Mantus

After studying the Creationist movement for a while I’ve come to the conclusion that science is loosing credibility in the modern world. Scientists are viewed with mistrust, skepticism and sometimes even fear. This is a truly troubling though because in absence of science we are left with superstition which in no way replaces the benefits of scientific knowledge and usually sets us back.

I’m not here to pick on Creationism. This is not a religious issue; it’s an issue of human being reacting irrationally to fear and the unknown.

The anti-vaccination movement is a great example of scientific rejection. Vaccinations have saved thousands of lives across the globe. They also greatly lower the costs on public healthy by preventing disease and the cost of treatment. Their benefits are unquestionable. Yet this brilliant science is under attack by complete quackery. This is leaching money and resources from programs that could be used to save lives by forcing the medical establishment to defend itself in the social arena. There is no doubt in my mind that people like Jenny McCarthy have cost lives. In her own words she’s alright with that:

“I do believe sadly it’s going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe. If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it’s their fucking fault that the diseases are coming back.” – JM

One would think that people who claim to be educated by the “University of Google” and follow their “maternal insight” would have little impact on social and political landscapes when pitted against science but this isn’t the case. Vaccination number are dropping in the US and England exposing increasing numbers of people to epidemics from diseases such as mumps and measles which were all but eliminated in decades past. People are willingly stepping into back into the Dark Age.

This isn’t the only case of rebellion against science; there are the global warming deniers; alternative medicine and organic foods are another bastion of scientific ignorance. Human beings were never the most rational species to begin with but it’s astounding how easily we fall back into superstition event when information and education is more readily available than ever.

It’s a curious phenomenon. People are not just rejecting science but replacing it with superstition. It is one thing to question authority – especially when we do not understand the subject at hand – and a rational being would seek to educate themselves to regain that power (after all, those with knowledge have power). However people seem to do something quite different: they ally themselves with those who question that same authority and, curiously, unquestionably swallow any misinformation handed their way.

I view this as a serious issue. Placing power in the hands of the few leads to abuse and corruption or worse: rejection and even destruction of knowledge. Logic and rational though do not survive mob mentality. Look at banning of stem cell research in the US – hampering medical research for almost a decade – all in the name of superstition. This is a political decision based on appeasing ignorance. Our painstakingly slow progress with climate change is another example of politics being timid in fear of loosing support from the ignorant masses. Decisions that cost lives and resources in the name of ignorance.

The question for me is how do we remedy this situation? What can make a human being more rational?

Shauk

The media can do a lot to shape public opinion, when you have stories being sensationalized about a girl getting a flu shot and then all of a sudden her nervous system becomes a wreck and she can only walk backwards, but they do nothing to sensationalize the fact that SHE GOT BETTER, people still will just go and blame science for all the ills.

inBOIL

It's emotional thinking. The greater (perceived) threat to people's children these days is defective immunizations, as they fit in with the whole "corporate America is fucking us" mindset. The fear of diseases such as mumps and measles has declined with the incidence of those diseases. The only way to solve this is to somehow remove emotional decision-making from the human population.

As for anti-stem cell sentiment, that's a moral argument based primarily on the belief that a fertilized egg/embryo is a human, and the distaste for sacrificing humans in the name of research. The only way to counter this is to prove that eggs/embryos are not human. As far as I know, nobody has been able to do this.

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And you believe Bush and the liberals and divorced parents and gays and blacks and the Christian right and fossil fuels and Xbox are all to blame, meanwhile you yourselves create an ad where your kid hits you in the head with a baseball and you don't understand the message that the problem is you.

Plan9

It seems that education remains the weapon in this war of ideas.

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Willravel

They key to unlocking this mystery lies in the minds of children. When you are born, you have an unusually high ability to learn and adopt reasoning skills. Humans take so long to become self-sufficient because there's so much to impart that children need to be like little intellectual sponges. Before we, as babies and young children, are exposed to formal science and logic, we are exposed to a great deal of biases and misunderstandings coming from our parents, extended family and friends. Our intuitive understanding of the world comes partially from very basic innate understandings and our environment, therefore the shape our intuition takes for the rest of our lives can be formed in those early, precious days. Sometimes we get good data from parents, so that we can intuitively understand systems correctly when we're older, but not all of what we take in is going to be correct because no one is perfect.

Imagine getting an unscientific contextual framework for medicine because your parents believe in the power of prayer (and don't believe in modern medicine). Even if, as you individuate as a young adult, you strip yourself of this bias on a conscious, intellectual level, you still may have intuitive biases from the early understanding of how the world works. In other words, though you've overcome your parent's unscientific beliefs about medicine, the bias that's rooted inside you may crop up elsewhere.

Take Bill Maher as an example. Maher has recently become a leader in the vaccination skeptic movement (or whatever you want to call it). When you listen to the case he makes, it becomes clear that he doesn't quite understand the science behind immunotherapy. I've been guilty of this myself, so I'm guessing this could be related to his religious upbringing in which he became an atheist. When you become a skeptic in a religious society at a younger age, you tend to adopt certain concepts about being the smarter outsider, the person who's freedom from a great bias somehow endows us with better skepticism; like our skepticism is super fly. When tackling a new subject, if our intuition tells us to be skeptical, that skepticism actually becomes a bias if unchecked.

Fortunately, there's an easy fix. Very young children aren't passive intellectual sponges, they actively seek out new information upon which to base their understanding of the world. This provides you with a wonderful opportunity to allow them to access how the world works. Let your child take things apart or get dirty in the mud. As he or she gets older, teach them the basic rules of how science works, from (very simplified) Newtonian physics to human biology to zoology and evolution to very basic chemistry. If they can develop scientific contextual frameworks, they not only will be able to intuitively learn science much more effectively in school, but will also as adults be better prepared to deal with the real world.

Seaver

I believe it has to do with the grossly inaccurate sciences from the Victorian era forward. The medication which caused deformed children to be born without limbs, the pesticides which were used worldwide as a miracle until it killed off high predators. Time and time again medical breakthroughs not only fell short, but caused drastic problems.

So while the whole vaccination and autism is completely false, it's not hard to believe it as you look through everything that was previously declared safe and caused untold death and deformations.

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"Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

Stare At The Sun

Religion and lack of education.

/thread.

GreyWolf

Tabloid style media and the internet.

Tabloid style media, which is really just about all mainstream media now, is all about today's sensationalism. Putting a rover on Mars is great news, but you can't sustain that for the extra years they actually operate and generate new insights. Crashing one on landing and losing a billion dollars is even better... science has failed in a big way. 300 million people using DEET to safely repel the malarial mosquito and other disease bearing insects on a daily basis for 50 years just isn't news. The very real tragedy of a single person suffering irreversible nerve damage due to an allergic reaction to DEET is, and helps fuel a campaign to limit the use/concentration of one of the safest, most effective chemicals ever produced. Air bags save millions of lives, no news; they take hundreds, it's over-regulation and a hazard... so we must restrict their usage. Sensationalism sells.

The internet gives the ignorant masses the opportunity for everyone (myself included) to expose their ignorance on an equal basis with the knowledgeable. And worse, it lets them find like-minded unknowing individuals to support them. The number of people who can misunderstand a complex topic will always exceed the number who can understand it. So the egalitarianism of the internet means those who misunderstand the subject will have greater presence than those who do, and thus appear to be "right" by virtue of sheer numbers of supporters.

As Robert Heinlein said: Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

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Cynthetiq

because of "the children", "think of the children!"

When I first read this post, I instantly thought of this TED talk given by Steven Levitt on child car-seats.

Steven Levitt on child carseats | Video on TED.com
They don't think of the logic or the data, they use the emotional response and stick with that.

This is why here we say debate the post not the poster, because when you take the discussion directly to the poster, you're getting emotional about the discussion.

This is what pisses me off about the whole peanut ban. WTF? The data shows that other things really are much worse but again, It may kill my baby, why are you trying to kill my baby??

The 30,000 and the 100 to 200, is ALL food allergies. So for 100 deaths, we've labeled all items "may contain peanuts" or "this product manufactured on machines that also have been used with peanuts" and other sorts of nonsense. Dammit this shit gets my goat.

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filtherton

I think the OP is conflating two things, namely that some people don't trust the scientific method and some people don't trust the way science is conducted. The distinction may not be explicit in how the deniers go about things, but I think it's good to understand the difference because while there really isn't a good reason to distrust the scientific method, there can be really good reasons to distrust the current structural state of scientific research.

With the anti-vaccine folk, I don't think that the problem is that people don't trust science- a lot of anti-vaccine folk refer to published research in their criticisms- though the published research is frequently dubious. I don't think they trust scientists in general and I don't think they trust that the scientific process is carried out with integrity. Neither these things are irrational at all. The notion of the noble scientist in the lab coat, slowly and steadily chipping away at human ignorance is naive at best, though it might be appropriate for something like particle physics, where there isn't a lot of profit at stake.

Right now, most (so I've been told) agriculture research is funded by Monsanto and Cargill and most pharmaceutical research is funded by members of PhRMA. Also, history has demonstrated repeatedly that there will always be scientists who are willing to exchange their integrity for money. A healthy distrust of science is, well, healthy. Scientists are people, and people fuck up, even large groups of people. The peer review process isn't perfect. This distrust taken a step or two beyond healthy results in a complete distrust of the entire medical science establishment. Though I would argue that this type of knee-jerk distrust is no less healthy than blindly trusting the medical science establishment.

One way to dispel the fears of biased research would be to let the information flow freely, but that isn't how things occur. Have you ever tried to conduct a literature search on vaccine research without a medical research database subscription? What you find out is that if you actually want to read a lot of this research, you either have to subscribe to a peer reviewed journal or you have to drop $15-45 to purchase the right to download an article.

But even free access to information wouldn't be enough, because when you do get your hands on some published research, you become aware that there are generally some pretty opaque statistical techniques used to make sense of the data and that even if you understood the significance of those statistical tests, you probably couldn't get your hands on the data to verify the results yourself.

Maybe that type of evaluation seems like overkill, but it is actually how one would weigh the evidence on a given subject because there are instances where a reevaluation of presented data can result in significantly different conclusions than those presented by the study's author. You can spend a lot of time and money doing it, but unless you are doing so with every bit of research you happen to accept as valid, you are also likely swallowing misinformation.

I think that it is perfectly rational for a person who lacks the time, money and expertise, someone how is also aware of the tenuous balance between integrity and money, to be skeptical of scientific results as presented by the scientific community and disseminated by the scientific press. An analogous process occurs when people show a complete lack of skepticism and accept as the words of Einstein all scientific results as presented (a process which occurs quite frequently among the anti-anti-vaccine crowd).

Lasereth

The problem is that most people simply believe. "Believe." As in accepting something as true without proof. Sometimes there is no harm in this but oftentimes it results in shit like this spinning out of control. Go to a family reunion and just listen to what your family is talking about. 99% of it is bullshit, but not a single person there rejects it. If Obama is a muslim at your family reunion, then it's true, and many many people in the world will believe something just because someone said it. "Believe." They are fine with taking something as fact without evidence or proof. They are fine with acting on their emotions. Obama is a muslim loving terrorist. John is a Republican who loves "believing" stuff like everyone else. John wants his party to win the election, so he wants the other side to have negativity surrounding it, so he automatically believes the Obama BS just because he has an emotional reaction to it.

I'm serious about the family reunion shit. Just listen and you will be amazed at the bullshit spouted and believed...by everyone, without question.

A family member of mine: "I'm not getting that H1N1 vaccine. I heard that it's bad so I'm not getting it." There you go. They "heard it was bad." Therefore they're NOT getting it, based on the word of 1 person, who has no evidence. That's the problem with most of the US...people will believe in anything.

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dippin

I am going to take this into another direction, and instead of talking about why science is losing credibility in the modern world, I am going to discuss whether science is losing credibility in the modern world.

Because our perception of long term societal change is often wrong.

Let's look at the vaccination issue: during the 18th century, there were actually violent revolts against attempts to build a hospital in New England to do Small Pox inoculations.
Regarding creationism, not too long ago we had the Scopes trial, the Butler Act, and other laws banning the teaching of evolution.


If you look at the data, MCV vaccination, for example, is at all time highs in the US, France, and near all time highs in Canada. Even in places where it declined, like the UK, vaccination rates have since strongly rebounded.

DTP3 (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis) vaccination has a similar pattern: vaccination rates in the US have gone from 83% in 1992 to 96% in 2008. Polio vaccination in the US is at 93%, after reaching a low of 72% in 1992.

Even newer vaccines for rarer conditions, like the Haemophilus influenzae vaccine have been widely accepted (16% of 1 year olds vaccinate in 1993, 92% in 2007).

So the revolt against modern science is actually weaker now than it was in the past.

What we have here is a two-fold phenomena that gives us the impression that it is stronger: first, with the internet, cable, and an ever increasing number of media, fringe positions are more visible now than they were in the past, even if the number of people who believe in that has actually decreased. That is, Jenny McCarthy might be more vocal and have more space in the media nowadays, but the number of people who believe her is at an all time low.

Second, with the so called culture wars , a number of conservative politicians have adopted this radical relativistic position that all science is politics. That is s US specific issue, and though it shapes political discourse, it is more like the nationalization of a regional phenomena, as the republican party has come to rely more and more on southern voters.

But, again, this doesn't mean that science has actually lost a great deal of respect.

kutulu

In general people (Republicans) are rejecting intellectualism. It's like the movie "Idiocracy" is coming to life.

As far as vaccinations go, when you talk to a friend who's daughter went into seizures after both rounds of vaccinations that freaks you out. There can be serious side effects of vaccines. Our solution for our kids is to take it more slowly. We are waiting till the kids are a little older to get their vaccinations.

Global warming is extremely complicated. Mitigation means real lifestyle changes and financial impacts. People don't like being told what to do. Making it worse, very few people are capable of understanding the basic principles of global warming. Let's face it, most people didn't take anything more than high school biology. It is easy for persuasive people to take data out of context, misrepresent data, or flat out lie about conclusions.

Cynthetiq, I think it is interesting that you chose something like car seats as an example. You have one guy, an economist, challenging decades of research done by actual scientists. After reading some of his articles, he isn't all that honest in his analysis. He likes to rely on the fact that many people use the equipment wrong, he likes to talk about how costly they are (always using the highest costs of course), and he bases his findings only on fatality rates. Injury rates can be reduced by car seats and the severity of the injuries can be less. They are designed specifically for those body types. Sure the auto makers might be able to make seat belts that adjust to a toddler's size but then you have even more ways for people to incorrectly use equipment (never mind forcing the auto makers to do that). Finally, even if they are only a percentage point or two better than seat belts, it doesn't help when your kid is the 1 in 100 and an extra $50 might have saved his life.

It's just like the recent discussion on mamograms in the media. They seem to have determined that a relatively small amount of lives are saved by early screening. Sure it sounds reasonable that people should start later but the end result would be that more people will die that could have been saved by a fairly inexpensive test.

You have a problem with packaging that shows what allergins may be present in a product? Really? How the fuck does a label affect your life? It doesn't cost any money to list allergins on packaging and it could save someone's life. Yes, when carried out to an extreme like banning peanuts at a school it is ridiculous.

roachboy

i agree in general with both filtherton and dippin above, so what i write here builds on them in a way, or presupposes that you've read their posts.


it seems to me that part of the problem the op is about is restated in the op itself. what exactly does the phrase "modern society" refer to? where is it?

same problem obtains for the category "science"---what are you talking about specifically? is there A Science in general? where is it? does it have special Science Buildings? how come no-one knows about Science Headquarters?

where does the simple alternative "science" vs "superstition" come from?
are all modes of being-sceptical about scientific activities in all social sectors the same? so there's no particular difference between "science" in the service of industrial food production and "science" in the service of--o i dunno---cosmology as a modelling experiment? how does that work, that there'd be no difference?

on what basis do you lump a preference for organic or locally-produced foods in with superstition? why is that preference not potentially a political matter (it is for me) and so a preference that one can come to on entirely different grounds from those which you ascribe to it?
another way: so are you saying that one expresses one's "faith" in this abstraction Science by eating fast food and drinking diet sodas?
how does that work exactly?


yet another way:
how is it the case that both the categories "modern society" and "science" are not expressions of superstition?

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it make you sick.

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Halx

I feel that society is a dichotomy of two mindstates equally positioned away from the centrist line. At some points in history, the two sides are close to the line, and the effect is a seemingly uniform society with only minor differences, peace and prosperity. At other points, the two sides are quite far away from the line and it appears as if the two sides are absolute opposites. This is the point where we are now.

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The_Dunedan

Part of the problem leading to this rejection (which is lamentable in the extreme) is that alleged "scientists" keep getting caught engaging in dishonest, misleading, or lazy behavior that has real consequences.

DDT, for example, has turned out to be mostly harmless (unless you're a mosquito). Rachel Carson and her enablers have turned out to be liars who manipulated their research in order to reach predetermined (and unsupported) conclusions regarding the toxicity of DDT and it's effects upon wildlife. The decision to ban DDT was made by an unelected bureaucrat, who did not attend a single day of the EPA hearings on the issue and over-rode EPA's own scientists, studies, and reccomendations and banned DDT with the stroke of a pen. The flunky in question later turned out to be a Carson disciple who admitted to having made up his mind before the hearings even began.
The American Spectator : DDT, Fraud, and Tragedy
The Straight Dope: Was Rachel Carson a fraud and is DDT actually safe for humans?
Hawaii Reporter: Hawaii Reporter

Then of course you have the wonders of Thalidomide, which the FDA said was safe, and Gulf War Syndrome, which is now all but officially acknowledged as having been caused by using American soldiers and marines as guinea-pigs to test dangerous cocktails of various vaccines and other drugs. Add into this the apparent wide-ranging and quite Orwellian suppression of dissent, falsification and massaging of data, destruction of data, and obstruction of investigation and transparence at East Anglia, and you can see why people may have a hard time trusting scientists.

My take on it is not that science itself is being rejected, far from it. What's being rejected is intransparent, politicized, "do what we tell you because we're smarter than you, and don't you DARE ask for explanations when something doesn't make sense!" attitude which has crept into science over the last 50 or so years, ever since DARPA and the Manhattan Project made science a Gov't-sponsored growth industry. People are tired of being condescended to, lied to, and ordered around by people who are either unaware of or simply don't care about the effects these edicts have on people out in the wider world.

Cynthetiq

Since I've been studying the food service industry for the past 4 years it's quite annoying. The food allergy groups are discussing labeling that is consistent across the board, so thus when the Peanut Allergens group certifies that you clean your machines and don't have peanut products tainting your machines or foodstuffs, you get a certification, then you get to put the Peanut Free label on the outside of your product. This doesn't come for free. It's a cost born to the manufacturer or producers. This is not much different than yet another kashurus (kosher certification) for labeling a product kosher. This can mean the difference of sales or not sales in certain stores or markets.

So if as a small business I contract to a food processor that also processes food that has nuts, even if my product does not contain nuts, I have to put that on the outside of my package that it is produced on machines that have processed nuts.

This can cost me potential sales both present and future, because if I move to a different plant that does not use nuts, the consumer may not ever pick up my product ever again to check to see that it doesn't have any peanut taint.

This cost is ALWAYS passed onto the consumer.

and as far as the fatality vs. injury, that's a major flaw in the discussion. The point is that I could be hit by a bus and if there were fences that only opened to allow me to cross the street when the light was green... a few dollars here and a few dollars there.

The problem with the car seat isn't that it's about saving $50 it's about being FORCED by law to no longer have the choice or decision to make the choice. It's a REQUIREMENT in pretty much all states.

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kutulu

Oh please you present the arguement as if it is such a burden on the final cost of the product. Since the incidence of nut allergies is so low the amount of lost sales can't be that high. Furthermore, what does the certification cost? A couple thousand dollars? Spread that around all the products made there and the cost is quite insignificant. Oh wait, nevermind, I just finished reading a bunch of articles about all the jobs lost because manufacturers had to disclose some of the potential allergins that might be present in their product.

Hyperbole much? You're right, there is no difference between mandating carseats and fences that engage automatically that would protect people in crosswalks. None at all.

The only flaw in the discussion is that it is pointless to base the analysis on fatalities. If an accident is severe enough to kill someone in a seat belt it probably was severe enough to kill someone in the car seat. However, in a less serious accident, a restraint system that is designed for the body size of a toddler will protect them from injuries better than one designed for somone twice as tall. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that. Younger kids even use 5 point harnesses, which are even safer (NASCAR doesn't use them for the lulz).

Adults are FORCED to wear seatbelts (they's takin' R freedum). There is an additional cost either way. One way would require cars to have restraints that can be used for kids (passing a cost to everyone) or to force parents to buy the seat. The way you piss and moan about having to subsizide other peoples' costs I would think you'd prefer it the way it is.

It isn't that much and there are programs for those who can't afford it.

Cynthetiq

It is a significant cost. I've been costing manufacturing plants for the past 3 years and the costs of CLEANING the machines varies from $3k-$4k. The costs of certification is in the tens of thousands. While you don't think it's significant it is to the small business owner who manufactures in cycles instead of owning a plant and machinery. It's costs that aren't cheap to the small markup.

Since you'd like to make this more about some sort of personal attack instead of the discussion of data and parsing that date I'm bowing out of the rest of the discussion. You got google and the internet. I must be dumb and wrong because I've actually done the legwork and have a significant investment in the food industry.

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Wes Mantooth

Obviously the rejection of science stems from many different sources , however I think distrust of authority plays a large role in the problem. Look at the commonly held beliefs we often encounter. The Government is corrupt and doesn't have our best interest at heart, Corporations and Big Business lie to us and sell us products that hurt us or make us sick, Doctors don't care about healing us they want money. Isn't it a simple leap to conclude that scientists are just as corrupt? Are they willing to say and do anything to get published? Get famous? Get Rich?

I'm not arguing that the above is always true but we have to admit that it is a popular belief in todays society. That mistrust causes people to seek out others they can trust, a parent, friend, pastor, guru, teacher, etc who is often times just as uninformed as anybody else and a vicious circle begins to form. Until our society as a whole is given reason to develop a healthy view of the "powers that be" I think we will continue to see the same mistrust of science continue.

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filtherton

But the standard practice of embracing science in the US involves "just believing." Pro-vaccine, pro-evolution, pro-subatomic particle, pro-relativity, based on what I've seen around me, the vast majority of the people who fall into any of these categories have absolutely no clue what the science actually says. The only proof they need is for someone with a PhD to tell them its true (provided their preconceived notions are confirmed, god help the scientist who questions global warming).

This type of embracing of science is completely superficial no reason for celebration. I'd rather people understand the science and reject it than blindly follow along. Maybe not, though.

Mantus

Thank you everyone for the wonderful responses. I have to say that this thread has generated more point of views than I can respond to in detail so please forgive in advance if I skip anyone or fail to address all your points.

The Media,

It bothers me to no end when media places quackery and superstition on level ground with science. They’ll bring in some idiot who believes in healing power of rocks he found in his back yard and sit him across a table from a scientist with decades worth of education and experience. They’ll then proceed to give them equal airtime, opportunity and respect in the name of being “fare and balanced”. This kind of process completely deflates the credibility of a scientific background. It’s like brining in a toddler to argue constitutional law with Kenneth Starr and giving them both “fair and balanced” opportunity to present their points. “Wait a second Mr. Starr. Looks like Billy put down his fire truck and is ready to make a point on the second amendment…”

Willtravel,

I agree with you. Proper education is a cure for many social ailments. While I’ve seen the denialism mentality among educated people it takes a group of un-informed individual to drive the groupthink and put blinders on each other that is necessary to maintain an unfounded point of view. A better educated general population is more likely to check itself against superstitions – as many posters are doing for me in this thread by pointing out flaws and gaps in my understanding of this subject.

So the question is: what kind of education? I believe that everyone should have at least a basic understanding of how our world works. Building perspective from an early age is of great importance.

Filtherton,

I couldn’t agree more that scientists like any other human being are susceptible to human flaws and need to be accountable for their actions. However, the superstition led movements mentioned in my OP do very little to hold science accountable and accomplish nothing but spread ignorance and waste resources for real inquiry.

The first hurdle is that it takes a certain amount of knowledge and experience to properly review science based issues. I believe this to be a major cause of strife between the general public and science. Many anti-science movements use this divide between public and the ivory tower to their advantage by vilifying entire segments of the scientific community in order to discredit it. This is seen as painting all microbiologists being the pockets of Big Pharma or all genetic researchers and chemists as employees of Monsanto or all evolutionary biologists as godless heathens that believe Jesus was a monkey. This is not having healthy skepticism but outright paranoia.

The second hurdle is people who adhere to superstitious thinking are close-minded. First they shut out all sources of conventional knowledge on the subject and then proceed to develop their own mythology and doctrine surrounding their beliefs. Just look at all the bullshit information available regarding alternative medicine out there. These people don’t read medical journals; they study dogma to strengthen their own ignorance – it’s almost as if they are anti-knowledge.

That is an extreme by far. Clearly most of the population is more rational but they are still influenced by such people. As a species we respond to emotion. A scientist will rarely tell you that they are 100% certain of anything. A snake oil salesman on the other hand will put his heart and soul behind his beliefs. This is why Jenny McCarthy’s “mommy instinct” gains credibility over cold hard science in the minds of many.

Anyways I have to run, You gave me much to think about, I’ll continue this on the weekend…

Dippin,

Thank you for posting those statistics. Since then I to have made an effort to check facts presented by the anti-anti-vaccine movement and found that in almost all cases they impact has been blown out of proportion if not blatantly lied about. That was a big eye opener.

roachboy,

I'm not writing a paper up for review here. The terms I used are vague on purpose. I realize language is important and if I choose to pursue this field in inquiry further I'll need to communicate better. If you can think of better semantics based on what you've read in my posts I'll be more than happy edit them.

Cheers everyone!

new man

Just a little correction on this about thalidomide. The FDA rejected the approval of thalidomide in the US, saving hundreds and thousands of babies.

From Wikipedia:
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, more than 10,000 children in 46 countries were born with deformities such as phocomelia, as a consequence of thalidomide use.[11] The Australian obstetrician William McBride and the German pediatrician Widukind Lenz suspected a link between birth defects and the drug, and this was proved by Lenz in 1961.[12][13] McBride was later awarded a number of honours including a medal and prize money by the prestigious L'Institut de la Vie in Paris.[14]

In the United Kingdom the drug was licensed in 1958 and, of the babies born with defects, 456 survived. The drug was withdrawn in 1961 but it was not until 1968, after a long campaign by The Sunday Times newspaper, that a compensation settlement for the UK victims was reached with Distillers Company Limited.[15][16] In Germany approximately 2,500 thalidomide babies were born.[13]


1962: FDA inspector Frances Oldham Kelsey receives an award from President John F. Kennedy for blocking sale of Thalidomide in the United StatesThe impact in the United States was minimized when pharmacologist and M.D. Frances Oldham Kelsey refused Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for an application from Richardson Merrell to market thalidomide, saying more study was needed. Richardson Merrell gave the tablets to doctors on the understanding that the drug was still under investigation. Seventeen children were born in the U.S. with the defects.[11]

In 1962, the United States Congress enacted laws requiring tests for safety during pregnancy before a drug can receive approval for sale in the U.S.[17] Other countries enacted similar legislation, and thalidomide was not prescribed or sold for decades

Strange Famous

science is simply a tool

In the hands of the military / capitalist master class - it is a tool used for the ruination of the physical world and the immiseration of the people in the blind and slavish lust for wealth and accumulation of captal.

It is the ills of modern science which have created the worst sickness (AIDS) and the worst crisis (Climate Change) of our times - is it any wonder that people are hesitant to trust science to fix the things it has created without remorse

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

kutulu

You aren't actually going with the whole AIDS was a govt plan are you?

Strange Famous

I dont think that the state planned what has happened now, of course.

But AIDS was man made, and like so many of science's "Frankenstien's Monsters" it got out of control and became a tragic disaster

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

Stare At The Sun

Show me a single peer reviewed journal that says that.

The_Jazz

You have absolutely no credible evidence to back up outrageous claims like that. You might was well claim that AIDS was introduced to humanity by a tranny hooker who sucked Bigfoot's dick for a cup full of magic beans.

---------- Post added at 02:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:13 PM ----------

Please note that this is the nice way to say the same thing I just did.

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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

Lasereth

Yeah but my post wasn't about believing in science, it was about believing in anything without proof, which most Americans do. I almost agree with you on the understanding and rejection of science though.

__________________
"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert

Baraka_Guru

Isn't rejecting something like science akin to rejecting something like economics?

Why not reject economics? It too lets bad things happen. Let's reject all forms of economics.

But wait, we can't, can we? Economics of some form have been in our culture quite possibly for the entirety of our species. Well, science is the same way. Having the curiosity to know things and how to apply new knowledge to practical applications has probably been in our species for the whole time as well. And we can't just up and reject science.

We can't avoid science or its impact, nor would we want to. The continuing practice of science reveals something new and useful probably every day. Mind you, technology and experimentation has yielded effects that are detrimental to our health and the health of the planet. But science addresses that too, especially in this day and age. We're no longer in the Industrial Age.

I don't think this is the problem here. The problem is a religious--or, more accurately, puritanical--paranoia or sense of persecution in response to advances in science that cut too close, or into, religious dogma, "truth," or text.

Just as some would argue that homosexuality is an abomination, there are religious groups who view certain biological sciences as transgressions. They don't care what they stand to benefit from it. They're obsessed with how it infringes on their sense of faith, no matter how misguided that may be. It's been a while since the dust settled after learning that the earth isn't the centre of the universe, nor is the sun. How long did you think it would take before other scientific discoveries caused conflicts with what people perceive as their unyielding "truth"?

Ironically, this leads them to turn a blind eye to the actual realities of "God's universe."

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Strange Famous

certainly people should and will reject economics. There is nothing which has caused more harm in history

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

Baraka_Guru

Finish reading (or reread) what I wrote. You can't reject economics. Unless, of course, you want to live as a hermit...or not at all.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Stare At The Sun

You're insane.

Economics and science are the best things in human history. Without commerce and innovation we would be stuck in the stone age.

Progress is only possible through science and the exchange of both ideas and resources.

Religion doesn't encourage innovation, just take a gander at the dark ages.

Economics does encourage innovation, just look at the industrial revolution.


If you loathe modern science and economics so much, move to North Korea. They have communism, no appreciation for science, and are just as backwards as you!

I'm sure they'd love to have you.

Baraka_Guru

That's not even the point. There was likely a form of economics even in the Stone Age. Humans are social creatures. I'm guessing trading and some kind of division of labour was a part of that society.

An economy is basically the existence of a form of trade or a place of exchange. If you don't want to be a part of an economy, you must live as a self-supported hermit.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Stare At The Sun

True enough.

However, living as a hermit wouldn't be so bad..in a distant future on a boat with gills and a machine that recycles your urine...

roachboy

this seems like a strange conversation. i don't see how rejecting certain positions outlined by economists or scientists amounts to denying the physical existence of economics as a discipline housed in certain buildings in certain areas that does certain things. nor does rejecting particular theories or explanations based on them outlined by the scientists of your choice is the same as denying the physical existence of science as a set of institutions.

and economics as a field of academic inquiry is a product of the 19th century. it mutated out of political economy. when the americans got hold of it, they stripped out the history and sociology bits of political economy and replaced them with the "neutral" language of number. economics as a subfield of academic work is not the same as thinking about economic activity---which is a subset of broader forms of social activity in any event (obviously).

i understand the position that strange famous appears to be arguing for...it's a mangled version of a marxist critique of science as it functions within a capitalist context. there are points to be made in this direction--he's just not making any of them, and the points he does try to make aren't particular considered.

it's not rocket science to say that in many areas of inquiry, scientific activity is entirely an extension of more general forms of capitalist rationality and in the repeating of this rationality scientific activity can and has produced politically and materially problematic outcomes.
but that's not the same as saying "science is hooey, all it does is wreck things."
and that's not the direction the marxist critique of the sciences ever headed in.
it's a kind of mangling then.
one done in a way that resembles the way my dryer wrinkles clothes--it does it as if wrinkling them were it's job. so here mangling a marxist critique of science as an institution within a capitalist context is being done as if mangling it were the point.

most curious.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Baraka_Guru

No, that's the problem. Strange isn't being clear. I know he supports communism, so it doesn't makes sense for him to reject economics outright. But why would one want to reject science? I can't see how any society could prosper over the long term without some sense of technological advancement.

Strange, are you suggesting that a communist hunger-gatherer society is ideal? I think it's improbable at this state in humanity. Maybe even impossible with our numbers. Though if you reject most technologies, I'm sure our life expectancy would drop to around thirty- or forty-something. So there's that.

Not all science is bad, neither is all economy.

I don't buy your arguments, Strange. Actually, I wouldn't consider them arguments at all. You don't even offer any alternatives. You seem to rather just tear things down.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

MSD

Science is a process through which data are gathered and analyzed to find whether or not hypotheses are empirically verifiable. There is no headquarters, science is not a shadowy cabal of sinister men in white labcoats plot our demise. There are buildings -- every research lab and every university classroom are places for science to be conducted and to produce knowledge.
So are scientists being nefarious and misleading or was this decision an example of what happens when you ignore the scientists?

filtherton

You're talking about an idealized notion of science. It is something that I think most scientists aspire to, but in general there is much more to the story.

Here is a modified, but frequently accurate definition of science:

Science is a process, frequently funded by people trying to make money or support a preconceived policy, through which data is gathered and analyzed in an attempt to support the quarterly sales goals or preconceived policy of the people providing the funding.

See here: http://www.prevention.ch/amjinmed2006.pdf

Adami is currently a professor at Harvard and Doll is still one of the big names in 20th century epidemiology.

This is an example of how science sometimes, more and more as government funding is cut happens in reality.

Wes Mantooth

Interesting post Baraka, thought it worth a little thought and response.

Even if one is a hard line Communist I wouldn't think they can really reject economics as a whole, certainly they would simply favor one theory over another? Even a hunter gatherer society has at its roots a very simple economy.

I would also think it would be near if not completely impossible to find anybody who out and out rejects every single scientific theory. It seems more that you have uninformed/paranoid/skeptical/ect (pick whichever is applicable) people that simply reject certain theories for whatever reason. I can't imagine there is somebody out there that rejects everything from the theory of gravity to the wheel to fire.

Anyway I agree I don't see how anybody could label all science/economy as bad. No matter what you do or how you live you are going to have to subscribe to certain principals weather you want to or not.

__________________