The notion of truth in science and medicine, it matters and we must defend it
hxstem.substack.com
hxstem.substack.com
The main type of science denialism I see is people ignoring the error bars / qualifications on scientific claims. Part of this is done by press offices and the media trying to generate buzz and prestige. Another more cynical group of people do it for profit.
Typically the people I see who cry about censoring of science are the same type of people who cry about free speech when they get banned from a board. If you are a tenured professor you can research pretty much whatever. Just don’t expect a big time journal or conference to broadcast your work if it’s not addressing a “hot” topic. But at the end of the day that’s fine right? We scientists do this for the love of scientific inquiry, not money and status right? /s
And most of those decisions are made in heavily politicized process.
In terms of grants / funding that is more of an economic issue. How do we allocate limited resources? There is a bit of grantsmanship that comes into play here, but that’s the game. The focus on ROI is in no small part a consequence of the numerous hit pieces crying about stuff like, “They spent X dollars on understanding the mating rituals of honey bees!?! Government waste!!!” But I agree that these decisions about what we as a society want to fund are inherently political.
Data access is a little more tricky. I generally take the stance that access is at the pleasure of the data owners / stewards, but they are also bound by the terms of the consent. So there is no small amount of risk that some of the subjects might get mad about how their data is being used and sink the whole ship. And this is probably not a bad thing in my opinion. I take the extreme view that subjects should have more control over their data than they currently have - probably as a reaction against the normalization of surveillance capitalism.
Isn’t that what the article is decrying? “Value Free or Value-laden Science” None of the items listed— especially justice— are intrinsic to science.
Can't a cigar just be a cigar?
Not in 2023, not really.
We have all woken up to the fact that many people stand (and even more have stood) on the world stage pretending to be “simply stating” when the intent has been to push a narrative or give credibility to specific groups.
I’m adding this rebuttal because it’s fresh in my mind: https://youtu.be/WBxAQYmPHDA (starting 42:28). If you don’t like Neil try to listen to the point he’s making and separate it from him. It’s a point worth at least discussing critically: the intent of a statement is integral to the statement itself.
Factual information has the right to be stated, it's the audience's fault if they're not cogent enough to discern bias and malicious intent.
Your position is a plain defense of censorship and forced interpretation of media, not one that promotes media literacy or individual sovereignty to make up one's mind.
For the record I’d much rather everyone be taught to think critically as a baseline but that’s simply not happening and to not call out bias or intentional influence is to be a bystander (something I choose not to do).
Ideology is the always a way of interpreting the Real into the Symbolic. If you don't think you have an ideology, congrats on having the dominate ideology. Ideology allows people to take the incomprehensible Real and distill it into the comprehensible Symbolic. The process itself is naively invisible in daily naive life. So much so, that the obviousness of it is reversed in order to justify the ideological process itself.
The author makes the uncritical assumption that his ontological conclusions exist as objective reality. And it's this confusion that is-and-ought are two sides of the same coin.
The whole 1.0 vs 2.0 conceptualization is a red herring based in a reactionary call to simpler times.
IMO, the main point of the article is to assert that in some fields (medicine and science) this "assumption that his ontological conclusions exist as objective reality" is needed, and that to do away with this 'assumption' is 'irrational' and sends one down the path towards authoritarianism.
This involves more epistemology than usual
When you understand that the author is ok with authoritarianism so long as it validates his symbolic universe because it's draped in the fineries of rationalism, the sooner the piece clicks. The author is fine with authoritarianism so long as its his authoritarianism and he doesn't get to call it authoritarianism, he gets to call it reality. To him it is reality and anyone disagreeing with him is denying reality. When we talk about the most insidious delusions, it's his. It's intellectual narcissism. And that's why it's epistemologically vacuous.
Anyone who's studied epistomology knows he's arguing from within a system instead of outside it and it comes across as naive realism because it is.
this gets weird when projecting our individual consciousness into the systems we construct to rule over ourselves (governments)... better known as our tendency (and capacity) to anthropomorphize anything.
And no, authoritarianism is not synonymous with the social contract. Sorry. Maybe in some minds, but no.
As soon as science become politicized, it becomes rotten to the core. Science is weak because it must analyze all hypothesis, and masses of people can’t study all of them, while little groups of people with powerful decisions will always be perverted by interests.
Traditional societies are lead by traditions, but modern societies are driven by the ideal that science can measure everything. It sounds as stupid as architectural experiments of the 1960ies. As soon as science drives society, it becomes a tool of power, and the one who can pervert science can gain power.
I had a fantastic discussion about the history of socialism on the African continent here, with one strongly anti-socialist person. And we both had to slap away people who just wanted to dunk on the "other team". It's unfortunate, really.
I am honestly concerned about how modern social-media related amplification moralism (aka Cancel Culture) may impact Science in general. Not for the reasons the author claim - at all - though. My perception, and fear, is that the current generation is overly concerned with "feeling good" to the point esoteric pseudocience is taking over important fields like medicine, with stuff like Homeopathy becoming accepted as medical practice in some countries.
The author, however, seems to be simply ranting about science taking a direction he personally does not like, and trying to sugarcoat his own prejudice in citations to credible sources.
There is NUMEROUS scientific evidence that demonstrated over and over again that the LACK of diversity in science has held us back tremendously in many fields, Medicine in particular. Years of experiments made by white men on white men, failing to take into account gender, ethnicity and other types of variations, leading to theories and therapies that only work as intended on white men.
Introducing diversity as a scientific requirement makes sure the very designing of experiments is less biased, as people with different backgrounds participate in the process.
I find it really ironic that people who supposedly understand the importance of variation in experimental samples can't see the importance of variation in experiment t designers.
"Bertrand Russell has argued that philosophical (“scientific”, note by the author) inquiry must stay value-free (Russell, 1956, 2007) "
I was somewhat enjoying the article, but hitting these dates attributed to Bertrand Russel (who died in 1970) made me think of these GPT generated essays that manage to look authentic but commit stupid errors. I was then terrified of being fooled by generative text and now I need to be sure before I can keep reading through.
In France issues of race have direct outcomes on healthcare, for example there is a very difficult line when recommending medical care based on racial predisposition to medical disorders. For example, communicating that there are elevated rates of sickle cell anemia in blacks, leaves medical professionals struggling for words at the detriment of those groups that would benefit from treatment.
In science there are useful models and unhelpful models.
I prefer math where it isn't truth but fact.
Established Truths are generally as close as proof as any statement, scientific or not, may ever be. Episthemologically speaking they ARE proven truths.
We are decades behind because of religious fundamentalists.
Just because you are unaware of the damage doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Biosecurity has nothing to do with politics or religion. Any research needs to adhere to security levels in accordance with its risks. It does not matter if it's Nuclear Power or DNA editing, it must be secure and failures of the security protocols will cause mayhem to people of all political opinions.
China literally allowed unrestricted flights out of China, knowing the pandemic would spread to the World. While at the same testing passengers on domestic flights to prevent local spread. Not Politics?
Also how exactly would you know if the current set of politicians wasn't acting out some pseudo religious motive, like saving the world from environmental Armageddon. Or why would you dismis the possibility of secret societies, when there are plenty of examples at political leaders through out history being parts of cults, or making up their own pseudo religious belief systems.