Just the Facts

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

I am of the opinion that a fact is a fact regardless of how you arrived at that conclusion and I am irritated at how "science" seems to have the final word on the facts.

The term "science" gets used all the time when people want to present solid facts, but facts stand alone without science needed to prop them up. Political propagandists love the terms "science" or "scientific" when trying to shut down debate with "the facts", but science is merely an investigative method, one of many.

Why is it that science must come around and place its stamp of approval on the facts that have always been facts long before people developed the scientific method? Common sense (not so common these days) has always known the simple fact that what goes up must come down, yet it took an apple to fall on Newton's head for "the science" to catch up with that fact.

Don't get me wrong, I believe that science is a good thing if properly used to determine facts, but I get pretty perturbed at people who use the word "science" as if that proves something without debate. It gets so loosely used all the time that unless something is verified by "the science" it is merely an opinion. If you produce some evidence that refutes a given "scientific fact" (remember that the word scientific is not that same as science itself), then your source is pseudo-science or worse racist.

So, while science is good it is too often used politically by way of "scientific facts", facts that were always facts but are now claimed as something science gave to us. It has gotten so bad that it has become a feature of our culture now and is used in common everyday language.

[Ninurta]

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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[DuckforcoveR]

I've also seen YouTube warriors go down a rabbit hole and consider that science...

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

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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Well then, I wished you could have contributed this to this discussion over on ATS, only one mentioned the money. I love the archeological analogy. It's like the question I have asked myself when I needed a hammer and used a field stone instead, "Have we left the stone age?"

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Something I had given consideration to when I began to write this thread was legal facts versus scientific facts and how science is used to introduce "facts" into court cases. That zone where science is used to support legal actions that then become a legal precedent in later proceedings. If science can be used toward some end, either political or legal, it will.