The Language of Science
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
Can you clarify on what you mean by bad scientific discourse, and why it is inevitable?
Any good system keeps malincentives in check. In the political realm, that would be America's system of checks and balances. Perhaps it needs updating, but it has served us very well. Critically, America's political system does not fundamentally remove the desire for competitive sabotage. It takes that desire and channels it into something good, while precluding the worst outcomes through a system of checks and balances. Those checks and balances are themselves adversarial in nature. America's founding fathers implicitly took the view that everyone is capable of wrong. Rationality is an emergent product of competition. We have to be careful not to pin too much blame on competitive behavior, even if it seems polemical, domineering, and protective. The system of scientific discourse requires more attention. Moreover, we have to fundamentally believe that it can be improved. If we don't, then we won't start to improve it, resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
All that being said, I'm talking about improving something that is already very good. The progress in almost all fields of science in the last 10-20 years has been mind-blowing. Some of it has already born fruit, and some areas of research, like graphene perhaps, will amaze the biggest cynics in the future with their transformational output.
First, no math problem or physics problem or chemistry problem or science problem involves politics or ethics. Give great scientists a great problem, and they will solve it. It's always up to the administrators and managers and executives to tell them when to stop, often by cutting funding or firing. These are not the scientists, though they may be made to represent them.
Ethics and politics is a completely separate discipline from logic and science. But often those doing the logic and science aren't given a say. They are just placed in their labs and made comfortable.
Second, most scientists know when they are right. You can check your work. You know how you did it. You are aware of what you understand. And being right is mostly enough in a purely scientific context.
But in the real world, you have the Donald and an endless army of careerists who don't mind serving for a naked king that get to decide what is right.
For the most part I don't believe scientists have much of a communication problem. They trade information and are happy to make progress. That's about it.