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Comment by Jensson | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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