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Given the track record of institutional science and the ever-growing list of regulatory failures, moral failures and outright abuses pushed in the guise of scie

by cuspy 6y ago

Given the track record of institutional science and the ever-growing list of regulatory failures, moral failures and outright abuses pushed in the guise of scientific expertise, why do so many people seem to think that simply doubling down and bullying the general population into compliance with expert consensus will ever work? What if institutional science in the US has a legitimacy crisis because it has failed to police its own corruption and failed to address its own limitations and vulnerabilities? What if everyday people can see this more clearly than those striving on the margins of these institutions? Personally, as a scientist, I am comforted that there are enough others out there who doubt the entire notion of a scientific establishment that the population should "trust" to make decisions without oversight. Our numbers are growing, and I know many people who fight every day to ensure we will never be ruled by unquestionable expert consensus. Anyone who has been inside these institutions knows exactly how petty and arbitrary the hierarchical structures can be. I'd rather be ruled over by elite families than squabbling, territorial, overconfident scientists who can be bought off for nothing and blackmailed easily. I think the constant stream of these articles just illustrates the massive social blind spot that comes from training STEM professionals solely for careers rather than for citizenship, communication and community membership. STEM training itself has sadly become a hierarchical, cult-like, anti-intellectual system that deprives students of critical thinking skills.

manux 6y ago
> scientists who can be bought off for nothing and blackmailed easily. Bought off by who? I presume the "elite families" you mention. So either way we are ruled by the wealthy in this model. There are other options of course and I assume you would agree, I just wanted to point out my surprise at this false dichotomy (that's not even a dichotomy since they're mostly the same scenario). I also agree 100% that STEM professionals should be trained to be citizens first.
- cuspy 6y ago
  I was thinking primarily of other states or foreign entities who have an interest in undermining competitivity, stealing or suppressing emerging technologies. Mentioning elite families was as an illustrative contrast, since at least domestic entities (who may want to maintain a monopoly on certain technologies) would be less directly incentivised to undermine the institutions that serve them.
- ptero 6y ago
  I heard of tailoring findings to the preferences of the grant giver (advocate a wrong view and kiss your grant good-bye). This is very worrisome as a lot of experimental science labs are so grant dependent. I actually think this is partly a self-inflicted wound -- a large fraction of major grant givers want truth and can stand findings that go against their beliefs, but given the heavy dependence of labs on grants there is a tendency to sugar coat findings to the taste of the money source. Which is totally, completely and absolutely against the spirit of real science. My 2c.
  - achillesheels 6y ago
    Hence the reason science has always been an aristocratic pursuit. Georg Feuerbach demonstrates this point with the thought-provoking claim that only a polytheistic tradition (such as Athens) can breed a love of natural beauty which obligates a love of knowing its ways. But it is principally a love of Nature (and it’s universals) and not a love of wealth which moves the civilization higher. Galileo, Descartes, Newton had pretensions but immortal ones.
    - UncleOxidant 6y ago
      I'm not sure I follow the connection here: > only a polytheistic tradition (such as Athens) can breed a love of natural beauty which obligates a love of knowing its ways. None of the people in your list below were polytheists: > Galileo, Descartes, Newton
      - achillesheels 6y ago
        They were principally moved by Aristotle, however. First by Galileo falsifying him. Further, the development of analytical geometry and calculus necessitated the Greek polytheistic “infatuation” with geometry.
    - danielam 6y ago
      Don't follow the part about polytheism. I would say, if anything, polytheism is a hindrance to the development of science. For one, the capriciousness of the gods makes nature arbitrary and unpredictable. FWIW, Stanley Jaki argues something quite different to what you've written in "Science and Creation" and "The Road of Science and the Ways of God". P.S. A quick search doesn't bring up any noteworthy Georg Feuerbachs.
- exolymph 6y ago
  How 'bout the Chinese government?
  - vsareto 6y ago
    And American companies. And the American government.
- giardini 6y ago
  manux asks> "Bought off by who?" Big pharmaceutical companies that stand to make trillions of dollars. Don't be stupid, follow the money.
- xkcd-sucks 6y ago
  > Bought off by whom? Of course there's the usual shenanigans re: funding, but anecdotally it seems like most people are "bought off" (or coerced) by their colleagues or their selves, and the payment is career success and social approval. For example: No grad student will invalidate their adviser's career. Very few people challenge the veracity of ubiquitous model systems or paradigms ("measuring $this means $that"). Results are sometimes tailored to be visually appealing. Unexpected results are discarded. The meaning of results can be overstated. An experiment can be set up which is internally perfect but which relies on completely nonsensical assumptions to inform its relation to salient natural phenomena. Etc. To behave that way is to be a "bad citizen", make trouble for people, lose friends, and never get ahead. And practically speaking, most people who challenge prevailing wisdom are noob grad students who don't even know how wrong they are. Of course, this happens to varying degrees in different fields. For materials chemistry of steel, it's pretty obvious when the tensile strength is less than reported. For organic synthesis, many published syntheses are bullshit but it's still obvious if a chemical isn't what it should be. For psychology and some of the newer theoretical disciplines (thinking of one rockstar "network scientist" here!), social consensus carries more weight than "reality" because reality is so tricky to measure.
nostromo 6y ago
Science in America tends to be practiced in universities, and universities in America are no longer open to the free exchange of ideas. While it may look like the public is losing faith in science, it's actually the public losing faith in the platform on which science is practiced: academia. If we want the public to regain faith in scientific findings, we need to fix academia.
- pnw_hazor 6y ago
  It doesn't help that the critical theorists taking over American universities are openely hostile to critical thinking and the scientific method.
  - uniqueid 6y ago
    If critical theorists want to "take over American universities", they'll have to start generating waaay more dollars.
- cuspy 6y ago
  I agree to some extent, but the whole "culture war" dimension of this question is far less important than people think. It has much more to do with corruption and broken incentive structures than with the identitarian critiques being pumped out by poorly-funded humanities departments. Until getting so much attention recently, they were at worst a minor check on what really has been an undeserved intellectual hegemony of STEM. Sticks and stones really. There are certain critiques that have been accurate enough to stick, and STEM should learn from those. The rest are noise. I think even now the Confused Critique Industry is largely just a distraction from the deeper, internal issues: No jobs for new graduates, abuse of grad student labor, no innovation, too many labs lazily churning out incremental work just to secure their own careers in a climate of precarity, and so on.
  - cuspy 6y ago
    After all, the real target of these kinds of articles is obviously the supposedly right-wing extremist "science deniers" who reject the critical theory stuff even more strongly than scientists themselves do. We need to clean our own house. I can't even keep track of how many brilliant people I personally know who have left academic research. It's really very tragic and our duty as citizens should be to ignore all the petty distractions and focus on doing what needs to be done. If the institutions are lost and beyond reform, we need to work on building new ones that work for us. The current crises could be great opportunities for this.
baddox 6y ago
> Personally, as a scientist, I am comforted that there are enough others out there who doubt the entire notion of a scientific establishment that the population should "trust" to make decisions without oversight. I'm not sure what you're actually proposing, but it sounds dangerously close to "pilots have been in control of airplanes for decades, and they've caused so many crashes, so maybe it's time to try people who aren't pilots." > I'd rather be ruled over by elite families than squabbling, territorial, overconfident scientists who can be bought off for nothing and blackmailed easily. Do you really look at history and conclude that, because some scientists are corrupt or dishonest, you'd rather have monarchs control things like safety regulations for medicine, industrial activity, architecture, food, etc.? Again, that sounds very much like the "let's give non-pilots a shot at controlling aircraft."
- cuspy 6y ago
  I'm not proposing anything like that. I said that I'm glad others are becoming more skeptical of the message of relying on trust without oversight. The fact that you read my comment as advocating a total disregard for training and expertise is exactly why we are in this mess. Where is nuance? No, I look at the current situation and conclude that our institutions are failing us. Notice that I didn't say I'd prefer to be ruled over by elite families rather than a consistent, transparent and democratic government that is accountable for its mistakes. I want government that has a generational stake in the outcome of its policies. All I can say in response to you is that without charitable reading of one another's thoughts, we are never going to get anywhere. It will be endless, pointless dispute. Just because something "sounds like" something else in some superficial way, doesn't mean it is.
  - godelski 6y ago
    > Where is nuance? The problem with language is we have to make certain assumptions. It is easy to read your comment in that way. Just as it could be easy to read > cuspy 15 minutes ago | parent | on: Science and Scientific Expertise Are More Importan... I'm not proposing anything like that. I said that I'm glad others are becoming more skeptical of the message of relying on trust without oversight. The fact that you read my comment as advocating a total disregard for training and expertise is exactly why we are in this mess. Where is nuance? No, I look at the current situation and conclude that our institutions are failing us. Notice that I didn't say I'd prefer to be ruled over by elite families rather than a consistent, transparent and democratic government that is accountable for its mistakes. I want government that has a generational stake in the outcome of its policies. > All I can say in response to you is that without charitable reading of one another's thoughts, we are never going to get anywhere. It will be endless, pointless dispute. Just because something "sounds like" something else in some superficial way, doesn't mean it is. As promoting anti-vaxers. The reason is because these conspiracy groups mimic the same language (i.e. the anti-authority rhetoric). With so much dog whistling happening it is difficult to correctly interpret. Btw, I don't think that's what you're intending to imply and I didn't take it that way, but it is important to understand how it could be taken that way. As a scientist, I care about many of the concerns that you are bringing up, but also be mindful that it is difficult to understand because these preconceived notions. It isn't so much that there is a uncharitable reading, but that it is hard to determine what you are meaning. There's "what you mean," "what you say," and "what is heard" and these can all the different things. This is specifically a problem because the division in our culture currently.
Consultant32452 6y ago
>legitimacy crisis You've hit the nail on the head here. These past few years I've felt like every major institution has been in a credibility crisis. Government, news, universities, the whole thing is falling apart. One hypothesis I'm starting to believe was coined by Eric Weinstein as the Embedded Growth Obligation (EGO). The basic idea is we had a few historically unique decades post WWII of exponential growth, and all of our institutions are now reliant on that. But the real exponential growth is over and they're flailing about trying to fake it. https://theportal.wiki/wiki/Embedded_Growth_Obligation https://theportal.wiki/wiki/Embedded_Growth_Obligation
- cuspy 6y ago
  Yes, I'm familiar with this idea, and I think it really does get close to one of the roots of the problem. I hope more people start listening carefully to individuals like Mr. Weinstein before it's too late to change course. I don't always agree with everything he says on other issues, but we are lucky to have him in a position where he's afforded the right to speak freely. It's a shameful embarrassment to the state of our public discourse that it takes a billionaire hedge fund backing to secure that right.
  - igorkraw 6y ago
    My problem with Weinstein and his ilk is that I don't see them offering solutions, they just yell "distrust, distrust, distrust" and not much creative and serious thinking about solutions. Meanwhile long time economists, labour and political activists (voluntarists and america-style libertarians, statist-socialists and classical neoliberals and a bunch of other flavors), artist/sacademics across the board and others have been saying "distrust these people for these reasons and do this to fix it" for decades and no-one seems to care because it goes against their politics, while claiming to not have politics because they are too smart and cynical for that. The "Embedded Growth Hypothesis" for example has been a thing that socialists, eco activists and even austrian economics and classical keynesians (if that's a proper term, I mean Keynesians who believe that debt is a problem and you should pay it back and not rely on MMT to pay it back via inflation) have been trying to push for a long time. But they also offer solutions which are compatible with an open society (at least the ones moderate enough to become mainstream), they don't just claim the current system is corrupt. It's fine to just criticize without offering solutions, but if you are gonna claim "everyones distrustworthy" you should back things up more. --- Oh, and Weinstein in particular has been using his right to speak freely for decades and continues to use it about being silenced. Now he just has a billionaire backer whose politics align with what he's saying to amplify him.
dwaltrip 6y ago
> I'd rather be ruled over by elite families than squabbling, territorial, overconfident scientists who can be bought off for nothing and blackmailed easily. Like the Trump family? I love me some "elite" autocratic rule! The future never looked brighter. Idiocracy here we come.
ssivark 6y ago
As a fellow scientist (also very enthusiastic about science), the problem is that some factions are trying to bully through what are actually policy positions in the name of “science”, thereby hurting the credibility of the institution of scientific truth seeking. Articles like this one are definitely only hurting, from the longer term perspective. Eg: However accurate/inaccurate/useful/useless epidemiology models might be, “science” can never answer questions about the recommended scale of our activities/lockdown/reopening. It’s ultimately a matter of values and judgement based on risk-tolerance given current situation and needs (which might also take into account model predictions and uncertainties). It is asinine to expect epidemiologists to make final policy recommendations (or for leaders to defer responsibility to them), since they understand only one piece of the puzzle. It is ultimately a judgment call to be made by political leaders elected exactly for that job.
- cuspy 6y ago
  I totally agree. I hope people like you will keep fighting for a vision like this. It's the only hope we have, and this problem is far more serious than most people are willing to admit. Unfortunately being outspoken about this viewpoint can be a big liability in a scientific career.
slg 6y ago
>What if institutional science in the US has a legitimacy crisis because it has failed to police its own corruption and failed to address its own limitations and vulnerabilities? What if everyday people can see this more clearly than those striving on the margins of these institutions? You are giving the anti-science crowd a huge benefit of the doubt. I don't think people who believe the Earth is flat or that wearing a cloth mask can cause you to give yourself COVID (EDIT: I was referring to the idea pushed by anti-science propaganda like Plandemic[1] that states masks "activate" COVID) is the result of a cogent analysis of the corruption of scientific institutions. [1] - https://www.livescience.com/debunking-plandemic-coronavirus-claims.html https://www.livescience.com/debunking-plandemic-coronavirus-...
- cuspy 6y ago
  Maybe I'm being too charitable, but wouldn't it be worse if it turned out that you were holding back progress in the conversation by insisting that ALL of your interlocutors are incapable of thinking critically? We need to be more strategic than vindictive. Why not forget about the notion of a mass "anti-science crowd" and have some basic respect for your fellow citizens as individuals with widely varying levels of education due in no small part to these same institutional problems. We've failed them. I think your examples are straw men that contribute no real insight to the cause of the problems. Also, just to be clear, a variation of that rumor about masks was indeed pushed by the surgeon general in early March: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/02/health/surgeon-general-coronavirus-masks-risk-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/02/health/surgeon-general-corona...
  - slg 6y ago
    I am not suggesting we be vindictive over strategic. I am suggesting that fixing corruption in the scientific community isn't going to solve this problem because the causes of the anti-science movement don't solely originate from within the scientific community. If my specific examples are too much of a straw man, how about climate change? The US has largely been ignoring the science on that for decades. What is the more likely reason? The scientific consensus on climate change is the result of corruption, the scientific community ignores this corruption, and the general public turns to climate deniers as a result of this corruption. Or is it the most reasonable explanation that there are countless groups that have an invested financial and political interest in downplaying the scientific consensus regarding the issue? It seems obvious this is a situation in which the corruption leading to anti-science viewpoints is an outside force acting on the scientific community and not the other way around. I also threw in a note about the mask issue in my original comment since I was unclear. To add another note on top, I'm not sure this administration is one I would point to as somehow anti-corruption especially when it comes to their interpretation of science.
UncleOxidant 6y ago
Is there anything new here, though? Science is and always has been a human endeavor - it didn't arrive out of the sky delivered to us by gods or aliens. There have always been "regulatory failures (since we've had regulations, anyway), moral failures and outright abuses pushed in the guise of scientific expertise." this is nothing new.
- cuspy 6y ago
  Right, but what's your point? If it's an old problem we shouldn't try to address it? I think the evidence points to it getting worse and more importantly becoming more and more of a liability for our future ability to compete on the world stage.
  - UncleOxidant 6y ago
    I'm not completely convinced that it's getting worse (that was my point), but if it is getting worse then we should try to figure out what changed. Maybe it's the drive for Universities to profit off of their research due to less public funding? If we think of the example of Jonas Salk and the the polio vaccine he developed he didn't want to make any money off of it - he essentially gave it away. Maybe we've developed into more of a dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself society in general where you've got to get as much as you can else you might end up on the streets? I don't know, but if the problem is indeed worse then maybe those are a couple of reasons.
tehjoker 6y ago
I find it interesting that everyone responding to this finds it unthinkable that democracy and critical thinking are possible without the need for monarchs nor experts who function as technocrats rather than peers. It's like pining for the Philosopher Kings of the Platonic tradition. Plato hated democracy fyi.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  It is more a rejection of the "my ignorance is equal to your knowledge" anti-intellectualism as a foregone tragedy not only waiting to happen but also still ongoing.
watwut 6y ago
> I'd rather be ruled over by elite families than squabbling, territorial, overconfident scientists who can be bought off for nothing and blackmailed easily. You did not read much history, did you?
tomp 6y ago
> overconfident scientists who can be bought off for nothing Well, I wouldn’t call sex with underage girls on a private island nothing.
ken47 6y ago
"STEM training itself has sadly become a hierarchical, cult-like, anti-intellectual system that deprives students of critical thinking skills" Engineering definitely doesn't deprive students and practitioners of critical thinking. Other disciplines? Maybe. I can't speak to that.
- cuspy 6y ago
  As someone with an undergraduate degree in engineering and some professional experience as an engineer, I would counter that the training of engineers absolutely does deprioritize the kind of high level critical thinking I'm talking about. I'm not saying every engineer needs to be an ethics and politics scholar, but there is definitely room for improvement. Nuance in communication and dealing intelligently with ambiguity is also a really big issue in all of STEM. Engineering is no exception. This is in fact something that COULD be improved. It's just not as profitable.
  - ken47 6y ago
    Without concrete examples, I'm going to continue to disagree.
    - cuspy 6y ago
      Have you looked into the world of Tech Startups, by any chance?
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    Ethics and political are technically peripheral to critical thinking. One can be an unethical bastard and have the critical thinking to realize something is unsustainable or a scam or be a saint and taken in by utter bullshit (although the bullshit may persuade them to do horrible things believing themselves right). Engineering deals with nuance certainly - although it is often a more pedantic technical form like say the difference between the stength of wood and steel vs temperature. Steel doesn't readily combust like wood but wood while it chars and burns doesn't weaken like hot steel. You don't need to melt steel beams to collapse a skyscrapper.
pandaman 6y ago
I think the problem is in the stakes. Consider the USSR - it had pretty fucked up science scene around 1930s-1960s: a lot of areas had been politicized and guided by the Party Line instead of reality. For example Genetics had been considered anti-Marxist for whatever reason and Genetic research had been forbidden (other than research to expose Genetic as a pseudo-science). But the science needed to make weapons had been pretty good. Nobody wanted to make a theory of Marxist-Leninist Physics and spend the rest of life in prison for screwing up rocket or nuke development. Then the late 60s came around and the Party found they don't grow nearly as much food as the Rotting West. The Marxist-Leninist Biology missed the Green Revolution for inexplicable reason. Even though not as important as weapons it was a big deal - the state could have been spending much less resources on growing food and buying food from abroad and use them to make ICBMs or something else speeding up the Global Revolution's approach! So Marxist-Leninist Biology got a book thrown at it. And, not being dumb, the Party restrained the politics in many other areas, just to be safe. So by 70s-80s science in the USSR had been much less politicized than now in the US in my opinion. I hope the current crisis will be a wake up call to the US. Hopefully people realize that playing politics around medical research is not just giving you cushy jobs and government grants - it can also fuck up the whole economy and if people cannot stop doing it by themselves then somebody have to throw a book or a whole library at them. And, maybe, just like the CPSU, they might do it in other areas, just to be safe.

by cuspy 6y ago

manux 6y ago

> scientists who can be bought off for nothing and blackmailed easily. Bought off by who? I presume the "elite families" you mention. So either way we are ruled by the wealthy in this model. There are other options of course and I assume you would agree, I just wanted to point out my surprise at this false dichotomy (that's not even a dichotomy since they're mostly the same scenario). I also agree 100% that STEM professionals should be trained to be citizens first.

cuspy 6y ago
I was thinking primarily of other states or foreign entities who have an interest in undermining competitivity, stealing or suppressing emerging technologies. Mentioning elite families was as an illustrative contrast, since at least domestic entities (who may want to maintain a monopoly on certain technologies) would be less directly incentivised to undermine the institutions that serve them.
ptero 6y ago
I heard of tailoring findings to the preferences of the grant giver (advocate a wrong view and kiss your grant good-bye). This is very worrisome as a lot of experimental science labs are so grant dependent. I actually think this is partly a self-inflicted wound -- a large fraction of major grant givers want truth and can stand findings that go against their beliefs, but given the heavy dependence of labs on grants there is a tendency to sugar coat findings to the taste of the money source. Which is totally, completely and absolutely against the spirit of real science. My 2c.
- achillesheels 6y ago
  Hence the reason science has always been an aristocratic pursuit. Georg Feuerbach demonstrates this point with the thought-provoking claim that only a polytheistic tradition (such as Athens) can breed a love of natural beauty which obligates a love of knowing its ways. But it is principally a love of Nature (and it’s universals) and not a love of wealth which moves the civilization higher. Galileo, Descartes, Newton had pretensions but immortal ones.
  - UncleOxidant 6y ago
    I'm not sure I follow the connection here: > only a polytheistic tradition (such as Athens) can breed a love of natural beauty which obligates a love of knowing its ways. None of the people in your list below were polytheists: > Galileo, Descartes, Newton
    - achillesheels 6y ago
      They were principally moved by Aristotle, however. First by Galileo falsifying him. Further, the development of analytical geometry and calculus necessitated the Greek polytheistic “infatuation” with geometry.
  - danielam 6y ago
    Don't follow the part about polytheism. I would say, if anything, polytheism is a hindrance to the development of science. For one, the capriciousness of the gods makes nature arbitrary and unpredictable. FWIW, Stanley Jaki argues something quite different to what you've written in "Science and Creation" and "The Road of Science and the Ways of God". P.S. A quick search doesn't bring up any noteworthy Georg Feuerbachs.
exolymph 6y ago
How 'bout the Chinese government?
- vsareto 6y ago
  And American companies. And the American government.
giardini 6y ago
manux asks> "Bought off by who?" Big pharmaceutical companies that stand to make trillions of dollars. Don't be stupid, follow the money.
xkcd-sucks 6y ago
> Bought off by whom? Of course there's the usual shenanigans re: funding, but anecdotally it seems like most people are "bought off" (or coerced) by their colleagues or their selves, and the payment is career success and social approval. For example: No grad student will invalidate their adviser's career. Very few people challenge the veracity of ubiquitous model systems or paradigms ("measuring $this means $that"). Results are sometimes tailored to be visually appealing. Unexpected results are discarded. The meaning of results can be overstated. An experiment can be set up which is internally perfect but which relies on completely nonsensical assumptions to inform its relation to salient natural phenomena. Etc. To behave that way is to be a "bad citizen", make trouble for people, lose friends, and never get ahead. And practically speaking, most people who challenge prevailing wisdom are noob grad students who don't even know how wrong they are. Of course, this happens to varying degrees in different fields. For materials chemistry of steel, it's pretty obvious when the tensile strength is less than reported. For organic synthesis, many published syntheses are bullshit but it's still obvious if a chemical isn't what it should be. For psychology and some of the newer theoretical disciplines (thinking of one rockstar "network scientist" here!), social consensus carries more weight than "reality" because reality is so tricky to measure.

nostromo 6y ago

Science in America tends to be practiced in universities, and universities in America are no longer open to the free exchange of ideas. While it may look like the public is losing faith in science, it's actually the public losing faith in the platform on which science is practiced: academia. If we want the public to regain faith in scientific findings, we need to fix academia.

pnw_hazor 6y ago
It doesn't help that the critical theorists taking over American universities are openely hostile to critical thinking and the scientific method.
- uniqueid 6y ago
  If critical theorists want to "take over American universities", they'll have to start generating waaay more dollars.
cuspy 6y ago
I agree to some extent, but the whole "culture war" dimension of this question is far less important than people think. It has much more to do with corruption and broken incentive structures than with the identitarian critiques being pumped out by poorly-funded humanities departments. Until getting so much attention recently, they were at worst a minor check on what really has been an undeserved intellectual hegemony of STEM. Sticks and stones really. There are certain critiques that have been accurate enough to stick, and STEM should learn from those. The rest are noise. I think even now the Confused Critique Industry is largely just a distraction from the deeper, internal issues: No jobs for new graduates, abuse of grad student labor, no innovation, too many labs lazily churning out incremental work just to secure their own careers in a climate of precarity, and so on.
- cuspy 6y ago
  After all, the real target of these kinds of articles is obviously the supposedly right-wing extremist "science deniers" who reject the critical theory stuff even more strongly than scientists themselves do. We need to clean our own house. I can't even keep track of how many brilliant people I personally know who have left academic research. It's really very tragic and our duty as citizens should be to ignore all the petty distractions and focus on doing what needs to be done. If the institutions are lost and beyond reform, we need to work on building new ones that work for us. The current crises could be great opportunities for this.

baddox 6y ago

> Personally, as a scientist, I am comforted that there are enough others out there who doubt the entire notion of a scientific establishment that the population should "trust" to make decisions without oversight. I'm not sure what you're actually proposing, but it sounds dangerously close to "pilots have been in control of airplanes for decades, and they've caused so many crashes, so maybe it's time to try people who aren't pilots." > I'd rather be ruled over by elite families than squabbling, territorial, overconfident scientists who can be bought off for nothing and blackmailed easily. Do you really look at history and conclude that, because some scientists are corrupt or dishonest, you'd rather have monarchs control things like safety regulations for medicine, industrial activity, architecture, food, etc.? Again, that sounds very much like the "let's give non-pilots a shot at controlling aircraft."

cuspy 6y ago
I'm not proposing anything like that. I said that I'm glad others are becoming more skeptical of the message of relying on trust without oversight. The fact that you read my comment as advocating a total disregard for training and expertise is exactly why we are in this mess. Where is nuance? No, I look at the current situation and conclude that our institutions are failing us. Notice that I didn't say I'd prefer to be ruled over by elite families rather than a consistent, transparent and democratic government that is accountable for its mistakes. I want government that has a generational stake in the outcome of its policies. All I can say in response to you is that without charitable reading of one another's thoughts, we are never going to get anywhere. It will be endless, pointless dispute. Just because something "sounds like" something else in some superficial way, doesn't mean it is.
- godelski 6y ago
  > Where is nuance? The problem with language is we have to make certain assumptions. It is easy to read your comment in that way. Just as it could be easy to read > cuspy 15 minutes ago | parent | on: Science and Scientific Expertise Are More Importan... I'm not proposing anything like that. I said that I'm glad others are becoming more skeptical of the message of relying on trust without oversight. The fact that you read my comment as advocating a total disregard for training and expertise is exactly why we are in this mess. Where is nuance? No, I look at the current situation and conclude that our institutions are failing us. Notice that I didn't say I'd prefer to be ruled over by elite families rather than a consistent, transparent and democratic government that is accountable for its mistakes. I want government that has a generational stake in the outcome of its policies. > All I can say in response to you is that without charitable reading of one another's thoughts, we are never going to get anywhere. It will be endless, pointless dispute. Just because something "sounds like" something else in some superficial way, doesn't mean it is. As promoting anti-vaxers. The reason is because these conspiracy groups mimic the same language (i.e. the anti-authority rhetoric). With so much dog whistling happening it is difficult to correctly interpret. Btw, I don't think that's what you're intending to imply and I didn't take it that way, but it is important to understand how it could be taken that way. As a scientist, I care about many of the concerns that you are bringing up, but also be mindful that it is difficult to understand because these preconceived notions. It isn't so much that there is a uncharitable reading, but that it is hard to determine what you are meaning. There's "what you mean," "what you say," and "what is heard" and these can all the different things. This is specifically a problem because the division in our culture currently.

Consultant32452 6y ago

>legitimacy crisis You've hit the nail on the head here. These past few years I've felt like every major institution has been in a credibility crisis. Government, news, universities, the whole thing is falling apart. One hypothesis I'm starting to believe was coined by Eric Weinstein as the Embedded Growth Obligation (EGO). The basic idea is we had a few historically unique decades post WWII of exponential growth, and all of our institutions are now reliant on that. But the real exponential growth is over and they're flailing about trying to fake it. https://theportal.wiki/wiki/Embedded_Growth_Obligation https://theportal.wiki/wiki/Embedded_Growth_Obligation

cuspy 6y ago
Yes, I'm familiar with this idea, and I think it really does get close to one of the roots of the problem. I hope more people start listening carefully to individuals like Mr. Weinstein before it's too late to change course. I don't always agree with everything he says on other issues, but we are lucky to have him in a position where he's afforded the right to speak freely. It's a shameful embarrassment to the state of our public discourse that it takes a billionaire hedge fund backing to secure that right.
- igorkraw 6y ago
  My problem with Weinstein and his ilk is that I don't see them offering solutions, they just yell "distrust, distrust, distrust" and not much creative and serious thinking about solutions. Meanwhile long time economists, labour and political activists (voluntarists and america-style libertarians, statist-socialists and classical neoliberals and a bunch of other flavors), artist/sacademics across the board and others have been saying "distrust these people for these reasons and do this to fix it" for decades and no-one seems to care because it goes against their politics, while claiming to not have politics because they are too smart and cynical for that. The "Embedded Growth Hypothesis" for example has been a thing that socialists, eco activists and even austrian economics and classical keynesians (if that's a proper term, I mean Keynesians who believe that debt is a problem and you should pay it back and not rely on MMT to pay it back via inflation) have been trying to push for a long time. But they also offer solutions which are compatible with an open society (at least the ones moderate enough to become mainstream), they don't just claim the current system is corrupt. It's fine to just criticize without offering solutions, but if you are gonna claim "everyones distrustworthy" you should back things up more. --- Oh, and Weinstein in particular has been using his right to speak freely for decades and continues to use it about being silenced. Now he just has a billionaire backer whose politics align with what he's saying to amplify him.

dwaltrip 6y ago

> I'd rather be ruled over by elite families than squabbling, territorial, overconfident scientists who can be bought off for nothing and blackmailed easily. Like the Trump family? I love me some "elite" autocratic rule! The future never looked brighter. Idiocracy here we come.

ssivark 6y ago

As a fellow scientist (also very enthusiastic about science), the problem is that some factions are trying to bully through what are actually policy positions in the name of “science”, thereby hurting the credibility of the institution of scientific truth seeking. Articles like this one are definitely only hurting, from the longer term perspective. Eg: However accurate/inaccurate/useful/useless epidemiology models might be, “science” can never answer questions about the recommended scale of our activities/lockdown/reopening. It’s ultimately a matter of values and judgement based on risk-tolerance given current situation and needs (which might also take into account model predictions and uncertainties). It is asinine to expect epidemiologists to make final policy recommendations (or for leaders to defer responsibility to them), since they understand only one piece of the puzzle. It is ultimately a judgment call to be made by political leaders elected exactly for that job.

cuspy 6y ago
I totally agree. I hope people like you will keep fighting for a vision like this. It's the only hope we have, and this problem is far more serious than most people are willing to admit. Unfortunately being outspoken about this viewpoint can be a big liability in a scientific career.

slg 6y ago

>What if institutional science in the US has a legitimacy crisis because it has failed to police its own corruption and failed to address its own limitations and vulnerabilities? What if everyday people can see this more clearly than those striving on the margins of these institutions? You are giving the anti-science crowd a huge benefit of the doubt. I don't think people who believe the Earth is flat or that wearing a cloth mask can cause you to give yourself COVID (EDIT: I was referring to the idea pushed by anti-science propaganda like Plandemic[1] that states masks "activate" COVID) is the result of a cogent analysis of the corruption of scientific institutions. [1] - https://www.livescience.com/debunking-plandemic-coronavirus-claims.html https://www.livescience.com/debunking-plandemic-coronavirus-...

cuspy 6y ago
Maybe I'm being too charitable, but wouldn't it be worse if it turned out that you were holding back progress in the conversation by insisting that ALL of your interlocutors are incapable of thinking critically? We need to be more strategic than vindictive. Why not forget about the notion of a mass "anti-science crowd" and have some basic respect for your fellow citizens as individuals with widely varying levels of education due in no small part to these same institutional problems. We've failed them. I think your examples are straw men that contribute no real insight to the cause of the problems. Also, just to be clear, a variation of that rumor about masks was indeed pushed by the surgeon general in early March: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/02/health/surgeon-general-coronavirus-masks-risk-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/02/health/surgeon-general-corona...
- slg 6y ago
  I am not suggesting we be vindictive over strategic. I am suggesting that fixing corruption in the scientific community isn't going to solve this problem because the causes of the anti-science movement don't solely originate from within the scientific community. If my specific examples are too much of a straw man, how about climate change? The US has largely been ignoring the science on that for decades. What is the more likely reason? The scientific consensus on climate change is the result of corruption, the scientific community ignores this corruption, and the general public turns to climate deniers as a result of this corruption. Or is it the most reasonable explanation that there are countless groups that have an invested financial and political interest in downplaying the scientific consensus regarding the issue? It seems obvious this is a situation in which the corruption leading to anti-science viewpoints is an outside force acting on the scientific community and not the other way around. I also threw in a note about the mask issue in my original comment since I was unclear. To add another note on top, I'm not sure this administration is one I would point to as somehow anti-corruption especially when it comes to their interpretation of science.

UncleOxidant 6y ago

Is there anything new here, though? Science is and always has been a human endeavor - it didn't arrive out of the sky delivered to us by gods or aliens. There have always been "regulatory failures (since we've had regulations, anyway), moral failures and outright abuses pushed in the guise of scientific expertise." this is nothing new.

cuspy 6y ago
Right, but what's your point? If it's an old problem we shouldn't try to address it? I think the evidence points to it getting worse and more importantly becoming more and more of a liability for our future ability to compete on the world stage.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  I'm not completely convinced that it's getting worse (that was my point), but if it is getting worse then we should try to figure out what changed. Maybe it's the drive for Universities to profit off of their research due to less public funding? If we think of the example of Jonas Salk and the the polio vaccine he developed he didn't want to make any money off of it - he essentially gave it away. Maybe we've developed into more of a dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself society in general where you've got to get as much as you can else you might end up on the streets? I don't know, but if the problem is indeed worse then maybe those are a couple of reasons.

tehjoker 6y ago

I find it interesting that everyone responding to this finds it unthinkable that democracy and critical thinking are possible without the need for monarchs nor experts who function as technocrats rather than peers. It's like pining for the Philosopher Kings of the Platonic tradition. Plato hated democracy fyi.

Nasrudith 6y ago
It is more a rejection of the "my ignorance is equal to your knowledge" anti-intellectualism as a foregone tragedy not only waiting to happen but also still ongoing.

watwut 6y ago

> I'd rather be ruled over by elite families than squabbling, territorial, overconfident scientists who can be bought off for nothing and blackmailed easily. You did not read much history, did you?

tomp 6y ago

> overconfident scientists who can be bought off for nothing Well, I wouldn’t call sex with underage girls on a private island nothing.

ken47 6y ago

"STEM training itself has sadly become a hierarchical, cult-like, anti-intellectual system that deprives students of critical thinking skills" Engineering definitely doesn't deprive students and practitioners of critical thinking. Other disciplines? Maybe. I can't speak to that.

cuspy 6y ago
As someone with an undergraduate degree in engineering and some professional experience as an engineer, I would counter that the training of engineers absolutely does deprioritize the kind of high level critical thinking I'm talking about. I'm not saying every engineer needs to be an ethics and politics scholar, but there is definitely room for improvement. Nuance in communication and dealing intelligently with ambiguity is also a really big issue in all of STEM. Engineering is no exception. This is in fact something that COULD be improved. It's just not as profitable.
- ken47 6y ago
  Without concrete examples, I'm going to continue to disagree.
  - cuspy 6y ago
    Have you looked into the world of Tech Startups, by any chance?
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Ethics and political are technically peripheral to critical thinking. One can be an unethical bastard and have the critical thinking to realize something is unsustainable or a scam or be a saint and taken in by utter bullshit (although the bullshit may persuade them to do horrible things believing themselves right). Engineering deals with nuance certainly - although it is often a more pedantic technical form like say the difference between the stength of wood and steel vs temperature. Steel doesn't readily combust like wood but wood while it chars and burns doesn't weaken like hot steel. You don't need to melt steel beams to collapse a skyscrapper.

pandaman 6y ago

I think the problem is in the stakes. Consider the USSR - it had pretty fucked up science scene around 1930s-1960s: a lot of areas had been politicized and guided by the Party Line instead of reality. For example Genetics had been considered anti-Marxist for whatever reason and Genetic research had been forbidden (other than research to expose Genetic as a pseudo-science). But the science needed to make weapons had been pretty good. Nobody wanted to make a theory of Marxist-Leninist Physics and spend the rest of life in prison for screwing up rocket or nuke development. Then the late 60s came around and the Party found they don't grow nearly as much food as the Rotting West. The Marxist-Leninist Biology missed the Green Revolution for inexplicable reason. Even though not as important as weapons it was a big deal - the state could have been spending much less resources on growing food and buying food from abroad and use them to make ICBMs or something else speeding up the Global Revolution's approach! So Marxist-Leninist Biology got a book thrown at it. And, not being dumb, the Party restrained the politics in many other areas, just to be safe. So by 70s-80s science in the USSR had been much less politicized than now in the US in my opinion. I hope the current crisis will be a wake up call to the US. Hopefully people realize that playing politics around medical research is not just giving you cushy jobs and government grants - it can also fuck up the whole economy and if people cannot stop doing it by themselves then somebody have to throw a book or a whole library at them. And, maybe, just like the CPSU, they might do it in other areas, just to be safe.