Ego of science, ridiculed by the fittest

I've seen all to often, from both historical context to even now. Scientists who are supposed to be objective, throw out their ego and ridicule anyone who has ideas and evidence contrary to their beliefs. Feels like being in a classroom full of teenagers. That's not being objective. An objective mind follows the evidence and try to prove or disprove theories and ideas. Not ignore evidence to the contrary. An objective scientists doesn't function by conjecture. If you were a csi would you ignore evidence that was contrary to your theory? No you wouldn't, otherwise you'd be out of a job. It is unprofessional, egotistical, and inhumane to ridicule another scientist just because they disagree with your findings. You should look at their evidence and ideas, work together not against each other. Undermining another scientist just to gain attention for your own is unethical. So when someone comes out with new ideas or evidence. Think about the scientists from history who were condemned and ridiculed and later proved right. Their weight, and anguish is on your shoulders.

 

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Ooh, is this a sock of previously-slighted troll?
Is this someone who doesn't understand the difference between having their conjectures ripped to pieces and having themselves attacked?
Is this, essentially, someone who doesn't know how science works?
(Is this someone who can't consistently form coherent sentences?)

 

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Too right, science only will ever work out so much, then it becomes a faith based belief, no different than religion.

So i agree, let them fool themselves they know everything, they do not, so why should anyone care. I bet in history many people found out something or stuff and it died with them, as they knew people could not understand or too set in there ways, lol

To op, i would not care if i was you, let the morons lead the morons.

 

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Nope.

Straw man.

 

Well gee whiz, welcome to the forum!! You sound like a fun guy. By the way the majority of scientists do not "ignore evidence", "function by conjecture" or "Undermining another scientist just to gain attention". If one does they do not last long. What you are describing are uneducated, antiscience want-to-be pseudo-science cranks.

Members that are ridiculed are either:
1. The ones that present a retarded conjecture and when they are politely shown why the conjecture is wrong continue to proclaim they are right ad nauseam.
2. The ones that start off proclaiming that mainstream science is all screwed up and they have the real theory (which is ALWAYS just arm waving conjecture}.

 

What just because you say so, sure, i get it, lol

 

Scientists are just people, with typical human faults.

 

Your complaint seems to be that scientists are normal human beings with an emotional investment in what they work on. In a perfect world I agree scientists would all be dispassionate, but that is not human reality. As in other kinds of enterprise (e.g. business or politics) egos, prejudices and non-objective judgements have to be managed, as part of the social, collective activity of doing science. This is where disciplines such as peer review come in, for example.

But on one point I disagree with you. While a good scientist does not ignore evidence contrary to his or her theory, he or she is perfectly free to ridicule a rival theory if it is NOT supported by evidence. That is the way that pseudoscience is eliminated from the scientific enterprise. It is a valid quality control process.

As Feynman, or whoever it was, said, "Keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out."

By the way, which scientists have you in mind that were ridiculed by their peers, only to be proved right later? I can think of some scientists who were ridiculed by non-scientists (e.g. Galileo, Darwin) and one who was I think indeed ridiculed by fellow scientists (Wegener). However I do not think this phenomenon is actually as common in history as pseudoscientists would have you believe.

 

Sagan.

 

exactly, more than enough morons in this group too.

 

Ironically, it's almost entirely the pseudoscience posters here who engage in the kinds of behaviour about which the OP complains. I haven't seen a single alternative theory presented here that didn't involve completely ignoring our existing understanding and all the evidence on which it's based (other than borrowing from conventional jargon to make reference to "electrons", "spacetime" and whatnot), and in lieu of any supporting evidence for the proposed alternatives, the only justification given is that existing science is "boring", incomplete and takes a long time to learn. Scientists are human beings like everyone else, they can be sweethearts or complete utter pricks or even both at the same time, but it doesn't make someone an asshole to call an old wives' tale what it is.

If real scientists actually thought they already knew everything, what the hell would be the point in anyone going into science or continuing funding for it? Where on Earth do these ridiculous false accusations about scientists spawn from? Is there some crazy guy in a deep dark dungeon somewhere who draws up caricatures of science and sells them to folks like yourself as educational guidebooks?

 

You see, the problem here is that you made unsupported claims and then complain when I do the same...
However:

Please provide evidence that science will become "a faith based belief".
Or are you just making sh*t up here?

Since science, and scientists, have never claimed to "know everything" this is a straw man argument.

 

Ah, was it him? Thanks.

 

Hah! :cheers:

Indeed, who are these people? All of them are dropouts. Obviously a bunch of them are fundies. A bunch of them are attacking evolution, climate science, and of course Big Bang Theory. And nearly all of them are doing so covertly (or at least thinly veiled) to avoid immediately triggering the site's immune response. The rest, if they are truly not religiously motivated, are evidently striking back at the system that failed them. And many of them are expressing pathological markers.

There is this explanation, which still leaves me asking: who are these people? I don't think a dropout can properly be called a post-modernist, but (no to make a mountain out of a molehill) the anti-science crowd has certainly managed to recruit them.

 

I see this view of scientists mainly from conservatives, and not just the religous ones. They think that their "common sense" trumps scientific knowledge.

 

Now this is refreshing and oh so true

 

Name one.

 

Kepler

 

I copy below the relevant para from the Wiki entry on Kepler:

QUOTE

Reception of his astronomy[edit]
Kepler's laws were not immediately accepted. Several major figures such as Galileo and René Descartes completely ignored Kepler's Astronomia nova. Many astronomers, including Kepler's teacher, Michael Maestlin, objected to Kepler's introduction of physics into his astronomy. Some adopted compromise positions. Ismael Boulliau accepted elliptical orbits but replaced Kepler's area law with uniform motion in respect to the empty focus of the ellipse, while Seth Ward used an elliptical orbit with motions defined by an equant.[71][72][73]

Several astronomers tested Kepler's theory, and its various modifications, against astronomical observations. Two transits of Venus and Mercury across the face of the sun provided sensitive tests of the theory, under circumstances when these planets could not normally be observed. In the case of the transit of Mercury in 1631, Kepler had been extremely uncertain of the parameters for Mercury, and advised observers to look for the transit the day before and after the predicted date. Pierre Gassendi observed the transit on the date predicted, a confirmation of Kepler's prediction.[74] This was the first observation of a transit of Mercury. However, his attempt to observe the transit of Venus just one month later was unsuccessful due to inaccuracies in the Rudolphine Tables. Gassendi did not realize that it was not visible from most of Europe, including Paris.[75] Jeremiah Horrocks, who observed the 1639 Venus transit, had used his own observations to adjust the parameters of the Keplerian model, predicted the transit, and then built apparatus to observe the transit. He remained a firm advocate of the Keplerian model.[76][77][78]

Epitome of Copernican Astronomy was read by astronomers throughout Europe, and following Kepler's death it was the main vehicle for spreading Kepler's ideas. Between 1630 and 1650, it was the most widely used astronomy textbook, winning many converts to ellipse-based astronomy.[56] However, few adopted his ideas on the physical basis for celestial motions. In the late 17th century, a number of physical astronomy theories drawing from Kepler's work—notably those of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli and Robert Hooke—began to incorporate attractive forces (though not the quasi-spiritual motive species postulated by Kepler) and the Cartesian concept of inertia. This culminated in Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687), in which Newton derived Kepler's laws of planetary motion from a force-based theory of universal gravitation.[79]

UNQUOTE


"Condemned and ridiculed"? This guy was appointed Imperial Mathematician to Emperor Rudolph II at the age of 30, having been taken under the wing of Tycho Brahe, who was greatly impressed by his ability.

 

This is what my grandfather (quondam prof of ecclesiastical history at Glasgow) used to call the "I'm thick and proud of it!" stance.

It's an ostentatiously anti-intellectual cast of mind, that you see a lot of in right-wing politics, both in the US and in the UK.