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

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

#201

Post by aeternus »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #187
balabaster wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's not science though - that's a single study or two being blown out of proportion. It's an element of science, a snapshot of knowledge, but the scientific method requires that we continually refine those messages and ideas, and that's not happening - we do an experiment, and then without any more corroboration or reproduction it's released to the public. We are seeing tiny pieces of science, but the problem is w…

Yes, but the scientific community has in-part brought this upon themselves.

The actual research is inaccessible to the public, hidden behind paywalls in subscription-only journals, and written in a form that is very difficult if not impossible for the general public to understand.

For most of the general public, the output of the scientific community is just a poorly translated and often misleading headline.

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

#202

Post by Nasrudith »

pdonis wrote: post #66
happytoexplain wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between being skeptical of scientifically-arrived-at conclusions (which is healthy and I don't share your opinion that people are largely "castigated" for that) and explicitly ignoring science, and experts in general, based purely on the fact that their conclusions conflict with one's socio-political convictions, which I think is a real problem that people may feel castigated for falling into (w…

> it's this trend of elevating skepticism to denial simply for political reasons Well, there's just as much of a trend of claiming your position is "science" when it isn't, simply for political reasons. For example, by any reasonable standards, economics is not a science; yet people who question the current orthodoxy in economics, for example by questioning whether having the Federal Reserve print money is really a g…

Economics should be fact based at least. I personally would call it a science but a soft one from there being so many variables and interpretations. It does produce some hard facts - mostly in the form of "what not to do"

We already know that hyperinflation relative to growth is a way to ruin an economy quickly for instance. Similarly the issue with federal reserve denialism is that they have rhetoric but not much understanding about economic history.

Precious metal backed currency has lead to countless expensive wars and travesties because it effectively started to be a brake/cap on growing economies. Essentially saying you are against the federal reserve period is like admitting you are a homeopath - it goes beyond a difference of supportable opinion and into a sign of incompetence.

I can understand some unease about the role of the federal reserve but it should have some role even if it is stuck on "try to map to economic growth instead of attempting stimulus or bubble deflation".

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

#203

Post by mymythisisthis »

cameronh90 wrote: post #16
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…

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.

That's how medieval scholasticsim was born. Originally logic, and the works of Greek philosophers were explored. Soon rules around logic became formalize, and a dogmatism set in.

Afterwards students were discouraged from original thought around logic and just forced to learn the following mnemoic

Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferioque prioris. Cesare, Camestres, Festino, Baroco secundae. Tertia Darapti, Disamis, Datisi, Felapton, Bocardo, Ferison habet. Quarta insuper addit Bramantip, Camenes, Dimaris, Fesapo, Fresison.

Scholasticism then went onto have terrible connotations as a scholarly system.

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

#204

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

aeternus wrote: post #201
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not science though - that's a single study or two being blown out of proportion. It's an element of science, a snapshot of knowledge, but the scientific method requires that we continually refine those messages and ideas, and that's not happening - we do an experiment, and then without any more corroboration or reproduction it's released to the public. We are seeing tiny pieces of science, but the problem is w…

Yes, but the scientific community has in-part brought this upon themselves. The actual research is inaccessible to the public, hidden behind paywalls in subscription-only journals, and written in a form that is very difficult if not impossible for the general public to understand. For most of the general public, the output of the scientific community is just a poorly translated and often misleading headline.

It's also become incredibly complex and utterly alien to even practitioners in the fields - I can't read computer science doctoral dissertations with any degree of understanding. That's not a failing of the language, that's an evolution of it - we're at a point now where we need years and years of education to be able to be able to speak the language required for the research.

It absolutely is difficult for the general public, but that's not a failing, that's the state of the art.

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

#205

Post by TimTheTinker »

Barrin92 wrote: post #163
yters wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't trusting authority contrary to trusting science? The point of science is that we can verify truths for ourselves without relying on authority. Hence, if any authority, 'scientific' or otherwise, asserts their authority instead of providing individually verifiable evidence of its claims, then we can say they are being unscientific, regardless of title.

I don't think that's the point of science at all to be honest. The point of scientific endeavour is to discover facts about the world. That's a really hard job, and the majority of people are not scientists, and even a trained scientist cannot verify the overwhelming majority of existing science by themselves, which means that science, like any other sufficiently large human collaboration, requires institutions, trus…

> religion that puts food on their table, makes their planes stay in the sky and makes them healthy again when they fall sick

Your phrasing makes it sound like you're conflating science and physical reality... that's kind of a pet peeve of mine (sorry). Science provides some of the knowledge required for engineers and doctors to do their jobs, but it's the work they do with that knowledge that accomplishes those things. I think that's an important distinction. We can't credit science with creating the natural world or its mechanisms, though it has enabled us to understand and work with it.

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

#206

Post by yters »

roenxi wrote: post #196
Barrin92 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's the point of science at all to be honest. The point of scientific endeavour is to discover facts about the world. That's a really hard job, and the majority of people are not scientists, and even a trained scientist cannot verify the overwhelming majority of existing science by themselves, which means that science, like any other sufficiently large human collaboration, requires institutions, trus…

> So if someone understands nothing about science at all, and worships it like a religion, at least they had the good sense of picking a religion that puts food on their table, makes their planes stay in the sky and makes them healthy again when they fall sick. Religion has proven capable of welding large communities together, and that sort of shared belief system wins wars. If you ignore the fact that the doctrine i…

Then there is the fact that science was created by religious societies, Christianity in particular. Many of the fundamental discoveries came about due to religious motivations and religious principles: the world is orderly and understandable because it was created by a transcendent mind. Take away religion and we would not have science.

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

#207

Post by brandonmenc »

mywittyname wrote: post #185
alan-crowe wrote: post #141

The article is dated 18 March 2019, but it asks "So: what went wrong?" and then mentions neither p-hacking nor the replication crisis in psychology. Perhaps the author has a rebuttal to those who think that questionable research practices have brought about the fall of scientific authority, but he doesn't give it here. Some of the problems lie closer to home than the content of scientific journals. Henry Gee is a sen…

This has been going on since long, long before p-hacking and the replication crisis. And I honestly find these to be very different issues. It was common for people in the US to reject the idea of smoking as a cause of lung cancer until like the 1980s. Scientific consensus on this fact was reached in the 60s and was suspected for a while before that. Yet, it took like 40 years for the public to agree. Think about wha…

> It was common for people in the US to reject the idea of smoking as a cause of lung cancer until like the 1980s. Scientific consensus on this fact was reached in the 60s and was suspected for a while before that. Yet, it took like 40 years for the public to agree.

You're exaggerating.

It did not take until after the year 2000 for the public to believe that smoking causes cancer.

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

#208

Post by ben509 »

Nasrudith wrote: post #34

Really science shouldn't operate on authority in the first place ideally - it should speak for itself. In practice however there are limits to both time and ability to understand. It should be listened to for being more right as opposed to position. The most disturbing part isn't not trusting scientist but not trusting evidence, even that gathered by themselves. It is one thing to say believe light has infinite speed…

> In practice however there are limits to both time and ability to understand.

It does seem that for some big ticket items like global warming the way to go would be have an open sourced app people can download and play with the simulations themselves.

The scientists working on this stuff do make efforts to put this material together in a comprehensible form, so it's all out there. But it's very hard to trace anything back to the original data, and it seems like we're getting to the point where enough tools to do this are becoming ubiquitous.

> I suspect Sophism is the main culprit really - arguing based on feelings as opposed to facts.

I think that's very much our default behavior. When I've seen policy discussions it seems overwhelmingly that people look at it through a personal lens, and then they've set themselves up so criticism of their position is criticism of them. And then it's bloody difficult to deescalate without seeming condescending.

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

#209

Post by weberc2 »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #178
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 th…

> 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.

How does a layperson make a deeper investigation on their own? The research is typically paywalled, the jargon is inaccessible, the experiments are prohibitively expensive, etc etc. In effect, there is a priestly caste, and one which arguably excludes from the debate members of the skeptic's tribe (i.e., "people the skeptic might trust to address their concerns"). This is why heterodoxy and political diversity in the academy is soooo important.

You might be inclined to say something like "conservatives select out of the academy" or "it's not my fault reality has a liberal bias" and you might even be right, but I don't think you'll find climate change very sympathetic to your position. In other words, this isn't affirmative action for conservatives, it's affirmative action (of conservatives) for the benefit of humanity.

Disclaimers: I'm picking 'conservatives' and 'liberals' here because that's clearly the bent of the article. I'm also picking climate change since it seems to be the favorite example of science denialism. Of course, contrary to the angle of this article, science denialism isn't even an exclusively conservative phenomenon (blank slatism is a favorite of anti-science leftists--including leftist academics--and flat-earth and anti-vax are bipartisan beliefs).

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

#210

Post by tunesmith »

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.

If it were limited to "when you do blah, I feel blah" verbiage, it would feel like that. But it's more generally about taking accountability for one's own side, while listening to the other side, without needless escalation. I can't really see a flaw with that approach, other than it taking more work.

I wonder how many arguments would be defused if both sides could phrase the other side's point of view in a way they would agree was accurately stated.

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