[I'm sorry if I missed something; I didn't get a chance to read the whole thread.]
David Shemano:>> ... on what basis do you believe I (or any other non-climate scientist) can conclude that climate change is occurring, that CO2 emissions contribute to global warming, that geoengineering solutions are not feasible, etc.?<< Simon Ward: > Because scientists aren't seeking to uphold a political or economic position > in providing their considered view. > It's a matter of trust. I would not trust a politician (of any position) to > pass on an objective viewpoint, but I would trust an independent scientific > expert. When you combine thousands of experts and they arrive at a consensual > view that says the planet is heating up and that we are mostly to blame, the > sensible response is to believe what they say.< I'd trust science much more than scientists as individuals, unless perhaps I knew the latter personally. Being human, scientists make errors, are corrupted by business, become seduced by ideology, etc. But science involves a constant process of peer review, replication of research, efforts to falsify existing research, logical critique, general skepticism, and the like. (Only research such as Darwinian evolution survives this Darwinian process and becomes "settled science.") This process keeps individual scientists honest. However, it's possible for some scientific communities to become corrupt, to give up the scientific process (as in the development of profit-making pharmaceuticals) So we should always watch the scientific community. One test is to see if the profit motive has infiltrated the community of not. If it has, don't trust the science. Another test is to see if the scientists have a clear ideology (going beyond their specialty), as with the Lysenko case. One thing that speaks for climate science is that there is no obvious vested interest that sees a profit to be made from global warming. If there is one, it currently does not have any power (nothing like that of the oil and coal industries). This suggests that the science (the prediction of global warming) is accurate. Of course, we cannot know completely, since uncertainty is always present when considering the future. raghu wrote: > I agree with the sentiment here. Scientism and mindless appeals to > authority are indeed increasingly common... Appeal to scientific knowledge is _not_ the same as scientism, which indeed involves appeals to authority. Scientism is centered on these appeals. There is no single definition of "scientism" that I found with a simple Google search. One definition I liked was "The view that science is the very paradigm of truth and rationality. Everything outside of science is a matter of mere belief and subjective ..." But I think that a better definition of scientism is the view that scientists are somehow better than other human beings. Scientism is exemplified by a book on schizophrenia I read once (don't ask why). The author was extremely knowledgeable about the subject (knowing settled science) and correctly criticized books like Ken Kesey's _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_ for its portrayal of schizophrenia. But he was scientistic: though he admitted that lobotomies did not help but instead hurt patients, the author never showed any kind of remorse about the use of lobotomies. To say the least, there was no apology. Scientism is a lot like what my wife (a health educator) calls "the (traditional) medical model," in which the MD or nurse tells the patient what to do, with no dialogue (and of course the MD tells the nurse what to do). Nowadays, there's some (but not enough) movement to the "model" where the patient encouraged to participate in the process as an adult, even though it's acknowledged that the MD does know more about the subject of medicine than do most patients. Crucially, the patient knows more about him or herself than the MD does, outside of the narrow process of diagnosis. Of course, in the US there usually isn't enough MD/patient face time for this dialogue to occur. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
