The cult of science - Page 7 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

All sociological topics not appropriate or suited to other areas of the board.
Forum rules: No one line posts please.
By Sivad
#14981073
Rancid wrote:I think the better question is:
Is there any truth finding alternative to science that is more accurate than science?



That's not the question. Nobody is disputing the value of empirical inquiry, what's being disputed is the integrity of the institution. If the institution is compromised then there is no truth finding, there's just junk science and babbittry. What's being challenged here is the quasi-religious faith in the authority and integrity of the institution of science that the managerial class has been cultivating in the public imagination with slick popular science propaganda. That's all bunkum.

The real question is what to do about it? How do we ensure the integrity of the institution and how do we best promote an authentic rational skepticism in the public discourse?
User avatar
By Rancid
#14981075
Sivad wrote:
That's not the question. Nobody is disputing the value of empirical inquiry, what's being disputed is the integrity of the institution. If the institution is compromised then there is no truth finding, there's just junk science and babbittry. What's being challenged here is the quasi-religious faith in the authority and integrity of the institution of science that the managerial class has been cultivating in the public imagination with slick popular science propaganda. That's all bunkum.

The real question is what to do about it? How do we ensure the integrity of the institution and how do we best promote an authentic rational skepticism in the public discourse?


The "institution" is very distributed and decentralized. Given as such, is it really an institution? It's not like all of science is administered by some sort of governing board.
By Sivad
#14981094
Rancid wrote:The "institution" is very distributed and decentralized.


It is? From what I can tell it's been thoroughly standardized into a hierarchical structure and it derives most of its funding from a single source. Science is administrated by various different entities(ngos, universities, corporations, government) but it's all operating on the same system and each field has its own elite network with central hubs and gatekeepers.

Not many people question that there is a military industrial complex or doubt that it's a problem, but for some reason many of those same people refuse to acknowledge there's a similiar problem in science:

In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

...

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocation, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet in holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower's farewell address

By Sivad
#14981097
There's a cliche n science that science advances one funeral at a time -
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

I think that's there's a good deal of truth in that and the only way that could be true is if there's a high degree of centralization within science whether formalized or not.

I got a paper somewhere on paradigm protection in science that looks at this issue in depth, I'll post it when I find it.
User avatar
By Rancid
#14981099
Sivad wrote:it's been thoroughly standardized into a hierarchical structure

Please elaborate. Where is this structure, and who exactly manages/controls it?

Sivad wrote:derives most of its funding from a single source.


Which source is that?

Sivad wrote:Science is administrated by various different entities(ngos, universities, corporations, government) but it's all operating on the same system


What's the same system?

Sivad wrote:each field has its own elite network with central hubs and gatekeepers.


Yes of course, this is true of just about anything. However, let me ask this. Are these different elite networks colluding, competing with each other? In either case, how so?

Sivad wrote:many of those same people refuse to acknowledge there's a similiar problem in science:


What is the underlying motive for the Science industrial complex?

Last question.

What do you want to happen?
By Sivad
#14985327
"A New Kind of Big Science"

by

Aaron E. Hirsh
research associate at the University of Colorado, Boulder

January 13th, 2009

The New York Times


But if we take a step back, and view it in the broader context of contemporary science, the grand project of particle physics seems suddenly not such a wild exception, but rather a vivid example of a very broad trend: Across many different fields, new data are generated by a smaller and smaller number of bigger and bigger projects. And with this process of centralization come changes in what scientists measure — and even in what scientists are.

In physics, a slow drift toward centralization was given a sudden shove during the Second World War — think Manhattan Project — so it is perhaps not surprising that colliders today epitomize what historians have called "Big Science." But a similar evolution is now evident in virtually every discipline.

When a crystallographer wants to determine the structure of a molecule, she signs up for time at a big synchotron, which can generate the generate the powerful X-rays she'll need. When a biologist wants the sequence of a certain genome, he submits his proposal to a large sequencing center, where armies of automated machines read their way in parallel through different paragraphs of a genome’s text. And when an ecologist wants to study the effects of all that extra CO2 in the air, she’ll turn to the very same national labs that achieve particle smashing, Brookhaven and Oak Ridge, which have built systems for manipulating the atmosphere over entire forests.

It's not only scientific instruments, but also the scientists themselves who are transformed by centralization. If the 19th century was an age of far-flung investigators alone in the wilderness or the book-lined study, the 21st century is, so far, an age of scientists as administrators. Many of the best-known scientists of our day are men and women exceptionally talented in herding the resources — human and otherwise — required to plan, construct and use big sophisticated facilities.

In a way, centralization seems unavoidable. The governments that fund research have themselves become far more centralized, so perhaps science has been pulled along in the process. But even without that prevailing wind, science would, I think, head in the very same direction.

A young discipline is bound to move first through the data it can gather most easily. And as it does, it also defines more exactly what it must measure to test its theories. As the low-hanging fruit vanish, and the most precious of fruits are spotted high above, bigger investments in harvesting equipment become necessary. Centralization is a way to extend scientists’ reach.

But of course, there are also some drawbacks. There's something disturbingly hierarchical about the new architecture of the scientific community: what was before something like a network of small villages is today more like an urban high-rise, with big offices at the top and a lot of cubicles down below.

The trouble with this is not just what it means for the folks in the cubicles, but also that the entire business should rely so heavily on the creativity and vision of relatively few managers. If the glassy office is occupied by Einstein, that’s great, but of course there’s always a chance it won’t be. (Tellingly, this point was made to me by a friend who grew up in the Soviet Union. "Trust me," he said, "centralization is risky.")


http://philosophyofscienceportal.blogsp ... thing.html

______________________________________________

Big Science


"Big science" usually implies one or more of these specific characteristics:

Big budgets: No longer required to rely on philanthropy or industry, scientists were able to use budgets on an unprecedented scale for basic research.

Big staffs: Similarly, the number of practitioners of science on any one project grew as well, creating difficulty, and often controversy, in the assignment of credit for scientific discoveries (the Nobel Prize system, for example, allows awarding only three individuals in any one topic per year, based on a 19th-century model of the scientific enterprise).

Big machines: Ernest Lawrence's cyclotron at his Radiation Laboratory in particular ushered in an era of massive machines (requiring massive staffs and budgets) as the tools of basic scientific research. The use of many machines, such as the many sequencers used during the Human Genome Project, might also fall under this definition.


Big laboratories: Because of the increase in cost to do basic science (with the increase of large machines), centralization of scientific research in large laboratories (such as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory or CERN) has become a cost-effective strategy, though questions over facility access have become prevalent.

Towards the end of the 20th century, not only projects in basic physics and astronomy, but also in life sciences became big sciences, such as the massive Human Genome Project. The heavy investment of government and industrial interests into academic science has also blurred the line between public and private research, where entire academic departments, even at public universities, are often financed by private companies. Not all Big Science is related to the military concerns which were at its origins.

Criticism

The era of Big Science has provoked criticism that it undermines the basic principles of the scientific method.[3] Increased government funding has often meant increased military funding, which some claim subverts the Enlightenment-era ideal of science as a pure quest for knowledge. For example, historian Paul Forman has argued that during World War II and the Cold War, the massive scale of defense-related funding prompted a shift in physics from basic to applied research.[4]

Many scientists also complain that the requirement for increased funding makes a large part of the scientific activity filling out grant requests and other budgetary bureaucratic activity, and the intense connections between academic, governmental, and industrial interests have raised the question of whether scientists can be completely objective when their research contradicts the interests and intentions of their benefactors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Science
By Sivad
#14985365
Eisenhower's Farewell Address at Fifty

President Eisenhower's address is mainly remembered for his warning of the perils of a "military-industrial complex." Less widely known, but no less important was his caution, a few sentences later, about "the danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite." This seminar explored the historical context and current relevance of Eisenhower's worries about a "scientific-technological elite." CSPO faculty members and authors Dan Sarewitz and G. Pascal Zachary spoke, along with author and journalist Daniel S. Greenberg and journalist and former science analyst for the GAO William Lanouette. The panel was moderated by Steve Lagerfeld, editor of The Wilson Quarterly.

https://washingtondc.asu.edu/video/eisenhowers-farewell-address-at-fifty
By Sivad
#14985383
Rancid wrote:Has this happened?



Kind of but he sort of got it backwards. The way it actually worked out is science became the captive of the dominant class and is used by that class to manipulate society. Science has become just one more captured institution in a constellation of captured institutions. There is a scientific establishment that does have significant political influence but it seems to be subordinate to the liberal superclass. The liberal elites are extremely technocratic so in that sense he got it right but the reality is science doesn't determine policy so much as the policy agendas of the liberal elites determine the science.
By Sivad
#14985652

It is common for people with physicalist or materialist views to be accused of "scientism". Some scientists and philosophers even openly embrace scientism. What is scientism, and what if anything is wrong with it? In this video we examine five objections to scientism.
By Sivad
#14988504
On Science Advancing One Funeral at a Time
Do star scientists erect barriers to entry for newcomers in their fields? Pierre Azoulay and Joshua Graff Zivin bring some data to the question raised in that famous quip from physicist Max Planck on how scientific progress really happens.

These results paint a picture of scientific fields as scholarly guilds to which elite scientists can regulate access, providing them with outsized opportunities to shape the direction of scientific advance in that space. We then explore the mechanisms through which these would-be entrants were held back while the star was alive.


Few of the deceased scientists served as editors of academic journals or on committees overseeing the issuance of research grants, so we rule out the possibility that the deceased scientists used their influence to limit who could or could not enter their fields. Rather it appears that the prospect of challenging a luminary in the field serves as a deterrent for entry by outsiders.


After their passing, however, we find evidence for influence from beyond the grave, exercised through a tightly knit network of collaborators. The loss of an elite scientist central to the field appears to signal to those on the outside that the cost/benefit calculations on the avant-garde ideas they might bring to the table has changed, thus encouraging them to engage. But this occurs only when the topology of the field offers a less hostile landscape for the support and acceptance of “foreign” ideas, for instance when the star’s network of close collaborators is insufficiently robust to stave off threats from intellectual outsiders.


While eminent scientists restrict the entry of new ideas and scholars into a field, gatekeeping activities could have beneficial properties when the field is in its inception; it might allow cumulative progress through shared assumptions and methodologies, and the ability to control the intellectual evolution of a scientific domain might, in itself, be a prize that spurs much ex ante risk-taking. Consistent with that view, we also find that the entrants who boost activity into the subfields formerly occupied by the deceased star are disproportionately likely to be future stars. Therefore, the outsiders of today can often turn into the stars of tomorrow—the circle of scientific life!


Pierre Azoulay is professor at the Sloan School of Management at MIT and Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

https://promarket.org/science-advancing ... eral-time/
By Sivad
#14989813
Suppression and Dissent in Science
Abstract

Academic integrity becomes more challenging during scientific controversies, as scientists and their allies and opponents struggle over the credibility and significance of knowledge claims. Such debates are healthy and necessary, but because science remains embedded in broader institutional, political, cultural, and economic contexts, struggles over truth often reflect dynamics of power. For example, those who challenge dominant ideas may face a landscape that does not welcome contrarian positions, which may result in what this chapter describes as “dissenting” behavior by scientists. In extreme cases, contrarian scientists may face attempts at scientific suppression: discrediting or silencing a scientist or scientific claim in ways that violate accepted standards of scientific conduct. While such actions are unusual, they happen frequently enough to deserve careful consideration as breaches of academic integrity.

https://link.springer.com/referencework ... 7-098-8_30

_________________________________________________________

Scientific dissent and public policy
Is targeting dissent a reasonable way to protect sound policy decisions?

Many scientists have therefore come to regard dissent as problematic if it has the potential to affect public behaviour and policy-making. However, we argue that such concerns about dissent as an obstacle to public policy are both dangerous and misguided.

[...]

scientists have adopted several strategies to limit these negative effects of dissent—masking dissent, silencing dissent and discrediting dissenters. The first strategy aims to present a united front to the public. Scientists mask existing disagreements among themselves by presenting only those claims or pieces of evidence about which they agree

[...]

A second strategy is to silence dissenting views that might have negative consequences. This can take the form of self-censorship when scientists are reluctant to publish or publicly discuss research that might—incorrectly—be used to question existing scientific knowledge.

[...]

some scientists are hesitant to make these disagreements public, for fear that they will be accused of being denialists, faulted for confusing the public and policy-makers, censured for abating climate-change deniers, or criticized for undermining public policy

[...]

Another strategy is to discredit dissenters, especially in cases in which the dissent seems to be ideologically motivated. This could involve publicizing the financial or political ties of the dissenters [2,6,25], which would call attention to their probable bias. In other cases, scientists might discredit the expertise of the dissenter.



Attacking dissent makes scientists reluctant to voice genuine doubts, especially if they believe that doing so might harm their reputations, damage their careers and undermine prevailing theories or policies needed.


targeting dissent as an obstacle to public policy might simply reinforce self-censorship and stifle legitimate and scientifically informed debate. If this happens, scientific progress is hindered.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3589084/


Science is definitely not a healthy institution. The rampant institutionalized corruption and political polarization within our society has undeniably infected science and compromised the integrity of the institution.
By SSDR
#14990379
Science is perhaps the most important subject that humanity can study. Science has contributed to the advancement of technology, the non domestic industrial revolution, computer occupations, advancement in medicines and the health industry, and science has also helped improve the standards of living for all people affected by the advancements of science.

Without science, people would live shorter lives, people would be stuck with their families, forced marriages would be common place, people would be less happy so they would use religion to cope with that, and domestic abuse would still exist since there would be no science to prove that domestic abuse is a threat to the survival of the victims.
By Sivad
#14990393
SSDR wrote:Science has contributed to the advancement of technology, the non domestic industrial revolution, computer occupations, advancement in medicines and the health industry, and science has also helped improve the standards of living for all people affected by the advancements of science.


We have discovered a lot of of very useful and fascinating things about the natural world but really science gets more credit than it's due. Most of the discoveries thus far have been relatively low hanging fruit on the tree of nature that are fairly easy to come by once you get past superstition and dogma and just start really observing and testing shit. The kind of scale and complexity we're getting into now is well beyond direct observation or linear explanation so we have to stop looking to science for certainty and start regarding it for what it is which is nothing more than an inherently flawed and limited system we've instituted for exploring nature and for providing useful yet tentative explanations for the phenomena we encounter in the course of that exploration.
User avatar
By XogGyux
#14990397
Sivad wrote:We have discovered a lot of of very useful and fascinating things about the natural world but really science gets more credit than it's due. Most of the discoveries thus far have been relatively low hanging fruit on the tree of nature that are fairly easy to come by once you get past superstition and dogma and just start really observing and testing shit. The kind of scale and complexity we're getting into now is well beyond direct observation or linear explanation so we have to stop looking to science for certainty and start regarding it for what it is which is nothing more than an inherently flawed and limited system we've instituted for exploring nature and for providing useful yet tentative explanations for the phenomena we encounter in the course of that exploration.

This prove you have no fucking idea what you talking about. Science is the method of systematically making observations, predictions based on those observations and testing. Basically, you are saying "science is shit, we can do everything science does and better by using science" fucking oxymoronic and idiotic statement.
By Sivad
#14990401
XogGyux wrote:This prove you have no fucking idea what you talking about. Science is the method of systematically making observations, predictions based on those observations and testing. Basically, you are saying "science is shit, we can do everything science does and better by using science" fucking oxymoronic and idiotic statement.


This is the reaction you get from these fundamentalists when you blaspheme against Science.
By Sivad
#14990403
You can take people out of religion but you can't take religion out of people, they'll always find some golden calf to worship.
By Sivad
#14990422
Underdetermination of Scientific Theory


At the heart of the underdetermination of scientific theory by evidence is the simple idea that the evidence available to us at a given time may be insufficient to determine what beliefs we should hold in response to it. In a textbook example, if all I know is that you spent $10 on apples and oranges and that apples cost $1 while oranges cost $2, then I know that you did not buy six oranges, but I do not know whether you bought one orange and eight apples, two oranges and six apples, and so on. A simple scientific example can be found in the rationale behind the sensible methodological adage that “correlation does not imply causation”. If watching lots of cartoons causes children to be more violent in their playground behavior, then we should (barring complications) expect to find a correlation between levels of cartoon viewing and violent playground behavior. But that is also what we would expect to find if children who are prone to violence tend to enjoy and seek out cartoons more than other children, or if propensities to violence and increased cartoon viewing are both caused by some third factor (like general parental neglect or excessive consumption of Twinkies). So a high correlation between cartoon viewing and violent playground behavior is evidence that (by itself) simply underdetermines what we should believe about the causal relationship between the two. But it turns out that this simple and familiar predicament only scratches the surface of the various ways in which problems of underdetermination can arise in the course of scientific investigation.

1. A First Look: Duhem, Quine, and the Problems of Underdetermination
2. Holist Underdetermination and Challenges to Scientific Rationality
2.1 Holist Underdetermination: The Very Idea
2.2 Challenging the Rationality of Science
3. Contrastive Underdetermination, Empirical Equivalents, and Unconceived Alternatives
3.1 Contrastive Underdetermination: Back to Duhem
3.2 Empirically Equivalent Theories
3.3 Unconceived Alternatives and A New Induction


https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scie ... rmination/




This is NOT simply a restatement of the strawman "evolution is just a theory" argument. Rather, it is the beginning of a series providing an explanation of the problem of underdetermination in scientific theory.


An argument that no scientific theory is actually falsifiable based on Holistic Underdetermination, which poses problems for Karl Popper's solution to the problem of demarcation.


An argument that the methodology of science must be irrational to revise beliefs in the face of discordant evidence.


An argument to the effect that no one theory can be shown to be true over other empirically equivalent theories, and an explanation of the problem of underdetermination.


An explication of Transient Underdetermination, and an argument as to why we cannot know that our theories are correct.
  • 1
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 13
Russia-Ukraine War 2022

I don't know who are you are referring to, but th[…]

PoFo would be a strange place for them to focus o[…]

In my opinion, masculinity has declined for all o[…]

@ingliz good to know, so why have double standar[…]