alex3619
Senior Member
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- Logan, Queensland, Australia
@barbc56
Science as it should be is vastly different from science being promoted by people who never question it, from decisions being made based on any old claim, from promotion of studies that are highly dubious but no questions are asked. Scientism is alive and well. We discuss it a lot on these forums, though we usually don't label it as scientism. For example, look at unquestioning promotion of the PACE trial by the SMC.
Differentiating between science and scientism is very much the difference between the philosophy of knowledge and the dogmatic religion of knowledge.
Vaccines are KNOWN to be dangerous. Not all, not all the time, not for all individuals, but they do produce some serious and lethal reactions from time to time.
Against this we have the issue that a number of major lethal and disabling diseases are now rare to nonexistent, though the pathogens may be kept in various labs. Countless millions are alive now who would not be without vaccines, and millions more are not ravaged by the impact of preventable disease.
The value of vaccines lies in population health. The danger of vaccines lies in individual health issues. The two are vastly different in how you think, research and communicate.
On a population level the value of vaccines outweighs the risk. On an individual level its a gamble. Its a good gamble usually, unless you have specific reasons to think otherwise, such as adverse reactions to a similar vaccine. In the case of ME with many of us losing seroconversion I think the risk/reward ratio is even more skewed than normal.
What is wrong about scientism is it does not ask questions. It accepts, and promotes. I distinguish between scientism zealots, and sceptical (in the classic sense, not denialist) thinkers. Scientists should, or at least research scientists, in an ideal world, all be professional sceptics. Sadly that is not always the case.
Much of science as practiced is not about questioning at all. Its about creating and selling product.
As for Zombie- or Mc-Science, this is about distorting the scientific base by bureaucratic, political or funding biases. McScience in particular is about production of research that supports corporate interests, with all the bias risks that involves. Big companies, and this often includes pharma, can do all sorts of things this way. This has included, in the past, commissioning six studies and only publishing the most favourable. Pharma has had staggering fines levied at it, but many companies keep getting fined for even newer offenses. I identify a trend of funding studies in CBT, for example, that seem to be less than properly scrutinized, and can by virtue of having many many studies look to the average person like there is a lot of evidence.
The classic example is of course Big Tobacco and the decades long fight to prevent tobacco being seen as dangerous. They funded study after study.
Not all companies engage in these practices. Those that do don't do it all the time. Yet it keeps being found out.
My main point is this: the extreme views are often subject to huge bias. Realistic views are often somewhere in the middle. They are not immune from bias either, sad as it is to say. Bias is always a risk. One antidote is to constantly question things, and especially the important things.
For anyone thinking science is only about evidence and reason, mathematics and logic, you might want to read discussions on the theories of Kuhn and Lakatos, as opposed to Popper. Popperian science is an ideal, the real world is often messy and irrational. Schools of scientific thought can fight rearguard actions for decades rather than accept being obsolete.
Science as it should be is vastly different from science being promoted by people who never question it, from decisions being made based on any old claim, from promotion of studies that are highly dubious but no questions are asked. Scientism is alive and well. We discuss it a lot on these forums, though we usually don't label it as scientism. For example, look at unquestioning promotion of the PACE trial by the SMC.
Differentiating between science and scientism is very much the difference between the philosophy of knowledge and the dogmatic religion of knowledge.
Vaccines are KNOWN to be dangerous. Not all, not all the time, not for all individuals, but they do produce some serious and lethal reactions from time to time.
Against this we have the issue that a number of major lethal and disabling diseases are now rare to nonexistent, though the pathogens may be kept in various labs. Countless millions are alive now who would not be without vaccines, and millions more are not ravaged by the impact of preventable disease.
The value of vaccines lies in population health. The danger of vaccines lies in individual health issues. The two are vastly different in how you think, research and communicate.
On a population level the value of vaccines outweighs the risk. On an individual level its a gamble. Its a good gamble usually, unless you have specific reasons to think otherwise, such as adverse reactions to a similar vaccine. In the case of ME with many of us losing seroconversion I think the risk/reward ratio is even more skewed than normal.
What is wrong about scientism is it does not ask questions. It accepts, and promotes. I distinguish between scientism zealots, and sceptical (in the classic sense, not denialist) thinkers. Scientists should, or at least research scientists, in an ideal world, all be professional sceptics. Sadly that is not always the case.
Much of science as practiced is not about questioning at all. Its about creating and selling product.
As for Zombie- or Mc-Science, this is about distorting the scientific base by bureaucratic, political or funding biases. McScience in particular is about production of research that supports corporate interests, with all the bias risks that involves. Big companies, and this often includes pharma, can do all sorts of things this way. This has included, in the past, commissioning six studies and only publishing the most favourable. Pharma has had staggering fines levied at it, but many companies keep getting fined for even newer offenses. I identify a trend of funding studies in CBT, for example, that seem to be less than properly scrutinized, and can by virtue of having many many studies look to the average person like there is a lot of evidence.
The classic example is of course Big Tobacco and the decades long fight to prevent tobacco being seen as dangerous. They funded study after study.
Not all companies engage in these practices. Those that do don't do it all the time. Yet it keeps being found out.
My main point is this: the extreme views are often subject to huge bias. Realistic views are often somewhere in the middle. They are not immune from bias either, sad as it is to say. Bias is always a risk. One antidote is to constantly question things, and especially the important things.
For anyone thinking science is only about evidence and reason, mathematics and logic, you might want to read discussions on the theories of Kuhn and Lakatos, as opposed to Popper. Popperian science is an ideal, the real world is often messy and irrational. Schools of scientific thought can fight rearguard actions for decades rather than accept being obsolete.
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