We are losing science

The symptoms are all there. Science is in decline, at risk of collapsing. It has become an oddity in a world where if you learn from experience you are considered a flip-flopper and where your manhood is in doubt if you even think of changing your mind on the basis of new data.

Science is, first of all, a continuous fight against your instinct, your will to believe despite the evidence. It takes training to arrive to the point where you understand that your beautiful multi-faceted theory has been smashed to tiny bits by a single, ugly fact. But this is the way science works.

Unfortunately, what's happened in recent times is that our beautiful theories on the continuous progress of humankind have been smashed by the single ugly fact of the finiteness of our planet (including the finite capability of the atmosphere to absorb the products of the combustion of hydrocarbons without overheating).

Even more unfortunately, most people have taken this discovery on the part of scientists as a betrayal. Science had been always bringing nice toys to people: from cars to smartphones. How can it be that, suddenly, scientists started talking about the need of doing away with all those shiny things we like so much? It can't be true.

The result is a series of attacks against science that come from several directions. Some people seem to think that science has become a conspiracy to get fat grants from the government. And, at the same time scientists are paid by the crude oil lobby to hide the real miraculous discoveries, from cold fusion to abiotic oil, that would easily solve our problems. Some people seem to think that science is a hideout for ultra-liberals or communists who are striving to destroy the American way of life. Therefore, they must be stopped by all possible means; if sending them to jail is too difficult, there is a simpler way that consists in denying them research grants on the really important issues.

Scientists have already been the objective of "purges" when their position didn't fit with the accepted political views of the time. There have been many examples in the past and, today, the symptoms are all there.  

Is Science Another Failed Institution?

The Greatest Intellectual Feat of Mankind

by George Mobus

I love science. All science and sciences. I've spent a lifetime reading every popular science book I could get my hands on in every imaginable discipline. And in fields in which I was intensely interested I read the textbooks and the journal articles. Science as a way to understanding has been my passion. It therefore gives me great pain to entertain the possibility that the institution of science is yet another failed institution of Homo calidus.

Read the complete post at "Question Everything"

Science: we did everything wrong

(Image h/t Mike Haywood, highlights mine)

Getting Disillusioned With Science

by Paula

from "Mythodrome"

Ordinary Person: Every night, my dog knows when my wife is coming home from work 10 minutes before she gets here, no matter what shift she works. Maybe my dog is psychic! How cool would that be?
Scientist: There can be no such thing as psychic dogs because the universe is a machine. It is either coincidence or you are lying.
OP: I’m not lying and it is not a coincidence. I see it every day!
Scientist: Your subjective experience is worthless because it cannot be measured in machine units.
OP: Oh okay, well screw you then.
 
Ordinary Person: I took this herbal medicine and it made me better.
Scientist: Your body is a chemical machine that requires specific chemicals in specific quantities. Studies prove that herbal medicines do not contain the chemicals necessary to make your body better. It was a placebo effect and therefore doesn’t count.
OP: Well regardless of what caused it to happen, the herbal medicine made me better. How does that not count?
Scientist: “Placebo effect” means your subjective experience is worthless because it cannot be measured in chemical units.
OP: Oh okay. Well screw you then.
 
Scientist: Global warming is a serious problem we need to address immediately.
Ordinary Person: I don’t see any global warming, in fact it’s been very mild this summer.
Scientist: The snows of Kilimanjaro are gone. The North Pole is a lake. You can see it with your own eyes!
OP: Why should what I see with my own eyes matter now when it doesn’t anywhere else? You said my subjective experience is worthless, so screw you.
 
Ever since I was a little kid I’ve loved science. I love microscopes and telescopes and stethoscopes and oscilloscopes and every kind of scope there is. I have never been able to understand why others aren’t as fascinated with the natural world as I am. I have not been able to understand why practically the whole of the United States has banded together against science and scientists not only with regards to global warming, but also in relation to just about everything science does. I had thought it was because science did not do a very good job of communicating with the general public. And this is true, technically; in reality, science is straight up insulting to people who don’t tow a machine-universe party line. In recent years, self-described militant, atheist scientists such as Richard Dawkins have exacerbated the problem by working to deliberately alienate anyone who does not share his (decidedly unfounded) faith in the machine universe (a.k.a., “materialism”).

Read the complete post at "mythodrome"