The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by unknownkadath » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 8:40 PM UTC

identity-haver wrote: post #143

unknownkadath wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

It's not at all clear that the books contain "geometry" per se in the painting. I can't find a source either way but if you've ever seen alchemical or astrological figures they could be mistaken for math. The people were destroying their own books after hearing a new way of looking at the world. How different is this from some kid throwing away his Joel Osteen book after taking a philosophy class? But I agree that th…

Replying here since we ran out of room down below:

Compared to this Nature article, Ataturk was very direct. Read these quotes that I found using 3 seconds of difficult googling, and then decide on what side of the debate he would land.

"I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men" [1]

"It is known by the world that, in our state administration, our main program is the Republican People's Party program. The principles it covers are the main lines that illuminate us in management and politics. But these principles should never be held equal to the dogmas of books that are assumed to have descended from the sky. We have received our inspirations directly from life, not from sky or unseen." [2]

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[1] Quoted in Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey, by Andrew Mango; "In a book published in 1928, Grace Ellison quotes [Atatürk], presumably in 1926-27", Grace Ellison Turkey Today (London: Hutchinson, 1928)

[2] Atatürk'ün Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi'nin V. Dönem 3. Yasama Yılını Açış Konuşmaları (in Turkish). "... Dünyaca bilinmektedir ki, bizim devlet yönetimimizdeki ana programımız, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi programıdır. Bunun kapsadığı prensipler, yönetimde ve politikada bizi aydınlatıcı ana çizgilerdir. Fakat bu prensipleri, gökten indiği sanılan kitapların doğmalarıyla asla bir tutmamalıdır. Biz, ilhamlarımızı, gökten ve gaipten değil, doğrudan doğruya yaşamdan almış bulunuyoruz."

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

#172

Post by matt4077 » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

tabtab wrote: post #127

A bigger problem is when and how to rely on "subject experts". My car mechanic knows far more about cars than I do, but he/she may also be biased into recommending unnecessary costly repairs to line her/her pocket. Climate change skeptics often question the financial motivation of climatologists. It's certainly something to consider, but they rarely propose alternatives. For example, a committee could be set up to in…

Climate researchers mostly have tenure. They cannot be fired for going against majority opinion. And in most countries except the US, they do not rely on outside funding to any significant degree.

So participating in a giant fraud would actually be the most dangerous option for them, financially. Instead, they could expose it and, if convincing, would at the very least make a lot of money on book deals and the lecture circuit. Maybe even a Nobel.

Alternatively, they could switch their focus. With a solid foundation in physics, dynamic systems, etc. there are any number of topics they could easily work on.

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

#173

Post by benj111 » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

justtopost wrote: post #149

igor47 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a fan of NVC(non-violent communication) and that framework could be summarized by the sentence, "when you do X,I feel Y". You basically become an instrument that reports on your internal state, plus you're also supposed to avoid assuming anything about the other person's internal state. This is a lot more like science then the usual default of blaming and assumptions and implicit expectations that most people con…

I find that type of communication childing and dehumanizing. To each their own.

Really? I do a similar thing when dealing with idiots (not idiots, fully formed human beings, with a legitimate point of view, probably not evil, probably quite normal in person) on the internet.

I find it helps keep me sane.

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

#174

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 8:47 PM UTC

spraak wrote: post #133

scotty79 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The definition of a planet is not science, it's just an arbitrary rule.

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

#175

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #166

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.

> However, for the average person, a dogmatic belief in the scientific method would be a huge step up over religion. But the scientific method is based on the idea of an unchanging God / reality. Without that fundamental belief, theres no point in determining how physics behaves in an experiment, because if everything happens at the whims of anthropomorphic gods, then there is no reason to expect the same experiment…

The scientific method produces predictable, reproducible results, and other philosophies do not. Therefore, it's more useful.

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

#176

Post by mjevans » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

balabaster wrote: post #164

joe_the_user wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that an even larger problem exists. Among the public, science has always had some portion of people who understood it's processes as those of a secular priesthood and those who understood it's processes as discovering the truth through skepticism and experimentation. Even among this working scientists, this division has existed (and given a society that never discarded religion, anti-science along with an…

It's like hearing that science says that fat is bad... and then eggs are bad for you... and alcohol is bad... and then another study says that a glass of wine a day is good for your heart... and salt is bad... then sugar is bad... then carbohydrates are bad... and now fat is good as long as you don't overdo carbohydrates... and eggs have good cholesterol and are really good for you... and salt is necessary to balance…

Oversimplification for sound bytes (and headlines/click-bait) is the primary cause for this.

News outlets are eager to 'report first' and don't bother correctly framing the science in a proper context of one study //which suggests more research and confirmation is necessary//.

Publish or perish, along with the lack of replication rather than trying to find something exciting to publish, or even enshrining the effort of replicating results (repudiating or confirming) to more strongly establish fact and carefully observe to see if there may be other causes/effects; is ruining the integrity of the scientific methods.

Finally, a lack of stable funding for maintaining and improving what should be public domain (established facts about nature) and the work of students of all ages to re-study and double check as they learn, is nearly the ultimate root cause. The true root cause being greed and the increasing likelihood that as we as a species approach 'abundance' that capitalism ceases to be a good means for wisely allocating resources. Surely that is the case when we are to the point of automated micro-transaction harvesting HFT and fractions of a second of advantage translating to profits in a financial sector that is a vastly over-sized portion of the GDP.

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

#177

Post by identity-haver » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 8:54 PM UTC

gus_massa wrote: post #45

x220 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo. I wish. In the US a huge number of people (large enough to be dangerous) reject climate change consensus, think that evolution shouldn't be taught in schools, are "skeptical" about vaccinating their children (I use quotes because skepticism implies reasonableness), think that t…

> or think that abstinence-only sex education is effective. How did we prove that it doesn't work? I agree that it doesn't work, but I have a very hard time imagining how to make a study to prove it.

Here's a large study indicating that states with the highest abstinence education level had 25% higher teen pregnancies than states with the lowest level [1], after not controlling for Hispanic teen population, the teen population demographic with the highest birth rate. Whereas, here's one claiming that state policy affected STI rates, but not pregnancy rates [2].

edit: these studies consider "effective" to mean "reduces teen pregnancy + STI rates". Many organizations including WHO consider what they call comprehensive sex education to be a human right, in which case abstinence-only education can never be effective.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26918400

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

#178

Post by matthewdgreen » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

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…

I don’t think those signs indicate blind, unquestioning support for “scientific truths” as practiced by some mythical scientific priesthood. They are a response to a troubling political tendency that has made the evaluation of certain scientific findings into a question of political and tribal beliefs rather than one that involves proper skepticism, education and scientific investigation.

If the situation was that there was a strong evidence-based disagreement about scientific findings, those signs wouldn’t be necessary. The situation is instead that a vast number of scientists are producing findings that contradict certain political preferences, and the response has not been a deeper investigation made in good faith — but rather an outright political rejection of the findings. “I support science” is not shorthand for “I take every scientific study as fact because scientists are gods,” but rather “I am inclined to give weight to scientific arguments in either direction as opposed to political arguments that reject those findings based on non-scientific reasoning.”

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

#179

Post by shirakawasuna » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 8:58 PM UTC

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…

"We believe science is real" is not a statement of dogmatic belief in scientific conclusions, it is a reaction to anti-scientific movements that attempt to influence the public perception of science. It is usually primarily directed at the moneyed interests opposed to climate science and the impacts it predicts, though it also deals with related issues impacting health and the environment.

If you spend a cursory time searching for that statement, you'll find that it's associated with the March for Science, which is, itself, a reaction to active and successful attempts at having persons in government distort, remove, and ignore science that flies in the face of moneyed interests.

By the way, just about everything you know about Galileo re: perception and persecution is wrong.

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

#180

Post by mcguire » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 8:58 PM UTC

unknownkadath wrote: post #138

Fellshard wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

As an aside...

"...how that authority [of scientific thought] waned in the mid-20th century and today..."

The high point of the authority of science in the United States was probably between ~1950, after Sputnik, and ~1980, say before Reagan's "Star Wars" proposal. Certainly, the descent had started by the early '90s, when a scientist went before a congressional committee and couldn't find anything more useful to say about the SSC project than "the God particle".

The latter brings up a good point: the authority of science would probably be more respected if scientists didn't spend so much time fighting each other.