The Politics of Science: Why Scientists Might Not Say What the Evidence Supports

Quillette ^ | 29 Nov, 2017 | Jonny Anomaly

[MtnClimber]

Suppose a scientist makes a bold claim that turns out to be true. How confident are you that this claim would become widely accepted?

extraordinary evidence. Still, the indirect evidence is mounting and most cosmologists now believe that dark matter exists. To the extent that non-scientists think about this issue at all, we tend to defer to experts in the field and move on with our lives.

But what about politically contentious topics? Does it work the same way? Suppose we have evidence for the truth of a hypothesis the consequences of which many people fear. For example, suppose we have reasonably strong evidence to believe there are average biological differences between men and women, or between different ethnic or racial groups. Would most people defer to the evidence and move on with their lives?............

There are many forms of pluralistic ignorance, and some of them are deeply important for how science works. Consider the science of sex differences as a case in point. Earlier in the year James Damore was fired from Google for circulating an internal memo that questioned the dominant view of Google’s diversity team. The view he questioned is that men and women are identical in both abilities and interests, and that sexism alone can explain why Google hires more men than women. He laid out a litany of evidence suggesting that even if average biological differences between men and women are small, these differences will tend to manifest themselves in occupations that select for people who exhibit qualities at the extreme ends of a bell curve that plots a distribution of abilities and interests.

[aspasia]

I have this theory that tears and smiles are for the powerless.

[sparklite2]

I hear that. My theory is you get more with a smile and a .45 than with a smile alone.

[dr_lew]

I can’t remember all the details, but what they found was that seconds before the subject reported making a conscious decision to stop the clock, signals were already building up in the muscles that controlled the trigger.

I have conscious experience of this phenomenon, from my habit of playing the ancient game of "Toejam and Earl" ( 1891 ... oops, I guess 1991 )

In the course of play, one can open various "presents" in the form of gift wrapped boxes, which can be good or bad. The worst, in my estimation, is the RANDOMIZER, which causes all the present wrappers, or boxes, to be reset at random, relative to the contents, which otherwise are identified, once having been opened.

Well, anyway, this creates a great tension between wanting to open "unkown" presents ( identified by "???" ) and waiting to have them identified by paying the Carot Man ... it's complicated.

But suffice it to say that this tension between opening, and not opening becomes palpable, and on many occasions, despite a stern conviction NOT to open an unknown present ( lest it be the RANDOMIZER ) I will feel overcome by an urge to do so, and in effect helplessly stand by while it happens. ... Weird!

[sparklite2]

Sounds like a great game.

My life’s oddity has occurred three times. Once as a kid.
I was playing whatever that game is on the back of a checker board. I looked at my opponent and said, “You’re about to roll a double six.” Which he proceeded to do.

I did the same thing with a fiance at the kitchen table as my son watched. Double sixes.

I have never predicted double sixes without it happening. I just ‘know’ what’s coming.

The other time, I was shooting craps with some co-workers and my cousin after work. Gambling makes me a little nervous, probably because I’m such a cheap skate, so I only played a little. But my cousin, unbeknownst to me, was making massive side bets on my dice throwing. When I found out about it, and asked him why, he said dice had a thing for me. Maybe so.

[itsahoot]

But when it bumps up against the teachings of ancient desert dwellers, science has to give way. Sorry, no sale.

D@mn straight we want to be free to identify as any race or sex.

[Swordmaker]

Let’s start with a mundane case. About a century ago, cosmologists began to realize that we can’t explain the motions of galaxies unless we assume that a certain amount of unknown matter exists that we cannot yet observe with telescopes. Scientists called this “dark matter.” This is a bold claim that requires extraordinary evidence. Still, the indirect evidence is mounting and most cosmologists now believe that dark matter exists. To the extent that non-scientists think about this issue at all, we tend to defer to experts in the field and move on with our lives.

But the article’s author’s mundane case is one of the most egregious examples of what he is describing. There literally is no evidence for "dark matter" or it’s later required "dark energy" yet cosmologists who proffer alternative cosmological hypotheses that do not require these mythical unseen and unfindable creations of the accepted orthodox cosmological model, AND actually explain observed astronomical phenomena, but also predict future discoveries that continually astound, shock, and surprise the orthodox cosmologists when they are discovered, are routinely denied publication, telescope time, tenure, and even ridiculed by those same orthodox cosmologists who must invoke magical fudge factors such as unseen "dark matter" and "dark matter" into their formulas to get their math to work! Yet these other cosmologists can demonstrate their theories in a laboratory, replicating in the microcosm what is seen in the macrocosm, and show that it is infinitely scalable, merely by increasing power. The orthodox cosmologists can demonstrate nothing except failure after failure in what they have predicted will be discovered.

For example, when NASA rammed a y40 pound chunk of copper in to Comet Tempel 1 back in 2005, the Electric Plasma Universe Cosmologists made 19 specific predictions of what would happen which orthodox cosmologists thought were highly ridiculous and amusing. Among them was that Tempel 1 would be rock, not a dirty snowball, there wtould be little to no water, there would be a huge discharge of electrical charge just before the impact. . . these and all the rest proved to be absolutely correct, surprises get the orthodox physicists, astronomers, and cosmologists whose predictions all were wrong.

Similarly, last year, the soft landing of the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe’s Philae lander touched down on Comet 67P/ churyumov’Garasimenko bounced Seven times instead of anchoring into an expected soft snowball ice surface when, because they refused to listen to the alternative Electric Plasma Universe Cosmologist’s theories of how comets work, they encountered a CHARGED, dry-as-bone solid ROCK comet, without an iota of ice!

In fact, in every encounter we’ve now had with comets, and we’ve had seven so far, we’ve found no I’ve, just dry rocks that look indistinguishable from asteroids we’ve had close encounters with. Yet the orthodox cosmologists are so wedded to their gravity driven model of the Universe they are still spouting the completely falsified line that comets are dirty snowballs that somehow turn to steam as they get closer to the sun to create their comas and and super-powered jets tails reaching millions of miles into space when they warm up to only -140° C below zero. Right, sure. — Electric Universe Ping

If you want on or off the Electric Universe Ping List, Freepmail me.

[tbw2]

The Muslim habit of cousin marriage over generations doesn’t help.

[aspasia]

My theory is you get more with a smile and a .45 than with a smile alone.

Also the politics of an impatient scientist.

[TXnMA]

One might make an educated guess that "Mike" = "Michael E. Mann"... '-)

[Boogieman]

“As for scientism, put me down as for it.”

You sure about that? Might want to look up the definitions of the term before you ascribe to it.

[reasonisfaith]

Passion lies.

[reasonisfaith]

You got it.

[Boogieman]

“But when it bumps up against the teachings of ancient desert dwellers, science has to give way. Sorry, no sale.”

This is simply a misapplication of science to fields of knowledge that by definition it cannot apply to. It is rejected not because science is wrong, but because the application is wrong.

[Boogieman]

“IOW, the little guy sitting in our heads who makes conscious decisions is really under the influence of something happening at a deeper level and the notion of free will needs tempering.”

That conclusion isn’t actually sustainable from the evidence of such an experiment, since you cannot scientifically quantify what “free will” is. You have conflated it with some pattern of electrical pulses in the brain, yet you have no way of actually verifying that hypothesis.

[SunkenCiv]

Nice find!

[sparklite2]

As I said, I don’t remember the details. And it wasn’t my experiment, so the “you” and “your” don’t exactly fit.

Anyway, the subject was told not to think about it, just pull the trigger spontaneously and make a note of where the sweep second hand on the clock stopped. The signals to the muscles were measured by the monitoring equipment, and were building up before a conscious decision was made.

It may be there we are thinking before we think we are thinking, or something. LOL

[Windflier]

It’s beyond me how anyone can sit in front of a computer transmitting information at the speed of light while describing science as a failure.

Engineers created your computer, the internet, and its attendant transmission technologies - not scientists.

[sparklite2]

So, science cannot be applied to biology, ie, evolution?
Chemistry, ie, origin of life? Geology, ie, age of the earth? I could go on, but you get the picture.

[sparklite2]

And yet the results have been astonishingly successful, wouldn’t you say?

[sparklite2]

Scientism isn’t perfect, but it’s way
ahead of whatever is in second place.