The War On Science

We're not talking about a 'normal' scenario.
And the Earth IS a closed system.

On a planetary scale, predicting the long-term effects of adding long-lived heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere really isn't that complicated-- it's going to warm up the planet.

Predicting the specific effects of that warming is more complicated, but not impossible when you have an understanding of climate systems. Of course, mistakes will be made, but that doesn't completely undermine absolutely everything that climatologists have studied.

I'm not sure what P=/NP has to do with that... unless you're talking about the models somehow.

 

Global warming is obviously not "undeniably" the result of human activity, because a large number of voters in the United States (albeit uninformed) deny it. A majority of registered Republlcans deny it. And powerful economic interests claim to deny it, and pay good money to a stable of scientists who also deny it. I don't deny it, because I respect the consensus of climate scientists. You react as though I was giving you my own anti-climate change views instead of stating the political reality of the war on science. As for the rape analogy, if a woman is being raped, that is evil, and we should do what we can to stop it, if we can. It gets complicated if we change the hypothetical so that the woman is being attacked by a mob of heavily armed Ninjas, able bodied bystanders are standing around watching, and we are puny and out of shape. Then it becomes a matter of principle, policy, and morality, not science. Do we act in a situation where resistance seems to be futile? Climate change is a calamity, but if we can do nothing to stop it because we can't without the co-operation of others, should we shell out billions of dollars in the effort that might be spent on other pressing problems? People can argue the point both ways, but science can't settle it. Unfortunately, many in the do nothing camp rely on faith in science to bail us out--technology will save us. This was the position of the late economist Julian Simon, who taught not to worry about environmental problems because technology will solve them, and if it gets too bad, technology can take us to another planet to despoil. (Honest, he said that!) Some voters who can't evaluate the science themselves, are turned off by what they detect as hype. I heard an economist on Fareed Zakkaria's program on CNN just this morning warning us that 2015 is absolutely the very last year to act on climate policy before it's too late. If that's true, we're up the creek without a paddle, because there's no hope at all to get major climate legislation through a Republican controlled Congress. Be careful whom you vote for!

 

Science has no place in politics until the results become a social issue. I too think the title "the WAR on science" is a hyperbole. But you're right, when it comes to the general public it would appear the quantity of agreement verse a quality of agreement makes more difference than it should on any given issue.

Global warming has become such a political issue, and now people are trying to fight scientific data with opinion. But to be fair, I think part of being a genius here as a scientist, is taking these complexities of data from their research and breaking it down to understandable terms for the general public.

If someone says your car is a real gas guzzler and that's impacting everywhere and everyone around them, of course you'll get pissed off if they can't provide evidence, and call you part of a problem. The polar ice caps are not something people are really familiar with, so when you say they're melting. so the fuck what, they think, never needed them before, why do they matter now?

Environmentalism is very interesting to me, but there's a fine line between what may make the most sense, what's is viably practical, and what is currently reality.

 

Yes, of course it is denied by people who don't know what they're talking about... but not in the science community.

You seemed to think that there was a legitimate scientific debate as to whether or not humans were responsible, but if not then great.

On the other hand, your 'we can't do anything about it' argument is defeatist. It resembles Bjorn Lomborg's position-- which is mostly designed to downplay climate action policies from a less 'hysterical' perspective. It accepts the science of climate change, but resists any and all solutions, essentially leading to the conclusion that we should continue to let people do whatever they want because if we don't the entire economy could collapse.

Downplaying the issue isn't the way to go. We can't stop the current trend, but we can prevent it from getting worse in the decades to come.

 

This thread is about the "war on science". I think science is losing the war on this issue. Why? In the first place, the problem is too long term to fit the timetable of politicians, who think in terms of two and four year election cycles. Second, the problem is somewhat intangible for most people to grasp, making them dependent on faith in science to accept the issue. The first generation environmental problems, like air pollution and water pollution were highly visible in the sixties. The Cuyahoga River caught fire, thermal inversions were causing deaths and respiratory illness, the Santa Barbara oil spill made dramatic news coverage in Life, Time and Newsweek, etc. Global Warming is less tangible, depending heavily on NASA reports and computer models which are always disputed by industry scientists. The irrepressible Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist and industry shill, churns out articles challenging that there is a consensus on the issue, explaining away computer models showing an impending crisis, and claiming that global warming would be beneficial. In presenting a "balanced" view of the subject, the media will often interview or quote a climate scientist supporting the scientific consensus, on the one hand, and someone like Singer, on the other, giving the impression that scientists can't agree and leading lay persons to suspend judgment. One of the most effective public figures I've seen challenging Singer and the climate change deniers is Robert Kennedy, Jr. However, he's recently discredited himself by also leading the charge against vaccinations. So is he pro-science or anti-science?

 

the way i see things, the current technology is plenty capable of solving most of these problems. economics is the real problem, motivation lies in the wrong places. we "have the technology" to replace all fossil fuel power plants with clean energy sources ... but its really expensive.

remember when LCD monitors were over $1000 for a 15" display, and it was common to have a few dead pixels on the screen? i do. nowadays you wont have any dead pixels, (and wont have to pay a grand) but its not because the technology is any different, its actuually the same technology, the economy of scale is different so its economical to have more stringent QA criteria. im sure theres been improvements in manufacturing that increase the yield, but this is mostly due to scale and economic interest because its not profitable to invest so much money into the manufacturing process unless the scale is very high. if your only manufacturing 100 displays its not profitable to invest $10 billion in the process so you can get a 70% yield instead of 40% (hypothetical numbers here). this increase in yield comes from the economic motivation that comes when a company realizes that theyre gonna get fuckin' rich, and they can get even more rich and faster if they increase the yield. i feel that the idea too many have about things is that money should only be spent if it can make them even more money and if you cant get rich doing something then its not worth the effort ... or the money. this type of thinking will do us in.

 

Disillusionment with the objectivity of science has been a major reason for the perception that there is a "war" against it. Like other major institutions attacked as "sacred cows", science fell victim to scholarly scrutiny, and "postmodern" deconstrucution. Kuhn's groundbreaking work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1992) shattered the myth that scientists are guided primarily by the idealized model of the scientific method presented by MeAgain on the Methods of Inquiry thread. Kuhn, a physicist turned philosopher and sociologist of science, argued that instead scientists are more affected by socialization factors, especially the process of initiation of fledgling scientists by older scientists who show them the ropes and pass on the accepted beliefs and theories. During "normal" periods, there is not a lot of falsifying of theories, nor is there much replication of results, since that doesn't often lead to interesting publications. During "revolutionary" periods, when prevailing theories come under attack and are replaced by a new paradigm, change ordinarily comes about as a result of intuition, persuasion and conversion as much as reappraisal of evidence and logical judgment. In the same year, Bauer provided supporting evidence that during normal periods, scientists tend to dismiss facts that don't fit the prevailing theories. A scientist with a deviant point of view will have trouble getting it through the peer review and publication process. Lister, Pasteur, Mendel, Helmholtz and Planck were only a few of the distinguished scientists who initially encountered this kind of rejection. Lister found it hard to convince his fellow physicians to wash their hands before surgery. Albert Wegner was mocked by his colleagues when he defended the continental drift theory. But in the eighteenth century, scientists accepted "phlogiston" as the explanation for combustion, and phrenology was a respected "scientific" discipline in the nineteenth century.

The role of power and politics in shaping scientific agendas and even results became the subject of a number of studies in the 1990s. Winner (1990) identified as myths the notion that science isn't influenced by who pays the bills. Scientists' involvement in the military-industrial complex and the priorities of Big Pharma made us aware of how research funding encourages or squelches various lines of research. The discovery that scientists employed by industry tend to have different views from those employed by government or environmental groups has been disillusioning to many. When scientific consensus is successfully challenged, it is sometimes a result of politics and cultural change. The removal of homosexuality as a mental illness listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual was a result, not of new scientific discoveries, but of an effective political campaign fought in the arenas of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association in a cultural climate that was receptive to the change. Lest all this be dismissed as anti-science, I'm a believer in science as the best we can do in terms of reaching valid and reliable conclusions about physical and social reality. But scientists are human, for better or for worse..

 

The phrase "war on science" more closely resembles the "war on drugs" imo. While I suggested it may be a bit of a hyperbole, if there is any accuracy to the article, it appears to be to dictate which science is and is not acceptable to the common person. Science has never been a "sacred cow," much like drugs. However most people recognize certain benefits of them, so as where government and our culture advocates and permits the use of prescription meds and a few intoxicants, it demonizes drugs which tend to elicit radical alterations in consciousness and awareness. It seems the divide in science is towards permitting technological science which have tangible effects on the individual scale of the common person, while leaning towards a tendency to dismiss science which has more effects on the collective.

 

The first definition that you provide reflects the perspective of the skeptical secular site, Rational Wiki, which is mainly concerned with one aspect of the problem:the effort of religious fundamentalists to challenge science in the schools. This is a serious issue, to be sure, but a narrow one and only part of the problem. The war is spearheaded by two organizations with similar but different agendas: the Institute for Creation Research, which is devoted to promoting the Genesis view of creation as science in the schools, and the Discovery Institute, which promotes the less literal theory of Intelligent Design. I think the latter organization poses a more serious threat because it frames the case in a way that strikes rational lay people as reasonable. Both of these organizations, though, are less interested in a war on science in general than in a war on Darwinism. The second war that you mention, also identified by Rational Wiki, the war of the greens against technology, is carried forward by eco-radical groups like Earth First which embraces a "deep ecology" perspective. Is this a war on "science" or a war on applications of science that threaten the environment? Ecology is science too. I'm sure these people would be ok with the UN climate panel's efforts to control global warming, which is science-based. A third front in the science wars is partisan politics, as described in Chris Mooney's book The Republican War on Science. This deals primarily with efforts on the part of conservative pro-industry political interests to cast doubt on the science behind global warming, ozone layer depletion and other environmental threats backed by scientific consensus. This is not a war on science per se, but an effort to cast scientific findings that support more government regulation in a bad light. They typically cast science they find threatening as "junk science". Strictly speaking, it is not just the Republicans who have launched this war, but Libertarians and Objectivists, as well, backed by well-healed corporations with stables of scientists as their foot soldiers. And then there is the more general war against rationality that often purports to be science itself but is really pseudoscience. This is grounded in the New Age Movement, including "quantum consciousness", the Akashic field, neurolinguistic programming and a host of other beliefs that purport to be science but fall woefully short of scientific standards. In other words, science is under attack from a variety of enemies on a variety of fronts, which I guess you could describe as products of cultural collisions. My post you are reacting to was addressing broader cultural developments that have weakened faith in science as a source of objective truth.

 

I agree. The frustrating thing is that each of these selective assaults claims itself to be scientific: Creation "science", the polluters' war against so-called "junk science", the New Age claims that its pseudo-science is science, and Earth First's claim that "back to the Pleistocene" is deep ecology. The casualty is the public's view of what science is. That's the real war on science. And it's particularly hard to fight when the media, in its search for balanced coverage, does the "on the one hand" "on the other hand" thing.

 

This one annoys me more than all the others, and I don't know what can be done about it.

My grandparents were relatively uneducated, but they knew it, so they didn't try to be something that they weren't. They were envious of those who had the opportunity to finish high school and go to college, and respected them.

I miss those times. I don't mean this in a murderous way, but I'm kind of glad my grandparents didn't live to see an era when everybody thinks they're an expert on every subject because they read two web pages. I'd rather remember them the way they were. I respected their honesty and humility.

The cornerstone of any good education needs to be fully convincing someone of how little they know, compared to all the knowledge that exists; hence, the reason for specialization. I know that I need to depend on other people for all kinds of things that lie outside of my own specialty, and their advice needs to be taken seriously. Anyone who doesn't understand this is not properly educated, in the most meaningful sense of the word.

 

i cannot in good conscience support a political party that wishes to inhibit science.

 

At least our flounder, swordfish, and tuna will have good teeth.

 

do you realize just how completely stupid that sounds?

 

That might seem like a weakness for science, but I think it's actually a strength. Real science doesn't claim to be "the Truth". It's always tentative. As the late J.B.S. Haldane said, one Pre-Cambrian rabbit would destroy Darwin's theory of evolution. So far, no rabbits. To some fundamentalist believers, religion seems more certain, because it's truths are absolute. However, they rest on faith., and when they make claims about physical reality, they are equally vulnerable to refutation--e.g., six thousand year earth, six day creation.

It's certainly true that scientific knowledge gets revised a lot, as satirized in the Woody Allen movie, Sleeper, where a Rip Van Winkle type wakes up in the future and finds that everything the experts said was bad for him is now good, and vice versa. I can remember when pasta was good, and now it's bad. But eggs now seem to be okay.

 

Not to be overlooked among the attackers of science is postmodernism, the form of extreme skepticism and relativism that regards science, along with every other claim to truth, as just a self-serving narrative privileging the interests of one group over another. A good example is the work of Sandra Harding who denounces "western white male" science as colonialist, racist and sexist because it tries to "privilege" rational thought over that of other cultures in which do not value rationality. She offers feminist science in its place. Fortunately, this perspective peaked in the late1990s and is now out of style, but it was dominant in the humanities wing of academia, and had scientists like Dawkins on the verge of apoplexy. Post-modernism was dealt a serious blow when physicist Alan Sokal was able to get his 1996 article ‘‘Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,’’ published in the post-modernist journal Social Text in an issue devoted to the "Science Wars". The article was a hoax, using the jargon of post-modernism but deliberately making no sense, and after the article was published, he exposed it, seriously discrediting the school. The article was, he said "a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense ... structured around the silliest quotations (by postmodernist writers) he could find about mathematics and physics" Post-modernist guru Jacques Derrida complained of bad faith on Sokal's part, and sociologist Gabriel Stolzenberg wrote and article claiming that Sokal just didn't understand post-modernism, but the damage was done and post-modernism has never been the same. But it left scars and wounds on thinking about science as a source of objective truth. Atheist "horseman" Daniel Dennet commented: "Postmodernism... has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for 'conversations' in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster."