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

#191

Post by incompatible » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 9:07 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…

Alright, say I want to replace my dogmatic belief that scientific methods are the best way of understanding the Universe. What should I replace it with?

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

#192

Post by joe_the_user » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 9:12 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…

The media quoting random science study pushing X claim and then Y claim is a fundamental problem of media (society), not science.

The problem of science is that it doesn't have the outlet of, say, high school students learning real science and knowing how it works, that the products of science and technology is wind-up cut-off from the broad processes of experimentation that gave rise to them.

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

#193

Post by identity-haver » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

unknownkadath wrote: post #171

identity-haver wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is fair, and not inconsistent with other public speeches I've found, which mention the failures of "Pan-Islamism" and spurn the idea of a caliphate. So I think I was off base about Ataturk. He was also a hardcore nationalist by any modern standard, which helps a lot when trying to get people in a nation to do stuff. I still think that, in the US at least, sneering at religion or defining it against science is a terrible way to further science.

There are really 2 types of "religious" people in the US [1], the "USA #1 + God" group, and the "church every week" type. These need to be approached a bit differently, I think. The first group's opinions really fall into the existing political polarization issues more than any explicitly faith-based concern. In both cases, understanding and using the groups' language would help a lot to communicate science.

[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/29/religious-ty...

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

#194

Post by sintaxi » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

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…

The goal of science is to acquire knowledge while mitigating human bias. No science ever eliminates bias completely. A good science teacher drills this point home constantly.

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

#195

Post by umvi » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 9:21 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #174

spraak wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> it's just an arbitrary rule.

Same with the definition of mental conditions. Yet people wield the DSM as science and use it to bludgeon people who are not politically in line with their worldview on mental health

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

#196

Post by roenxi » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 9:23 PM UTC

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…

> 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 is more allegorical than factual, religion has a lot of utility when resources are scarce. Being part of a large group is frequently more important than being part of a technically correct group.

I think the last 200 years of history has demonstrated that science is a superior strategy, but it isn't obvious enough to be hand-waved. There is some evidence that to successfully abandon religion societies have to first have an ungodly surplus of resources. The new trend towards no religion hasn't been tested in a war yet either; back in WWII religious/nationalistic sentiment was famously high.

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

#197

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 9:27 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.

> Pluto as a planet was established science for a long time

The discovery of more objects in the solar system led to defining additional categories of objects, most relevant the category of “dwarf planets”.

That's evolving terminology not a change in the science.

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

#198

Post by sintaxi » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #85

lkrubner wrote: post #2

About this: " Hanging in the Louvre Museum in Paris is an imposing painting, The Preaching of St Paul at Ephesus. In this 1649 work by Eustache Le Sueur, the fiery apostle lifts his right hand as if scolding the audience, while clutching a book of scripture in his left. Among the rapt or fearful listeners are people busily throwing books into a fire. " Okay, but in the USA, over the last 60 years we've seen an astoni…

It's not so much "authority" but "trust" that has gone down. There used to be institutions that were regarded as the gold standard for truth: the FDA, top science journals, the CDC, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and so on. These weren't necessarily regarded as infallible . But it was widely recognized that they undertook a best effort to get at the truth, and would tend to err on the side of caution. That trust is…

> Nor can I think of any actual corruption by these organisations exposed by amateur sleuths.

Wouldn't the simple fact that the CDC now owns patents on vaccines qualify at least as a conflict of interest that would justifiably erode trust?

Trust is power and power corrupts. Its part of a natural cycle that occurs. This is why we develop organizations with strict constraints and methods of accountability such as the separate branches of government.

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

#199

Post by groovy2shoes » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

igor47 wrote: post #109

featherrust wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interpersonal relationships?

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…

When you talk like that, I feel as though I am talking to the emacs psychotherapist. It too is a mere instrument that reports on its internal state.

If you have found it a useful communicative tool, then I am glad for you. No doubt communication can be hard, so we've gotta use whatever tools we find effective. But honestly when I try speaking like that, I can't help but feel like a robot or a program. It feels very unnatural and very awkward to me. Perhaps that distance is exactly what lends it efficacy for some people, but that very distance only lends it offputticacy for me.

Am I right and you wrong? No, I don't think so. I have no reason to doubt that you have found success with such an approach. But were I a barkeep and you a patron responding like that when asked "why the long face?", you'd be getting a double of tequila on the house. (Tequila has a funny way of bringing out one's inner party, in my experience—or getting one started where there's yet only a quiet inner evening get-together).

https://i.imgur.com/ShGZjQ6.png

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

#200

Post by Erlich_Bachman » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

benj111 wrote: post #169

pfortuny wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raising your children, talking to strangers, charity, you name it.

Do you mean you shouldn't raise your kids based on science? You shouldn't experiment to see what works with your child, or you just shouldn't do experiments on your child?

Children need love, compassion and a lot of patience. They want to be treated like living beings, not like science projects. Yes science in general can obviously make some generic guidelines or provide some good insights in very specific questions of this childraising enterprise, but the vast majority of choices and everyday actions will fall outside of this.