Hanging in the Louvre Museum in Paris is an imposing painting, The Preaching of St Paul at Ephesus. In this 1649 work by Eustache Le Sueur, the fiery apostle lifts his right hand as if scolding the audience, while clutching a book of scripture in his left. Among the rapt or fearful listeners are people busily throwing books into a fire. Look carefully, and you see geometric images on some of the pages."

In the context of 1649, a painting that depicted the burning of geometry books had a very particular meaning. However, instead of noticing that the discussion is focused on Le Suer's painting, phd413 decided that his religion was being attacked.

Does this context make phd514's comment make any more sense? If not, in what context does it make sense?

The only context that I can see is that of a religious person who didn't read the fine article before getting upset and commenting.

As an aside, so what if the bible says those books were full of sorcery? So what if they were? I don't reckon at any time that burning books has been a considered a great idea by people who read, you know, books. (I might make an exception if you found an authentic functional Necronomicon.)

Re: The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

#140

Post by vkazanov »

madspindel wrote: post #54
cameronh90 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People may confuse believing in the scientific method for believing in the current scientific consensus, which as you point out is fluid. However, for the average person, a dogmatic belief in the scientific method would be a huge step up over religion.

"The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." Written by Albert Einstein

Source, pls. Where and when did he say that?
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