Why I Hate Science

"What I'm concerned about is that the average scientific layman reader -- the person who assumes they are just as up-to-date on scientific matters as possible -- has no freaking idea where the real science leaves off and where the bullshit begins."

Which I completely agree with. There is the scientific method which strives to discover truth though rigor and their is the use of 'science' in rhetoric which attempts to lend truthiness to speculation or wishful thinking.

The blog post would have benefited greatly from taking this version of it, pulling out all of the actual things the author wanted to say, and then laying those out in a more cohesive fashion.

For those interested in the abuse of numbers in rhetoric I can reccomend the book 'Proofiness' [1] which talks about ways people abuse mathematics as a rhetorical tool. Science is one of those things that also helps lay people feel better about believing in something.

I agree with the original author's disappointment as to how it is being abused. But I also note that the author gets confused between how journalists report science vs what the science actually said. It is always a good idea to track down the original paper or study and read it to see what the journalist left out or simply missed.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0670022160/

Science needs a new set of ethics. It needs to be clear when reporting medical studies what types of methods were used, what was brought into the study a priori, the sample size, and how it was reviewed. Scientists should be clear when they are speaking on matters of reproducible science -- such as the absorption spectrum of CO2, the Greenhouse principle, the fact that man changes his environment, and black-body physics -- and when they are totally speculating, like predicting the global temperature in 100 years. These are different types of information. (I hate to use global warming, but it's in vogue.)

First, Isn't what he wants in medical studies completely standard practice? I regularly read NEJM and their standard format is: Background, Methods, Results, Conclusion. I feel like he's getting his medical science from the NYTimes, which is fine as a starting point, but those are articles written by reporters. Find the actual study to see what the scientist did.

Second, if you actually read the "speculative" studies, rather than just watching Fox News you'll typically see how they come to the conclusion of the temperature in 100 years. They detail and construct a model, sometimes via simulation. It's not that anyone is saying, "This is what the temperature will be guaranteed", rather it's saying, "here's a model we constructed. We tested it on historical data and it's accurate to this extent. This is what we see looking forward. These are the factors that contribute most to this result." That's how science is done. That's how I can hypothesize the sun will come up tomorrow -- I have historical data, I create a model of the solar system, gravity, inertia, etc... and say based on that I think the sun will come up again tomorrow, and based on my models I think it will be colder in the winter than the summer. What he considers "speculative" science is just normal science, but where the models aren't as well understood, and part of science is strengthening the models.

I just feel like he doesn't get science at all. When you don't really understand something, you're more likely to hate it.

  ...but at the end of the day you can make the argument that 
  everything about personalities are evolutionary in nature.   
  ADHD? Useful for surviving in the jungle. 

It seems like the author is dumping on people for not getting it right, when he is not really getting the context correct themselves.