Hacker News Reader

Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

In your role as a scientist, shouldn't providing evidence of truth (or falsehood) be your main concern?

Statements about importance are value judgements that no doubt you have made, but are not really science and are basically political.

An easy example, "covid restrictions curb covid" may be true and you can provide experimental evidence. "We need to impose restrictions" makes a judgement about the overall situation under the restrictions being preferable to the one without them. This is not a scientific call, this is a societal judgement.

People too often pretend that an action immediately follows from some identified causal relationship. Smoking kills you does not immediately imply you should quit smoking, without the intermediate step of "you value your later life and health more than the ongoing benefits you get from smoking" (disclaimer, nonsmoker)

View on HN

The science community as a whole needs to do the work of all three. The work of an individual scientist may be able to focus on just the one, and their lives are easier if they work in a context that gives them that specificity of responsibility.

But eventually, someone needs to do the work to convince people "science is trustworthy." And for a variety of reasons (both objective and social), scientists should be on the front lines of that work.

The question of "this is important" is tricky because it must involve a two-way discussion with the audience. But there are cases where a scientist must be making that case, e.g. in order to procure funding.

> The science community as a whole needs to do the work of all three.

This is exactly the source of the trouble. Hearing scientists project their value system onto everybody else destroys their credibility. If people felt that scientists were sticking to the facts and avoiding ideology and values, science would be better received all around.

Whether or not the Earth is getting warmer, and the cause of that warming, are scientific questions. Also science is a discussion of possible remediations and their costs. Which remediation to choose, if any, is a question of values and outside the scope of science.

Also important for science is being clear about levels of uncertainty and ranges of possible outcomes. Recent global temperatures have little uncertainty. Distant-past temperatures have a much higher level of uncertainty, and predictions about ranges of possible distant-future temperatures have yet more uncertainty. I never hear much about this from scientists or the media that cover them though.

> This is exactly the source of the trouble. Hearing scientists project their value system onto everybody else destroys their credibility.

> sticking to the facts and avoiding ideology and values

I think a few different things are being confused here, but as far as value is concerned, the choice to do science, to take scientific findings into account and to decide what to investigate are themselves the result of value judgements. There is no fact-value dichotomy. There is no "clean" separation between fact and value (as if value were a dirty word contrary to fact).

This fact-value dichotomy can be tied to the materialist worldview which denies objective value because it presumes a metaphysics that renders the world a kind of theater of senseless extension in space. Any value must therefore be a matter of subjective projection (and therefore delusion, putting to one side materialism's inherent inability to account for subjectivity). But this metaphysics is, to put it gently, problematic. The wish to separate fact from value (which I take to occupy one order, not two) is no doubt further encouraged by liberalism's pretensions to neutrality and the inherent tension within Lockean liberalism between science and liberty.

But I do agree that the actual deciding of policy is not to be left to scientists but to politicians and the like. Scientists are specialists who can supplement our knowledge in specific ways that generalists can then take into account along with other data and understanding when making judgements.

The problem is when people aspire to be scientists because they want to be authority figures rather than find out facts about the world. And then once they become an authority figure as they always wanted they just push their agenda because they never cared about the facts in the first place.

Of course lots of scientists cares about facts first, but the scientists with an agenda are much juicier for journalists to interview and write articles about so they are who we see.

(I believe in climate change, I am pro vaccine. Just noting this here since many will think that me having the above view means I am a climate change denier and anti vax)

The problem of correct motivation (and here I would argue understanding is the aim of science, not fact collection per se) is a separate problem, but it, too, is a matter of value judgement (what is the correct aim and motivation for science?). The concern for corruption cannot erase the essential value-ladenness of all activity, including scientific activity. Science is both shaped by and shapes value judgements and is itself suffused by them. You cannot escape from value. If you judge something to be valuable, you will act and shape reality according to that understanding of what is valuable. This is the essential nature of practical reason. All action is determined by value judgements.

> what is the correct aim and motivation for science

I think you misunderstood, I am not saying that they try to discover facts to support them using science. I am saying that they want the credibility of a scientist. You know how people start to listen a lot to the views of a Nobel Laureate regardless if it is their field of expertise or not? That sort of authority is very attractive to a lot of people and they will work really hard to get it, I am saying lots of people go into science since they want that authority, they don't have any care at all about doing science.

No, I understood you. What I'm saying is that a) your concern for bad motives is separate from the question of whether science if value-laden (which it is), and b) the question of "what is the correct aim and motivation for science?", meant rhetorically, demonstrates that your judgement about what is a bad motive for entering a scientific field itself involves a value judgement.

> demonstrates that your judgement about what is a bad motive for entering a scientific field itself involves a value judgement.

Yes, I judge people who try to corrupt our view of science. I never denied that.

> our concern for bad motives is separate from the question of whether science if value-laden (which it is)

Science having value is exactly why I don't want people to corrupt it. If you agree with me that science has value then you should agree that we should try to stop people from corrupting it.

If you argue that we can't judge who is corrupting, then I'd argue that you are so out there on the clouds with your definitions that we could just as well argue that a random youtube commenter is also doing science and that is a good thing and that we can't really say that youtube commenters are worse scientists than the people at universities since that is just a value judgement.

I think you're reading things into what I wrote.

W.r.t. value, the only point I was making is that there is no fact/value dichotomy. It doesn't follow that I am therefore arguing that one cannot make value judgements. On the contrary, if no fact/value dichotomy exists and value is a matter of fact, then it follows that we can indeed make value judgements on par with factual claims.

But what I was addressing in an earlier post was the suggestion that there is a fact/value dichotomy and the notion that problems occur in science when value mingles with fact. I rejected this claim by arguing that there is no such dichotomy and by implication that the diagnosis is incorrect. Questions about corruption are fine as far as they go, but they are not relevant to this thread because they do not address the question of fact/value dichotomy and they presume value judgement.

> Whether or not the Earth is getting warmer, and the cause of that warming, are scientific questions. Also science is a discussion of possible remediations and their costs. Which remediation to choose, if any, is a question of values and outside the scope of science.

So how do you propose scientists "stick to" the discussion of remediations of "we can remediate X by doing Y at expense Z" without it being portrayed maliciously as pesky interfering scientists saying "we should do Y"?

The problem of lack of trust is hardly the sole responsibility of scientists here.

Do you think discussing uncertainty more is going to raise trust or just be more fodder for the people with non-scientific reasons to oppose action?

I propose scientists "only stick to the science" if and only if everyone else in the world sticks to their wheelhouse as well. Lotta citizens, politicians, and pundits out there without much training in making good ethical decisions either!

As long as the output of a scientist will be interpreted through other people's political lenses its fair game for them to frame it politically too.

>As long as the output of a scientist will be interpreted through other people's political lenses its fair game for them to frame it politically too.

Not if they want to be credible.

>>Also science is a discussion of possible remediations and their costs. Which remediation to choose, if any, is a question of values and outside the scope of science.>>

This is where I've noticed mainstream political discussion often go off the rails. The best example is when "because science" is used to end conversation on the idea that 100% of the population should wear masks. Science, at least in this case, is clearly not prescriptive, so it can't be applied as a single justification like that. Perhaps science confirms that masks reduce transmission, therefore 100% of the population wearing masks is certainly one valid design. But one could come up with multiple other designs that would be equally confirmed by science to be effective at reducing transmission. So reducing transmission is not the hard part. The hard part is all the other variables that cause consequences in economics, mental health, other areas of healthcare, etc. Each model needs to be tested for it's utility across a variety of factors, but that idea is lost with the "science" cancel cudgel.

I felt more like what people had problems with was unnegotiable nature of logical thinkers and their plans(add air quotes as necessary). People expected to be involved but weren’t, and only plans that ignore them worked. That no one liked.

it just do not work, usually only scientists know truth, and they try to let people help, no one care, until Rachel Carson displayed how to use emotions let people 'understand'.

Science is Politically incorrect.

It will not care about narratives and may bring facts that we don't want to accept.

One sample is -> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9477....

After this paper several other papers tried to milk other interpretation.

> But eventually, someone needs to do the work to convince people "science is trustworthy."

It's harder than that though.

Science is complicated, frequently messy and often adversarial, and that is how science makes progress.

There is no single narrative for scientific truth -- even when there is overwhelming consensus, science places high value on the coherent arguments at the margins.

This scientific embrace of complexity has been weaponized against us.

"Society" prefers a clear narrative they can comprehend, and science does not always provide it.

The media used to be relatively responsible stewards of the narrative, but that is very much no longer the case. (not the blame the media -- the media is us)

For an example of how science can end up with competing ideas and differing conclusions from experiments, see the little battle between Steve Mould and Mehdi "ElectroBOOM" Sadaghdar. They each made a few videos trying to explain the Mould effect (the effect where a chain dropped from a jar rises up from the lip as it falls). Each of them make compelling arguments as to why they're right and the other is wrong, but if not for them competing we'd just be assuming that Mould's original explanation was correct.

> The question of "this is important" is tricky

This question is not tricky. It is weighty and scary. If it was tricky, there would be a puzzle you could solve to answer it.

Instead as you say it must first involve listening because people have the freedom to choose what is important to them.

Otherwise, you might assume that people place a highest value on sustaining human life. This can fail if you go to New Hampshire and encounter a person who value liberty more highly than life.

> But eventually, someone needs to do the work to convince people "science is trustworthy."

Yes, and science as an institution has been failing pretty badly at that. I posted this on HN just last week, but it's worth repeating:

1. Science journalism is almost universally terrible, so people already get sold half truths and sometimes even outright falsehoods from allegedly reputable sources. Messaging needs dramatic improvement.

2. The replication crisis has shown that up to 50% of published results in medicine can't be replicated (and up to 66% in social sciences), and there are virtually no incentives to replicate or publish negative results, and too many incentives to data mine/p-hack and publish sensationalized results (in fact, results that fail replication get cited more). There are now some efforts towards correcting this, but it's only just beginning.

I think there's another part that is also underappreciated, which is that the honesty of the public faces of science should be above reproach, and if someone in public facing positions lose their credibility by violating public trust, they should no longer be the public face.

The best recent example is Dr. Fauci. He has openly admitted to lying to the public on multiple occasions, such as whether the public should wear masks and about vaccination levels for herd immunity. It doesn't matter whether you think he did the right thing in those cases, he has unquestionably violated public trust and eroded trust in science as a result.

>In your role as a scientist, shouldn't providing evidence of truth (or falsehood) be your main concern?

Strictly speaking no, but that's more of a long digression on epistemology than what I think you mean. (but think of indiana jones here: "archaeology is concerned with _fact_, not _truth_ ...")

My role as a scientist is to work diligently to understand, as best as we are able, the natural world.

Yet, "I will always be conscious that my skill carries with it the obligation to serve humanity by making the best use of the Earth's precious wealth."

The point, I think, is that laypeople and scientists alike fall further and further into the fallacy of appeal to authority: 'a scientist said it's true, therefore it is true!' (for simplicity, true == a fact correctly expressed).

That thing may be true, but the rising disdain for not accepting a conclusion when the evidence isn't presented alongside is worrisome. The difference between science and religion is that science draws conclusions from reproducible research. Yet - especially now - many people take the naked word of 'a scientist' the same way a religious fanatic takes the word of their spiritual leader.

This definition gave me a lot of clarity: an expert is someone who has, can get, can make, or can cause to be made - and presents - evidence that supports their conclusions.

Statements of importance are indeed value judgements, That's why you have to argue that its universally good ( a virtue ) in order to get around the political stifle. This does happen quite alot but you don't always hear about it. The US happened to approve a 1 billion dollar funding request for Israel's Iron Dome. The vote was 420 to 9.

But that's not a publicly salient culture issue in the US. It's a simple matter of do you want aipac backing you or your opponent in the next race. Easy calculation, no higher principles necessary.

Is a scientist not also a citizen?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com