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Science and scientific expertise are more important than ever

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Science and scientific expertise are more important than ever

#151

Post by baddox »

cuspy wrote: post #113
baddox wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, as a scientist, I am comforted that there are enough others out there who doubt the entire notion of a scientific establishment that the population should "trust" to make decisions without oversight. I'm not sure what you're actually proposing, but it sounds dangerously close to "pilots have been in control of airplanes for decades, and they've caused so many crashes, so maybe it's time to try people wh…

I'm not proposing anything like that. I said that I'm glad others are becoming more skeptical of the message of relying on trust without oversight. The fact that you read my comment as advocating a total disregard for training and expertise is exactly why we are in this mess. Where is nuance? No, I look at the current situation and conclude that our institutions are failing us. Notice that I didn't say I'd prefer to…

I'm sorry you don't view my interpretation as charitable, but I do think a charitable interpretation of your first comment is that you don't propose ways of fixing problems in the scientific community but rather broadly dismiss the scientific community without proposing a better alternative other than "elite families."

Re: Science and scientific expertise are more important than ever

#152

Post by cuspy »

ken47 wrote: post #140
cuspy wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with an undergraduate degree in engineering and some professional experience as an engineer, I would counter that the training of engineers absolutely does deprioritize the kind of high level critical thinking I'm talking about. I'm not saying every engineer needs to be an ethics and politics scholar, but there is definitely room for improvement. Nuance in communication and dealing intelligently with ambig…

Without concrete examples, I'm going to continue to disagree.

Have you looked into the world of Tech Startups, by any chance?

Re: Science and scientific expertise are more important than ever

#153

Post by aspaceman »

nostromo wrote: post #60
cuspy wrote: post #55

Given the track record of institutional science and the ever-growing list of regulatory failures, moral failures and outright abuses pushed in the guise of scientific expertise, why do so many people seem to think that simply doubling down and bullying the general population into compliance with expert consensus will ever work? What if institutional science in the US has a legitimacy crisis because it has failed to p…

Science in America tends to be practiced in universities, and universities in America are no longer open to the free exchange of ideas. While it may look like the public is losing faith in science, it's actually the public losing faith in the platform on which science is practiced: academia. If we want the public to regain faith in scientific findings, we need to fix academia.

Huh? How are universities not open to free exchange of ideas?

I do not understand this position.

Re: Science and scientific expertise are more important than ever

#154

Post by lopmotr »

slg wrote: post #138
cuspy wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm being too charitable, but wouldn't it be worse if it turned out that you were holding back progress in the conversation by insisting that ALL of your interlocutors are incapable of thinking critically? We need to be more strategic than vindictive. Why not forget about the notion of a mass "anti-science crowd" and have some basic respect for your fellow citizens as individuals with widely varying levels of e…

I am not suggesting we be vindictive over strategic. I am suggesting that fixing corruption in the scientific community isn't going to solve this problem because the causes of the anti-science movement don't solely originate from within the scientific community. If my specific examples are too much of a straw man, how about climate change? The US has largely been ignoring the science on that for decades. What is the…

Ignoring the science or knowing the science and deciding the best course of action is to carry on as usual? The science doesn't tell us what the best action to take on climate change is.

Re: Science and scientific expertise are more important than ever

#155

Post by DenisM »

slg wrote: post #138
cuspy wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm being too charitable, but wouldn't it be worse if it turned out that you were holding back progress in the conversation by insisting that ALL of your interlocutors are incapable of thinking critically? We need to be more strategic than vindictive. Why not forget about the notion of a mass "anti-science crowd" and have some basic respect for your fellow citizens as individuals with widely varying levels of e…

I am not suggesting we be vindictive over strategic. I am suggesting that fixing corruption in the scientific community isn't going to solve this problem because the causes of the anti-science movement don't solely originate from within the scientific community. If my specific examples are too much of a straw man, how about climate change? The US has largely been ignoring the science on that for decades. What is the…

Nutters will be nutters, you can't affect that. What you can affect is how the general public perceives the difference between the two camps. They may not know enough to judge on the merit of the arguments, but they understand reputation and character.

Every single bit of bullshit to come out of academia is one extra point for the detractors. I won't enumerate it here because there is an even chance you're in support of what I consider "bullshit" and vice versa, but it's not the point - the point is that people use their assessment of what they understand to extrapolate to things they don't, as a signal of trustworthiness of the source.

The entire intellectual class is marred by now, it's not just academia. If one does not denounce bullshit pronounced in their name the bullshit will stick.

Re: Science and scientific expertise are more important than ever

#156

Post by munificent »

bhupy wrote: post #46
munificent wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter-argument is that there is no value in doing scientific research if you don't use the results to influence human choices.

The counter-counter-argument is that if you don't decouple the "doing of the scientific research" from "influencing human choices", you might compromise the endeavor of scientific research altogether. The same institutions don't need to do both, and that they are separate is usually because "is" questions and "ought" questions are answered via different mechanisms.

> The counter-counter-argument is that if you don't decouple the "doing of the scientific research" from "influencing human choices", you might compromise the endeavor of scientific research altogether.

I don't disagree with you. Put more concretely, I think we need a blend of:

1. Allowing scientific concensus to influence the choices we make today. We should act on our current best knowledge of the world.

2. Allowing politics and our understanding of what humans need today to influence the way we allocate scientific resources. Critical problems and promising solutions should be given some priority because they have the greatest chance of improving people's lives.

3. Funding "pure" scientific research where we have no idea if it will pan out or not. 2 is biased because we don't have a perfect understanding of what research will pan out. Without some random resource allocation we will only hill-climb to the nearest local maxima of things we know are improvements. Sprinkling some fraction of our resources outside of obvious priorities allows paradigm shifts and serendipity, which are vital for progress on longer timescales.

I think a lot of science nerds, especially here, focus on 3, and I agree that it's important and undervalued. But I think it's highly inefficient to only do that. Smart resource allocation does give greater weight to areas with greater probability of success, and to areas that provide the most benefit.

Re: Science and scientific expertise are more important than ever

#157

Post by baddox »

keenmaster wrote: post #141
baddox wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, as a scientist, I am comforted that there are enough others out there who doubt the entire notion of a scientific establishment that the population should "trust" to make decisions without oversight. I'm not sure what you're actually proposing, but it sounds dangerously close to "pilots have been in control of airplanes for decades, and they've caused so many crashes, so maybe it's time to try people wh…

I'm not 100% agreeing with the OP, but I am horrified by the massive number of scientists, medical leaders, and medical professionals who: 1. Downplayed the role of masks as a public measure to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 early on (often out of a duplicitous desire to preserve PPE for the medical community, without considering that homemade cotton masks would not reduce PPE supply for medical workers) 2. Didn't a…

I agree with all those criticisms to some extent, but without some alternative I don't find the argument very useful, and I certainly don't find the original commenter's approach useful.

It's like listing the many many examples of plane crashes due to pilot error. That's not controversial. I don't think many people claim that individual pilots act without flaw, or that the entire system of pilot training and qualification is without flaw. But surely the proposal should not be to take comfort as more and more people "doubt the entire notion of an airplane piloting establishment that the population should 'trust' to make decisions without oversight."

Re: Science and scientific expertise are more important than ever

#158

Post by DenisM »

LordFast wrote: post #29
jfengel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy has never really relied on people being well-informed. The "wisdom of crowds" incorporates a lot of ignorance. It just assumes that ignorance is random, while informed opinion will tend to have a bias in favor of reality. If 49% of the people make a random guess one way, and 49% of people make a random guess the other way, then 2% of people who actually know something will put the best-informed answer over…

Huh, never thought about the math like that. It makes a lot of sense, thanks for sharing. P.S. Before the age of social media, was there not the same level of risk of induced ignorance through traditional media campaigns and propaganda? If not, why not?

In the old days the propaganda was expensive and it came from monied interests and any such interest would have a competitor pushing the other way providing balance and allowing room for the influence of the most informed citizens.

We're in the weird territory because some propaganda comes from really low-budget campaigns not easily steadied by the stabilizing influence of competing businesses. The disruption is akin to the printing press invention - suddenly low budgets provide loud voice. I expect this to go the same way - running good social media campaigns will demand huge budgets and require support from big businesses.

The other odd (and alarming) part is that the government bureaucracy itself became a source of the propaganda - we don't have a competing government bureaucracy so no tension is created to promote balance.

Re: Science and scientific expertise are more important than ever

#159

Post by DenisM »

jfengel wrote: post #40
nostromo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The nudge towards reality is easily overwhelmed by a thumb on the scale of the wrong answer. What’s the evidence supporting this? I've noticed this trend of all sides of every political debate declaring that the other side has fallen for "fake news." In actuality, it's often that people with the "wrong answer" just have a different value system than the people with "right answer."

I provided a link. You don't get to sea-lion me by just repeating "evidence" until you've demonstrated that you've at least read the sources I gave you already.

> You don't get to sea-lion me

Was this really necessary? You point would be just as strong without it, and the degree of hostility would go down.

Re: Science and scientific expertise are more important than ever

#160

Post by achillesheels »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #109
achillesheels wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence the reason science has always been an aristocratic pursuit. Georg Feuerbach demonstrates this point with the thought-provoking claim that only a polytheistic tradition (such as Athens) can breed a love of natural beauty which obligates a love of knowing its ways. But it is principally a love of Nature (and it’s universals) and not a love of wealth which moves the civilization higher. Galileo, Descartes, Newton…

I'm not sure I follow the connection here: > only a polytheistic tradition (such as Athens) can breed a love of natural beauty which obligates a love of knowing its ways. None of the people in your list below were polytheists: > Galileo, Descartes, Newton

They were principally moved by Aristotle, however. First by Galileo falsifying him. Further, the development of analytical geometry and calculus necessitated the Greek polytheistic “infatuation” with geometry.
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