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scientists are like gold prospectors dependent on assayers for their continuing in the mine
And under socialism in the 20th century, science was an institution that only funds research that advances whatever narrative the hermetic powers-that-be decided to push and strengthen their grip on power, their obsession with secretiveness and projecting an image of infallibility.
Take the Soviet Union.
T.D. Lysenko and his crackpot food engineering ideas is one such glaring example. But boy oh boy could he talk a “toe the party line” game and suck up to Stalin.
Or how about how the kremlin rendered nearly one quarter of Kazakhstan uninhabitable due to their relentless nuclear testing. And they nearly did that for all of western Europe with Chernobyl.In the name of workers and science, we shall poison your land. Science for the workers’ paradise, rejoice, comrades!
Science is easily corruptible, but of most relevance to us is how it is being corrupted here
Okay, you have one point of data, the USSR, can you list a second point of data, otherwise this is not a trend of socialism but of a single country.
The entire eastern block adopted Lysenkoism.
The USSR also abused medical science to imprison dissidents in mental institutions based on false diagnoses.
Critical theory, my beloved
science is science. it can be (sometimes necessarily) prioritized via societal influence, culture and monetary means.
socialist countries have different types scientific spend but I don’t see femboys taking things in the ass for them I guess.
Look, the only thing in the world which hasn’t been corrupted by capitalism is OP’s brain, which happens to be in a jar, on a shelf, owned by an evil demon, who lives in a hole at the bottom of the sea. Just be thankful that the capitalists have not figured out how to harness this phenomenological power yet.
Oh, we’re totally going to do brains in vats
I dunno about science, but truth is proof. That just infers that science is various forms of proof, and I’m ok with that as it lets our notion of proof evolve as we do _
Let’s also not forget that Scientists are also humans. Humans with their own beliefs and biases which do get transferred into studies. Peer review can help reduce that but since peers are also humans with their own biases, but also common biases shared amongst humans it’s not bulletproof either.
There will always be some level of bias which clouds judgement, or makes you see/think things that aren’t objectively true, sometimes it comes with good intention, others not so much. It’s always there though, and probably always will be. The key to good science is making it as minimal as possible.
Does anyone remember all the bogus studies that showed smoking was healthy?
Wrong example. Here better example would be “does anyone remember how underfunded were those studies, that said smoking was not healthy?”
Fair enough, yeah from what I remember big tobacco was funding the former. They even had the surgeon general recommending smoking.
What methodology finally disproved that?
People kinda… um, died?
And how did we connect that, and rule out other things?
This is why the last step of science is broad consensus, which has solved literally every single example of bad science in this entire thread. All this means is people should pay more attention to sources.
Broad consensus may be the “last step of science” only insofar as the scientific community accepting a theoretical framework as a complete, perfect, objective truth would mean no more science and no more scientific community, only fools and fanatics.
Science is the process of getting things a little less wrong.
Even if you follow the rules strictly, confirmation bias can kick in… which is basically “always” because you have to start somewhere and will think a certain way.
Based on that argument, why bother? /s
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Cuz that’s what this meme is trying to abandon - science
Nihilism is fun! Science as a framework for truth seeking, and big S Science are functionally different things. Nobody is making the argument that Science is free from political or economic bias, or even that empiricism is the sole arbiter of truth. Literally just finish reading Kant, I’ll wait.
On the other hand, you can look at the world and very plainly see that science… does things. It discovers truth with a far better track record than every other imperfect epistemology. But sure, capitalism bad. Twitter man cringe. And the internet is just like, an opinion, or something.
ok, but according to science everyone is worthless
Science doesn’t change just because some groups try to use it to forward an agenda.
No True Scotsman argument sort of.
Now, I’m not saying we ignore science or throw it out, but there are flaws.
Is it made by humans? Yah, there are flaws.
ignoring the other examples you’ve been given: it absolutely does even when it goes well. The scientific method is literally based on “other people must change and refine this, one person’s work is not immutable nor should be taken as gospel”
Also what science is has changed. Science used to be natural philosophy and thus was combined with other non-scientific (to us) disciplines. Social sciences have only been around 200 years tops.
Some would debate that applied mathematics is science, others would say all sociology isn’t science.
I’d argue the scientific method does not have to include multiple people at all. All it is, is the process of coming up with a hypothesis, designing an experiment to check that hypothesis, and then repeating while trying to control for external factors (like your own personal bias). You can absolutely do science on your own.
The broader field of academia and getting scientific papers published is more of a governance thing than science. You can come up with better hypotheses by reviewing other people’s science, but that doesn’t mean when a flat earther ignores all current consensus and does their own tests that it isn’t still science.
The broader field of academia and getting scientific papers published is more of a governance thing than science.
You cannot separate the 2. There is no pure science out there which can be done without “governance”.
I’m explicitly arguing that you can separate the two. I can perform a completely independent experiment in my house.
For example:- I make a hypothesis that my stove can boil 1L of water in 10 minutes.
- I then measure how long my stove takes to boil that water.
- I can then record these results to inform my future cooking and water boiling experiments.
- Proper use of the scientific method may also attempt to measure atmospheric pressure, water contaminants, and other factors that may affect the result.
I don’t have to publish the results anywhere or even talk with another person, yet I’ve still used the scientific method. I’m not a professional scientist, but I am an amateur one.
I can perform a completely independent experiments in my house.
And I can scream into the abyss, it’s just as relevant. The absolute majority of actually useful and relevant science is performed socially for social purposes.
I make a hypothesis that my stove can boil 1L of water in 10 minutes.
You aren’t even supposed to do a scientific experiment in the way you have just described. Or rather, there is neither a universally agreed upon scientific method, nor would your described experiment hold up to any standards.
An actual scientific experiment into water boiling would involve at the minimum
- A model predicting the speed of boiling based on relevant variables
- A collection of many data, and preferably corroborated by independent sources
- Statistical analysis of the data (there are many methods to choose from) to gauge confidence in the model.
- Publishing or proofreading of the results.
However, at each of these steps, you have a choice of how to approach the problem. And this depends on what you are trying to do, and what the best standards in the industry are. The process has also changed over time.
And this reveals the problem of many people’s metaphysical approach to science. They treat it as if it were a platonic ideal, or floating constant in the human minds pace. In reality, “science” is an industry with its ever-changing standards, culture, interaction with the rest of society, and a million other complexities.
I think we have a fundamental disagreement on what counts as science, and that’s okay.
Your methodology seems to imply a valid scientific experiment must be sufficiently rigorous as to improve on the current scientific consensus. And I do partially agree, it’s a waste of time collecting data that’s just going to be worse than previously collected, more controlled experiments.
By my philosophy is a lot looser. To quote Adam Savage: “The only difference between screwing around and science, is writing it down”
I’d counter argue that a test that is not communicated, reported, described or otherwise transmitted to another party is identical to it not happening, therefore one needs to tell “someone” (even if that is a private journal), and while in theory falsifability is possible solo, it increases the problem of induction, and science is, in essence, a language: a description of phenomena not the phenomena itself.
I’d agree for the result to be useful to society, the science should be published. But science can still be useful to an individual without sharing. I use the scientific method regularly in my daily life for mundane things, and often it’s just not worth the time to communicate to others because the situation is unique to me. I write it down for myself later, which doesn’t make the science any less valid.
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But it does. Cigarettes were healthy and climate change didn’t exist 50 years ago
Neither of those things were backed by science. Confusing convincing lobbying with science is a problem today was it was then.
I mean those things didn’t change, it was just about how research was manipulated by money and human biases.
Yes but science is a process, not a thing, and that process is corruptible.
There is a differentiation between the natural world for how it’s made and the human process that quantifies that knowledge.
Science has always changed, just like human culture did
The truth doesn’t change. Scientific consensus does. Scientific consensus has been wrong on countless things. After all, science is about getting things a little less wrong every time.
Exactly.
Climate Change has existed for over 110 years in science.
just the start, too.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/
https://theconversation.com/what-big-oil-knew-about-climate-change-in-its-own-words-170642
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/01/desmog-fossil-fuel-industry-climate-risks-1950s-denial/
There was never any science saying “cigarettes are healthy”.
Define healthy. Nicotine is a stimulant and does improve mental acuity.
What it is vs how it’s (ab)used
Or “real science” versus “imaginary science”
Bonus round : “real science has never been tried”
One more to fill the bingo card
Based
