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I was raised by a scientist (life sciences) and then studied some history of science in graduate school. And because of both I approach all scientific knowledge with what I think is a healthy measure of skepticism. Because our understanding of the natural world is often very different from one decade, certainly from one century, to the next.
Junk Science
Seeded on Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:39 AM EST
Article Source: Talking Points Memo- Enjoy this article? Help vote it up the 'Vine.
- Public Discussion (8)
I appreciate skepticism, but a partisan stance against something is not the same as challenging its merit. There's a lot at stake here so everyone needs to challenge the science. This is clearly not happening in the media when you compare how Fox News and MSNBC cover the issue.
- 5 votes
#1 - Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:57 AM ESTThis is clearly not happening in the media when you compare how Fox News and MSNBC cover the issue.
It's not terribly different from one corporate network to the next. What changes is the amount of truth or spin that's reported, but there is no honest, scientific debate on television or corporate news media and when you look for what's missing you see that.
If there were honest discussion of science as part of informing the public and uncovering the key debate facts we would be hearing about the genetically engineered foods that Americans have been covertly force fed for a decade and we don't hear a word. Fox and MSNBC both ignore the issue.
They all spin the science and omit true debate to balance between their viewers appetite for factual reporting and protecting the ad revenues of their ad base.
- 8 votes
There is no room for debate in science. The scientific method shows which theories are incorrect, and which are (for the moment) correct. Debate in science is pointless, and any time it is seen is because politics or personal preference has tainted it. Anything to which the scientific method can not be applied is not science, it is politics.
- 1 vote
Alway...There is no room for debate in science.
Are you kidding? As long as we have questions for which no clear answer is determinable, debate must be the cornerstone of science. Theory stems from questioning and debating what may be possible for what we don't know. Without the right questions we will never find the right answers.
- 3 votes
Science is borne from skepticism. Scientists should try to prove the theory wrong. Call it debate or the scientific method. It's all the same. But saying you don't "believe" in AGW because it's nobody's business how much oil you can burn is fallacious.
- 4 votes
The tobacco industry in the fifties and sixties had their own scientists who told everyone that tobacco was no problem.
Today we have scientists in the biotech and agriculture industries telling us the same thing using the same model of "NON-peer reviewed science."
- 5 votes
Alway, you are being very literal minded. Scientists have a need to be published, that leads to a political process it's true. But in order to come to conclusions, scientists need to set their work into a framework. This framework needs to be ironed out in debates. These debates should be open and available to everyone, but we know that everyone spins the data to their point of view. Debates in science are actually quite healthy and necessary.
- 4 votes
#2 - Thu Dec 10, 2009 2:18 PM ESTYes, debates in science are good, healthy, and necessary. The notion of "peer review" means that scientists share information, conditions of experiments, and results in order to get confirmation, have others point out potential problems, and new ways to look at the data presented. This is very good.
The case where person A puts forth a viewpoint supported by various commonly accepted citations of verified data, and person B tries to shout down person A, misrepresents his position, attempts to kick the underpinnings of not just his arguments but the foundations of the last thirty years of research out from under person A, and bribes passersby to repeat B's tactics? That is not a debate. That is a smear campaign, and its only purpose is to cloud the issue.
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