[anon1253]

This isn't about facts. Science is rarely about facts. Empirical science is and cannot be about proofs. Proofs and facts are for the abstract, the ideal, left to philosophers, logicians, and occasionally mathematicians and computer scientists. No, this is about something much more sinister: denying the ability to reason about and disseminate observations. All empirical science can do is look at things, do experiments and come up with logically consistent and plausible theories or hypotheses that explain them. The value is rarely in the data: the value is in the reasoning around it. Observing, for example, that beaks in birds change depending on the environment is rarely interesting. The interesting bit is reasoning that traits get passed down to offspring in a survival of the fittest scheme. Similarly, observing that combustion engines release CO2, and there is more of it than before we had them … not particularly interesting. The interesting bit is that it acts as insulation to sunlight and that a lot of ecological and climate systems act as non-linear under the influence of temperature and CO2.

Do I say this to downplay empirical science? On the contrary. However, the focus on facts is I think more harmful than it might appear in trying to protect our scientific legacy. Dump every table ever recorded on the internet as a torrent, and very little useful things will come from it. It's protecting the institutions and freedom to reason about, and talk about, those findings that is important; to be able to openly challenge them, and rigorously come up with "best explanations" (a human intellectual construct, not fact, not truth).

Gag orders to silence academic findings, that is problematic. More so than trying to "protect" facts-of-the-matter as if they are somehow the pinnacle of human intellect.

Corollary this is also why I always find "humanities are not science" or "this is not Nature worthy"-statements rather annoying. It's a no-true Scotchman fallacy. Science is more than stamp collection, it's more than peer-review, it's more than running elaborate statistical tests on randomized experiments: it's the collective human endeavor to understand the universe and ourselves, it's a mindset. A mindset that can, and should be, in constant flux as our understanding progresses (and sometimes regresses).

[hueving]

>it's a mindset.

No, it's more than that. Without the rigor to come up with testable hypothesis and reproducible results, you might as well be practicing religion. You can have a very inquisitive mindset but without applying scientific rigor, you're right in line with numerologists and whatever else.

That's why people are so hard on shaky humanities studies that have poor experimental design, poor analysis, or terrible biases in the data. You can't derive meaningful conclusions from bad science. Garbage in => garbage out.

[arethuza]

One of my favourite quotes on the subject:

“Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible… We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power.”

I saw The Ascent of Man at a young age (probably 7 or 8) and I've always remembered this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXwj4jMnWZg

[bbctol]

I think a lot about the tension inherent in science; we do science because we have a desire for the truth, which for many scientists is a deeply emotional and visceral hunger, a need for knowledge and a joy of discovery... but we do science by acknowledging that this goal is impossible, that we can never have a moment of celebration where we're absolutely certain we've discovered something. Trust your methods too much, and you'll end up believing in phrenology or whatever other misplaced scientism even the establishment can come to believe. Trust your methods not enough, and you'll never be able to come to a conclusion, and never be able to convince others of the importance of your findings (even if the fate of the planet depends on it.)

And in the end... it's a tension that can't be resolved. All there is is the tension. That's what science is, despite our hopes in it as a rational, dry methodology; at some point, the methodology has to come to a conclusion, the controlled experiments and p-values end up affecting the way we think and act, and we all just keep trying our best to make sense of the world.

[anon1253]

Well yeah, but rigor is part-of the scientific mindset. One that we now try to enforce with statistics, peer-review, and reproducibility. But those are rather new ideas. Proper based evidence medicine, for example, is something we only came up with in the 60s or so. Rigorous experimental science might produce better insights in some way, because the data is better. But there is still value in other methods. An interesting example here is the advent in genetics for personalized medicine: did it deliver on the promises? No, it's still utter hype and vaporware. Part of the reason, I believe, is that it was merely stamp collecting. Sequence enough, go fishing for correlations, and hope that something useful comes of it. The current hype around CRISPR and related technology? Not because of rigorous scientific testing on large peer-reviewed data sets. Someone, was "merely" curios about bacterial immunological defense mechanisms. Curious enough to try and understand it. It was the explanation that made it worth it. Ideally they go hand in hand, but anyone who has ever been in a scientific institute will agree that this "idealized" view is rarely, if ever, true. An interesting paper about the subject is "you can't play 20 questions with nature and win" by Alan Newell

http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3032&c...

[dhimes]

A little off-topic, but part of the problem with personalized medicine I think is that the target market for any drug developed for a particular personalization is necessarily small. In other words, right now it is a bad business decision. Perhaps it can be used as a delta- to a mass-market drug in the future, like seasonings to a basic recipe, but that's a bit off.

[anon1253]

Perhaps, but not sure if it's the correct explanation for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eroom's_law

I think the focus on data-driven pipelines for discovery, rather than focus on fundamental understanding of the biology and chemistry of organisms might also play a role. But I have no "proof" to back that up, other than my anecdotal experience as a researcher in a genetics institute :p

[WayneBro]

Scientists might as well be practicing religion for all that it matters to non-scientists.

So, it comes down to trust. Unless you're going to do the science yourself, you have to trust somebody.

Also, despite mainstream scientific consensus being based on "testable hypothesis and reproducible results", it's still managed to get things terribly wrong. That's what they call a paradigm shift but most people would just call it being proven wrong.

[Florin_Andrei]

> No, this is about something much more sinister: denying the ability to reason about and disseminate observations.

Let's face it: Joe H. Average does not "reason". He just takes it on faith that there are various authorities on different matters, and just subscribes to the points of view of those authorities.

So then, the really sinister thing is this massive push to denigrate some authorities, while setting up "alternatives" in their place.

The vast, vast majority of people are puppets with very limited mental autonomy. If you think otherwise then you have no chance of understanding what's really going on now - because that's how the manipulators are thinking about the world, and they are succeeding.

[hkon]

"Science is showing" is the new word of god...