Deflections

 

Impressionism / Adam Baltatu/ Fantastic Landscape

One of the things that happen when you try to go out of your way to read from sources you don’t agree with is that you can kinda keep a weather eye on how the “truth” is being perceived by the opposing sides of issues.  Needless to say, the ebb and flow of the “truth” is as malleable and transient as can be.

Michael sent me a couple of pieces yesterday that talked about science in an odd way.  Not that he was talking about science as much as what I would refer to as “cargo cult science”.  Which isn’t really science.

Science is an odd thing.  Lots of folks want to wear the priest's robes, but most of the folks have never really gone through and done “science”.   This is especially evident in the mass media and in the crowded hallways of the internet.  

Consider for a moment this quote:

Eddington publicized Einstein’s achievement in a 1918 paper for the Physical Society called ‘Gravitation and the Principle of Relativity’. But it was of the essence of Einstein’s methodology that he insisted his equations must be verified by empirical observation and he himself devised three specific tests for this purpose. The key one was that a ray of light just grazing the surface of the sun must be bent by 1.745 seconds of arc–twice the amount of gravitational deflection provided for by classical Newtonian theory. 

Not much of that kind of rigor going around of late.  What is passed off as science are papers, funded by corporations, with cherry-picked statistics and the bottom line clearly in sight at all times. Almost everyone appears to be in on the game. 

I am of the sincere opinion that things are going to get worse before they get better.  There aren’t enough uncontaminated scientists out there to give us a decent look at the verification data.  The verification data is being referee-ed by folks who might as well be employed by the folks who benefit. And worse of all, prestige, reputation, and power are in play which taints the entire scene.

Nope, right now I think that folks should spend some time reading and thinking about how science is perceived and used in a nominally demographic system where the educational system seems to de-emphasize the true nature of science with its inherent skepticism and refutations.