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The Encroachment of Fact-Free Science
G3ckoG33k writes "Fact-free science is not a joke; it is very much on the move, and it is quite possibly the most dangerous movement in centuries, for the entirety of mankind. One can say it began as counter-movement to Karl Popper's ground-breaking proposals in the early 20th century, which insisted that statements purporting to describe the reality should be made falsifiable. A few decades later, some critics of Popper said that statements need peer acceptance, which then makes also natural science a social phenomenon. Even later, in 1996, professor Alan Sokal submitted a famous article ridiculing the entire anti-science movement. Now New York Times has an article describing the latest chilling acts of the socially relativistic, postmodern loons. It is a chilling read, and they may be swinging both the political left and right. Have they been successful in transforming the world yet? How would we know?"
Let's agree not to call this a "Republican" or "Democratic" position. The problem is that there are adherents to scientific claims who don't know the truth on both sides. I don't claim to know much about climate science, evolution, natural history or reproductive biology. So me claiming a "scientific" position on global warming, creationism, evolution or abortion is to some extent who I want to have faith in. Generally I choose respected scientists, but its still faith on my part because I haven't done the research myself.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Not related to the article that much, but I do admit I see a lot of people frown upon any career science related lately, and anything new that researchers come up with, people take with a grain of salt. String theory? "We're not made of strings, we're made of dirt!"
It's also hard, since personal bias on the part of researchers can guide studies astray. Often times, hard data is ignored if it doesn't fit the desired outcome. Now, granted, this doesn't happen all the time, but when one study becomes high profile and this is found out about it, it taints the reputation of science in general.
Fact-free science for me is most built up around religious thoughts and/or humans. Those which beliefs doesn't have scientific boundaries like the most other people (in my location at least). There is of course other beings which believe in fact-free science but they use to be, in my opinion, easier convince that they don't have reliable sources for their "facts".
When I think about about fact free science...
What's up with this box everyone has to think inside of or outside of? Why does there have to be a box?
"This is stupid, and you are stupid" is not an ad hominem attack.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Really, how does this story rate posting here?
This is not even a thinly disguised attack piece. Yet another "if you don't subscribe to the current global warming facts you are an idiot" . As in, there is no room for debate, it has been decided, any contrary view is automatically wrong. Any discussion which does not state full agreement is wrong. Any facts not in the approved list are wrong.
So the entire basis to attack the other side simply is over the one issue Global Warming which is not even completely decided science. We get new information daily, we get contrary information daily, we get supportive information daily, yet the one thing we can guarantee is that the NYT will voice the opinions of the Democratic party as indisputable fact at all times.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Peer review seemed like a good idea at the time, but these days it increasingly seems to be a way for the most powerful clique to ensure their papers get published and no-one else does.
Ultimately consensus is worthless in science because it's so often been wrong.
Just another victim of the love of money. This is the only direction politics can evolve into. Then there's a revolt, and the cycle starts again. Turtles all the way down
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I love how the article is equally fact-free, but makes sure to include several opinion polls.
A) There are lots of climate change deniers out there
B) Postmodernism has caused lots of people to think that science is all relative, and the folks in A) have adopted that banner.
I'll really argue the link here- I doubt that *anyone* in A has really, seriously read the literature from B. A is comprised primarily of folks who are either highly religious and refuse to adopt a scientific worldview at all (and would be totally horrified by the philosophy of B if they actually read it) or people who have massive financial incentives to believe that climate change isn't true. The fact that A people argue against science has far more to do with those two factors than anything a bunch of academic nutcases wrote about.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Science is when you make a model prediction ten years ago, found false today, and then adjust the model to fit reality. Confirmation bias is when you make a model fit whatever happens after the fact by explaining it away with some bullsh*t excuse. Discuss!
No, Sokal was specifically going after `post-modernist loons`, not anti-science as a whole.
At university, when studying about postmodernism (for some reason in a course titled International Political Theory), I felt like the professor was describing quantum mechanics: everything is based on your perceptions.
Unfortunately, I couldn't train myself to perceive those 80 minutes/week away, or perceive a top mark on my final exam... :(
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
Call it what it is: religion. And no, that does not exclude the "Left".
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Obviously you have no actual experience of science as practised, small fields of science are usually more contentious and with stronger rivalries. Like the difference between a house with many cats and a sack of "only" a few angry cats. Scientists do not get funding by agreeing with each other they get funding by proving each other wrong, or discovering something before another group and making them look stupid. Definitely not anything like the sort of happy families you are suggesting. Anyone who was caught adjusting data to match political ends would not just loose any prospect of a career but also any shred of respect from their peers, and replication of your experiments and demonstration of your falsehoods will be particularly swift in any field with strong polarisation as each side will try to take the others work apart(even more so than usual).
yeah....
Also I am of the opinion that 2 + 2 = fishsticks. and if I have enough people agreeing with me it's true.
This needs more cowbell!!!
Why the hell does this article quote a literature professor on the topic of the quality of scientific research? How the fuck would he know?
I have to ask: do you have any evidence to support your theory? I'm not questioning your position, simply inquiring on what basis you make your claims. As a fledgling scientist in the ivory tower of academia, I have an insider's perspective on the peer review process, but I admit it's very easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and for that reason welcome any feedback on the process itself.
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
Professor David Nutt uses science in a paper against prohibition of drugs, and is fired the next day. Article from 2009
Popular opinion and straw men are the new trusted sources of facts, guys! Science and statistical analysis are for fringe nutjobs and quacks!
Falsifiability is highly valuable, but does not delineate "science". Not even Popper himself claimed this.
It's useful to take a look at Thomas Kuhn on this...
But during this time, a new "paradigm" is created, and after a protracted period of "paradigm shift," the new paradigm is accepted as the norm by the scientific community and integrated into their previous work, and the old paradigm is banished to the history books. The classic example of this is the shift from Maxwellian/Newtonian physics to Einsteinian/Quantum physics in the early 20th century. If the acceptance or failure of scientific theories relied only on simple falsification, according to Kuhn, then no theory would ever survive long enough to be fruitful, as all theories contain anomalies.
link
Though it makes controversial (i.e. "profitable") press to render the question into a sharp division of "science versus religion" or "science versus pseudoscience" or "science versus the Right", the reality is that falsifiability isn't a practicable criterion in 80% of what is uncontroversially understood to be "science", either. Have a hypothesis about how those arrowheads got there at your archaeological dig site? Let's see your falsifiable test. In reality, the scope of "science" is as much systematic inference as falsifiability.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Tentatively taking up the position of the scientific consensus is the most reasonable thing to do as a non-expert. No body of a similar standing to the IPCC has contradicted AGW as far as I'm aware. Maybe you know better. I don't.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Citing Sokal's hoax in an argument against peer review is odd since Social Text was not at the time a peer-reviewed journal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
This sig is not the Zahir. Lucky for you.
The reason why Science (yes with a capital "S") always eventually finds the (objective because I'm not a hare-brained relativist) Truth (yes with a capital "T") is because NATURE (all caps) has the final say. Don't agree with my theory of nuclear physics? We'll see who's nuclear bomb works! Think I'm barking up the wrong tree in my semi-conductor theory? Well my new chip should work (or not). Don't agree on Global Warming? Well we'll know (unfortunately) well within most of our lifetimes.
Science, like any human endeavor has always had it's share of conspiracies, rivalries, petty feuds and whatnot. Just look at the bitterness between Newton and Liebnitz or the amount of skepticism (and personal attacks) the first people who proposed continental drift or black holes went through. Yet now they are very well accepted foundations of their disciplines because ultimately overwhelming amounts of colloborating observations proved them correct. The same thing will happen with global warming because (again) it will happen quickly enough for us to see. (Evolution is harder because speciation typically happens over many generations, however it has been widely observed (and repeated in labs) on a "small" scale which is why evolution denialists have given up on denying "micro"-evolution).
I wish that every critic of Global Warming would be forced to clearly state their true identity in a public manner for a permanent record. That way, in just 20-50 years, as the shit really hits the fan (and we lose Florida) their grandchildren can look at them and hold them up to contempt.
I don't deny that climate change exists; the climate on Earth has been changing since the Earth began and continues to do so. What wasn't been definitively established is to what extent this change is due to the activities of man versus to what extent it is due to the Earth's natural cycles and was going to happen anyway. Although it stands to reason that reducing the albedo of the Earth and dumping all that crap into the atmosphere should have some effect on global temperature, there is no proof that ceasing this activity would reverse the warming trend. We are experiencing basically the same climate now that existed 5000 years ago... what do you blame the climate change of 5000 years ago on?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
If you show people two scientific models/theories of the same thing, (that they aren't familiar with already obviously) one older than the other, people generally can tell which is older and which is newer. This is all you have to do to invalidate postmodernism. It has been thoroughly discredited. Science works, and gets better/more accurate over time. A glance at the last hundred years can tell anyone that.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Excellent point. Its funny how anyone who goes against Global Warming is instantly labeled as a perpetrator of "Bad Science", yet a lot of the initial politically funded and motivated research has turned out to be complete garbage.
I tend to believe that if the early research and consensus had been left to the scientists, and politicians like Al Gore had stayed out of it, it wouldn't be a political issue at all by this point.
When politics gets involved in science it ruins both.
Its just like rock music and religion.
2010-Oct-15: What Did Tyrannosaurus Rex Eat? Each Other — It turns out that the undisputed king of the dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex, didn't just eat other dinosaurs but also each other.
2011-Jan-26: No Leftovers for Tyrannosaurus Rex: New Evidence That T. Rex Was Hunter, Not Scavenger (Jan. 26, 2011) — Tyrannosaurus rex hunted like a lion, rather than regularly scavenging like a hyena, new research reveals. The findings end a long-running debate about the hunting behavior of this awesome ...
2011-Feb-22: T. Rex More Hyena Than Lion: Tyrannosaurus Rex Was Opportunistic Feeder, Not Top Predator, Paleontologists Say Was T. rex really the king of the forest? A new census of dinosaurs in Montana's Hell Creek Formation shows that T. rex was far too abundant to be a top predator. ...
http://healthland.time.com/2010/05/24/doctor-behind-vaccine-autism-link-loses-license/
popper's analysis of science is weak. It's based in the idea that their are 'facts' and that these facts are truths. If we accept certain axioms such as that we are not living in 'the matrix' etc then we can all agree that yes the sun is 'above' the earth, that planes fly, that this conversation is happening on server somewhere. Anybody who understands anything about the philosophy of science will understand and accept these things. The issue with popper is that he fails to recognise that the creation of scientific truth is a human endeavour and thus subject to human flaws, a far better analysis of the production of science is produced by Bruno Latour in Science in action - see Google books http://is.gd/07KejQ Perhaps the OP should widen their circle of scholarship before making such muddle-headed comments PS Sokal may have got a paper published in social text, but various scientific journals have accepted papers from people that show they are equally as gullible to accepting papers devoid of logic or proof. The problem with peer review is that it is peer review: ideas that are only acceptable to ones peers will be published. Challenges to the current orthodoxy typically have to be publicised through journals outside the mainstream view
Yes there are bozos out there who push their illogical political. views. There always have been. And some people want to deny science and/or critical thinking, to push a political agenda.
But I do not see where this is impacting actual scientific research.
This article is a liberal democrat biased "news" source, trying to smear the republicans. I am not repub myself, and I am not trying to defend the repubs. But, to say this article is shallow, and biased, would be understatements.
This whole topic pisses me off. The non-science idiots who try to pervert science with their armchair observations polluted with religion are ruining this country.
We need science policy based on fact - not fantasy. This creationist crap is what leads to bad policies for the country as a whole too and impacts global warming and energy policy just as much as science funding.
Keep the nut jobs out of science.
it's like believing that the earth is flat, which was widely held by even scientists centuries ago.
No, it wasn't. That's a fallacy.
"There never was a period of 'flat earth darkness' among scholars (regardless of how the public at large may have conceptualized our planet both then and now). Greek knowledge of sphericity never faded, and all major medieval scholars accepted the earth's roundness as an established fact of cosmology." -- Stephen Jay Gould
Reference: http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/WS06/pmo/eng/Gould-FlatEarth.pdf
Can someone tell me how the same people who believe that pumping tons of smoke into the air and pouring millions of gallons of oil into the ocean has no effect on the environment and that the Earth is 6000 years old, are willing to buy off on at least basic atomic theory? Is it because the atomic theory gives them weapons?
Appropriate in a discussion of fact-free science is this fact-free mudslinging. Got any examples?
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Have they been successful in transforming the world?
Anti-intellectualism, anti-science, or anti-whatever-else has been prevalent in at least the United States for a very, very long time. And it starts when you're very young.
I remember being in school, in first grade. I was smarter than a lot of other kids in my class, and because of that I was ostracized. I wasn't allowed to be an intellectual; stupidity was celebrated. Acts of buffoonery were promoted and lauded.
Is it any coincidence why the most socially-outgoing people, in the history of K-12, are typically *not* the intellectuals? The "nerds" and "geeks" are always kept from ever rising above the "jocks" on the social ladder.
When you make it to college/university, it doesn't change very much. The nerds are at least not the brunt of jokes, and they're allowed to sit in the science and engineering buildings well into the night, silently doing their nerdy sciency and engineery things.
But the loud ones -- in sports, and poli-sci -- are still the non-intellectuals of the high school years. And these are the ones who grow up to be politicians.
So when articles like this act surprised that the majority of the government is filled with anti-elitist and anti-intellectuals, I have to wonder – were they paying attention any, growing up? This sort of conditioning –letting people know that being smart is NOT COOL – starts from a very young age.
But these people became successful? So they must be smart, right? Oh, if only. It's not about what you know, but rather about who you know. Nerds don't really socialize; we focus on our work, because that makes us happy. The others schmooze and network like crazy, with like-minded anti-science colleagues, who later become leaders, while we're the ones left wondering where the world is heading.
They become rich and powerful, and spread their ideas to the next generation. Of course, not all of them are successful. Many of them are not. Many of them remained dumb because they didn't realize the importance of knowledge, since it was ingrained to them from a very early age to think that knowledge and intellect are ELITIST and UNCOOL. And so they raise their kids that same way.
And we're back to square one.
I've experienced this first hand, and I am sure many have here as well.
It sucks; it's terrible. It shouldn't be like this. But it is. And I really have no idea what to do to stop it, but the article is right about one thing – it's terribly dangerous.
The two are related, the main issue is that at some point something becomes likely enough to acknowledge. It really is true that you can't be certain of anything, everything gets filtered before we become cognizant of it, however, in order to get anything done you do need to have some willingness to go with things on surface value.
Last week I was driving and I saw a car trying to squeeze through a tight spot to turn right. I looked away and a moment later I heard something fall and saw a part of the side mirror from a parked car on the ground. I did not see the car hit the mirror. Now, do I assume that the car hit the parked car, or was the damage prior to that and the sound the sound of the car running over the already broken piece of mirror?
The point of that story is that without knowing that I was perceiving something which might not be true, I would have assumed the car hit the other car. More likely what happened was that the car just ran over the already broken mirror. Not that it made much difference, I didn't have license plate number anyways, and I didn't actually see an accident.
With respect to the issue of anthropogenic climate change both sides level the charge of ideological bias against the other. Supporters of the anthropogenic hypothesis (which is to say "most people") charge that its opponents are driven by either short-sighted self-interest (since combating climate change is expensive) or are directly beholden to energy corporations. Opponents of the hypothesis charge that its supporters are driven either by cynical desire to advance their own careers (acquiring grants they would be less likely to receive if they deviated from the consensus view) or that they seek to manufacture a crisis in order to advance other vague political ends. In their view the only guys doing "objective science" are the ones who disagree with the consensus; all others are thought to accept the consensus in an almost "religious" (i.e. unquestioning) fashion.
Postmodernism is just fine for some disciplines. It improved anthropology a great deal. I think problems begin when you apply postmodern thought to areas it isn't suited for.
As for it being "discredited", I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that. Some fields went through a postmodern phase, some are in one, and it is irrelevant to others. Seems sort of like saying the Enlightenment has been discredited because it's an epoch we've already passed through.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
IAmNotAPhilosophyMajor, but here goes.
It's a variation of the Limits concept that opened the way to Calculus. "There is no spoon" either, because it's just a quantum swirl of stuff all the way down. However, for that reasonable approximation of reality that moves life along, it's a spoon.
The problem get far worse when God comes up. I can't recall the third entry after Moebius-Klein Bottle-____, but an Infinite Force that a person can simultaneously pray to, yet cannot affect the world (free will) *and* is undetectible by any measurement process (including prayer!) creates a paradox of such proportions that all rational thought just melts completely.
So sidestep "cannot claim to know", and replace it with "the limit of approaching the knowledge" - there is no God, which works for all but logic loops.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Well my "casual" observation shows there was another global warming period during the time of Ancient Egypt (circa 3500 BC) and again in the Roman Empire (circa 300-1300).
Clearly those global warming periods were not caused by cars, so there's no reason to think the present period is either. We need to find the REAL cause for these three Warming periods, which are not man-made.
Also Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, long before firearms were invented.
Clearly he was not killed by a firearm, so there's no reason to think someone could die as a result of being hit by a gunshot.
Because he was one of the science relativism types back in the ago. When his methods started being used to undermine things he believed in, he suddenly decided his former positions were bunkum.
I tend to believe that if the early research and consensus had been left to the scientists, and politicians like Al Gore had stayed out of it, it wouldn't be a political issue at all by this point.
When politics gets involved in science it ruins both.
Anything that threatens the profit margins of big business is a political issue.
If Global Warming/Cooling/Change didn't start out as a political issue,
it would be the second someone said "we need to restrict [business] from doing [action]"
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Its a shame that so many people don't understand what the word science means. From Dictionary.com: a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws. Fact Free Science is NONSENSE. I wish people would stop trying to lend credibility to their cause by misusing the word science.
Greed is the root of all evil.
The West is already on its way out as a manufacturing and innovation base , most of which has headed east. Soon the chinese will be doing most of the science too and the west will be free to degenerate back into superstition and ignorance once more.
And you expected anything different from the NYT? That's like expecting FOX to come out in full support of anyone on the other side.
Oh, please. The climate summit farces in Copenhagen and Cancun show how seriously the rest of the world takes the issue. Most of the Kyoto treaty signers actually increased emissions, some by *more* than the US did. Your high horse is made of straw.
The summary here looks a little panicked and fact free. If you're a champion of rational thought and science, shouldn't you avoid referring to anything with emotionally-charged terms like "most dangerous movement in centuries"? Heck, science as we know it hasn't really been around for more than three or so centuries, so while the claim may be technically true, it also looks foolish.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
The summary is talking about the evils of postmodernism, cultural relativism, and deconstructivism.
The New York Times article linked is about head-in-the-sand data denial.
These two things have nothing to do with each other. The Republican congressmen in question don't give a damn about postmodernistm or cultural relativism. They don't believe that the truth depends on your perspective, or that morals and ethics are culturally informed. They believe that their ideal of the traditional American way of life is the only truth, and that anything that contradicts that must not be true.
TFS author is trying to shove a square peg down his favorite round hole.
Fair enough, when I was saying it was discredited, I was referring to a particular claim, roughly along the lines of 'no scientific theory or model is any better than another, they all just reflect the culture that they're from'. I agree it's entirely appropriate to some disciplines in the humanities and so on.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
That's why you say "we need to restrict [business] from doing [action]" late in the game.
Politics got involved way, way too early.
However, as a wise man once said:
"Don't call a man a fool, borrow money from him."
So, everybody to some extent takes the word of others as truth. ...
That's why it is unwise to simply accept big subjects with many parts, like evolution, as true and inerrant.
You wind up believing work from a scientist who may or may not have exhaustively researched the work, combined with many others, and accepting it all without question since it sounds reasonable and either agrees with your assumptions, or disagrees with a belief you dislike.
"My pappy used to say..." is not a valid scientific assumption, proof or reference.
I.e. When a chemist dilutes a concentrated substance in water he/she doesn't use water "cause someone told him/her that water dilutes" but because it is a SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN METHOD for dilution of that particular substance.
Cause, many substances are NOT soluble in water. Which was again, scientifically proven.
Through repeatable experimentation and observation based on scientific rules, facts and theories.
Which are again based on those same rules of provable experimentation etc.
There is no "believing" in science.
It all has to be proven and provable. Again and again and again.
Sure, you may ACCEPT already EXISTING PROOFS and results and you wouldn't be wrong doing that as long as they were proven in a properly controlled manner.
Or, you can go and get your own proofs and results, then let other experts re-check your data and results and if there are no errors - you can use your own if you don't trust the already proven data.
That's the beauty of science. It is so fucking constant that it borders on boring.
Belief and faith are gambles that humans find necessary when they CAN'T PROVE something, but still need some form of assurance - being insecure little monkeys that we are.
Be it god, love or the ASL of the person you just met online. Once it is a proven FACT though - there is no need for faith. It's a fact.
Your belief won't do a lick of difference to change it.
You can "believe" that the sky is actually colored in a red and white checkered pattern all you want - that will not make it true.
Nor will your lack of "belief" that it is blue (usually... from human perspective) make it change its color.
It simply doesn't work that way.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The thing we have to remember is that "anti-intellectual, anti-establishment, anti-elite"-ism is != anti-science. There might be a correlation between those who are anti-science and those who are anti-intellectualism and the rest but I know a number of very good scientists who could be considered anti-intellectualism. Intellectualism generally (not always but generally) includes a disdain for less intellectual methods of knowledge. It places the intellect (rationalism, if you will) as the best (and maybe even only) way to discover knowledge. I could go on but you can be a scientist and not hold to all the other scientific elitism stuff.
The NYT article does a good job of displaying some of this elitism. For example, "Opposing the belief that global warming is human-caused has become systematic, like opposition to abortion,' [Weiss] says. 'It’s seen as another way for government to control people’s lives. It’s become a cultural issue." Sure, this quote is out of context but many of the AGW critics (deniers exist but they are a vocal minority) simply state that not all global warming (is it global warming or climate change?) is caused by humans. Isn't this a rational questioning of the science? This should drive (and has driven) scientists to demonstrate the reliability of their findings. The problem is that people who question AGW are called "deniers" without much thought taken for their arguments or lack thereof. A lot of people have very serious questions about global warming science, as they should - it's the kind of science that has huge political, social, and economic consequences. Many are simply opposed to governments imposing penalties and would rather the free(ish) market to decide. If enough people value green technologies then the markets will go that way eventually. I'm not arguing either way with my post, I'm merely pointing out that many of the oppositions to AGW are in fact opposition to political policy and not the science per se. Further, including abortion in with AGW is a cheap shot because being opposed to or in favor of abortion is about moral values, not science.
Anyway, the NYT article's author makes a number of good points (particularly that conservatives and liberals both have issues with science) but she doesn't even begin to get at the root of why so many people on all sides of the political spectrum might have issues with science: most people don't understand science. What's even ironic is that a lot of scientists do not understand science. They might understand how to do science but they do not understand science. Science is, after all, one way to discover facts. Facts are discovered (actually they are made - mauFACTured; fact comes from the Latin facio, facere, and factum {essentially the same word, just different forms}). However, facts are discovered through the biases of the methods (study epistemology and the philosophy of science for more on this) and the biases of the scientists. Facts also are != truth. Facts might be true but truth is independent from facts. People's biases strongly affect the research being conducted (by affecting what people choose to study or by affecting the funding or not funding of specific studies) as well as that being published (file drawer effect of research - in short, journals don't like publishing studies that fail to show anything seemingly meaningful but maybe the lack of a finding is what is meaningful). We were recently able to get an article published in which we had a null result only because it contradicted common beliefs in the medical field. Otherwise, our lack of results would not have been published.
I know how scientific journals work. The peer review process is sometimes a joke. People accept or don't accept work based on what they know. Sometimes what they know is wrong so articles can get rejected or accepted based on bad knowledge or assumptions of a reviewer. My research interests go against some of the conventional wisdom in my field precisely because I think most previous researchers have foc
Fact-free science is not a joke; it is very much on the move, and it is quite possibly the most dangerous movement in centuries, for the entirety of mankind.
From WIkipedia:
Symptoms of groupthink
...
4. Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, impotent, or stupid.
Speaking as a someone who has scrutinized the "factual science" of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in much detail, I will not bother to "deny" the validity of the consensus view. To do so would just result in my demonization by the "experts". Instead I will merely point out that the AGW movement has all of the earmarks of groupthink.
Whenever legitimate scientific challenges are raised, they are met by evasive strategies. Ignoring the valid scientific questions, AGW proponents will point to "postmodern loons" as examples of the kinds of fruitcakes that don't accept the consensus scientific view.
You're an idiot.
Sokal gets held up as some kind of hero for "exposing" the emptiness of the so-called "anti-science" movement (and in truth, there are some significant problems there). But he hardly comes out smelling like a rose himself. If you read the linked Wikipedia article, first of all, he deliberately set out to deceive the editors of this journal with this hoax piece. Then, the editors of the journal recognize at some level that there are problems with it, and ask for changes. Sokal refuses to make any changes at all, telling them to take it or leave it. The journal caves and publishes the piece as is; feeling that they didn't have significant expertise to question the author. This was a mistake on their part - if you can't validate a piece, you've got no business publishing it.So yes, the journal screwed up.
But whose sin was greater here? The journal that got fooled, or the guy who did the fooling? This was a major exercise in academic dishonesty, and Sokal should have suffered the consequences. But in fact, everyone was having so much fun punching the hippies at the journal that he got a pass.
Most scientific hypotheses fail. So most scientists are usually WRONG. That is not a bad thing. Proving something does not work is knowledge too. But these days scientists appear more like game show hosts. They will say anything knowing hardly anyone will dispute it, and scientific refutation does not usually get reports. Political correctness takes precedent over the scientific method.
This leads to stories worthy of Monty Python. The most recent I have seen was a scientist who died of plague. He was working with a genetically modified version of plague that should have been non-infectious. So they implemented no bio-hazard controls. Since they really had no clue what they were doing, they actually created a version of plague optimized for the genetic condition common to descendants of plague survivors. The scientist died, and a bio-hazard incident on the campus. Talk about Darwin Awards.
In shot take all pronouncements Deus ex Scientifica with a large grain of sand, and wait a few years for the actual physical proof.
Carrying a baby to term != Raising a child.
The waiting lists of childless couples hoping to adopt are still very long, and most states have "no questions asked" policies on accepting your unwanted infant.
The fact that you are not ready/qualified to raise a child does not give you the right to kill it.
Even if you aren't "sure" that an N-week fetus is a human life yet... if there's a reasonable chance that it is than we really should err in it's behalf.
Exactly what has this got to do with the topic of "fact-free science"? Whether or not you support abortion rights has nothing to do with science. Science can provide input to the debate such as the survivability of the unborn child/fetus, how fetuses are terminated etc. but what you do with that information depends on your personal moral code and beliefs which, while they may be rational (or not) are not science.
Agreed. It assumes the republican position on global warming is wrong (I rather like it to be honest) then claims the republicans are against science in general without any other evidence. It's a complete political blathering with little basis in fact - much like the behaviour it claims to be against.
The equations and theories used in science are man's interpretation of how the universe works. They are our human attempt to understand and to be able to predict how the universe behaves from our perspective.
We have developed the peer review process as a means of allowing experts to look at our work before it is published to decide if our findings are believable based on the current scientific understanding. The peer review process is a lot like a democracy, it is not perfect but it is the best thing we have come up with so far. The scientific community should resit making policy and the politicians should quit trying to do science. Even experts in their fields will cite sources when they are available, why should non experts be expected to do any less?
insert inflammatory comment here!
Actually 'climate change' was created by republican political consultants in the Bush era to sound less scary, not because of some nefarious scheme by climate scientists.
“Climate change” is politically correct nonsense, but Republican pollster Frank Luntz and George W. Bush are to blame, not Al Gore. Luntz sold the phrase to Bush: “Climate change” is less frightening than “global warming.” While “global warming” has catastrophic connotations attached, “climate change” suggests a more controllable challenge. Bush agreed. Republican political appointees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where I was a biologist, forced scientists to always use “climate change” instead of the accurate and alarming “global warming.”
I lol'd.
If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.
The flood has already happened. It's the genomics flood, and we're drowning in data. The evolution deniers have lost the war on data. Not a life jacket in sight. Round two, pound the facts (construed as social consensus). Round three, pound the table (after elite stamina drills).
The religious zealots have already shown they're willing to kill for their cause, so buy a gun and carry it.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Part of the problem is that the last 30 years of physics is a castle in the air. String theory has no experimental confirmation. Supersymmetry remains iffy. That gravity is particle-based is hypothesized but not observed.
Until 40 years ago or so, physicists were the champions of experimental confirmation. From Kepler and Newton forward, physics was about accurate measurement and experimentation. Then physics hit a wall - the phenomena that needed to be measured to confirm or refute theories were out of reach of experimental tools. But this didn't slow down the rate at which Physical Review papers are published. The math is pretty, but may have no tie to reality.
So we don't have the high-energy physicists to act as the hard-liners on experimental confirmation. (Low-energy physics, on the other hand, has made real progress in recent decades, with results which have resulted in useful technologies. Much cool stuff is being made to happen down near absolute zero.)
There's a good book called "Counterknowledge" by Damian Thompson that explores some of these issues. It has a good web site as well.
Fact free science is as old as science itself. Just look at the junk science of Phrenology and Cold Fusion as examples. My educated guess is that, on the surface, this phenomenon is appearing to grow only because world population is growing at a steady rate. Plus, people just love sounding off like experts (a la journalism) and spouting off phrases as if they are facts with little basis in reality. Then, most lay Americans take what they hear on the news as gospel. Perhaps, it would be good for all of us to question what we hear a little more often.
Alexis de Tocqueville called, he'd like his comments on the general anti-intellectualism of the United States from 1830 back.
So, you're saying a political party is trying to ride a cultural hobbyhorse to power? Let's see, the Right says that the world is ending because of Communism, Liberals, Secularism, Abortion, and Homosexuality. The left claims the world is ending because of Pollution, Oppression, Religion, Industry, and Republicans. It's perhaps An Inconvenient Truth that grossly narcissistic politicians from BOTH sides like to try to wave FUD at us to hand them more power. I guess they don't all get Nobel Prizes or Academy Awards for it?
Not sure, but I'm pretty certain that the world will keep changing, it's not going to "end" anytime soon (LHC notwithstanding :) ), and life is better now for most people than it's ever been in the larger scale of human history.
Anti-intellectualism (like religiosity, or our tendency to be community-oriented) is one of the very basic paradigms of American culture, and has always been. What's perhaps more interesting is that this culture nevertheless managed to become (somehow) an industrial and scientific leader.
That article, however, is a thinly-veiled anti-Republican screed, nothing more.
And while I know that this will bring the worms out of the woodwork, one might say that there are at least 165 climate science experts who significantly doubt the conclusions from the data: http://www.copenhagenclimatechallenge.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=64
Facts are, of course, not decided democratically. But the inviolable certitude of the AGW proponents seems like zealotry. I think theres room to believe that (both)
- AGW is a fallacious, narcissistic religion advanced by 3-decades failed environmentalists, scientists desperate for funding, and anti-west, anti-industrial marxists.
- you don't want to sh*t where you live, so we should generally try to keep the place clean and toxin-induced mutations to a minimum.
-Styopa
This article isn't particularly overwhelmed with scientific accuracy.
Misleading elements of the story such as "A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted in January found that 83 percent of Americans want Congress to pass legislation promoting alternative energy" in the same paragraph as “climate-denier sect” pretty clearly show their bias and demonstrates a lack of rigor.
The context of the article would lead us to believe that those 83% believe in ACC.
I doubt that that is factual and it is definitely not substantiated in the article. While the reality is that many do believe in ACC, many will believe that alternate energy will reduce geo-political issues the country faces; many believe it will create jobs; many will believe it will help keep air breathable and water drinkable, some will believe all of the above.
What does that 83% really represent. Based on the content of the article, we have no idea.
Journalists are just as adept at fudging numbers and using questionable stats to skew stories and justify their positions as anyone else who's power and income depend on promoting their own agenda.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Hey, Keynesian economics has plenty of evidence and economists suggesting it's wrong, but that doesn't stop both parties from pushing further away from free-market ideals...
Oh please. Don't bring economics into this debate. It is called the dismal science for a reason. Chicago School economics is based on the assumption that markets behave rationally (the Efficient Market Hypothesis)! Rationally! ROFL. Any field that purports to have mathematical models to reliably describe my behavior does not deserve much credence.
Bertrand Russell used to say that science was inductive, or merely probable. Even the statement that "the sun will rise again tomorrow" is based only on our knowledge that it has always risen in the past, and is thus only probable. Highly probable yes. But still only probable, and not certain. He used an example where a chicken, every day of its life, saw the farmer coming and was then fed. One day, the chicken saw the farmer coming and reasoned inductively that it was going to be fed. And then its neck was wrung. Russell believed that science was never perfectly certain, but he also wrote that science was our best way of understanding the physical world.
The statement that "the sun will rise again tomorrow" is an inductively strong statement. Its truth is highly probable. Physics is an inductively strong science; the truth of the predictions of Newton's models is highly probable, if we don't travel too quickly. I would argue that economics is inductively weak. Its predictions have some utility, and sometimes describe the behavior of market actors. But those predictions don't come close to the probability of the predictions of Physics. Economics is inductively weak. This is why economics is rightly called the "dismal science".
And as for the debate at hand, I believe that it is high time that many of us who are educated and have the time should pay more attention to the details of science, of reason. We should attempt to philosophically understand the underpinnings of science and reason. And we should more strongly call out those who show a reckless disregard for the truth. We are after all citizens in a democracy. It is our responsibility.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
an Infinite Force that a person can simultaneously pray to, yet cannot affect the world (free will) *and* is undetectible by any measurement process (including prayer!) creates a paradox of such proportions that all rational thought just melts completely.
Not everyone defines God like you just did.
Disclaimer: For all intents and purposes, I am an atheist. I can accept the idea of a creator to the universe. I cannot accept the idea of an Invisible Sky Daddy.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Since no one actually knows precisely how warm it's going to get, how can you say the problems are exaggerated?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I don't think AC was writing to criticize the article, I think his or her comment was directed at this statement from the summary: "Now New York Times has an article describing the latest chilling acts of the socially relativistic, postmodern loons." So I agree with that: it is a poor summary.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
"I mean literally influenced by environment... not a natural selection kind of thing"
"Influenced by environment" combined with genetic mutations are the foundations of natural selection. How does that challenge evolution?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
George A. Ricaurte is still doing research and publishing papers. Enough said.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
So you would wait until there's a 95% chance of an accident occurring unless you put on your brakes, before you would put on your brakes? That seems insane to me. If something bad is even somewhat likely to happen, and I can fairly easily take action to prevent or minimize it, I would take the action. Why would I wait until a disaster is nearly certain before I try to avoid or minimize it?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Insulted on the Internet by a guy named after a cartoon character. I don't think I'll be losing sleep.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Is that so? You believe a statement of fact somehow loses its validity through a dubious messenger? I rest my case.
I find "fact-based science" -far- more dangerous and harmful. By "fact-based science", I mean "I know it's true because I read some scientific paper which said somewhere that it was true!"
Science should, fundamentally, be grounded in a method, not in facts. Good science makes no claims to facts - it only makes claims to what has, so far, withstood the scientific method of examination.
If you can understand the difference between grounding it in a method or grounding it in facts, then you're doing better than 99% of the US population.
do you feel the same about the Holocaust? And if not, then how much time should be given to the alternative theories in order to provide balance against all of the people who actually know what they are talking about?
People seem to forget what science is. It's not a collection of knowledge which is factual and unchallengeable.
It is a process, a way to describe something based on what you observe. Good theories make predictions which can be tested. This article assumes that all global warming science is true, and doubting it is bad and 'anti-scientific'. When in actual fact, doubting and challenging science is a fundamental part of the scientific method. Science needs to be challenged so it can either be verified, or found false so it can be improved.
To make is clear: Science knowledge is not truth. Saying science is truth is a bad way to look at things. Scientific theories are simply the best way to describe something thus far. The best illustration of this is classical mechanics, vs general relativity, vs quantum mechanics. All three accurately describe motion at their respective scales, but in general are not compatible with one another.
I don't deny that climate change exists; the climate on Earth has been changing since the Earth began and continues to do so. What wasn't been definitively established is to what extent this change is due to the activities of man versus to what extent it is due to the Earth's natural cycles and was going to happen anyway.
Psst! You see that article about people who haven't been following the science? I think he's talking about you!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
If you think that in quantum mechanics "everything is based on your perceptions" then you have no idea what quantum mechanics is...
The only reason you keep your "facts" to yourself is that you know that the competent people here will be able to poke so many holes through them as to render them a joke. 2 + 2 = 4. That everyone (except perhaps you and the other paste eaters) accepts that as truth. this is not groupthink it is a fact. Anyone (over the age of 8 or so) attempting to claim that 2 + 2 = 27 would be ridiculed as they should.
In the Copenhagen interpretation, it is. ..
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
Don't forget, the political system is the only authority, by intentional design, that is able to say and enforce "we need to restrict [business] from doing [action]".
You should celebrate it instead of bitching about it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
How about we say "we need to streamline procedures and permits for nuclear power research and development"?
Or, "we need to remove the senseless roadblocks to building new nuclear power plants"?
Why is it that the only thing the AGW folks know how to say is "restrict [anyone] from doing [anything]"
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Good point
There's probably big money to be made by enforcing Prohibition.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Humans are a lot better than computers at connecting the dots. While having vast electronic libraries at our fingertips reduces the tedium of searching for information, you still need humans to summarize info and synthesize new info by connecting the dots. In a law firm, you still needs humans to develop strategies from available case histories. In science and technology, often two or more seemingly unrelated bits of info come together to form a new theory or invention. A couple of examples are the orign of microwaves and post-it notes, two inventions we can't imagine doing without. Or the method of tracking stealth aircraft by their disturbance of the signal field generated by a network of cellphone towers. on and on and on. It would take something much more powerful than Watson for a machine intelligence able to connect the dots in a general range of subject rather than just one extremely specialized task. No doubt that will happen, but not anytime soon.
Eh, Slashdot is like that, it's just the nature of the beast.
As someone into Anthropology and the social sciences, whenever an article in the social sciences come up, I despair at the amount of comments that ridicule any point of view, even ones backed by scientific data, that challenges the worldview of the computer nerd. Around here, CS, EE, Math, and Physics
are king, Chem and Bio are middle tier, and Sociology, Psychology and Anthropology are lumped together with English Lit and anime.
People here seem to want to see the world as one giant computer or machine, with an absolute truth that has no room for other cultures or viewpoints. That they're lumping together climate denialists of the right and cultural relativists of the left is not that surprising.
I don't claim to know much about climate science, evolution, natural history or reproductive biology. So me claiming a "scientific" position on global warming, creationism, evolution or abortion is to some extent who I want to have faith in. Generally I choose respected scientists, but its still faith on my part because I haven't done the research myself.
No, you are just propagating Republican talking points. if you have nothing to offer to this discussion, please, by all means remain silent and let other debate with more ideas and facts on both sides.
The person you are ranting at was logically precise. People like you on both sides are part of the problem.
It is very difficult to get a man to understand something when his tribal identity depends on his not understanding it.
Fixed:
It is very difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
But when you look at the other planets and how they'd have to go around in looping circles that run along a spiral across the sky, you'll soon notice that it's much more "elegant" to just move the sun into the center. Now they all circle around in (more or less) circular motions.
Except that the Copernican model isn't simpler than Ptolemaic geocentrism. Look it up.
There's also the whole fact that heliocentrism and geodynamicism contradict Aristotelian mechanics. We have Newtonian mechanics today, but well, it had to be invented. And what about that pesky stellar parallax that heliocentrism predicts, but which was never observed until the 1800's?
And it's funny that you talk about "circles" here, because one of the things that really killed geocentrism was Kepler's demonstration that the trajectories were elliptical, not circular. That's one of the big things that messed up the geocentric models—the heliocentric models were better able to cope with that.
So, it's not that simple, dude.
Are you adequate?
After careful review of the comments here I can conclusively say I'm glad I'm not in the same room as most of you.
Hi AC.
I am careful only to object to the classic fundamentalist literal interpretation, where answering prayers was very nearly the point of purpose of God. That, and doing Final Judgements.
Since we agree to discard that narrow view, all kinds of interesting modern interpretations show up from the more balanced weaker Myth-Gods, to Norman Mailer's limited deity idea, etc.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
When I was young in the 50's and 60's, it was 'cool' to be into science. Naturalists and scientists were respected and so were their opinions and findings. My work took me out of the United States for nearly 50 years punctuated by visits to the U.S, about twice a year average. In that time I have seen a disturbing change in the attitudes of people in general, away from the factual and data-specific and more to the emotional denial of fact and logic. I have seen a rise of religious extremism and their encroachment into the social and political arena than ever before. When I was in a kid in the '50s they changed the 'Pledge of Allegience' by adding 'under God' to the pledge that we all recited in school. Even at the age of 15, that irritated me and I refused to comply (which earned me a lot of harassment) as I felt that, even though I was a Catholic, that it was unfair to the people who did not believe in God. This was just the beginning. When I entered the military, I declared myself an 'atheist' to the clerk who was building my personnel file. He snarled at me 'We don't have atheists in this Air Force! What religion was your father?' and I answered 'Catholic' (I should have said 'none of your business', but I was intimidated, young and naive), and so he put down 'Catholic' in my records and issued me 'dog tags' with that as my religion. (I threw them away when I left basic training and got ones that said 'no preference' because the Air Force during my entire 20 year career would not let me declare myself as an atheist.) I have seen this attitude of religious discrimination intensify as the years passed. One of the byproducts of this has been an attitude of rejection of things scientific and factual, I have watched from the outside as our society has become more and more anti-intellectual, anti-logical, (as one of the comments stated) and more prone to belief in things emotional, things magical, creationism, intelligent-design-ism, pro-life-ism. Kids no longer value science and seeking facts as much as they value the winner of American Idol, the sports, the top singers and movie stars, Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, vampires and werewolves, other non-consequential crap. Along with this I have seen an 'establishment' trend in 'justified' erosion of individual freedoms. My last visit to San Diego, in 2008, I felt I was in some kind of third-world country, not the United States, as I was driven away by the police from watching a peaceful political demonstration against the governor. I thought ' I put in 20 years and a veteran to protect the freedom of political expression and now even I am being denied that right?' I have decided to live the rest of my life overseas because, regretfully, the U.S. is no longer the 'land of the free and the home of the brave'. It is a myth now. The children are being educated with pseudo-scientific BS, a mixture of mysticism, creationism and intelligent-designism, a belittling of evolution and scientific evaluation by putting them on a equal comparison of those non-scientific beliefs. The religious fanatics and politically-correct mob-think have taken over our country. I have taken shelter beyond the border.
The thinking that says, "Hmm, the earth seems to be warming a bit. People burn a lot of fossil fuels. Therefore people must be the cause.," is not necessarily correct.
Your chain of logic is a little short there. It should be more like "Hmm, the temperature on the surface of the Earth is governed mostly by the amount of incoming solar energy and the greenhouse gases and clouds that capture the outgoing radiation that is reflected or re-radiated. Without any greenhouse gases the average temperature on the surface of the Earth would be around 0 degrees F instead of 58 F. The level of greenhouse gases, particularly CO2 is increasing. Human burning of fossil fuels releases about twice as much CO2 as it takes to raise the atmospheric level by the amount it is rising from year to year. Therefore people must be the cause."