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"There is a veritable truckload of bullshit in science." Amen to that. :) I'm a bit tired of seeing critics of various hypotheses being dismissed out of hand simply "Because Science".
Many hypotheses can be dismissed because they violate some fundamental principals.
Instead of a sisyphean refutation of every attack, wouldn't a better strategy be to research and prove the attacker's conflict of interests (and thus discredit them)?
Instead of a sisyphean refutation of every attack, wouldn't a better strategy be to research and prove the attacker's conflict of interests (and thus discredit them)?
Frankly, in some cases that's likely to backfire. Point out that a global warming sceptic accepts huge amounts of money from an oil-company linked foundation and they'll take great pleasure in pointing out which green advocacy groups fund an awful lot of research on the other side of the debate. If the net effect is less trust in any climate science, they win.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but in fairness there is a fair amount of BS in any area of human endeavor. There are BS movies, BS politicians, BS music, BS programming languages; it's certainly not unique to science.
But isn't science supposed to be, by definition, the anti-bullshit?
There's a link between that and critical thinking; one of the first theoretical physicists wrote: "The duty of the person who investigates the writings of ancients [scientists?], if learning the truth is their goal, is to make themself an enemy of all that they read, and ... attack it from every side. They should also suspect themself as they perform their critical examination of it, so that they may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency." — Alhazen, ~1000, Cairo
However, since science is a social enterprise, it's vulnerable to institutional bullshit. Certainly, Alhazen had to pretend madness to avoid angering the local Powers That Be. Nowadays, scientists must contend with all sorts of brokenness at universities; managerialism/bureaucracy, class/sexism/racism, etc.
Instead of a sisyphean refutation of every attack, wouldn't a better strategy be to research and prove the attacker's conflict of interests (and thus discredit them)?
Arguing against the speaker instead of the argument itself is bullshit too. Having a vested interest doesn't automatically discredit the things one says for their cause.
Instead of a sisyphean refutation of every attack, wouldn't a better strategy be to research and prove the attacker's conflict of interests (and thus discredit them)?
What conflict of interest does a Young Earth Creationist have? Not money. If you say religious belief, you'd be right, but it's not a terribly effective criticism because the majority of U.S. scientists are religious, too.
Why not money? Most of them built a career that is celebrated, while being lousy scientists, by playing the Creationist card and appealing to particular political/religious publics. And working for similarly minded organizations and "research" institutes.
>If you say religious belief, you'd be right, but it's not a terribly effective criticism because the majority of U.S. scientists are religious, too.
That would be relevant only if they let their religion influence their science. Which a computer scientist or a chemist doesn't have to, or at least as much as a evolutionary biologist.
The job market right now in the US forces grad students to attempt innovative research with remarkable conclusions. As a consequence, everyone's trying to prove more outlandish things while few are bothering with replications. If the field were sane, you would train all the apprentices on replication studies. Once they demonstrated dispassionate expertise with the tools, only then would they be allowed to try to use…
Instead of a sisyphean refutation of every attack, wouldn't a better strategy be to research and prove the attacker's conflict of interests (and thus discredit them)?
Frankly, in some cases that's likely to backfire. Point out that a global warming sceptic accepts huge amounts of money from an oil-company linked foundation and they'll take great pleasure in pointing out which green advocacy groups fund an awful lot of research on the other side of the debate. If the net effect is less trust in any climate science, they win.
"There is a veritable truckload of bullshit in science." Amen to that. :) I'm a bit tired of seeing critics of various hypotheses being dismissed out of hand simply "Because Science".
Somebody's ignorance of the background of some scientific claims is absolutely not an excuse to accept to even spend the energy considering his claims of "wrongness." The only thing we should consider is how we can educate as much people as we can, but we certainly should not treat them as having any contribution to the understanding of the topic.
An example for a case study:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8athT6tfRIg
"Horizon Zoom Boom Earth Flat"
The modern concept of "journalistic balance" (in reality, trying to win the eyeballs by creating "conflict") by representing 99% percent of all world scientists with one person and some group with silly claims with another person and giving these two then the same air time or coverage space is exactly one of the things that produce this effect:
"The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."
Also never ignore the "accidental" fact when the "silly" group represents the interests of the people with immense amount of wealth and/or power, or potential financial or power gain in maintaining the "controversy." That's where the events really get nasty.