SCIENCE SAYS
THE SCIENCE SAYS
I am writing as someone with the highest respect and honor for real science, someone deeply repulsed at how so many people, rather than thinking scientifically, treat it as a religion, a religion filled with prejudice, dogma and taboo, forbidden thoughts and book burnings.
Many people today use the phrase "Science Says" (Science always has a capital S) or "the Science is" the way people used to use the phrase "The Bible Says". Most of those people have absolutely no idea how the process of official version Science works. It has simply become a new object of blind belief.
What is almost always forgotten is that the history of Science is a history of continuing inquiry which often reveals old accepted ideas to be wrong and "crazy" or "ridiculous" ideas to be right.
All Science can ever say is
"this is our best understanding as of now and it can and probably will change".
Instead, in exactly the same way people blindly accepted whatever the priests told them, now too many blindly accept whatever the officially sanctioned scientists tell them and with just as much lack of understanding or critical thought.
And, very unfortunately, very often scientific research fields, especially those dealing with controversial social concerns, have been viewed by too much of the general public in highly politicized ways, to the point that when results and findings are reported large segments of the public react from their political views and either blindly accept or blindly reject the findings.
Sometimes what we're told is true. Sometimes not.
Sometimes there are honest mistakes Sometimes deliberate lies.
To accept unquestioningly is to enable the worst abuses.
To reject unquestionably is stupid.
-----
HOW SCIENCE IS SUPPOSED TO WORK
1 a hypothesis (an idea) is presented and there are no limits to what that hypothesis can be based on prejudgements.
2 an experiment is designed and conducted to test that hypothesis
3 the results are duly analyzed and the results published.
All this conducted with absolutely no bias, taboos or dogmas.
HOW IT ACTUALLY WORKS
1 Scientists have careers and families to feed. Older scientists have built their careers on certain theories and are very against having those ideas disproved.
This means that many ideas cannot be talked about if people want to have a career. There are innumerable stories from all fields of people losing their careers for proposing unpopular theories and then later on being proved right.
There are a whole set of taboos not to cross and dogmas to follow.
.
2 Especially in the field of medical research, there are very large vested interests, for example Big Pharma, whose profits very much depend on the theories. accepted.
3 Experiments have to be funded. How do they get funded? Scientists don't have the money in their own pockets.
Many experiments will never get funded, especially those which might produce an inconvenient result for vested interest.
When you hear "further research is needed" what it really means is that they didn't want these experiments to get done and so they weren't funded in the first place.
Many institutions which would fund those experiments are very dependent on money from Big Pharma.
.
4 If experiments do somehow get done and do produce interesting results they still have to be published.
For all the reasons mentioned above, official publications such as prestigious medical journals are very unlikely to publish research which seriously calls into question existing theories.
It has been said that the actual way science works is that the Old Guard has to die before a new idea is accepted.
Profit and ego are the enemies of Real Science.
----
OFFICIAL AGENCIES
Many people will remember that Dwight D Eisenhower warned against the military industrial complex as he was leaving the presidency. The idea that profit-seeking interests had undue influence over government agencies.
Today we are aware that almost every government agency is closely tied in with private interests, yet for some reason people seem to naively believe that agencies such as the CDC and the FDA have not been affected by that, not to mention many other institutions affecting medicine, public health and safety.
-----
So now people say "Science Says" as if they were quoting a verse from the Bible and with just as little critical thought of how it came to be.