6 ms·
Stupid scientists
- ulvund 15y agoI have never seen this attitude
- winestock 15y agoI haven't seen such an attitude, either. Not stated so explicitly, anyway. What is more common is the attitude that, for example, we should put off manned space exploration "until we solve all of our problems here on Earth." I have personally witnessed this attitude in high school cheerleaders and DC lawyers.
- flatline 15y agoI rather thought that this is exactly the attitude he was parodying - calls to defund seemingly frivolous research, things that have no immediately obvious applicability to the general public such as the space program, etc.
- mkr-hn 15y agoLike when Sarah Palin decried fruit fly research in a portion of a speech where she was talking about the need to fund autism research.
- mkr-hn 15y agoYou see it whenever someone talks down science using an implementation of science as a medium.
- amcintyre 15y agoI've seen it, in various strengths/flavors, in the southern United States. My guess is that it's more common among people whose complete life experience is so far removed from any scientific endeavor that they've never needed to understand how science works or how it gets turned into technology. In the interest of fairness: the opinions of some scientists, whose complete life experience is so far removed from any blue collar work that they've never needed to understand why some people don't know anything about science, are often equally as uninformed. (Note: I'm not suggesting Dr. Plait is in this category.)
- hugh3 15y agoIndeed, the whole article comes off as strawman-ish. Nobody [to first approximation * ] ever says something like "I mean, seriously? Scientists?! What have they ever done for me?" because, well, that attitude is quickly discredited by a moment's thought. Now, what you will find is people with attitudes like 1. Useful sciencey things like MRIs and clean water are important, but a lot of what's going on is just a pointless waste of time and money (seriously, you spent how much to figure out the internal mass distribution of Jupiter?), or 2. Science has done all sorts of bad things to the rainforest and stuff! 3. Yes well, science is very important, but we have major budget problems so it's inevitable that pure research budgets need to be cut, or 4. Why are we spending all this money on [huge science project of little practical utility] when [far more urgent and heartrending problem] But these are much more difficult arguments than the one which Phil Plait appears to want to have with the imaginary dude in his head.
- amirmc 15y agoI had to read that twice before I understood it. I've heard of basic science research (and funding) being likened to growing crops (albeit with different timeframes). You have to spend a lot of time and effort sowing seeds and about 20-30 years later you get to harvest the benefits. Edit: I think other commenters might be missing the irony in the OP. The author mentions LCD monitors, prescription glasses, medicine, clean water, medical technology, the internet, satellites and computers. After all that, he ends with "What have they [scientists] ever done for me?"
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- mathattack 15y agoFunny! And it's a more concise and effective call to arms than a 30 page peer reviewed article spilling with data.
- shabble 15y agoAll right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
- diego_moita 15y ago[irony] Yeah, these scientists! They only want to talk about bullshit like evolution and global warning! [/irony]
- yummyfajitas 15y agoThis article makes an all too common economic fallacy. It argues against a proposed marginal cut in spending on science. In order to portray this as a bad idea, he then argues that in total, spending on science is a good thing. Similarly, I oppose 10% cuts in military spending because if the military were cut 100% 50 years ago, I'd probably have suffered under communism. This is the logical fallacy of the "excluded middle".
- mkr-hn 15y agoWhat proposal are you referring to? I don't see any mention of one in the submission.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago"The news page is even worse. And when it finally downloads, what do I see? Some scientist complaining that their budget is going to get cut." My mistake, it's an actual cut rather than merely a proposal.
- arethuza 15y agoActually, 50 years ago is pretty much the time of the "missile gap" hysteria where the US military was wildly overestimating the threat from Soviet strategic systems to justify expenditure on new weapons systems. So a pretty enormous reduction could have been been made, the Soviets would still have been deterred and the consequences of any war would have been an awful lot less terrible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap
- marshray 15y agoYes, but he specifically referred to a 100% reduction. Excluding the middle?
- j_baker 15y agoI don't think he's making any policy suggestions so much as he's fighting the mindset a lot of people have: the anti-intellectual stance that scientists are a bunch of ivory tower elites that have no real impact on society. Certainly, there are places where we're unnecessarily spending money in science. But that doesn't justify some anti-science rhetoric you're seeing from some.
- watchandwait 15y agoIn 2011, the the U.S. government will spend more money directly bailing out Fannie Mae than it will spend on NASA's entire budget.
- hugh3 15y agoAccording to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA the inflation-adjusted budget of NASA over its entire history from 1958 to 2011 is less than $800 billion. That is significantly less than the cost of... several single large initiatives that have passed through Congress recently (no doubt if I picked an actual example then I'd wind up with a political argument on my hands...)
- stopsucking 15y agoToday I learned how many people on HN can't recognize satire.