You can justify anything...with SCIENCE!

[subplotkudzu]

To start, I'd like everyone to bear in mind that I'm honestly looking for answers here, and I'm not trying to undermine anyone's positions. I have friends and relatives on both sides whose minds and opinions I respect, even if I don't agree with them. The problem is that both sides don't trust each other, and they don't trust the people who are supposed to be teasing out the truth.

 

 

More areas where this is a problem: the trust in science. Science is supposed to be about questioning. A line from the opening to America's Best Science Writing 2006, paraphrased here, is that Newton didn't see further because he stood on the shoulders of giants, but because he kicked those giants in the knees and knocked them down. Science does that. It's science's job to continue to doubt and poke and prod and look for explanations that better fit the facts than the ones we have right now. But that doesn't mean that things that we are 95% sure of should be tossed aside for things that we have no evidence of whatsoever, or that we can't act on the 95% certainty with a good degree of confidence. If you're trying to disprove a theory, the burden is on you to disprove it, not on you to point out some grey area and say that it's not really proven until that grey area is completely defined and therefore your theory that has much more grey area, is equally valid.

 

Unfortunately that's been happening with increasing frequency. Those whose businesses would have a financial loss from a scientific finding attack the science behind the finding, demanding that more research is needed, and more - no amount of research is ever enough, and we can take no action until we're certain. Those whose political and social dogma are threatened by a study always have a reason why the study wasn't really valid, that the investigators - no matter how many or how well researched - are weighting their findings and slanting their opinions. Both sides of the debate do this when their dogma is threatened, and any evidence that their advocated plan doesn't work is dismissed with calls of how the plan was undermined by the opposition. It is better to be consistent than correct, and I'll use science to prove it. And therefore, no science can be trusted.

 

Finally, we've lost our trust in government to accomplish anything - even the most basic tasks that we claim government should have. We in the US can come up with any number of reasons for this - the 60's, the Watergate scandals, the ineptitude of the Carter administration, the Republican insistence that government was the problem, the lack of spine on both parties when it came to reign in spending or not pander to interest groups (really sad that it's a legitimate argument to say that America is suffering under the weight of Big Corn, but it's hard to argue), but I've seen some recent studies that show that people worldwide started losing faith in their government at about the same time. India and England, Germany and Canada, after the early 70's everyone stopped having faith that the government could do anything. And so government slowly stopped making big proposals. I just can't see the US getting the space program really going today, or the national highway system, or rural electrification. People talk about wanting a Manhattan Project or energy, but do we really think the government would get it right?

 

And if the MPfE came back with the statement that the US needs to build a couple hundred nuclear reactors using designs that are safer versions of the already trustworthy European models, eliminate all corn based ethanol subsidies in favor of switchgrass, enforce rigid and upward ratcheting mileage requirements for automobiles, and phase out incandescent light bulbs and non-energy efficient appliances, would we listen? Or would the Democrats NIMBY out the nuclear plants, middle America prevent the removal of corn subsidies and Republicans block the mileage and engineering requirements as being an impermissible government meddling with the market? And everyone produce their own science to back it up?

 

In short, would we trust that the answers we didn't want to hear might actually be answers?

 

And again, where does that leave us?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

As with journalism, I think the problem is due to some scientists forgetting their real profession and trying to become advocates, especially when they tried to use their scientific authority to support causes or ideas completely unrelated to their area of expertise. One thinks of the "Union of Concerned Scientists" or the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists," which had clear political agendas dressed up in a white lab coat.

This isn't to say that scientists shouldn't have political opinions -- they're citizens -- but when they give in to the urge to fudge the data to make a point, they've started on a very slippery slope.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Indeed. And every time they do fudge that data and they're caught, they reduce the amount of trust we have in science as a whole. Which is hardly good.

Another problem that I see is part of the legal system, where it's possible to slow any action to a crawl by making the endless arguments about the edges of difficult data while making it look like you're being reasonable. Some science gets really complex, to the point where judges and juries can't make sense of the outcome. Companies can always say they're starting a 1 million dollar blue ribbion panel to further explore an issue that is really settled science and it looks like they're doing something- the Tobacco companies are a fine example here, doing this dance for decades until their internal documents were discovered.

Of course, it works in government too, where issue advocates can support legislators beliefs that this or that regulation is critical and prove that there's no way to change it without irreperable harm. Even if its not working _now_ it will surely start working in a year or decade or two or three, and any other plan will be immesurably worse.

A web-friend of ours has a job as a scientist for the house of commons - his job is to provide non-partisan, purely fact based analysis of science to any MP who asks for it. The jobs in that department are funded regardless of whose in power, the MPs don't have control of hiring issues and the directors aren't allowed to hire based on political purposes. He might not always get called on when science is an issue, but it does act as a road block from slanted science overriding real science. I wonder if we could insititue something like that here.

Another note on this

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

I found this <http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12376658> interesting. The premise is that in order to get the attention of the editorial boards of the most prestigious scientific journals the scientists have to "tart up" their findings. That is to say, overstate them so they're more dramatic. Less exciting but more accurate conclusions are relgated to lesser journals

Of course, the overstated findings are suceptible to being picked apart and proven to be overstated, which reduces the overall trust in science.