The Myth of the Noble Scientist

Science obviously has an internal value system. It treats truth and objectivity as guiding values. And science certainly receives a lot of grief for doing that from the loony-left, from 'feminist standpoint epistemologists' and the like. Personally, I stand in solidarity with science in those increasingly bizarre academic controversies, I'm just pointing out that epistemological values are values and they are sometimes challenged.

But I don't think that MR was criticizing scientists or the values internal to science so much as he was addressing the role of science within the rest of society. That's the context of his suggesting that the role of truth and objectivity values in science can sometimes be more of an ideal than a reality. Scientists are motivated by funding and by careerism as well as by the 'higher' values.

MR's concerned about the naive and uncritical adulation of science and scientists that's seemingly expected from laymen. 'What should we think about X, Y or Z? The scientists know! They will tell us!' So to answer your question, I think that MR is concerned that giving science the social role of ultimate authority on everything in life promotes a 'just believe whatever you are told' system in which conformity and credulity become the primary values, justified by faith that the scientists can justify everything they say by employing their supposedly epistemologically infallible Scientific Method.

But never mind, you ignorant little laymen, if you are in no position to understand all the arcane reasoning and mathematical hieroglyphs for yourselves. All that people like you are called upon to do is believe.

Science is and can be a beautiful thing. But it can also turn very ugly if it is ever allowed to become The One True Church, where those who continue to express any skepticism about the catechism are burned at the stake as deniers.

 

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When I wrote my little thing about plumbers, I was just answering Dinosaur's question about who is more objective than scientists. My answer was basically that anyone who works with their hands could reasonably be a contender. Machinists, mechanics, warehousemen, ditch diggers, bus drivers. They are in constant contact with the objective physical world and inject far less of themselves into their work product than scientists. They aren't always hypothesizing, theorizing, imagining and trying to spin up universal cosmic principles out of what they do. It's weird, but often when we talk about science, we aren't literally talking about the physical world at all, but are talking instead about products of the scientific imagination: fields, dark energy, cosmic strings, Schroedinger's equation... How much of science's theoretical language actually corresponds in the scientific-realist sense to real objectively existing being out there in the world?

What's more, we don't have plumbing celebrities like Feynman, who is better known among the general public for his witty and breezy writing style than for his physics. We don't have plumbing demigods like Einstein, who is still avidly quoted today for his views on things like religion, a subject that he probably didn't know any more about than anyone else.

 

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A lot of truth in that.

One reason, it seems to me, why science goes to great lengths to establish its observations are objective is precisely because its theories are abstractions, often several layers removed from the tangible data on which they are founded. Those that work at the level of the directly tangible do not have to go far to establish their facts. The fuse has blown and you can readily verify this and which one. But the data that tells you the chemical reaction is 1st order in OH. may be less clear and your derivation of the rate determining step and its activation energy and pre-exponential factor may have even more possibilities for mis-steps. You feel a lot better when someone else has had a go and come up with figures similar to your own.

The other reason is that a whole edifice of theory is constructed from the data. If it turns out some of that data cannot be relied, some large pieces of masonry can come down about your ears.

 

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Well the problem is that we only live a finite number of years. So we do not have the time or the resources as individuals to do the field testing of everything we think we know, to confirm that we know it when it comes to the different branches of science or anything really.

So we have to trust those who are acredited to certain specializations.

Just because you cant confirm what a scientist is telling you (due to lack of knowledge and/or resources) doesn't mean you shouldnt believe him, and in most cases to question him while not having the knowledge yourself is silly.

Not believing something you cant possibly confirm is no less silly than believing it. You are no less sheepish or ignorant.

 

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Another false statement back3ed with 0 evidence. More of an ad hominem statement. So much quote mining lol.

Your jealousy is astonishing.

 

Here's what "quotemining" means:

"The practice of quoting out of context (sometimes referred to as "contextomy" and quote mining), is an informal fallacy and a type of false attribution in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning."==https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_quoting_out_of_context

Here's what "quoting" means:

"to repeat or copy out (a group of words from a text or speech), typically with an indication that one is not the original author or speaker."==https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&q=define quoting&oq=de&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j0j69i59j69i57j69i60j0.8475j0j8

See the difference now?

 

And what is the context of the quotes in your trolltivational posters?

 

It is also referred (perhaps slang) to when someone attempts to quote someone else, typically a person of favor, in hopes that the persons credibility that they quoted would rub off on them. It never works. And it absolutely applies to you lol.

 

No...that's not what it means at all. You're just making up bullshit again.

 

Go look them up. You're the one claiming these quotes are distortions. Prove it.

 

Nope, not at all.

Everything I've said is absolutely true. Your lack of understanding does not equate to it being false.

 

You have the burden of proof backwards LOL.

 

Are you making the claim the quotes are distortions? Then the burden is on you to prove that, not me. I'm not claiming that.

 

Are you making the claim they are not distortians? You have to prove that, not me. Because I'm not claiming that.

 

You accused me of quotemining, which is distorting the meaning of statements. The burden is on you to prove that claim, not for me to disprove it.

 

The burden is on you to prove that your information is not distorted and therefore valid. Not for me to disprove it.

 

No it isn't. You made the claim they were distortions. Now you have to back up that claim. Either that or admit you are making unsupported accusations.

 

Rather quite a lazy fallacy. What's the philosophical justification for that?

 

Magical Realist's reputation for his contempt of science.