(03-15-2024, 07:18 PM)Ninurta Wrote: The term "follow the science" is what the unscientific use to batter their opponents in the head with that which neither understands.

Science, like most of our institutions, is rapidly losing it's public confidence due to abuse by people who don't comprehend it, but want to "sound smart" in debates. To make matters worse, more and more "science" is being sold to the highest bidder. Once upon a time, it was said that "you can have your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts". No more. Now, enough money or political clout will allow one to purchase whatever "scientific facts" and whatever conclusions they want those "scientific facts" to confirm... but that isn't how true science works.

In actual science, you start out with a question, and follow it to whatever the data and investigations confirms, however distasteful that may be to your personal opinions or what the money wants it to arrive at. But now, that has been turned upside down, and one starts with the desired conclusion, and then finds only the "facts" that confirm that conclusions with with to bludgeon an opponent, regardless of what the data actually says.

Actual scientists are well aware of the abuses being heaped on the doorstep of "science", and have been for some time. Back in the late 1980's or early 1990's, one of my first wife's psychology professors started out his statistic lectures by laying the framework for them - he started out with the old axiom that "there are lies, there are DAMNED lies, and lowest of all, there are statistics; " It was true then, and it is no less true now. I stopped paying attention to polls long ago when I realized their statistical methods were arriving at conclusions that their funding partners wanted them to arrive at, and did not actually reflect what the actual outcome of political contests would be - I stopped paying attention to them when they stopped being accurate.

Some science is just getting lazy and unimaginative. For example, among archaeologists, it's a running joke that if you can't figure out the function of an artifact, then you just ascribe it a "ritual purpose" and move on to the next, problem solved. For example, I was recently reading about discoveries at a Bronze Age village discovered virtually intact in the fens of East Anglia in Britain - the Must Farm site, All of the discoveries were made due to the outstanding preservation of organic remains (wood, cloth, etc) made there. Due to the discovery, they now have a firmer grasp on the construction of Bronze Age round houses - actual walls and roof timbers were preserved, showing how they were joined together to form a round house, rather than just a floor plan marked out by post holes.

One of the artifacts discovered looked to me exactly lie a wooden mallet or "maul" we used to make here, which was used in conjunction with a "froe" to split out flat slabs of wood, such a shingles for roofing. The archaeologists didn't know what it was, and admitted such, and an observer mentioned that they could just call it a "cultic object" and move on. I can't be sure that it was a mallet, as there is no scale in the images to show it's size, but it looked exactly like the wooden mallets we used to make here... but maybe it IS just a "cultic object", eh? After all, round houses were roofed with thatching, so why would they be splitting out shingles? Then again, there are many uses for a maul beyond just shingling (driving wooden pegs, tightening wooden joints, etc), and it's a lot easier to thrash one out of a piece of wood than it is to make a metal hammer when metals are in short supply, but wood isn't....

Science investigates, it forms possible hypotheses, and then tests them for falsifiablitiy. It doesn't start with the conclusion and just work towards that eventuality. That's not investigation, it's mere confirmation, often of a conclusion that is erroneous to begin with. Only those with enough imagination to see alternate possibilities are aware of what is going on with "science" these days. Those who use "science" as a mere bludgeon are blissfully unaware of how it is being abused in their rush to beat their opponents over the head with "facts" that are anything but factual.

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