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Limits on Listening to “Scientists”
Ricochet’s St. Augustine has asked the interesting question as to whether there is a limit to listening to scientists as the Democrats urge us to do. The problem with the question is that Democrats have an entirely different definition of “scientist.” Their science is a special office within the Narrative with the job of (a) protecting the fiction that progressivism is an outgrowth of pure reason and not merely a tired and rather conspicuously deficient ideology and (B) hijacking the prestige that has traditionally attached to academic credentials.
“Scientists” tell us, for example, that there is no male or female or that any and all politically wrong economic activity is killing the planet. One can no longer have a job as a scientist if one does not agree that polar bears are nearing extinction, the Great Barrier Reef is dying, that sex is just a cultural artifact, or that adaptation should be considered in lieu of mitigation of climate change.
Recall how Dick Morris disappeared from the airways when his guarantee of a Romney victory proved to have no value? Can anyone identify a servant of The Narrative losing work for being wrong? Journalists still defer to Paul Ehrlich (The Population Bomb) whose predictions were not merely spectacularly wrong but drip with a vile anti-human philosophy —for 50 years(?!) with no retractions or apologies.
More recently, Neil Ferguson of Imperial College gave us the wildly wrong prediction of COVID’s lethality just as he had overpredicted the dangers of bird flu, swine flu, and Mad Cow disease. And not content with that embarrassing track record, he and his crack team of fiction writers offered a model in May (already falsified by actual data) which predicted mass deaths if the lockdowns were lessened in any way. How does this clown have a job? How can any journalist with even high school research skills reach out to such a proven incompetent for quotes?
Think of the array of credentialed buffoons who assured viewers on CNN and MSNBC that Team Mueller would bring down Trump any day now. Think of the thousands of articles over the last 30 years about climate disasters that never happened. The volume of authoritative prediction failure is rising fast but the Narrative does not care. We are at Orwellian DEFCON 2
When the left says to “listen” to “scientists” they are also declaring that the Narrative has claimed and reconfigured that which was once the realm of free exchange, empiricism, and disciplined induction. The new form of science will ratify the Narrative, deny human nature but hint at its perfectibility, declare crises that require the desired solution of the moment and continue to erase dissent by assertions of authority.
To disagree with this “science” does not generate a demand for proof or reasoned argument. Instead, there are accusations of ignorance, malice, or being in service to regions superstition or corporate greed. It is a response you would expect if the charge were heresy or treason. That is what “scientists” do. “Listen” means shut up and obey.
Published in General
I dig.
Well said.
Scientists are not gods, they are merely other pathetic mortals like the rest of us.
To hell with “authority,” I want evidence. And candor. And no conflicts of interest.
And non-proprietary ‘computer models’ and access to the data.
And, while I’m at it, some [redacting] reproducibility would be nice.
There are two other aspects of the left’s “trust the scientists unquestioningly” mantra that I find amusing.
(1) They so often contradict each other. If they had arrived at a single definitive answer on anything, there wouldn’t be disagreement because the finding would be crystal clear to all of them. Yet it never is. :-)
(2) The history of science is replete with new discoveries trumping old ones. I’ve read a lot of science textbooks organized around the timeline of the historic discoveries in the sciences. This style of writing about science is engaging for students taking basic-level college courses. But having read several of these, now I just laugh whenever someone starts with “scientists say” or “scientists have proven.” Disproving each other is how they earn advanced degrees, prizes, and a place in the history books. :-) Disproving each other is what gets them out of bed in the morning. :-)
I enjoy reading science articles and books of all kinds. But I don’t take them too seriously.
For the last few months, watching the scientists investigate this virus has been very revealing about the holes in our research programs in virology. I think that as long as the pneumonia and flu-pneumonia deaths stayed about the same year after year, there was little incentive to study viruses. Money and attention and interest went into cloning sheep instead.
The word “science” is being perverted into an appeal to authority, rather than a method of discovering—or, better, moving toward—truth.
I’ll trust science when it gets the simple things right. Are eggs good for us or not? Is butter good for us or not? Is coffee good for us or not? Is alcohol good for us or not? Is tobacco good for us or not? I am old enough to have heard that science was on both sides at least one turn for each, and in the case of coffee, at least three times around the merry-go-round.
what, you think there is only one answer per question?
Silly me.
LOL
The funny thing is that science only exists because of centuries or even millennia of observation, and reproducible experimentation, and the historical handing down of these observations.
And it is history such as this that those who misuse science are denouncing and “cancelling” as White Supremacy, or White Patriarchy, or White Oppression or whatever they are calling it at the moment.
And yet it is this very same science which they denounce by which these same people frame their predictions of doom.
The glaciers are in a serious case of science denial.
It would probably good if the public understood the extent of the replication crisis in the sciences, especially the social “sciences.” As an example, fewer than half of published studies in clinical psychology can be replicated. That number falls to around 25% for studies in social psychology.
In medicine, well:
The Party of Science doesn’t like science when it comes to genetically modified crops.
The Party of Science doesn’t like science when it comes to medical advances in pre-natal care that extends the viability of premature babies down to the late second trimester.
The Party of Science doesn’t like science when it comes to the technology that combined fracking with horizontal drilling, which permitted vast new reserves of shale oil and gas to become economically viable for production for the first time.
There are lots of other things that The Party of Science not only hates, but goes positively Luddite about, because it goes against their ideological world view. They simply use the claim because it makes them sound forward looking, and when they do find some area where they can get scientists to agree with them (even scientists commenting on different fields which they have no expertise in), gives them a superficial image of gravitas simply through the use of a slogan and a few buzzwords.
But they’re never going to openly admit they hate science when it doesn’t fit their ideology — it’s up to others to point out when they hate science, and that’s usually best done to the non-political when The Party of Science’s actions manage to mess up normal people’s lives. The current situation in California is a good example, where The Party of Science going all-in on alternative energy while going Luddite on nuclear power and natural gas energy sources has created rolling blackouts and demands that people shut off their ACs during the hottest time of the year (and ‘others’ means alternative and online media, because it’s not like the bulk of the big media outlets will make a big deal about this or other science/technology screw-ups by the left).
Loss of respect for the experts is what happens when argumentation replaces experimentation.
The other issue is that even if science gets it right every time, science still can’t tell you what to do (the way Biden implies he will “do what the scientists say”).
Statistical science says that 40,000 people will die in the next year in automobile accidents. What if Biden said that he will “listen to the scientists” and eliminate all but absolutely necessary automobile travel to save those lives.
But those statistics don’t actually say to eliminate most auto travel. Science delivers the facts. Those facts are but one among many inputs into the decision making process. No matter what the science says about the virus, it will never tell you whether or not to shut the economy down.
Exactly. Many experts are experts in only one field. Dr. Fauci can advise Trump all he wants on public safety in regard to COVID, but he’s out of his league if he starts advocating schools stay closed, businesses don’t reopen,
riotspeaceful protests are okay, football should not be played, or vote for Biden.Whoever the decision maker is (Trump, Governors, Mayors, or County Councils), there are other factors to take into account. The decision maker has to weigh all input when rendering judgment. Unfortunately, many of these decision makers are Democrats, and “Will this impact Trump negatively?” is one of their factors (possibly the biggest one) . . .
That’s why all this friction between Fauci and the administration was unnecessary. The Dems were always trying to stoke it. Trump should just have reiterated over and over that Fauci’s job is to help us understand what we are dealing with, and that’s it. And that then the elected representatives make the final decision. That would have let Fauci off the hook, while at the same time making it clear that he doesn’t make the decisions. But it all just got muddled up.
I’ve hiked a lot of that park and climbed on some of its glaciers; I visited in the early ’80’s and late 20-oughts. Some of the trails are dramatic. What struck me about Glacier is how easy it is for the average person to experience real exposure.
I forgot one. They need skin in the game, too.
Additionally, it seems anyone can call themselves a scientist. See: Bill Nye.
What kills me is the environmentalists who show pictures of glaciers calving – which is normal – and scream, “Global warming is melting the planet!”
I don’t worry too much about it. That’s because it’s really all my fault. I have a ridiculous carbon footprint, it’s totally sick. I even burn leaded gasoline in my Svea 123. But I don’t care – those glaciers can melt all they want.
If I could strike two words from our public discourse, so that people would have to think about what they mean to say, they’d be “science” and “scientist.”
To be fair to scientists, lots of those questions are really hard to understand. You can be fair, intelligent and humble and still have a rough time understanding these immense questions.
I like to listen to scientists when they are doing science. They don’t always restrict themselves to science, though, so they are not always interesting.
I’m not very good at obeying scientists and am not working on getting better at it.
An excellent counterexample to the absurd Biden line of reasoning.
“Science” determined that coffee was good for us, after it determined that it was bad, after it determined that it was good,… Unsettled unscience.
They don’t give a hang about science until it can be used to bludgeon something into law.
Let’s take the “are eggs good for us or not?” question.
Context is important. If you are starving and have not eaten in a week and someone offers you a few hard boiled eggs so you won’t starve to death, eggs are good for you. If someone offers you two food options [a] eggs or [b] arsenic, eggs are the healthy option.
Some more context.
Let’s say I design a nutrition study of the general population, anyone from age 18 to age 70. I ask them how many eggs they eat each week and I track their health during a 2 year period. I see no statistical difference between those who eat a “high amounts of eggs” and a “low amount of eggs” in terms of heart attacks, strokes, cancer, diabetes.
Conclusion: Eggs are not bad for you.
But someone else looks at my study and only focuses in on those in my study who, at study onset, had either heart disease or type 2 diabetes and shows that those who eat lots of eggs had a higher mortality than those who didn’t eat lots of eggs.
Conclusion: Eggs are bad for you.
Also, one often hears that while eating eggs will raise your LDL (the so-called “bad cholesterol”), eating eggs will raise your HDL (the so-called “good cholesterol”) t00. So, eggs are good, right? After all, eggs have protein and other nutrients. So, they’re good, right?
But that all depends. Are you concerned about raising your HDL? Or are you concerned about lowering your LDL?
Raising HDL by exercising more is likely to be beneficial to ones health. Raising HDL by eating eggs might not be. Some types of HDL are actually bad for you, even though we tend to generalize and call HDL the good cholesterol.
It’s complicated, isn’t it?
At one point, Fauci was backing Trump up, but the press took out all his qualifiers, thus making it look like he was dumping on El Donald . . .