Capitalism Rules, Socialism and Communism Suck Thread

[OngBonga]

Scientists want to discover facts. Science is not facts, it's the method by which people try to discover facts.

[Poopadoop]

Scientists want to discover facts. Science is not facts, it's the method by which people try to discover facts.

True in principle. Sadly though the reality is that Science is in practice the methods by which people try to get grants so they can do Science. And those methods include practices that don't always stand up to scrutiny.

[TheSpoonald]

the reality is that Science is in practice the methods by which people try to get grants so they can do Science.

And that's all controlled by left-leaning academia and big-government bureaucrats. And coincidentally, the outcomes of science seem to support all of their political goals.

Yeah....no reason to be skeptical of this. Believe them or be labeled a *DENIER*

[MadMojoMonkey]

And that's all controlled by left-leaning academia and big-government bureaucrats. And coincidentally, the outcomes of science seem to support all of their political goals.

Yeah....no reason to be skeptical of this. Believe them or be labeled a *DENIER*

So... you're saying science is a small group , controlling knowledge through consensus?

Clown.

[Poopadoop]

And that's all controlled by left-leaning academia and big-government bureaucrats.

There's two considerations here: First, the quantity of available funding is controlled by the government to some extent but also depends on charities and industry. Not all funding comes from the government; they are simply one of three main sources.

Second, of the different pots of funding provided by the government and charities, the distribution of them is controlled by academia because they're in the best position to evaluate the proposals. You don't get vetted by a funder for your political views when you are asked to review proposal X; you're vetted based on your expertise.

The problem with this is the tendency of outcomes of funding decisions to include a large component of randomness: different reviewers are sensitive to different aspects of the proposal, have their own theoretical views, and the system is so competitive that if even one reviewer doesn't like your perspective, you're fucked. And if all three reviewers (usually it's 3 but it can be more) like your perspective, the funding committee essentially ends up flipping a coin to decide between a number of highly-rated proposals.

In terms of certain fields of research this is problematic because certain zeitgeists tend to be prevalent. It may, in the current 'climate', be difficult to get funding to prove climate change is not real because a lot of the reviewers may already be heavily inviested in the view that it's real. So there is a kind of inertia where ideas can tend to become dogmatic and it takes a very striking finding or series of contrary findings to begin to change the minds of people in the community. That said, once the evidence begins to pile up to challenge a prevalent dogma, it usually isn't long before minds are changed with it. As a group, scientists are quite flexible in their thinking.

Funding provided by industry is largely controlled by individual funders. If I want BMW to fund my project to build a better cup holder, I have to convince a group of non-experts that I know something about ergonomics. The problem with this is they aren't really in a position to evaluate whether the Science I'm proposing is good or shit. So it can be even more gamey than the other sources of funding.

And coincidentally, the outcomes of science seem to support all of their political goals.

Also rather oversimplified. While you are going to have a hard time getting funded to prove things that are grossly distasteful to most people (like that a certain race is prone to crime, for example), a lot of controversial subjects get funded (IQ and race, IQ and sex come to mind), and results tend to be treated objectively by most members of the scientific community. It's the general public that tends to have a hard time handling objective truths they don't like.

As for climate change, this is an example of a branch of science where the consensus is precisely at odds with the wishes of the ruling class. Not many big business CEOs are happy about arguments coming from scientists about climate change.

Yeah....no reason to be skeptical of this.

There actually isn't much reason to be skeptical of the underlying motives of the work in most cases. The better place for skepticism is in whether the work is of a sufficient quality to support the conclusions.