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Comment by wccrawford | Hacker News Reader

It's not just an "appeal", it's a "belief". Not based in fact or logic but in faith. They seem to think that if scientists said it, it must be real, and anyone that tries to say otherwise is just wrong.

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I think this observation is mostly overblown. I'm sure some people "worship" science to an irrational degree, whatever that means in each case, but it seems like in most cases what we're seeing is actually this: If you see two opposing opinions, and one is ostensibly derived in whole or in part by science, and the other isn't, then, prior to further information or extenuating circumstances, it makes sense to defer to the latter when making decisions or forming opinions. That doesn't mean you are sure it is correct, it means you are sure it is more likely to be correct than the alternative, which is far more reasonable. It might look like people are picking the ostensibly-science-backed choice with unthinking faith, when the majority of them are simply making the more statistically likely choice given the information available. In most cases, it's impossible to tell the difference, and this gives rise to a lot of political rhetoric that exploits that ambiguity.

I think it’s more political.

If you agree with the political conclusion of a study then it’s science. If you disagree then it’s fake news.

To the extent a study has a political conclusion, it's not science, but relatively few really do.

(Some have conclusions that policy entrepreneurs find useful to support a political agenda, either because of what they actually say or because of what people can be deceived into understanding them to say, but that's a different thing than actually having a political conclusion.)

Is Plankton dying political? You would not think so but it definitely is.

Republicans would be quick to dismiss the article assuming it is another attack in economic success, global warming etc... Democrats would be quick to point to the article as support for reasons to support progressive policies.

Literally everything is political today

I disagree that it's overblown. For every study that's utterly failed to replicate over the past however many decades, people have been "sure it is more likely to be correct than the alternative" and that's literally not the case. The word "science" has been invoked in a way that makes people believe that they have more information about the world than they do. Updating towards a study that wasn't properly conducted is worse than the study not existing, because it removes uncertainty that you should still possess, but it is touted as "science" in popular media all the same.

Especially in areas like psychology or sociology, where studies over the past few decades are more likely not to be replicable than they are to be replicable. Compounded with the disgusting state of pop "scientific" "journalism", it's probably a better heuristic at this point not to believe most scientific news to be correct.

Updating towards a study that wasn't properly conducted is worse than the study not existing, because it removes uncertainty that you should still possess, but it is touted as "science" in popular media all the same.

This is why I try to pollute as much as I possible can. "Science" keeps telling me that climate change is an important issue and that we need to curb pollution to fight it. As you just said, since it comes from a place that can't be trusted, the logical choice is to take the opposite stance.

Definitely what I said

> and one is ostensibly derived in whole or in part by science, and the other isn't

So as long as the shit is wrapped up better we should eat it?

I had an argument with an old friend a bit ago over the efficacy and possible nth-order effects of publicly-funded "safe shoot-up sites" for drug addicts. my point was that lots of progressive liberal ideas about policy come from a place of feelings about what the "morally right" thing to is ("give homeless addicts a place to safely use drugs, to prevent spread of disease etc."), while not necessarily thinking through possible nth-order effects that could result from such policy decisions, specifically with regards to factors of human incentives and motivations ("if you provide a taxpayer-funded safe drug use facility, how will this affect inherently dangerous & self-destructive intravenous drug use in the long term? decrease it, keep it roughly the same, or increase it?"). as a means of arguing his position ("safe shoot-up facilities are good and effective"), he referred me to a nearly decade-old study that was done over the course of three years, and to him, that was slam dunk proof that his position was the better one. I pointed out the questionable research methods ("drug dealers in the area didn't report higher sales in the three years after opening the facility"), the length of the study (three years), and the time that has passed since the study (an additional seven years), and asked if maybe this was cause for at least further investigation, but to him, The Science Was Settled, someone did a research project and published the results in some journal, so That's That, Everything Is Good, Confirmed.

I want to stress here that in this instance I may still be fully in the wrong and he may in fact be correct with regards to our assessments of the overall situation—my point is merely that my friend took the mere existence of a research paper in a journal with findings that affirmed his beliefs as if it were Gospel, because it's a Study in a Scientific Journal, you see. never mind that social sciences are far more fuzzy than hard sciences, never mind the methods used in the study, never mind following up and seeing if anything changed in seven years. no, a Study in a Journal asserted that his Beliefs were Correct, so that might as well be a Science stone tablet with Science written on it that some Scientists were directly told by Science God from Science Heaven to write.

this friend is, of course, an atheist, basically an anti-theist really, and the degree of Faith he places in the Gospel of Science (even Social Science!!!) being comparable to that which adherents to conventional religion place upon their holy books remains completely lost on him.

I don't think this is a particularly uncommon way of thinking these days.

In my experience I think it usually comes from a mistaken idea that all fields of science are equally predictive, which I think comes from a popular misconception that "science" = "physics".

I think we colloquially get drawn into thinking that science-as-in-physics is the same thing as science-as-in-biology is the same thing as science-as-in-economics, especially when it comes to what they all mean by "fact" and "proven". Media then takes advantage of this general misunderstanding to make "weather facts" sound like they are just as concrete as "fundamental physics facts" because it gets more attention. Then we find ourselves arguing about climate science with the same level of self-assured veracity we might argue about billiard balls on an ideal surface in a vacuum.

We crave an authority that will give us knowledge and control of the unknown.

Even bad information gives us a small sense of power and security.

Media propaganda promoting that view of "science" isn't helping much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

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