11–20 of 112 posts
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/complete_report/CBS_Report...
I heard the incoming Vice President, Mike Pence, does not believe in evolution. In fact there's a video of him, admittedly a long while ago now, making a speech where he seems to not understand what the scientific meaning of "theory" is. Are people not concerned about this at all? People in high positions ought to know basic things about how science functions, yet as the article points out, barely a word was said abo…
http://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2016/jul/28/...
Science needs another ally as well - we also need wholesome support of science. Not just pick and choosing to support a particular ideology, liberal or conservative. For some (my friends on the right, whom I understand and have empathy for more than your average HN reader), scientific thought unfortunately has been so closely tied to liberal ideologies that middle America sees as destructive to families and local eco…
Conservative ideals and science don't have any inherent conflict, but uhm, that other thing...
I heard the incoming Vice President, Mike Pence, does not believe in evolution. In fact there's a video of him, admittedly a long while ago now, making a speech where he seems to not understand what the scientific meaning of "theory" is. Are people not concerned about this at all? People in high positions ought to know basic things about how science functions, yet as the article points out, barely a word was said abo…
Unfortunately, there are just as many ill-informed Americans that share these views. It's sad and depressing, and is usually just the result of being in a conservative bubble. If you live in rural America, your friends and family all regurgitate the same things they hear from Fox News, Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, Breitbart, and other conservative sources, which, for whatever reason, seem to hold a lot of scientific things in contempt.
They're ignorant, sure, but it's hard to see things from another perspective if you've never really been exposed to anything else.
I heard the incoming Vice President, Mike Pence, does not believe in evolution. In fact there's a video of him, admittedly a long while ago now, making a speech where he seems to not understand what the scientific meaning of "theory" is. Are people not concerned about this at all? People in high positions ought to know basic things about how science functions, yet as the article points out, barely a word was said abo…
Science needs another ally as well - we also need wholesome support of science. Not just pick and choosing to support a particular ideology, liberal or conservative. For some (my friends on the right, whom I understand and have empathy for more than your average HN reader), scientific thought unfortunately has been so closely tied to liberal ideologies that middle America sees as destructive to families and local eco…
> growing intolerance for scientists to hold opinions of faith or conservative ideals Conservative ideals and science don't have any inherent conflict, but uhm, that other thing...
Faith and science go together just fine, and I say this as a hard atheist.
Science does not lead inexorably to policy. Science is only the first step, in how it allows us to understand the world around us. What we want to do about that is an entirely value-based decision. Deciding to implement policy demands filtering that understanding through a lens of our collective values as a society. Those values are fluid, and very frequently in controversy. It seems like the demands to "follow science" are an attempt to sweep some of that controversy under the carpet.
In the case of climate change, it's pretending that there's cost/benefit analysis to be done. It ignores the possibility that the cost of doing something will exceed the likely damage expected. (I'm not saying that's the case, I'm just saying that folks are trying to skip that part of the conversation)
It pops up in other cases, too. Virtually every economist will tell you that free trade is almost always a net positive for all involved. It harms a few, but on net the entire society is much better off. If we stopped with the science, then we should remove all tariffs and be done with it. But before we do so, there's still a moral question to be resolved: if a few people are paying the price to improve our overall economy, do we owe any debt to them, to make them whole afterwards?
So stop pretending that a lack of the policy you want demonstrates that we're scientifically illiterate. Instead, recognize that the science can only inform our debate over the values.
The climate scientists talk about 1 degree Celsius increase in global temperatures and some react with "I am fine if the temperature would increase by a degree Fahrenheit".
Instead, what a person should realise is that an increase in global temperature of a mere 1C is shorthand to trillions of trillions of Joules (energy).
I heard the incoming Vice President, Mike Pence, does not believe in evolution. In fact there's a video of him, admittedly a long while ago now, making a speech where he seems to not understand what the scientific meaning of "theory" is. Are people not concerned about this at all? People in high positions ought to know basic things about how science functions, yet as the article points out, barely a word was said abo…
Funny, today on the Drudge Report, I read that we've had record cooling in the past 8 months. http://realclimatescience.com/2016/11/record-global-cooling-... There's a large online anti-global warming movement that needs to be addressed. Actually, there's an anti-everyhing movement (e.g vaccines). The general public is not going to know who to believe. Do more people read Drudge or Scientific American?
What we need not better debate, but better dogma. It shouldn't be necessary to argue that climate change is real every time the topic comes up. Just like we dogmatically accept that cigarettes cause cancer, we should dogmatically accept that climate change is happening and it's caused by us. The science that establishes this fact is far beyond anything that the general public should be expected to understand. I don't…
The truth is that using the colloquial definition of "cause", everything seems to "cause" cancer:
>"These considerations of mechanism suggest that at chronic doses close to the toxic dose, any chemical, whether synthetic or natural, and whether genotoxic or nongenotoxic, is a likely rodent and human carcinogen. Not all chemicals would be expected to be carcinogens at high doses; the MTD may not be reached (101) or the chemical may be toxic without causing cell killing or mitogenesis." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC54830/
There is value in having a nuanced understanding. For example, just as a kind of random additional fact, did you realize lung cancer is a pretty common diagnosis even amongst non-smokers? "if lung cancer in non-smokers had its own separate category, it would rank among the top 10 fatal cancers in the United States." http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/features/why-lung-cancer-s...
What about the reports that the most common time for smokers to be diagnosed with lung cancer is right after quitting: "Several reports indicate that the risk of lung cancer increases slightly for a short period of time after cessation of smoking while the risk of adverse cardiovascular events drops immediately." http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877%2805%29...