Scientism: The worship of modern mainstream science

originally posted by: vasaga
The investigations done by free thinkers or independent researchers are not falsified by disproving hypotheses, but rather discarded by scorn and ridicule.

An example of that is what happened to Halton Arp, author of Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies. He tried to challenge Big Bang cosmology, but had his paper summarily dismissed:

originally posted by: GetHyped

originally posted by: vasagaActually, as someone who has a degree in chemical engineering, and works at a refinery, I've read my share of scientific papers.

The person who thinks a paper abstract is enough to determine the credibility of the paper, its methodology, its data and its conclusions?

The person who mistakenly thought that peer-review was the final word in scientific research and who's purpose is to independent replicate and validate the data and claims in a paper?

The person who cannot distinguish the difference between a good and bad paper, who appears oblivious to the red flags you should be looking out for?

The person who appears oblivious to the messiness of science and how being able to assess the credibility of a paper in terms of methodology, data, conclusions, replication and subsequent discussion within the scientific community is not only the cornerstone of the scientific method but critical to separating the wheat from the chaff?

The person who thinks a single poorly written paper who's findings have not been replicated is capable of refuting the mountain of evidence in favor of a given scientific theory?

The person who displays a consistently low level of scientific literacy and who routinely makes mistakes, blunders and fundamental misconceptions about the scientific method?

Consider me deeply suspicious of your claim.

That's what I want you to believe, yes.

Right *wink wink*

Actually, no. Just because I constantly choose to play devil's advocates in those kind of threads to see how much people actually question and how much people blindly defend doesn't mean I believe everything in that paper.

Oh come on now, you really expect me to believe this? This defense is beyond lame. You got called out on your BS and you (rightfully) looked silly as a result. Pretty much every response in that thread was critical of that paper. You persisted in defending it, only to play this card once you let slip you hadn't even read it (and making you look very hypocritical in the process given this current thread of yours). To pull this line now as an excuse, have you no shame? Try and have at least a shred of intellectual honesty.

The difference between scientism and me is that scientism is in support of the big body of mainstream science. I choose the side of the minority that questions the big body. Not because I believe everything they say, but because they are challenging the status quo which is not working.

There is no difference. Every charge you level at this 'scientism' thing you've invented can equally be laid down at your feet. That makes you a hypocrite.

Yeah. I get it. I'm the most stupid person on the planet. Tell me again how this undermines scientism in any way. Oh, right...

Description of Poisoning the Well

This sort of "reasoning" involves trying to discredit what a person might later claim by presenting unfavorable information (be it true or false) about the person. This "argument" has the following form:

Unfavorable information (be it true or false) about person A is presented.
Therefore any claims person A makes will be false.
This sort of "reasoning" is obviously fallacious. The person making such an attack is hoping that the unfavorable information will bias listeners against the person in question and hence that they will reject any claims he might make. However, merely presenting unfavorable information about a person (even if it is true) hardly counts as evidence against the claims he/she might make. This is especially clear when Poisoning the Well is looked at as a form of ad Homimem in which the attack is made prior to the person even making the claim or claims. The following example clearly shows that this sort of "reasoning" is quite poor.

People have posted multiple examples of what I say in the opening post. Yet all you do is ignore it and keep saying how stupid I am.

Let's please discuss the topic and NOT each other.............

--Off Topic, One Liners and General Back Scratching Posts--


You are responsible for your own posts.

We expect civility and decorum within all topics.

originally posted by: C0bzz
a reply to: vasaga

The difference between scientism and me is that scientism is in support of the big body of mainstream science. I choose the side of the minority that questions the big body. Not because I believe everything they say, but because they are challenging the status quo which is not working.

How is that any better than "mainstream" science?

They are willing to go wherever the evidence leads, unlike mainstream science, which only goes where they are allowed to go by scientific dogma.

originally posted by: C0bzz
The difference between me and you, is I purely search for the truth based on the evidence available, regardless of whether it is popular or not. It is the most ethical approach and spreads the truth most effectively. It is also the approach favored by most professional engineering entities.

Good for you that you believe that about yourself.

originally posted by: C0bzz
You seem to think science should be a popularity contest, where you feel the need to support the underdog regardless of whether it's true or not. What you should really be doing, is looking at actual scientific evidence and dispelling pseudoscience where you can.

We need to support the underdog when he wants to test new ideas. Currently they are dismissed with scorn before anything has even been tested. Controversial hypotheses are not allowed anymore. Look at the ridicule Rupert Sheldrake faced, even when his points are very valid. We are not allowed to question modern mainstream science as a body. The supporters will immediately attack the person, whether he's right or wrong. This is the point. But you people sit there day after day, night after night, pretending that everything is going perfectly in science, that everyone can research whatever they want, and all good evidence is accepted and all bad conclusions are discarded, the ones who are ridiculed always deserve it and the ones who are praised also always deserve it. This is not based on reality. It's no more based on reality than tbelieving that God has only brought us good.

originally posted by: C0bzz
You also haven't given an example of mainstream science not working yet. "Science" not working has a word. Pseudoscience.

Oh it's working. Just not in the way it's supposed to work.

a reply to: vasaga

Pointing out blatant contradictions between the things you have said online is not "poisoning the well". Pointing out the mistakes, contradictions and logical holes in your arguments is not a fallacy, however much you may want it to be in order to avoid having to address the issues raised. I'm afraid you don't get to throw random fallacies at people when they point out such things and expect to be taken seriously.

Seeing as you love (mis)playing the fallacy card, here's one for you:

The false fallacy fallacy occurs when a person’s argument is falsely claimed to be a logical fallacy when it is actually logically valid. This fallacy is a form of straw man argument. A straw man argument occurs when a person’s argument is misrepresented. This misrepresented argument is then attacked. In the false fallacy fallacy, the person’s argument is specifically misrepresented as being fallacious when it is in fact logically valid.

False fallacy arguments are usually used by those who do not understand the fallacies they claim are being committed. This fallacy can also be very effectively used by those wishing to deceive an audience that is unfamiliar with the fallacies claimed.

Emphasis mine.

originally posted by: GetHyped
a reply to: vasaga

Pointing out blatant contradictions between the things you have said online is not "poisoning the well". Pointing out the mistakes, contradictions and logical holes in your arguments is not a fallacy, however much you may want it to be in order to avoid having to address the issues raised. I'm afraid you don't get to throw random fallacies at people when they point out such things and expect to be taken seriously.

It is a fallacy if you somehow think that things that happened in another thread undermines scientism, which is what this thread is about. All your arguments are about what I did. It's not about how scientism doesn't exist or whatever. I think you know very well it does and you don't want to admit it.

a reply to: vasaga

Your actions in other threads have shown you to be intellectually dishonest, scientifically illiterate, cherry picking in the information you use to form your arguments, ignorant of the scientific method and someone who holds faith-based ideas and ignores evidence that contradicts them. Considering these are the very things you accuse others of with this whole 'scientism' thing, it's all very much on topic.

If you don't want the fallacious arguments you've used in other threads to be used against you in this thread to expose your hypocrisy and ignorance then perhaps you shouldn't behave in such a hypocritical manner.

You are preaching to the choir with me OP. Science is the new religion and novelty is the substitute for spirit. We no longer look at the big picture to discern how these technologies will change us or our environment. Anything that can be produced for a profit is put on the market with zero forethought for what effect it will have. Science has given governments nearly unlimited power with which to control or destroy and they are developing new methods daily. This is the basis for the NWO and unless the people are willing to question the science that empowers it the best we could hope to do is swap dictators. Our quest for knowledge has made us believe we are gods and can change the world to suit us. One day the full reality of what we've given up will come back to bite us in the arse and we will be back to living in the iron age so far-reaching will be the effects.
Our playing god will not end well.

originally posted by: GetHyped
a reply to: vasaga

Your actions in other threads have shown you to be
intellectually dishonest,
scientifically illiterate,
cherry picking in the information you use to form your arguments,
ignorant of the scientific method and
someone who holds faith-based ideas and ignores evidence that contradicts them.

That sounds very much like a list of you describing yourself, along with your buddies which you raid every thread you dislike with.

Intellectually dishonest:

When one avoids an honest, deliberate and comprehensive approach to a matter because it may introduce an adverse effect on personally and professionally held views and beliefs.

Who are the ones trying to undermine a comprehensive approach to the matter of scientism here?

Scientifically illiterate:

Scientific literacy encompasses written, numerical, and digital literacy as they pertain to understanding science, its methodology, observations, and theories.

To understand that scientism exists, someone needs to be more than scientifically literate. They have gone so far as to see where the method is not being applied, especially by the body that is supposed to apply it. I'm not the one who invented scientism. There are quite a few articles and videos floating around depicting this problem.

cherry picking:

Choosing to make selective choices among competing evidence, so as to emphasize those results that support a given position, while ignoring or dismissing any findings that do not support it, is a practice known as "cherry picking" and is a hallmark of poor science or pseudo-science.

Sounds more like what you're doing regarding anything that is a challenge to evolution, abiogenesis, materialism and so on, than what I'm doing.

Ignorant of the scientific method: Basically the same as scientifically illiterate. Repeating yourself to make your argument look longer?

Someone who holds faith-based ideas and ignores evidence that contradicts them: Sounds pretty much the same as cherry picking... And like you and your buddies raiding every thread that you dislike, trying to ridicule the person rather than delving into the content.

originally posted by: GetHyped
Considering these are the very things you accuse others of with this whole 'scientism' thing, it's all very much on topic.

Well, there's a difference between falsely accusing and pointing out a specific behavior that has been noticed. You among others have accused me multiple times of being religious, while that was never true. And then you have the nerve to call me intellectually dishonest...

originally posted by: GetHyped
If you don't want the fallacious arguments you've used in other threads to be used against you in this thread to expose your hypocrisy and ignorance then perhaps you shouldn't behave in such a hypocritical manner.

Fine. Keep poisoning the well. I'll go into ignore mode until you actually give a substantiated argument as to why or how scientism doesn't exist. I wish you good luck with ignoring the evidence.

originally posted by: Asktheanimals
Science is the new religion...

While this makes for a popular sound bite, it really isn't.

Our playing god will not end well.

Well, if you believe the good book, it's not supposed to end well.

Let me just leave these examples here that support scientism in modern day science...

Unreliable research
Trouble at the lab

Scientists like to think of science as self-correcting. To an alarming degree, it is not
~
Over the past few years various researchers have made systematic attempts to replicate some of the more widely cited priming experiments. Many of these replications have failed. In April, for instance, a paper in PLoS ONE, a journal, reported that nine separate experiments had not managed to reproduce the results of a famous study from 1998 purporting to show that thinking about a professor before taking an intelligence test leads to a higher score than imagining a football hooligan.

The idea that the same experiments always get the same results, no matter who performs them, is one of the cornerstones of science’s claim to objective truth. If a systematic campaign of replication does not lead to the same results, then either the original research is flawed (as the replicators claim) or the replications are (as many of the original researchers on priming contend). Either way, something is awry.

To err is all too common
It is tempting to see the priming fracas as an isolated case in an area of science—psychology—easily marginalised as soft and wayward. But irreproducibility is much more widespread. A few years ago scientists at Amgen, an American drug company, tried to replicate 53 studies that they considered landmarks in the basic science of cancer, often co-operating closely with the original researchers to ensure that their experimental technique matched the one used first time round. According to a piece they wrote last year in Nature, a leading scientific journal, they were able to reproduce the original results in just six.

This part about negative results is very interesting. By leaving these out, a theory can look much more solid than it actually is:

With this in mind, consider 1,000 hypotheses being tested of which just 100 are true (see chart). Studies with a power of 0.8 will find 80 of them, missing 20 because of false negatives. Of the 900 hypotheses that are wrong, 5%—that is, 45 of them—will look right because of type I errors. Add the false positives to the 80 true positives and you have 125 positive results, fully a third of which are specious. If you dropped the statistical power from 0.8 to 0.4, which would seem realistic for many fields, you would still have 45 false positives but only 40 true positives. More than half your positive results would be wrong.

The negative results are much more trustworthy; for the case where the power is 0.8 there are 875 negative results of which only 20 are false, giving an accuracy of over 97%. But researchers and the journals in which they publish are not very interested in negative results. They prefer to accentuate the positive, and thus the error-prone. Negative results account for just 10-30% of published scientific literature, depending on the discipline. This bias may be growing. A study of 4,600 papers from across the sciences conducted by Daniele Fanelli of the University of Edinburgh found that the proportion of negative results dropped from 30% to 14% between 1990 and 2007. Lesley Yellowlees, president of Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry, has published more than 100 papers. She remembers only one that reported a negative result.

Source

originally posted by: vasaga
Let me just leave these examples here that support scientism in modern day science...

I thought you were against it so why are you posting support for it?

Seriously, an article about how science is not as self correcting as "some" scientists think, is actually self correction.

originally posted by: daskakik

originally posted by: vasaga
Let me just leave these examples here that support scientism in modern day science...

I thought you were against it so why are you posting support for it?

You're misunderstanding the position. Support that scientism exists, not that it should be supported.

originally posted by: daskakik
Seriously, an article about how science is not as self correcting as "some" scientists think, is actually self correction.

Unless it's published in a popular biased peer-review journal, it will go on deaf ears, just like it's going on deaf ears in this thread. There are quite a few people who are aware of it, but they are silent, and the ones who deny its reality are extremely outspoken.

originally posted by: vasaga
You're misunderstanding the position. Support that scientism exists, not that it should be supported.

I was being sarcastic although, after looking at the article, it actually doesn't support your claim.

Unless it's published in a popular biased peer-review journal, it will go on deaf ears, just like it's going on deaf ears in this thread. There are quite a few people who are aware of it, but they are silent, and the ones who deny its reality are extremely outspoken.

Except that what you posted is proof against that.

a reply to: daskakik

In what way?

Why is it that when you make claims regarding proof or evidence, it is never backed up by a source or copying anything or even a simple explanation? I provide the parts which are relevant so people don't have to go out to look for themselves. All I get in return is "no that's wrong, that's wrong, no, nope, wrong". Elaborate on your replies please.

originally posted by: vasaga


Intellectually dishonest:

When one avoids an honest, deliberate and comprehensive approach to a matter because it may introduce an adverse effect on personally and professionally held views and beliefs.

Who are the ones trying to undermine a comprehensive approach to the matter of scientism here?

You presented a paper as being solid evidence for your faith-based position and defended its methodology and findings when you hadn't even read it.

That's intellectually dishonest.

Scientifically illiterate:

Scientific literacy encompasses written, numerical, and digital literacy as they pertain to understanding science, its methodology, observations, and theories.

To understand that scientism exists, someone needs to be more than scientifically literate. They have gone so far as to see where the method is not being applied, especially by the body that is supposed to apply it. I'm not the one who invented scientism. There are quite a few articles and videos floating around depicting this problem.

You sincerely believed that one piece of unreplicated work refuted a mountain of solid scientific evidence. You believed that the peer-review was some seal of approval of a paper's findings and methodology. You believed that peer-review was the final word when it's only just the beginning.

That's scientific illiteracy in general and ignorance of scientific method in particular.

cherry picking:

Choosing to make selective choices among competing evidence, so as to emphasize those results that support a given position, while ignoring or dismissing any findings that do not support it, is a practice known as "cherry picking" and is a hallmark of poor science or pseudo-science.

Sounds more like what you're doing regarding anything that is a challenge to evolution, abiogenesis, materialism and so on, than what I'm doing.

You ignore all of the evidence in favor of the theory of evolution and the hypothesis of abiogenesis and present one poor quality paper as solid proof against both positions.

That's cherry picking.

Ignorant of the scientific method: Basically the same as scientifically illiterate. Repeating yourself to make your argument look longer?

You don't understand the theory of evolution. You don't understand the hypothesis of abiogenesis. That's scientific illiteracy.

You don't understand the scientific method. That's ignorance of the scientific method.

Ignorance of the scientific method is a specific example of scientific illiteracy. It's not my fault that your ignorance spans multiple categories.

a reply to: vasaga
You said:

There are quite a few people who are aware of it, but they are silent

how can they be silent when you just posted an article about it?

Final Warning...

originally posted by: DontTreadOnMe
Let's please discuss the topic and NOT each other.............

--Off Topic, One Liners and General Back Scratching Posts--


You are responsible for your own posts.

We expect civility and decorum within all topics.

Another example of modern day science not working as it should:

Problems with scientific research
How science goes wrong

Scientific research has changed the world. Now it needs to change itself

A SIMPLE idea underpins science: “trust, but verify”. Results should always be subject to challenge from experiment. That simple but powerful idea has generated a vast body of knowledge. Since its birth in the 17th century, modern science has changed the world beyond recognition, and overwhelmingly for the better.

But success can breed complacency. Modern scientists are doing too much trusting and not enough verifying—to the detriment of the whole of science, and of humanity.

Too many of the findings that fill the academic ether are the result of shoddy experiments or poor analysis. A rule of thumb among biotechnology venture-capitalists is that half of published research cannot be replicated.

Results are being manipulated so scientists can make themselves look good:

One reason is the competitiveness of science. In the 1950s, when modern academic research took shape after its successes in the second world war, it was still a rarefied pastime. The entire club of scientists numbered a few hundred thousand. As their ranks have swelled, to 6m-7m active researchers on the latest reckoning, scientists have lost their taste for self-policing and quality control. The obligation to “publish or perish” has come to rule over academic life. Competition for jobs is cut-throat. Full professors in America earned on average $135,000 in 2012—more than judges did. Every year six freshly minted PhDs vie for every academic post. Nowadays verification (the replication of other people’s results) does little to advance a researcher’s career. And without verification, dubious findings live on to mislead.

Careerism also encourages exaggeration and the cherry-picking of results. In order to safeguard their exclusivity, the leading journals impose high rejection rates: in excess of 90% of submitted manuscripts. The most striking findings have the greatest chance of making it onto the page. Little wonder that one in three researchers knows of a colleague who has pepped up a paper by, say, excluding inconvenient data from results “based on a gut feeling”.

As for peer reviews...

The hallowed process of peer review is not all it is cracked up to be, either. When a prominent medical journal ran research past other experts in the field, it found that most of the reviewers failed to spot mistakes it had deliberately inserted into papers, even after being told they were being tested.

Source

The illusion that modern day science is infallible needs to be dropped.

originally posted by: vasaga
Another example of modern day science not working as it should

And also another example that the claim at the end of the post is not very accurate.

The illusion that modern day science is infallible needs to be dropped.

The reason I don't agree with the whole "science is religion" premise is that, while some may sound religious about science, I have not come across many that think science is infallible.

Even those that may think this don't seem to extend this infallability to the humans working in scientific fields.