116. The War on Science | THUNK

The so-called "War on Science" isn't about hostility, it's a simple case of forgetting how science is different.

-Links for the Curious-

Some great examples of how bias can cause us to wander away from the scientific method (thanks Your2ndPlanB!):

[kwhite]

Oh man. You nailed this. Thank you, random YouTube recommendation.

Really though, you might just be my favorite new YouTube channel. I'll let you know after I binge watch all of your videos.

Now pardon me while I reap those sweet sweet likes after I share this on facebook...

[doktor_ghul]

As far as I'm concerned, the best reaction to being proved, conclusively, wrong about a previously held conclusion is a sincere "thank you" for advancing the understanding of humanity regarding that branch of science. Unfortunately, people tend to freak out and call for emotionally negative responses to being found as incorrect. Burning witches, torches and pitchforks, and prison time are three responses I immediately recall. The so-called "War on Science" seems, to me, to be the worst response. You have another subscriber, sir.

[TheAgavi]

Another great video, man. I think the only way to get people to acknowledge science as a better tool for understanding the world than their intuition and experience is for them to learn critical thinking and logic. I was the worst for that kind of thing but it seriously only took a couple of 100 lvl units in logic and my whole life turned around. That shiz should be taught in high schools to prepare people for the real world.

[improv]

Great video. Another summation of the situation goes like this:
Scientists: "We Thiiinnk that the sun Miiiigghht be a ball of cheese, but we're still looking into it."
Media: "SUN IS A BALL OF CHEESE???"
Populace: "SUN IS A BALL OF CHEESE!!!!"
Scientists: "Oh, hmmm, while our initial tests pointed towards the dairy-fication of our sun, we've found more data that suggests... uhh..."
Populace: "SCIENCE IS WRONG!! SUN IS NOT CHEESE. Y SO STUPID SCIENCE."
Populace Minority: "it's a conspiracy, the sun is cheese and obama did it"

I think a very damaging factor in the cultural war on science is the manner in which scientific query is portrayed to the public. Not only does that include media announcement of "breakthroughs" but also the public concept of a "theory"

[incollectio]

This was damn near perfect summary. The worst thing about your channel is that I didn't stumble onto it sooner (I have like 30+ tabs open that I need to catch up on so I can be content :D ).

[AmaranthOriginal]

As someone who is both vaguely scientifically literate and who both studied and practiced journalism, I think I should point out one other issue with the idea that "science keeps changing its mind" all the time: It doesn't. Well, not necessarily.

A lot of this idea that science is changing its mind originates in the press, and the press is often not scientifically literate. They will look at a press release on a paper and get the wrong idea, or even just copy from a source that has done the same and not look at either the original paper or the press release. As someone who plays video games, I get an article every 3-4 days in my news feed about a study saying video games cause violence or don't cause violence. If you look at them, a good number of them cite the same handful of papers. Some of these studies aren't even new.

Now, it's possible you're thinking "lol games journalism is a joke, " but some of the articles getting shared are from reputable magazines and networks. Publications who aren't much better on other science. I've never looked into the eggs thing, but I end up wondering if the "good for you"/"bad for you" shift was science or the press. Have scientists made discoveries that go back and forth, or did people report on things they didn't understand? Both are definitely possible, but actually working with journalists who couldn't seem to follow a scientific paper (and often didn't try) made me more acutely aware of this problem.

It's quite possible that both the "eggs are good" and "eggs are bad" people got those ideas from the same papers or sources.

[alexgrigas]

"Anything goes" - Paul Feyerabend

[MetsuryuVids]

Great video.

I'm ashamed to say I've thought like that myself sometimes when reading scientific news that contradicted my mental models, thanks to this maybe I'll be more aware when I do it in the future.

>How can we convince people that science holds a priviledged position over other sources of information?

The Socratic method could be a good way?

[LeeCarlson]

And my daughter's high school science teachers have informed me, bald-facedly, that they no longer bother to teach the scientific method. This is one reason that I'm glad that my teenager's mother and I made certain that she learned it well before she got out of grade school.

[julesmoore]

I'm gonna be marching! Me and my aerospace friend are going to the syracuse march

[robertrowland]

My problem with science isn't about "Its method"; no complaint there. The validity of applied science speaks for itself. It's about the disavowed fudging that goes on in theoretical science where falsifiability is impossible and one unproven assertion is predicated on the assumed validity of yet another. In short, the weak link is "the human factor". If scientists didn't have egos or an axe to grind, were willing to acknowledge their discipline's limitations instead of assuming that nothing lies beyond its scope and would occupy their time searching for the truth actually available to them instead of hoping to make a name for themselves by constructing castles in the air, I believe the reputation of science would be and remain pristine.

[BornOfTheCypher]

Conspiracy theorists and the like are all fair enough to fix as the opposition to scientific primacy, but I wonder what your take would be on academic groups that are less anti-intellectual. I'd love to see a video dealing with the problems that the post-structuralist philosophers and especially Ludwig Wittgenstein (I'm aware that he wasn't post-structuralist, but people are less likely to come through with their knee-jerk reactions to "postmodernism" if I mention him) pose against systems that claim absolute truths.

I definitely don't see myself as one of the confused postmodern subject skeptics to scientific primacy, with the anti-vaxxers and the like, but I think Wittgenstein's anti-philosophy put forward the absurdity in having a pronounced hierarchy of discourses quite convincingly. Great vid as usual btw, keep up the good work. It's nice to see channels that haven't reached the viewership they deserve have so much effort put into their content.

[terryg]

I still don't believe that heavier objects don't fall faster than lighter objects. It's just an elaborate prank, don't fall for it.

[mikensd]

LOVE your videos and the rational approach you take, been addicted for quite some time. Makes me think that maybe we aren't going to be one of the shortest lived species in the history of Earth after all. Having said that, this video is a tad naive. The evidence that peer review is severely compromised, the fact that all major med schools are greatly influenced by corporate money (curricula, staff, areas of research, even board members), pharmaceutical companies legal suppression of nine negative clinical trials until the tenth is positive after manipulating the study methodology repeatedly, the use of surrogate endpoints instead of meaningful results to justify an outcome (with the FDA's blessing), blatant fraud and conflict of interest at the CDC/FDA, political control of science funding and published results of government funded research, gagging of researchers (corporate and government), etc, etc, point to the reality that TRUE, OBJECTIVE, UNFETTERED science has been so undermined that we cannot believe what is shown to the public or even in hardcore primary research journals. That is the finding of several editors of major medical journals, including the NEJM and Lancet among others. I hate to see someone as astute as you seemingly not being aware of the skewed scientific environment in which we live today. In a perfect world, this video would be spot on, and it should be. The evidence of all the things I've outlined here is not hyperbole of even sketchy. It's well documented fact that needs to be understood and appreciated before deciding that the 'preponderance of science' represents the truth. That is not the case much of the time. We live in a dog eat dog capitalist society that values profit and power over truth and cares about the social good only after the profit motive has been maximized.

[ramonveracruz]

I'm late and someone probably already mentioned this, but a lot of this sounds like stuff Thomas Kuhn would say. Except a difference is, unlike (or along the lines of?) what Kuhn said about paradigm shifts and how scientific progress seems to be muddled with politics, nothing is being replaced per se (i.e. there's no paradigm shift in the way Kuhn thought of), rather as you said, "wishful thinking" seeks to find a "balance" between science and non-science/pseudoscience, which is still driven by political, or social, or religious leanings.

[CarneadesOfCyrene]

While I think this covers some of the popular objections to science, it fails to address the underlying problems with the scientific method and produce concerns with the truth of positions like scientific realism, such as the problem of underdetermination. The irony is that this problem demonstrates that scientific theories are in fact reliant on intuition and the data underdetermines the conclusions that we should draw. The Primacy of Science is actually just trying to claim that one intuition is more useful than another.

[bookfan]

New subscriber here, and as someone delving into food science and what is actually the best thing for your body, what is your opinion on the food pyramid?

[Yasmin-tygw]

Thank you so much for your videos.
p.s. that intro tho

[tn]

What are your thoughts on the problems of induction?

[jonathanhatch]

How does gravity even work?? Scientists mean to tell me that the moon pulls on the oceans and there's only empty space between the two bodies. How the hell does that happen?