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Comment by feldrim | Hacker News Reader

Came here for scientific comments, found US politics -again.

I am perplexed too. Is the word "science" being redefined in the US? Why does it appear that most people discussing here are so... helpless? Needing someone to tell them the truth? Did no one in here ever do any science at all?

Often yes, it's now not defined as simply a description of a process it's "The Science"... An editorilised summary of work that supports some policy or initiative.

It's often not really possible to contradict or contribute to The Science as an outsider, as access to the equipment, samples, and raw data is not available.

The vast majority of human beings don't even go to grad school, believe it or not.

I did science in middle school, and still do it today as an adult. What’s grad school have to do with anything?

I've gone to grad school and only after a lot of years of self study afterward have I really begun to understand what science is, how it actually functions, what the fundamental ontological and epistemological commitments my field makes, etc etc etc. In my opinion graduate school allows the student to _just barely_ touch something like actual knowledge of some specific thing. I think you're just vastly over estimating the actual substance of middle school science education.

The scientific method can be understood by a middle schooler. A rigorous and independent way of thinking can be taught to middle schoolers, too. Understanding the primary causes of bias, both psychological and methodological is also something a middle schooler could be taught, (though I was never really taught it even in university).

Deep understanding of a particular field is something altogether different, and is not what I mean when I talk about capital-S “Science”. For that, you need either grad school or a lot of study.

Graduate school taught me to respect how little detailed knowledge I have of a specific topic compared to experts who have deeply read the literature. It did not teach me the scientific method.

Science is much, much more than the scientific method. I'm glad people get exposed to the idea in grade school or whatever but just being able to list the steps in the scientific method doesn't make you scientifically literate or able to appreciate how knowledge and knowledge generation actually works.

Did someone close to you growing up do science? Many people do not have someone like that. Many people were raised in an area without well-funded education.

My family was very scientifically minded, and it has also taken me many years to realize what 'science' is.

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Your comment sounds to me like "I've won the lottery and I don't understand why everyone else hasn't". Yes it is possible to understand a lot of things about science at an early age; however I do not think very many people have a deep enough understanding of sociology to understand all the implications of public discussion of science.

In fairness, this is a US site, that does promote a particular kind of political ideology. It’s run by VC firm after all.

The trick with HN is to skip past the top comments.

Well yes, politics is why there's one party line with the alternatives all buried (and yes there are occasional stories showing that this scales down to internal department politics), and the US is big and influential and cares about all the big hotbutton issues.

As they say, when America sneezes, the world catches a cold.

Is this because America isn't obeying the mask rules? I don't get this analogy.

Because America leads the world, it has a lot of influence over it for better or worse.

US politics is global politics. Some government policy might start wars, other policy might end wars. Wars that are overseas, somewhere close to you

US domestic culture war bullshit is decidedly not global politics.

I'm afraid it is - For example, the gender debate leads to other countries introducing draconian laws against the LGBT communities. Some days it's all they talk about on Russian TV. Same for the race debate, it seems some politicians don't know which society they are fighting for. There were people in Sweden demanding government action because of the George Floyd incident. US domestic culture wars do spread globally because of the dominance of US media.

To be fair, this is more global than US politics. China's got a huge role, along with the WHO, and most European countries.

But yes, it makes me extremely sad how politics has gotten in the way of science. I can now tell what politics a scientist has by which covid origin theory he believes. Things shouldn't be this way, but this is what happens when political entities get involved in the evidence.

When in history has politics not got in the way of science?

Now don't say it was religion before, because that is just a form of politics itself.

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