Treating the words of authority like scripture is what got us into this mess.
The usual "scientific process" concerns itself with how to keep an experiment correct/truthful - but how do we decide what experiments to conduct in the first place? Scientific funding can be biased towards the successes of the past, and so future funding can be guided by political agendas.
Pop culture thinks science means space, chemicals, and electronics. We aren't even hearing the words of authority in this case. A scientist describing what science is doesn't sound like indoctrination or blind faith to me.
I do give most non scientific people the benefit of the doubt. They are at least trying. What is really disturbing is that this is a real problem within sections of the scientific community and especially within the public relations of the scientific community. “Science Communicator” is almost synonymous with this trap. I think it stems from oversimplification and a need to generate funding for research.
What part of what Feynman said do you disagree with?
We teach a bizarro world version of feynman’s quote, where it’s more like the way we teach the formulas in math. It’s the right formula that they’re teaching, but the way it’s taught is encouraging its use as a black box.
‘Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."’
There is nothing in the article that supports this claim about the cause of the ‘problem’ or even a really usable understanding of what the problem is, other than that cigarette companies have been able to make people doubt things they shouldn’t have doubted, and that climate deniers and other kinds of ‘deniers’ are doing the same building on the work of the PR firms used by the cigarette companies.
The best I can read as what the problem is, is that we think that teaching people differently could make them immune to propaganda, and so the problem is that we aren’t teaching them differently. I think this is highly questionable.
It argues that we should instead teach science based on a feminist critique.
As far as I’m concerned the article is complete bullshit. It sets up a straw man, and then argues to a completely unsupported conclusion. It’s terrible.
Having said that here’s what it touches on that is useful:
Teaching scientific method alone as ‘science’ is outdated. Science is part of public discourse and so it is important for students to understand how science works as social, sociological, and political processes, as much as it is an epistemological method.
From this point of view, I respect the various ideas that they are advancing as valid for study. However ‘valid to study’ is very different from attempting to claim that science education should be based on this ideology, and is an obvious political land-grab which must be rejected.
The article makes a bunch of naked assertions as if they are simply facts about reality, when in fact they are very much the subject of social science itself.
Consider these statements:
> Believing based on trust is a pervasive human practice, not confined to scientific inquiry.
Seems true enough, right?
> It starts in infancy, when children learn language, everyday facts, and even religious beliefs from their caregivers.
Does it? This is definitely not settled science. Obviously children learn from caregivers, but what they trust is a deeper question, and a subject of study. Also, then sources are far wider than ‘care givers’.
This seems like an attempt to anchor the conversation in a blank slate kind of conception of the emergence of belief. This is discredited in social science, but is popular in the humanities.
> Trust is only as reliable as the source of the knowledge; when that source is unreliable, we sometimes regard beliefs based on trust as the product of indoctrination.
‘Sometimes’ being the operative word.
> Trust can be eroded when there is evidence of the unreliability of the source.
Yes, but research has shown that it can be strengthened when there is evidence of the unreliability of the source, too. It depends on other factors, such as who is providing the evidence. Again this statement is simply not objective or reflective of current social science.
> Reflective knowledge should therefore include some account of the reliability of the source of knowledge.
If you delete all of the preceding elements, and just say:
Reflective knowledge should include some account of the reliability of the source of knowledge.
We are left with a reasonable proposal.
Weirdly, one which is already common amongst science students, who don’t ignore the reliability of the results on which they base their work.
2. Many people think that what they learn in school or from other authorities is immutable fact and that's the end of discussion. This is an unfortunate failing of the education system.