A long Rant on the Politicization of Science

[Sgt Eddy Brewers]

I have become more and more troubled in recent years by the devolution of quality in broad sectors of the scientific community. There has always been a tension between the pressure to publish, the lure of being worshipped for your amazing discoveries, the instincts for confirmation bias and… a mindful respect for the SANCTITY of the SCIENTIFIC PROCESS.

I fear that a new generation of scientists is developing, with Americans leading the way, that has acquired a degenerate sense of what science is actually supposed to be about. Lots of papers are published with findings which are later amended or overturned. Even more disturbing perhaps is the public’s relationship with science.

Modern progressives would have you believe that the worst problems in society are due to a lack of formal science education which allows conservative and fundamentalist hillbillies to doubt the sacred writings of the scientific clergy. OK… some of that is not great I admit… but what I fear most is the condescending attitude of the administrative class. The Obama administration would be an excellent exemplar of this. NONE of them seem to actually understand science at all. Yet they gleefully insult scientists such as Lindzen, Christy, Pielke, etc as if they were speaking to unwashed schoolchildren. How do they justify their arrogance? They have a special clique of “celebrity scientists” that head committees that tell them their PC positions are backed by the incontrovertible verdict of peer-reviewed science. Who are these guys?

The modern scientists who fuel this madness seem to be a mixture of two basic types. The older ones seem to be 60s washouts who first got laid because they told some doe-eyed hippy child that they were helping to save the planet from the destruction wrought by their parents’ generation. They were the rebels who fought against the establishment and its capitalist injustices. Paul Ehrlich would be the grandest example of this type. It doesn’t matter that the science they used was 50% crap… they were saving the planet ya know!

Imagine how compelling it is to be at the head of a large classroom filled with fawning young sycophants awaiting the wisdom of your every pronouncement. We are saving the world ya know! Why Ehrlich hasn’t hidden from public after every one of his early predictions have proved false I simply do not know. Somehow he can still get in front of an audience of eco-warriors and make them swoon. Remember this is the same crowd that will sign a petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide if you hand it to them. So this is the foundation of the movement.

But I think if it were only these aged hippies (which I suppose I might be) leading the way they would not have so much power. A new class of scientists have evolved. Young and ambitious people who look at the world differently than most of their elder peers. They think everything is relative…especially morality. For them the ends justifies the means and peer-justification trumps empirical justification.

They think they are really smart, and compared to their non-science age cohort I suppose they are…. But that ain’t saying much. Those of you who follow science probably know that the performance of the American science student, from top to bottom, has been in decline for decades now. When I was in grad school the vast majority of my peers were native born and educated. Now the converse is true. Most science grad students in the USA were not born here.

Why? Because our science education was gutted by “progressive” reforms. I could rant for pages on this topic… it makes me really angry actually. Suffice to say a new generation of scientists is developing who have been trained that group validation and self-esteem is more important than veracity and rigor. We are steeply declining in our production of competent scientific minds. If you doubt me try these links

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/ ... ling-video" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

or this

http://4brevard.com/choice/internationa ... scores.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Anyway this new breed of scientists, post-modern is a decent label, sees validation not in discovery of truth, but in societal acceptance. In “climate science” this trend is especially evident. They seem to spend as much time tweeting and blogging and whining as they could possibly be spending researching. They see themselves as public personalities, and seem never to pass up an opportunity to appear publically, except if that would require an actual DEBATE on the science they are selling. IMHO they are immature narcissists who have done much damage to the scientific enterprise.

For a REAL scientist you must accept that someone could prove you wrong (it cannot be science if it is not falsifiable). If someone does produce the necessary evidence to show that your theory is WRONG, no matter how much you loved your theory and how much fame it brought you…. You must discard your theory. Period. Then you should thank whoever proved you wrong for the service they provided. They corrected you so that now when you move forward, in whatever direction, it will not be motivated by your previous incorrect ideas.

THAT IS HOW SCIENCE IS DONE.

In this new post-modern version of science reality is sorta relative and you have to include social reality and you shouldn’t be too hung up on details because…we’re saving the world ya know! And so this new version of science allows way too much crap to be published….

So in the spirit of this rant I will share an especially excellent essay(IMHO) about the state of science in modern society… I had secretly had these same opinions for ages…it is nice to see them from pen of another. The link is given if you want to read the original essay as posted.

AN ENTERTAINING ESSAY about the New Series COSMOS

The End of Science http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2014/03 ... ience.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The reemergence of Cosmos could not have come at a better time, not because it has something to teach us about science, but because are living in Sagan's world where real science is harder than ever to come by.

Carl Sagan was the country's leading practitioner of the mythologization of science, transforming a
process into a philosophy, substituting political agendas for inquiry and arrogance for research. Sagan was often wrong, but it didn't matter because his errors were scientific, rather than ideological or theological. He could be wrong as many times as he wanted, as long as he wasn't wrong politically..

Science has been thoroughly Saganized. The vast majority of research papers are wrong, their results cannot be replicated. The researchers writing them often don't even understand what they're doing wrong and don't care. Research is increasingly indistinguishable from politics. Studies are framed in ways that prove a political premise, whether it's that the world will end without a carbon tax or that racism causes obesity. If they prove the premise, the research is useful to the progressive non-profits and politicians who always claim to have science in their corner. If it doesn't, then it isn't funded.

* Read this link in support of claim made above (a truly important paper):
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/inf ... ed.0020124" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

the above link involves careful analysis of what has gone wrong lately in science.

"Science" has been reduced to an absolute form of authority that is always correct. The Saganists envision science as a battle between superstition and truth, but what distinguished science from superstition was the ability to throw out wrong conclusions based on testing. Without the scientific method, science is just another philosophy where anything can be proven if you manipulate the terminology so that the target is drawn around the arrow. Add statistical games and nothing means anything.

This form of science measures itself not against the universe, but against the intellectual bubble inhabited by those who share the same worldview or those who live under their control. It's not a bold exploration of the cosmos, but a timid repetition of cliches. The debates are as microscopic as this miniature pocket universe. Discoveries are accidental and often misinterpreted to fit within dogma. Progress is not defined not by the transcendence of what is known, but by its blinkered reaffirmation.

This isn't science or even scientism because it has little basis in the scientific method. Like all progressive authority, it now derives its credentials from membership in an expert class and advocacy on behalf of a victim class. Global Warming research covers both quotas. On the one hand everyone ought to shut up and listen to the scientists, as long as their message conforms politically, and on the other hand everyone ought to shut up and listen to the victims of Global Warming. Connect the two and you have the basis of progressive authority.

The mythologization of science isn't new. Its chosen hero, "The Man Who Was Right When Everyone Was Wrong", defying ignorance and superstition with the torch of knowledge is an old archetype. But the mythologization of science has outlived the rationality that once gave this figure meaning. The Men Who Are Always Right aren't right anymore because they use the scientific method, but because they use science as a priesthood to prove the rightness of progressive policies.

In the collective language of the progressive internet, science has become an absolute. Science proves everything. "Because Science." "15 Ways Science Shows You're Stupid". "How You Can Be Smarter With Science". But this vision of science as an absolute, a post-modern abstract oracle, is less true than it ever was. Science is a state of uncertainty. Researchers discover new things by questioning what they know. A theory is another stop on a journey, not an ideological safe harbor.

* a recent article in support of the idea that “consensus science” is sometimes wrong read this link about how the best recent data suggests that the massive and multi-decadal consensus that saturated fats “caused” heart disease will turn out to be INCORRECT (in fact this was a much larger consensus than the AGW consensus):
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=11947" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The animistic spirit of science, the technocratic muse of a secular age, is superstition wrapped in a lab coat. The worship of the expert class is no more credible for PhD's than it is for witch doctors. It's a sure way to convince the worshiped to swap out their old risky methods for an air of omnipotence.

Science works as a process that utilizes a set of tools. It does not innately confer superiority on anyone. A scientist who does not utilize the scientific method is as much use as a carpenter who cannot make chairs or a plumber who cannot fix toilets. A science that exists as a fixed absolute, whose premises are not to be questioned, whose data is not to be examined and whose conclusions are not to be debated, is a pile of wood or a leaky toilet. Not the conclusion of a process, but its absence.

It isn't science that gives a thing legitimacy, but the processes of thinking and testing that do. The only authority worth mentioning is also worth questioning. That is as true of science as it is of government. An authority that answers to itself, that derives its power not from an open system, but from a closed system is a tyranny and prone to a failure-denial cycle in which each failure is then covered up by greater abuses of power until the resulting disaster can no longer be covered up.

The science of the "Science is settled" crowd isn't an open system of skeptical inquiry, but a closed system of centralized authority funded and controlled by special interests, beholden to political agendas and intolerant of dissent. It has the same relationship to science that the various People's Democracies had to democracy.

The response of the science settlers to the serious questions that have been raised about their unscientific advocacy has been to demand a more closed system, to hide more data, to urge newspapers to stop printing letters from anyone who questions Global Warming and to even propose the imprisonment of Warming critics.

This isn't the confident attitude of a field that believes it has the facts on its side.It's the authoritarian response of panicked overlords who have become too comfortable with their routine of morning show alarmist appearances and the rushing flow of grant money paid to stave off the apocalypse.

Bad science often pays better than good science. There's more money in unveiling an invalid research study that is sure to show up in 200 newspapers tomorrow and start a a new diet craze the day after than a methodically researched piece of work that demonstrates that staying healthy is a matter of hard work and other elements that are outside an individual's control.

There's more money in predicting an apocalypse that can only be stopped with trendy progressive policies than the recognition that environmental debates are complex and often come down to a tug of war between competing interests. Reality doesn't pay. Politicized and prostituted science does.

The mythologization of science, like the cowboy movie, always had a loose relationship to reality, but still derived from it, dressing up reality, rather than entirely displacing. It has now become the idealization of a murdered ideal by the people who murdered it.

Science has become a substitute religion for secularists who imagine that they are more intelligent than religious people because they are more skeptical, when in reality the things that they are skeptical about are the ones that don't touch on their own unexamined and unquestioned beliefs.

Like the old joke about the Communist who boasts that like the American he too can shout, "America is worthless!", challenging someone else's dogma is not skepticism, it's antagonism. This attitude has leaked into the scientific community which eagerly rushed out to condemn opponents of vaccination, but has much less to say about the pervasive culture of fraud in medical research.

The Cosmos crowd have always been eager to mock televangelists predicting the end of the world, but have little to say about Sagan's equally bogus predictions about the end of the world. They made science into a culture filled with 'awe and wonder' as if the universe were their own private church, while jettisoning the rational inquiry and reasoned debate.

There is nothing to cheer about the return of Cosmos. It's not science, instead it's more of the popularized punditry that distorts science into an absolute dogma with a cynical agenda.


Another excellent essay about science and politics can be found at:
http://www.michaelcrichton.net/essay-st ... erous.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


A long rant but you were warned!