Guest post: Social aspects of science

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Will the real pseudoscience please stand up.

I’ve been studying social aspects of science as a layperson for at least 25 years, some college courses before that, and through discussions with working scientists on my podcast since, and just chatting with Greg Laden. I don’t claim to be an expert on science by any means, since I have limited practical experience designing and conducting experiments only when they are part of an undergraduate course and so that just gives basic context of how some science works. But it’s such a broad area of investigation, that even among working scientists there are concepts in the philosophy of science that they don’t accept or fail to understand. It’s likely that this is due to a lack of interest since they spend so much time mastering a specific field that the broader arguments hold no interest for them. So, when specialists speak out of their field, and I know that they are talking out of their ass but using their authority as say, a theoretical physicist, to expound on a subject that they don’t have experience in researching,. it’s maddening. I’m thinking of a couple of TV and multi-media physicists in particular.

I subscribed for a while to an email service called “The Big Think”: and they used to blast out emails with videos of famous scientists answering questions. Sometimes the questions were lame, sometimes they sparked my interest. But one video in particular was really frustrating. The question that was assigned to physicist Michio Kaku was lame, but I hear it all the time from Creationists, or people new to the evolution v creationism mess: “Has human evolution stopped?” Kako, having the physicists usual arrogance that they are the Top Scientists, decided to wing it with an answer. And, I, with my bachelor’s in business, but with extensive reading in talk.origins, knew the answer. Michio did not. Rather than pass along the question to a biologist, he answered that due to medicine and the advances that we are making, evolution by natural selection is basically over.

I canceled my subscription. The video should not have been sent out, and they should have gotten their money back from Kaku.

The point is, that when it comes to claims of pseudoscience, the reader still needs to apply critical thought, even if a scientist makes the claim. More to the topic at hand, Sean M. Carroll, another physicist, shared an image about DSDs with some verbiage about what “The Science” says about trans issues. So, as a physicist he doesn’t even know what the transgender claim is, and as a physicist, he has the god-like brain to make a declaration that is irrefutable. He didn’t respond to any of the replies that pointed out his error.

So, GLAAD, which is another organization that once existed to promote the well-being and social acceptance of lesbians and gays, wrote about how the science was settled and that the Times were promoting pseudoscience to dispute it.

Anyone with a basic understanding of science knows that the “science is never settled.” All answers are provisional, subject to further exploration.

It sticks in my craw, and grinds my gears because the proponents of transgenderism are using a propaganda technique of sounding sciency and using the language of science to promote their own pseudoscience, and all those people who have those signs on their lawns about “in this house we believe” that “Science is Real” are fooled into thinking that it’s settled. The Dutch and the Danes figured it all out years ago, and any objection is denialism. Well, no one wants to be called a denialist! Especially if they don’t fully understand how the science is supposed to work.

Along with all of the other weaknesses in our educational system, teaching the process of science is one of the weakest. Teaching critical thinking and the acceptance that even the best science can be overturned by new facts and new techniques is lacking. We are taught that science is a body of knowledge, not that it is an imperfect process of gaining understanding. We’ve lost the spirit of the IGY, and just take in as accepted fact what we hear from experts who tell us what we already agree with. It’s easier to let other people do our thinking for us, and we can then get back to doomscrolling and “liking.”

– footnote about Neil DeGrasse Tyson –

I really like him, but whenever I see that clip of him saying to Bill Maher that “Science is true, whether you believe it or not,” it pierces me. Deeply. I may be a pedant, but that is such an imprecise statement that he shouldn’t say it. It gives a completely wrong impression of what science is.

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