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Comment by armatav | Hacker News Reader

"When science is viewed in isolation from the past and politics, it’s easier for those with bad intentions to revive dangerous and discredited ideas."

Shouldn't science always, without any exception, be viewed in isolation from the past and politics?

I feel like the only reason this idea that science shouldn't revolve solely around the practice of the scientific method, and the observation and application of the results of experimentation, is being entertained is because people are posting these viewpoints in high-profile places like Nature.

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> Shouldn't science always, without any exception, be viewed in isolation from the past and politics?

Only if it isn't practiced by scientists, who have a past and politics. Or funded by institutions that also have a past and politics.

I think good points can be made in favor of not ignoring the context when (a) the science cannot be evaluated independently (so you have to take it on trust or ditch it), or (b) there are reasons to suspect publication bias (i.e., results are reported/published more if they fit certain biases). So yes for many parts of biology and psychology, but no for maths or much of the hard sciences (at least not the older stuff that has been repro'd many times).

Speaking of "isolation from the past", the linked opinion piece doesn't cite a single reference other than the author's own pop-sci book. An interesting decision for sure.

If it can't be evaluated independently it's not science. At all. The defining feature of science, as opposed to superstition and recieved "wisdom" is that you don't have to take it on trust. (If it's merely difficult to evaluate independently, it might be legit, but you should still be suspicious of it.) Publication bias is admittedly more a problem.

Yeah, I should have said "infeasible to evaluate".

Where do modern scientists get their money? The bulk of it comes from government agencies which are funded by politicians. I was routinely advised in grad school to consider "what diseases congresspeople die from" when applying for grants.

The way that science is conducted, the questions that are asked, and the way that results are interpreted are all dependent on culture and politics. Something as simple as understanding that xyz viewpoint was considered politically incorrect or anathema to the goals of whoever was funding given research is important in understanding that conclusions from a study might be on data that was filtered to make a case stronger or specifically chosen and designed so no other conclusion could be drawn. Or that the 19 other runs might have been thrown out for the one that showed the result the sponsor wanted. People used "science" to justify smoking as harmless, leaded gasoline as safe, eugenics as a good idea. We need to under what context all of that came from to understand the confounding factors at play.

> Shouldn't science always, without any exception, be viewed in isolation from the past and politics?

What is so special about politics that science must ignore it?

Qq, are you a scientist? Have you personally observed or have been involved with science as it is actually done?

It's exactly the opposite. Literally all types of science are political. Science tells you how to optimize towards an objective once you've decided on an objective (that's the scientific method). You need the "friend of science", also known as "Philosophy" and it's worldly implementation, "Politics", to decide what your objective is.

Politics is the art of running a Polis (a city, or in modern times the state). The question of "what is good for the state" is a political one.

>Shouldn't science always, without any exception, be viewed in isolation from the past and politics?

Try telling that to Galileo.

FYI, Galileo was called out because his science was considered shoddy at the time, notably because of the poor quality of instruments that didn't take things like parallax into account. That he turned out to be right afterwards is more of a coincidence. Also, he called the Pope an idiot. The moral of the story isn't that truth prevails despite the evil church, it's that no one likes a contrarian smartass, especially when their arguments are wrong.

we've reached peak "well ackshually..."

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