The Mistrust of Science and Scholarship

[PLOlover]

I think a lot of the mistrust has to do with the mistrust of the professions (doctor, lawyer). I mean, let's face it, a lawyer's job is to lie lie lie.

I mean the professionals go to college, and the scientists go to college, there's some bleedover there I guess.

just a thought.

[m_the0ry]

This reminds me of a story one of my best friends told me a while ago about his aunt. She had a Ph.D from a prestigious university and every day after coming home from work she would drink. She was an alcoholic. He wasn't scared of her and she wasn't a mean drinker, but for a long while he never had the courage to ask her what exactly her doctorate was in or what her job was. Eventually he asked and he summarized her response for me. She said the highest paying job for many postgraduate degree-holders is in making announcements to the press and public - for an organization - so that they can reference and cite the material with false credibility. Almost always it involved unethical representation of data and solely was for the progression of some agenda. She was sickened by her job and so she drank to forget it.

In the ideal world, money would be meaningless to politicians and scientists. But they can still be bought. For every scientist developing a stem cell based cure for parkinsons, there's a scientist working for NASA whose sole job is to deny the existence of global warming as verbally as possible.


And as we all know, losing trust is easy, gaining it is difficult. How can the scientific community expect to hold the trust of the people when the same labels that are intended to set them apart are being abused to push political agendas?

[Taraz]

[ QUOTE ]

The 3 examples have been given, Human caused Global Warming, Evolution, and the Big Bang.

That's not a long list. They bring into play special biasing factors for some people. And they have peculiarities as Scientific theories. The subjective biases people can have are Religious and Economic. As Science, they do not allow for the kind of repeatable controlled testing that the scientific method normally prescribes. Thus, they are more subject to correlation-causation problems. Does the data conform to the theory because it was caused by what the theory says? Or is the data being caused by something else and simply correlates with the theory coincidentally?

[/ QUOTE ]

The problem is that there is overwhelming evidence for evolution and man-made global warming. It is our best approximation at the moment by the people who spend their lives studying these problems. Many people just aren't educated and haven't really read about these matters. But some flat out reject these theories after doing thirty minutes of research on the internet. It's a little distressing to me that these people think they somehow know better than leading scientists WORLDWIDE.

[ QUOTE ]

Evolution can predict that if it finds fossil records they will tend to fill in the gaps in evolutionary history. But it is constrained in the specificity of such predictions because there is no way of knowing what kind of fossils they are likely to discover. The theory has such a long Time element that it depends heavily on such historical searches. They would like to apply the scientific method to where they could "watch" evolution happening. But the Time element in the theory makes that impractical. The Big Bang relies simliarly on interpretation of data still existant which points to events of the past. We can't produce a Big Bang in the lab.

That's not to say the Theories are not good science. The Theories continue to be consistent with the data that becomes available to them. We just can't provide them with the kinds of experiments testable by the scientific method whereby we could see if the data produced would be consistent with predictions of the Theories. We can't produce New Data for the theories the way we would like because it's not practical.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is all true. But we can falsify alternative theories. Basically, these are the only theories left standing after rigorous research. That pretty much means that believing in some other reason for these things is unsupported by the observable world.

[Taraz]

[ QUOTE ]
This reminds me of a story one of my best friends told me a while ago about his aunt. She had a Ph.D from a prestigious university and every day after coming home from work she would drink. She was an alcoholic. He wasn't scared of her and she wasn't a mean drinker, but for a long while he never had the courage to ask her what exactly her doctorate was in or what her job was. Eventually he asked and he summarized her response for me. She said the highest paying job for many postgraduate degree-holders is in making announcements to the press and public - for an organization - so that they can reference and cite the material with false credibility. Almost always it involved unethical representation of data and solely was for the progression of some agenda. She was sickened by her job and so she drank to forget it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Would you mind sharing what kind of organization she worked for? Was it one that had business interests or was it a scientific organization?

[ QUOTE ]

In the ideal world, money would be meaningless to politicians and scientists. But they can still be bought. For every scientist developing a stem cell based cure for parkinsons, there's a scientist working for NASA whose sole job is to deny the existence of global warming as verbally as possible.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, this administration has been especially bad about casting doubt on the claims of science. It scares the crap out of me.

[ QUOTE ]

And as we all know, losing trust is easy, gaining it is difficult. How can the scientific community expect to hold the trust of the people when the same labels that are intended to set them apart are being abused to push political agendas?

[/ QUOTE ]

Very true. Also scary.

But we have to remember that other countries are doing research on these issues as well. It's a WORLDWIDE consensus. The best research from Europe and Asia confirm the scientific consensus within the U.S.

[Archon_Wing]

Also, statistics can seem cold and impersonal. "67% of [insert group that you are in] are more prone..." Hey, that's not me!

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
I think a lot of the mistrust has to do with the mistrust of the professions (doctor, lawyer). I mean, let's face it, a lawyer's job is to lie lie lie.

I mean the professionals go to college, and the scientists go to college, there's some bleedover there I guess.

just a thought.

[/ QUOTE ]

Scientists aren't capital P Professionals. I don't mean that in any sort of pejorative way.

[oe39]

[ QUOTE ]
It's a little distressing to me that these people think they somehow know better than leading scientists WORLDWIDE.


[/ QUOTE ]

don't we think we know better than leading tobacco scientists or theologians?

(fwiw, i agree that man-made global warming is extremely likely)

[PLOlover]

[ QUOTE ]
Scientists aren't capital P Professionals. I don't mean that in any sort of pejorative way.

[/ QUOTE ]

true, but I meant sort of the common perception, how the little guy views it.

I got a better example though. Medical doctors definitely are professionals. How long did they support the tobacco industry and claim that smoking was good for you? How long did they buckle and claim, well, it isn't bad for you? How long then well, it is bad but no cancer? Of course finally the truth came out but it took a long time and people were lied to for a very long time.

[Taraz]

[ QUOTE ]

don't we think we know better than leading tobacco scientists or theologians?

(fwiw, i agree that man-made global warming is extremely likely)

[/ QUOTE ]

Theologians aren't scientists. I'm talking about factual claims that people have spent lives researching and are falsifiable. I'm not saying that we should believe all 'experts'. But when practically 100% of all peer-reviewed scientific journal articles support a claim, I am pretty inclined to believe it.

If you are talking about scientists who work for the tobacco companies when you say 'leading tobacco scientists', I have another reason for doubting their claims. Basically all scientists who don't work for the tobacco companies disagree with them. If the prevailing opinion in peer-reviewed scientific journals was that cigarettes aren't bad for you, I would believe it. Unfortunately it is entirely clear that they are terribly addictive and terribly detrimental to our health.

[godBoy]

People are very willing to dismiss something that they don't understand..

I know it's not directly related to your post, but creationism has the impact it does because there's a lot of people ignorant about science.