"Scientists say"
60 2016-12-28 by buildyourselfabridge
"Scientists say" "science says" "experts say" should be eliminated from the vernacular.
Who are these scientists and experts? Do they live up on the mountain with the rest of the gods, sending down their wisdom to the unwashed masses?
To use the phrasing "scientists say" creates an image in the mind of a sort of monolithic wizard of oz like character. Faceless and all knowing, free from all the influences, errors, and temptations of mere mortals.
The reality of what is behind the curtain is a ragtag group of people with widely varying skill levels and motivations. But when we say "scientists say" or "experts say", we homogonize all these people. It's nonsensicle.
Johnny so and so did an experiment. He may or may not have made technical mistakes while conducting the experiment. His paycheck may or may not come from someone with a financial interest in the outcome of the experiment. His interpretation of the data is run thru the filter of his political, social, and religious agendas and/or those of his superiors.
I think that many people, because they find thinking to be exhausting and uncomfortable, just outsource it. They may outsource it to religion but it is now socially acceptable to outsource it to the secular religion of scientism. What is scientism? It is an ironic rebranding in which the suspension of the scientific method is called Science, with a capital s. Scientism takes some popular theories and declares them final and no longer debatable. What you would call "faith" in other religious denominations.
If we want to avoid what amounts to religious dogmatism usurping the scientific method, when describing research we should say something along the lines of "johnny so and so has been doing experiments with x and think that it means y" instead of "scientists say".
This type of phrasing does not lend to the conflating of all research and researchers into one easily worshiped demigod.
67 comments
14 InaccurateLinguist 2016-12-28
this guy gets it
9 heihuquan 2016-12-28
Totally agree, much like when they use the empty terms "Informed Sources", "Authorities have confirmed" or the equally generic "Experts agree" it's all mind-fuck PSYOP games to manipulate people into trusting the line of rubbish they're running out. These are nothing more than counterfeit stamps of approval to sell you their nonsense. Using them, they never have to reveal to you the actual evidence or parties concerned in the real story. In this manner they can stifle any dissent and obfuscate inconvenient facts.
12 reclaim_constantinop 2016-12-28
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
10 badgertime33 2016-12-28
One sentence in, and I'd guild you already if I weren't broke. This has been on my mind for months, especially concerning the inocuous term "climate change".
1 Iamamansass 2016-12-28
And globe earth.
8 Ninjakick666 2016-12-28
I recently apologized to a couple of anti-vaxxers in my life because I always smugly cited "Science" and thought they were some sort of pagan idiots to reject the claims of "Science".
Now I'm doubtful that vaccines are totally safe... I used to cling to "Science"... now I use my gut instinct a lot more... and my spidey sense tells me vaccines are marginally unsafe at best and absolutely nefarious at worst.
6 no1113 2016-12-28
I'm glad you're realizing that "$cience" isn't nearly as infallible as TPTB have brainwashed many to believe is the case. This is good.
8 Ninjakick666 2016-12-28
Yeah... Science is just a religion for people that think they are too smart for religion... I fell for it... but I always re-evaluate new data when it is presented to me... so I am a scientist at heart...
4 no1113 2016-12-28
I'd say that's more than simply being a scientist. That's being a critical thinker - which I think is even better still.
5 Ninjakick666 2016-12-28
I love to think... it makes life worth living... And this sub will make you think more than any other place on the internet that I've discovered yet.
3 no1113 2016-12-28
I'm not sure if this sub will make one think more than any other place on the internet (internet's pretty big, after all) but I will say that it's definitely helped me understand things a lot more than might have otherwise been the case without it.
That said, I'm growing more and more critical of the censorship I've heard and read about being enacted on Reddit in general by the site administrators, etc. As such, even though I give this place a lot of credit for helping me find things that I might not have otherwise found, I'll jump ship in a heartbeat and go to another place (Voat, for example, where I already have an account set up) if this place gets worse on the censorship end of things.
1 Ninjakick666 2016-12-28
Yeah... I got accounts all over... Voat... gab... but here works alright for me... I like the paid opposition... it keeps me sharp to square off against pros.
1 no1113 2016-12-28
How's gab? Haven't looked into that place yet, but have heard of it.
3 Ninjakick666 2016-12-28
It's fine by me... pretty clean and quick interface... lots of different opinions without any flame wars or massive trollfests... Small but steadily growing userbase... lots of Christians on there cause I guess its founder is Christian...
1 no1113 2016-12-28
Thanks for the quick description of it. Appreciated.
1 Little_chicken_hawk 2016-12-28
"Why" is the greatest and most feared word in the English language.
1 InaccurateLinguist 2016-12-28
vax suffers from a massive combinatorics design problem. and then the actual implementations of it suffer from serious QA problems. and, when i got my cat vaxxed he spent a whole day spinning around in circles and he's now a bit different. debunk that Michio Kaku!
1 Ninjakick666 2016-12-28
I literally have a tshirt that says "End Polio Now"... I think it is working!
1 [deleted] 2016-12-28
[removed]
4 Ninjakick666 2016-12-28
I'm a Narcissist... can we talk about me some more? You seem to know allllll kinds of things I don't know.... tell me more, Pappy.
2 petrus4 2016-12-28
You're reminding me of why I enjoy 4chan. Over there, I'm still permitted to really let loose with people like you.
1 Ambiguously_Ironic 2016-12-28
Rule 10. If this is all you have to contribute, consider saying nothing or you'll run the risk of being banned. First warning.
1 petrus4 2016-12-28
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKwq7b2i-vc
5 polkadotgirl 2016-12-28
We don't need to worship God anymore.
We have scientists as our high priests to guide us to the truth, right?
1 science_positive 2016-12-28
lol, this is like an Onion headline "right-wing religious nut equates scientific evidence to God ..."
2 polkadotgirl 2016-12-28
Please stop stalking me.
2 science_positive 2016-12-28
lol, if there's one thing I've always admired about the religious right, it's their ability to make absolutely everything about themselves ... bye weirdo.
4 Might-be-a-Trowaway 2016-12-28
Pop science has become a new religion. Which is ironic because science is merely observing the natural world. Nothing scientific about believing what a scientist says
4 7x4I-eGr6fC8V 2016-12-28
No. Say it with me folks: Science says... and then bam, you cite the paper. Works every time.
3 KnightBeforeTomorrow 2016-12-28
Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, invented Propaganda. He figured out that people would believe the statements attributed to 'experts' without ever verifying or questioning what was being said. Want the public to rabidly defend bullshit? Just have the bullshit message of your choice repeated in public by your hired or coerced 'experts' and no matter how unsupported or unbelievable your message is, it's never questioned by Joe Normal because it's "Settled Science" so he doesn't need to bother his own little head about it's content.
Any statement attributed to 'scientists', science or any source of authority, such as legacy media reporters is taken at face value by the public without question.
They know what to think based on who it was that told them what to think. In my opinion that's the height of ignorance.
2 [deleted] 2016-12-28
[deleted]
3 NWOShill1 2016-12-28
Sure, but if injecting 49 doses of 14 vaccines, all containing aluminum and mercury, into a child before age 6 doesn't sound safe to you, you are a heretic to that religion right now.
Trump has spoken on how it's the frequency and amount of vaccines that is the problem at one of his rallies.
2 cgamonitor 2016-12-28
Safe? Maybe not totally, but safer than measles, mumps, polio, etc..
1 [deleted] 2016-12-28
[deleted]
3 NWOShill1 2016-12-28
What about the preponderance of evidence that aluminum and mercury are bad to inject into your blood lol?
And no, H202 doesn't sound safe. I don't know what it is. Believe it or not, concluding that injecting mercury and aluminum "doesn't sound safe." is quite reasonable and is nothing like making conclusions about random molecules I know nothing about. I know Mercury and Aluminum are bad and that they bio accumulate. Which leads to the question, how bad are vaccines? Only slightly? I already know they will have some harmful effects by just looking at those two ingredients. It's just logic... Your science religion has you dismissing the harmful qualities of those ingredients completely off hand because their studies say there aren't harmful effects. Talk about religious. Pharma has vax to sell you, kid.
2 buildyourselfabridge 2016-12-28
"Mad as a hatter" is an expression that comes from the observation that people who used to make hats for a living went crazy. They used mercury as part of the trade, which they sometimes put in their mouths. We have reason to believe that injecting mercury into the bloodstream could be harmful.
With that in mind, "first, do no harm".
3 NWOShill1 2016-12-28
A common source of mercury nowadays is dental amalgams. They give off mercury vapor at the rate of about 10-25 ng per day, much of which is absorbed into the body through the lungs and travels to the brain. I have like 8 dental amalgams lol. I'm mad as a hatter! But seriously, I wonder sometimes if I would think clearer and be even more intelligent if I didn't have fillings lol. It brings me to my point that I would never want to hurt the development of a child by over zealously vaccinating, but same with under vaccinating I suppose.
I also had my whole left side, including face, paralyzed by vaccines when I was 4 or 5. It's kind of why I'm so unabashed in my anti-vax stance. I think they called it a "booster" and it was one of the times I got a large amount of vaccines all at once. I had to slide my left foot around on a paperback book I was so paralyzed lol.
-1 [deleted] 2016-12-28
[deleted]
1 buildyourselfabridge 2016-12-28
Toxicity is in the interaction of the material and your body. Heavy metals interfere with basic cellular processes in the body. There is not a magical dosage level at which lead goes from being "safe" to all of the sudden harmful. There is just an acute dose range at which the damage is extensive enough that even a casual observer will notice that something is wrong.
You can drive on a tire that has a slow leak, but for how long.
You do eat all the aformentioned metals in food. In the early 1900s, lead arsenate was sprayed in large quantities on fruit fields to deal with moths and other pests. It remains in the soil and water.
2 SoCo_cpp 2016-12-28
"CIA insiders say..." - CNN, WashingtonPost, MSNBC, NY Times every fucking time.
1 Pop_Psychology 2016-12-28
That one is probably true, it's just that the CIA is lying through their teeth...
1 whyd_you_kill_doakes 2016-12-28
That's false. In the scientific community you are encouraged to disprove theories. Many of my studies include geology, which as I'm sure you know has Plate Tectonics as the dominant theory. Do you know how long it's been around? To give you an idea, one of my professors learned what's called "Isostasy", a completely different theory. When he was in grad school is when plate tectonics was developed. He's actually been published quite a bit with regards to it, and he had to learn it all as it was being developed.
People need to get it out of their heads that science is this institution that is dark and nefarious. Science is a method. Period. End of story. You don't need ANYONE besides yourself to do science.
Want to know what science is? Ask a question. Test it. Interpret your results with as little bias as possible. Rinse and repeat. That's it. All you need are tools, an open mind, and a desire for knowledge.
You're encouraged to disprove current theories. How do you think people win Nobel prizes in scientific fields? They correct or expand upon our current knowledge of the universe. Science is constantly changing.
9 skindoe 2016-12-28
I think your premise is presisely what he is arguing. You are misinterpreting his definition of Scientism.
His idea of the "religion" of Scientism is basically anyone who treats a "scientific consensus" as infalliblibly true NOT someone in the scientific community.
For example someone who in an argument says that Evolution due to natural selection is a fact because the scientists say so. He is pointing out the dangers of this kind of thinking and how it is very similar to saying things like the earth was made in 7 days because the Bible says so.
2 whyd_you_kill_doakes 2016-12-28
That makes more sense, but to out the whole scientific community as a whole is a grand generalization that will close him and others off to new ideas presented by the community.
5 buildyourselfabridge 2016-12-28
I think you illustrated some of the beliefs that I am attempting to point out. The "scientific community" implies a monolithic group. But it's just a two word version of "scientists". There is no scientific community because as you said science is a only a method and anyone can do it. There is a linguistic confusion in popular culture between a method and a group of people that leads to the religion of science.
There is a large public facing creation called "Science" by its members. But I refer to it as scientism. It claims the scientific method as its basic principle. But it limits it's practice. Only popularly held theories are allowed. It is similar to how the birth of an antimaterialist man on Christmas is celebrated by mass consumption by Christians with a capital c.
Interpretation of raw scientific data is strictly personal opinion of a flesh and blood flawed human being. My main point is that we are quick to forget this fact in the presentation of science to the public. The phrasing that is used makes the opinion of men appear as the wisdom of faceless gods.
1 whyd_you_kill_doakes 2016-12-28
There is a scientific community. People who devote their life to practicing science
Kinda like a religious community
Senior community
White/black/brown community
It's just people with like characteristics
2 buildyourselfabridge 2016-12-28
So if i said, "religious people say", or "white people say", does it make any sense? Do all religious people share the same opinion? Do all white people?
There are individual people doing experiments, it is not a monlithic community that expresses one opinion.
2 whyd_you_kill_doakes 2016-12-28
Yeah, some things would make sense
"Religious people say there is more to the universe than can be seen with the naked eye"
"White people say they they don't get ashy"
Just 2 examples of many
1 buildyourselfabridge 2016-12-28
"Experts agree, white people say they don't get ashy"
1 whyd_you_kill_doakes 2016-12-28
Statement still works without "experts agree"
2 buildyourselfabridge 2016-12-28
How do we determine who is dedicated enough to science to be called part of the scientific community?
And we're going to survey all "white" people to get a concensus opinion on if they are ashy. How will we do it? How much "black" can they have in their ancestry and still qualify as "white"? What classifies as "black" and not "brown"? Are hispanics, native americans, chinese, indians, are they white, black, brown, yellow, or what?
1 mastigia 2016-12-28
I've worked in science related fields all my life and while you're mostly right, it kinda depends. I have been in completely unbiased and ethical labs where funding and equipment come pouring in and folks start nodding along to the pitch pretty quick.
Not out of any sense of greed or willful disrespect of the scientific method at all. But when you got some polished scientific salesmen that are paid to be good at convincing others to buy what they are selling, it can shape the direction of inquiry.
All a sudden no one is worrying about the car payment, and little Jimmy can get those braces. And I'm not saying I ever saw anything consciously faked to yield desirable data. But data can be, ya know, encouraged in certain directions.
2 whyd_you_kill_doakes 2016-12-28
For sure. But tell me, when someone is discovered to have "fudged" or forged their data, how are they viewed in the scientific community?
0 reclaim_constantinop 2016-12-28
UTTER, DAMNED ROT!
1 whyd_you_kill_doakes 2016-12-28
You do know he proposed and helped develop continental drift, right?
Or are you too busy planning how to commit genocide?
1 badgertime33 2016-12-28
Uhhh... why exactly accuse him of genocide?
He's merely pointing out that established science is often antagonistic to challenges. This is the danger on taking on a scientfic theory as dogma.
0 whyd_you_kill_doakes 2016-12-28
You missed his other threads, he's been banned or something, all comments nuked. He was saying "Christians want to rid of all jews"
1 bozobozo 2016-12-28
Blasphemy!!! Behead those that say science is a violent religion!
S/
2 petrus4 2016-12-28
Atheists don't need to behead people. There are plenty of other ways. The problem with beheading is that it leaves no room for plausible deniability.
1 jonnywut 2016-12-28
I think the language situation is a symptom, not a cause. Effort to solve the root cause will do a lot more than swimming against the current of language evolution.
1 buildyourselfabridge 2016-12-28
What is the root cause?
1 Pikcle 2016-12-28
when it comes to published and peer reviewed works, youre not trusting the scientist, youre trusting the hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people reviewing said published works. if something is amiss, there are folks chomping at the bit to call them out.
4 buildyourselfabridge 2016-12-28
This is again akin to religious faith. We assume that decisions are made in scientific research exclusively based on data. You aren't taking into account the negative social and financial results that having a unpopular opinion can bring upon a person doing research.
A man, just for fun, wrote a paper of pure nonsense and had it peer reviewed and published. If anyone recalls the story please post it here.
3 buildyourselfabridge 2016-12-28
http://mobile.the-scientist.com/article/37798/fake-paper-exposes-failed-peer-review
3 buildyourselfabridge 2016-12-28
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131003-bohannon-science-spoof-open-access-peer-review-cancer/
1 sper_jsh 2016-12-28
Not only this but most research is bullshit in the medical/psychological/pharmaceutical industries. Researchers and doctors have been half-assing their findings for a long time and it's finally coming back to get them. Only publishing research results that correspond and validate the hypothesis is published while the rest is put in the file cabinet. It's a very big and dangerous problem. The field of parapsychology has done a lot to try and get science and research to be held accountable. Of course profit and funding always wins.
0 HulaguKan 2016-12-28
And then again "anonymous sources" are good enough for this subreddit all the time.
0 SquareShapeCloud 2016-12-28
Why does everyone on this forum seem to think they're smarter than the scientific community?
7 buildyourselfabridge 2016-12-28
You seem to have glossed over the arguments and interpreted this discussion as a dick measuring contest.
It wasn't a dismissal of the scientific method.
-2 tadm123 2016-12-28
This is about climate change isn't it? This is when /r/conspiracy goes way overboard for me. The overwhelming majority of scientists agree on it. If you're gonna start questioning now every single statistics on the basis of "well how do we know they are not lying!", you're gonna end up in a rabbit hole where no information is a credible source except you going to every single scientist on the planet and doing your own poll.
3 buildyourselfabridge 2016-12-28
http://mobile.the-scientist.com/article/37798/fake-paper-exposes-failed-peer-review
3 buildyourselfabridge 2016-12-28
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131003-bohannon-science-spoof-open-access-peer-review-cancer/
2 whyd_you_kill_doakes 2016-12-28
For sure. But tell me, when someone is discovered to have "fudged" or forged their data, how are they viewed in the scientific community?