Science in the modern era

The biggest problem imo is that we can't trust media to accurately report on science. Either they report on some shitty non peer-reviewed article or they copy and paste misreadings of proper articles over and over. Whatever opinion you hold there is always a blogger that purports to represent science that will corroborate your beliefs. Those who make claims supposedly based on science needs to cite their sources directly or fuck off.

Another thing that irks me is when science is represented as a monolithic constant structure: 'SCIENCE says' 'SCIENTIST says' etc.
 
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Like any system of thought, it's prone to abuse by the unscrupulous or the lazy. Lots of people are over-awed by any firm proclamation, irrespective of where it comes from; a priest, a politician, the press, etc. The real issue is as old as time and it doesn't lie with the proclaimer; people like simple answers and they like to pass the responsibility for them off on others.

I honestly don't think that there's a practical solution to that issue. Any systematic approach to finding the truth of the matter is bound to be boiled down to a pat series of "10 simple steps for cutting through the bullshit" or whatever, and thus the cycle of nonsense starts again.

Ultimately it's down to the individual to either find the sources and get the facts straight or admit to their ignorance and/or indifference and remove themselves from the conversation.

Unfortunately that's no fun so I'll see you in A&H where I'll do my best to pretend I know anything about politics, the environment, or the judicial system.
 
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Despite its straightforward name, the field is complex and remains an area of current inquiry. Philosophers of science actively study such questions as:



  • What is a law of nature? Are there any in non-physical sciences like biology and psychology?

  • What kind of data can be used to distinguish between real causes and accidental regularities?

  • How much evidence and what kinds of evidence do we need before we accept hypotheses?

  • Why do scientists continue to rely on models and theories which they know are at least partially inaccurate (like Newton's physics)?
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The philosophy of science

undsci.berkeley.edu undsci.berkeley.edu
 
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I think there is an interesting underlaying assumption to OP's perspective.

If science is currently used by people when useful and ignored when not useful, that is essentially a criticism of the corruption of people (intellectual dishonesty), but also presumes that science is some kind of force that is inherently intellectually honest, or that it should hold some form of authority.

I think it's a strange assumption to place authority into a system of unraveling mysteries of nature. Science isn't an organisation. It can't be held accountable. It's a giant umbrella, with both corrupt and pure forces working underneath that umbrella. Some science is done to hide secrets (think corporation funded studies to prove safety of tabacco), some science is done purely to make money (think inventing new medicine that replaces existing medicine not by being better, but by being different so the patent length is renewed). There are nearly infinite pure and infinite corrupted reasons for doing science and being done by people most likely smarter than you and me. The publish or perish needs have led to a reproduction crisis in a lot of different scientific fields.

Should "science" hold more authority? If so, which people or organisations would wield that autority in the name of science?

The essential field of conflict is often the idea of "scientific consensus". This is a way how science can be wielded as as stronger sword in politics. After all, if all or most scientists agree, it's probably true, right? Of course this politicizes the science field and puts stronger political motives in making sure which scientists succeed and which do not, regardless of truth content. Unless, I guess, you would claim that politics is in the business of persuing truth, in which case we'll have this talk again after you've followed politics a little longer.

Of course there is merit to this idea of scientific consensus as much like the god of the gaps with evolution, one can forever play a game about the things you don't know or prevent politics on acting on scientific studies by claiming that we don't have sufficient data yet (protip: we never have sufficient data). So to put an end to that game and also to cover politicians asses the idea of scientific consensus helps alleviate some of those tensions.

But then I'm reminded of Einstein. There was the book "Hundred authors against Einstein" (which was in the end 47 authors of which 4 scientists) to which he responded: "Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough."
 
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Lemmingwise said:
I think there is an interesting underlaying assumption to OP's perspective.

If science is currently used by people when useful and ignored when not useful, that is essentially a criticism of the corruption of people (intellectual dishonesty), but also presumes that science is some kind of force that is inherently intellectually honest, or that it should hold some form of authority.

I think it's a strange assumption to place authority into a system of unraveling mysteries of nature. Science isn't an organisation. It can't be held accountable. It's a giant umbrella, with both corrupt and pure forces working underneath that umbrella. Some science is done to hide secrets (think corporation funded studies to prove safety of tabacco), some science is done purely to make money (think inventing new medicine that replaces existing medicine not by being better, but by being different so the patent length is renewed). There are nearly infinite pure and infinite corrupted reasons for doing science and being done by people most likely smarter than you and me. The publish or perish needs have led to a reproduction crisis in a lot of different scientific fields.

Should "science" hold more authority? If so, which people or organisations would wield that autority in the name of science?

The essential field of conflict is often the idea of "scientific consensus". This is a way how science can be wielded as as stronger sword in politics. After all, if all or most scientists agree, it's probably true, right? Of course this politicizes the science field and puts stronger political motives in making sure which scientists succeed and which do not, regardless of truth content. Unless, I guess, you would claim that politics is in the business of persuing truth, in which case we'll have this talk again after you've followed politics a little longer.

Of course there is merit to this idea of scientific consensus as much like the god of the gaps with evolution, one can forever play a game about the things you don't know or prevent politics on acting on scientific studies by claiming that we don't have sufficient data yet (protip: we never have sufficient data). So to put an end to that game and also to cover politicians asses the idea of scientific consensus helps alleviate some of those tensions.

But then I'm reminded of Einstein. There was the book "Hundred authors against Einstein" (which was in the end 47 authors of which 4 scientists) to which he responded: "Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough."
Click to expand...
You know who gave scientists lots of authority

Hitler, Stalin, and Mao
 
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Manwithn0n0men said:
I'd suggest you look into that.

They had LOTS of Scientists making key decisions of evil. Because Absolute evil regimes give them unrestricted access to experiment
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There are no absolute evil regimes. Even if it is a regime's goal to be as evil as possible (I have my doubts that any regime ever has had that goal), human beings are flawed and imperfect and won't be able to achieve Absolute evil with a capital A.

Just a few keystone parts that should have you reconsider your position:
* Soviet Russia had a purge of wrongthinkers.
* The atom bomb was in part developed by scientists that had fled nazi germany.
* Mao used the hundred flowers campaign as a seeming fig leaf toward arts and science and then when the politically incorrect thinkers exposed themselves, they were subsequently imprisoned.

As to your point about unrestricted access to experiment, considering what you could know about research that happened in the US, I wouldn't even go so far as to say that it was signficantly qualitively or morally different than the research that happened in the US.
 
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Lemmingwise said:
As to your point about unrestricted access to experiment, considering what you could know about research that happened in the US, I wouldn't even go so far as to say that it was signficantly qualitively or morally different than the research that happened in the US.
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There was more done by the Soviets, Nazis, and Maoist....we just have far less talk about them because they existed in societies where the state was always right
 
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Manwithn0n0men said:
There was more done by the Soviets, Nazis, and Maoist....we just have far less talk about them because they existed in societies where the state was always right
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I consider the talk about things like tuskegee syphilis and mk ultra tests to be rather rare when examining the significance of such acts. When people claim that we have such open society I look at Assange and Snowden and raise an eyebrow. Really? Our states are about free flow of information? Our states don't suppress those who challenge their monopoly on truth?
 
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The problem with science in the 21st Century is that so many people have replaced traditional religion with a nebulous pop culture idea of "science" and most of these "Fuck Yeah Science" types are just left-wing atheists who uncritically accept whatever perception of scientific consensus best supports their personal ideology or political narrative.

Basically, the "Fuck Yeah Science" guys are no different than the fundie neoconservatives who go with any interpretation of the Bible that best supports their narrative. And if they can't find one, they'll twist and bend an interpretation until it does.
 
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Science is doing fine.
It's advancing faster and faster each year.
The problem is that social progress is slow and most of us are unprepared for what we've created.

Also, you can't just learn science and leave it at that, you need to update your knowledge constantly if you want to keep up.
Also also, even if you are keeping up, there's so much to learn in just a single discipline that you would have to live for centuries to truly master it.
Because of that, we have to rely on experts in particular segments of a particular discipline and a lot of them abuse their expert status to push their personal agendas.

No real way to solve it at this point.
Maybe when we upgrade ourselves to be cyborgs or something, we'll be able to just upload all of human knowledge into our hard drives and then everyone will know everything.
Until then, we just have to do our best to keep up with whatever we think is relevant.
 
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