▶ Watch on YouTube
This video:
...is representative of an irritating propaganda technique in which the propagandist posits a single scientific consensus, and frames their political beliefs as the only rational position consistent with this alleged "scientific consensus", aka the "sciencier than thou" gambit.
It inspired me to write a response that became a bit longer than I planned, and therefore deserved a bigger audience than a youtube comment.
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I agree that the scientific method is the best way we currently have to understand the world. However, IMO, we should be wary of the current "scientific consensus".
Why?
Because much scientific research, including papers considered foundational in their fields, cannot be replicated:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
In fact, John Ioannidis, a health policy researcher at Tufts, published a meta-analysis which claimed that most published scientific papers are false:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/
If these results are themselves true, the trustworthiness of the scientific consensus is not uniform, and varies depending on several factors, including:
* the nature of the scientific question under consideration
* the skill of the researchers
* the political environment in which the research was done
* the funding source
* the economic and professional incentives of the scientists
In other words, we have to make a judgment about which research to believe, and the degree to which we believe it. And reasonable people are going to make different judgments about those weightings.
For example, most climate change scientists are funded by government funding bodies like the National Science Foundation. The NSF receives its funding, in turn, from politicians--politicians who want to increase the flow of power and money to themselves.
And what better way to increase that flow, than by scaring the public into believing that there is an impending global catastrophe that can only be solved by vastly increasing the taxes imposed on the public, and stiff new regulations that give politicians new levers of power to control?
If tobacco companies were the primary funders of tobacco research, it would be easy to see how the researchers might be corrupted by the business aims of their funders. Is it so hard to believe therefore, that the research of government funded scientists might be tainted by the political aims of politicians?
Even if you dismiss the incentives of academic scientists to curry the favor of politically motivated grant making bodies, the scientists must also contend with the egos of the current "consensus makers".
Most academic rewards--grants, tenure, and publications-- are awarded by committees, whose members are the current "old guard", whose reputations were made by constructing the current "consensus".
New scientists are not dumb, and they know that if they buck the "consensus" too much, those committees will cut them off from funding, block their tenure progress, and refuse to publish their papers.
In other words, consensus is often another name for "groupthink".
Physicist Max Planck bemoaned the delay that this kind of groupthink imposes on scientific progress when he famously said (roughly translated) "science makes progress funeral by funeral". Recent research suggests that he was right:
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/science-really-does-advance-one-funeral-at-a-time-study-suggests/3010961.article
Therefore, rather than dismiss those who disagree with your weighting of the current scientific "consensus" as benighted souls who don't "believe in science", please consider that they may, in fact, "believe in science" just as much as you do, but have (for now) come to different conclusions.
If you'd like to read more about the politics of science, and how it often influences the "scientific consensus", please check out this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Scientocracy-Tangled-Public-Science-Policy/dp/1948647494
▶ Watch on YouTube
...is representative of an irritating propaganda technique in which the propagandist posits a single scientific consensus, and frames their political beliefs as the only rational position consistent with this alleged "scientific consensus", aka the "sciencier than thou" gambit.
It inspired me to write a response that became a bit longer than I planned, and therefore deserved a bigger audience than a youtube comment.
-----
I agree that the scientific method is the best way we currently have to understand the world. However, IMO, we should be wary of the current "scientific consensus".
Why?
Because much scientific research, including papers considered foundational in their fields, cannot be replicated:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
In fact, John Ioannidis, a health policy researcher at Tufts, published a meta-analysis which claimed that most published scientific papers are false:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/
If these results are themselves true, the trustworthiness of the scientific consensus is not uniform, and varies depending on several factors, including:
* the nature of the scientific question under consideration
* the skill of the researchers
* the political environment in which the research was done
* the funding source
* the economic and professional incentives of the scientists
In other words, we have to make a judgment about which research to believe, and the degree to which we believe it. And reasonable people are going to make different judgments about those weightings.
For example, most climate change scientists are funded by government funding bodies like the National Science Foundation. The NSF receives its funding, in turn, from politicians--politicians who want to increase the flow of power and money to themselves.
And what better way to increase that flow, than by scaring the public into believing that there is an impending global catastrophe that can only be solved by vastly increasing the taxes imposed on the public, and stiff new regulations that give politicians new levers of power to control?
If tobacco companies were the primary funders of tobacco research, it would be easy to see how the researchers might be corrupted by the business aims of their funders. Is it so hard to believe therefore, that the research of government funded scientists might be tainted by the political aims of politicians?
Even if you dismiss the incentives of academic scientists to curry the favor of politically motivated grant making bodies, the scientists must also contend with the egos of the current "consensus makers".
Most academic rewards--grants, tenure, and publications-- are awarded by committees, whose members are the current "old guard", whose reputations were made by constructing the current "consensus".
New scientists are not dumb, and they know that if they buck the "consensus" too much, those committees will cut them off from funding, block their tenure progress, and refuse to publish their papers.
In other words, consensus is often another name for "groupthink".
Physicist Max Planck bemoaned the delay that this kind of groupthink imposes on scientific progress when he famously said (roughly translated) "science makes progress funeral by funeral". Recent research suggests that he was right:
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/science-really-does-advance-one-funeral-at-a-time-study-suggests/3010961.article
Therefore, rather than dismiss those who disagree with your weighting of the current scientific "consensus" as benighted souls who don't "believe in science", please consider that they may, in fact, "believe in science" just as much as you do, but have (for now) come to different conclusions.
If you'd like to read more about the politics of science, and how it often influences the "scientific consensus", please check out this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Scientocracy-Tangled-Public-Science-Policy/dp/1948647494