Rod,
I really enjoyed your essay, and I agree. A thought-provoking read, for those who are not 'blinded by science'.
tal
"Science is not Bad, but there is Bad Science."
by Rod P 46 Replies latest watchtower bible
-
-
kid-A
I guess I would encourage anybody who feels "blinded by science" to think about that statement next time they turn on their lights, turn on their stoves, enjoy their
air conditioning, take pharmaceuticals and/or vaccines for their diseases, hop on an airplane, post a message on the internet, take their car or drive a bus, go through life-saving surgery, are cured themselves or have their children cured from a horrible disease.....its all the work of us evil god-forsaken scientists!
-
Rod P
Kid-a
Methinks you have taken things a little out of context here.
And that's all I've got to say about that.
Rod P.
-
kid-A
Rod,
I am truly sorry, but you have made some gross over-generalizations in your essay, particularly pertaining to how scientific
funding is established and controlled by governmental agencies. I would direct you to the CIHR or NSERC websites for more
information about the process by which funding decisions are made for particular research projects (at least the Canadian
system).
Cheers
-
Rod P
Kid-a,
I am not trying to deny the valuable contributions and results of legitimate scientific research and invention.
I am aware that funding in Canada is subject to some rather stringent controls, reviews, audits, etc. I have been thru a number of these personally from an accounting perspective for clients involved in "scientific research and experimental research" projects. I have had to do many cost report submissions to governmental departments such as Industry Canada, and was directly involved in government audits in the aftermath.
However, it would be naive to think every scientific project that has ever been funded, including in Canada, has never been manipulated or abused and still gotten successfully thru the system.
I need only think back to the 1980's when the government of Canada offered an incentive program utilizing refundable Scientific Research Tax Credits (SRTC's) which turned out to be one of the biggest scams in Canadian taxpayer history. The government calculations of lost tax revenues over that program numbers in the billions of dollars. I personally was given a grand tour of a state of the art gold and mineral assay lab that could rival anything similar in North America, and cost in excess of $110 Million. It was one of the most expensive and over-designed facilities ever made, and i'ts you and I the taxpayers who ended up having to pay for this nonsense. I could go on and on at length, but I did not want this thread to turn into a big indictment of the scientific community. I also know that things have tightened up a whole lot more since then, and the rules are much more stringent and enforced than they were at that time. Thank god! (Dare I say!)
Let me tell you my underlieing motivation for this thread. I am going to be introducing some rather interesting but non-conventional topics on other threads having to do with the Big Bang theory and also Einstein's General and Special Theory of relativity. They are going to be challenges by other scientists whose information I will be using and relying upon (since I am not a scientist per se, but rather one who is very much interested in science.)
Because they are not officially recognized by the "scientific establishment" for a number of different reasons, I see these "unconventional mavericks" as needing to be given a fair chance to be heard. I do see that a number of these people have been treated unfairly, and for that reason, I wanted to make the case that not everything in the world of science is unbiased.
There ARE human beings in positions of Power who have used and abused that power to protect their own published viewpoints. I can cite you a number of cases where this has happened, and it has cost them their careers.
And there absolutely ARE institutions that have used their financial leverage and connections to their own advantage, influencing various parameters of the research. These are not subject to the same criteria of accountability that the government is which is responsible for the use of taxpayer monies.
Further to all this, I am going to try to make the case that when you look at what these "other scientists" have to say, if they are anywhere's near to being "on target" in terms of scientific truth (even if it overturns long-held views), there may be some serious implications for us all. In other words, if we find that "a and b and c" are the prevailing scientific views of today, and then along come a few other scientists who make a good case for "x and y and z", then this may mean that "a and b and c" may, by implication, have to be questioned, or even redefined. But, if this happens, it may also mean that some whole new insights may be drawn, such as "m and n and o", which opens up many more possibilities.
I am anxious to get on with the real business at hand, so please forgive me if I have come across in my opening remarks as being too prejudiced against scientists. That was not my intent. I was not suggesting the problem was rampant.
Rod P.
-
seattleniceguy
kid-a,
Thank you for your comments. I appreciated hearing the voice of someone who is personally involved in the field as a professional.
Your comments about considering the value of science when you turn on your air conditioner, use medicine, etc, resonated with me because I have been thinking about the same thing lately. What I would say to science disbelievers is: science is a good system because it is manifestly real. We would not be able to build tiny chips with millions of transistors that can use laser beams to read DVDs with billions of tiny pits on them if the underlying theory were not true.
I sometimes wonder whether certain people have any idea how many layers upon layers of science and technology underlie their every minute of life in the modern world. We did not develop airplanes and cutting-edge medical treatments by taking wild guesses. We researched, we developed theories that explained what we saw, we validated those theories in the lab millions of times over, and we used the knowledge to create practical applications. Then others came after us, did more research, refined the theories, and built even better applications.
There are some cases where politics influence science, but I believe that they are rare, for these reasons:
- Scientists do what they do because they have a desire to learn.
- Politicians could not possibly influence all branches of science. Science proceeds apace, and sometimes it ruffles some feathers, and some of those times political pressure is brought to bear. Witness Galileo vs. the Catholic Church. But that did not stop science in the long term, even if it was a temporary setback. Politics is temporary; knowledge is forever.
SNG
-
Frog
Excellent thread, lot's of quality points of view. So much to digest, had to implement the skim and scan technique. Will look out for Rod P in future, along with 2 of my fave posters, tetrapod & sngfrog
-
Rod P
SNG,
Of course, you do make valid points which I acknowledge.
Thinking about some of the "buttons" I seemed to have pushed on this thread, I am trying to take the edge off a bit in terms of where I am coming from versus what people seem to be perceiving from my remarks.
My goal was and is to open the door to alternative thinking from scientists who are not in the mainstream. I was trying to break down barriers so that people here would be more willing to listen to what they had to say.
Apparently it appears that I have simply presented an indictment against all scientists, which was not my intention here.
At the same time, I stand by my remarks, because I know for a certainty that what I say is true, and there are a lot of examples that would serve to illustrate that.
Politics is temporary; knowledge is forever.
I absolutely agree with that. There are times when science takes a back seat to politics, because financial backing and support is vital. But in the long run, science will win out, precisely because knowledge and discovery has it's own way of becoming compelling and convincing, or as you say "manifestly real". True knowledge is simply superior to ignorance, superstition, prejudice, wishful thinking and untested notions (eg. Urban Legends).
Perhaps I need to update my thinking in terms of how science operates today, as opposed to say 20 years ago when I was in the thick of things. Could it be that a lot of what used to occur within the scientific domain back then has now been successfully weeded out? Is it possible that more and more safeguards have been built into "the system" that some of these more negative occurrences stand a far lesser chance of being gotten away with than could have been done years ago? Maybe!!!!! But then, has human nature changed to any significant degree since then?.....I am willing to be shown otherwise.
On the other hand, I always think about the fact that over 90% of all the scientists that have ever lived in the history of the world are alive on planet earth right now. I call this the "great equalizer" because this simply means that there are far more scientists scrutinizing the work of their peers than ever before. The chances of manipulating the experimental results, or producing significant or undetected errors are, therefore, greatly diminished.
In terms of Kid-A, who is a professor in a scientific field, I mean no disrespect. I have no doubts that he has paid a big price, and has worked hard over the years, and deserves to be in whatever position he has advanced to. My hat goes off to him, I give full credit to his accomplishments, and I am quite ready to acknowledge that his knowledge of science is superior to mine. If I met him in person, I would probably feel very priviledged to study under his tutelage.
It has occurred to me that where the greatest differences of opinion, the biggest arguments, even animosities occur is when we get to the frontiers of science. This is the area where the least amount of research has been done, and there is more room for a diversity of opinion and interpretation of scientific data, with more questions needing to be asked and answered. This is the arena where many questions and theories may be hotly disputed from more than one viewpoint, with competing hypotheses, even theories. This is not necessarily unhealthy in the interests of scientific progress.
One example of this is in the field of Cosmology, discussing the Universe and its origins. This is not something that lends itself to scrutiny under a microscope in a laboratory. We end up with a lot of complex mathematical formulae and theoretical models in computerized simulations, but no-one would be so bold as to think they had all the answers. There may be a lot of romantic notions surrounding all the mysteries and question surrounding this field of research, but science is still plodding along, searching for the answers.
And so, because of the area I wish to lead into on other stand-alone threads having to do with the Big Bang theory, and Einstein's theory of Relativity, I would say that these are the kinds of topics that are basically on the relative frontiers of science, where there are still a lot of possibilities beyond what is currently being taught vis-a-vis the textbooks. All the more reason why new and different ideas should not only be tolerated, but even invited into the participation. I would only ask that due consideration be given to viewpoints that may be offered by those who are not considered part of the "establishment" or the academic elite. We might even learn something during the exercise.
Rod P.
-
talesin
Apparently it appears that I have simply presented an indictment against all scientists, which was not my intention here.
No, I understood your intent ... science, like every other field, has its good and its bad.
A brief analogy:
Let's say you outlined a similar premise about law enforcement, and how some elements within it may be corrupt. You can rest assured that some of those involved in this field would do the same-put downs, insisting that you are denigrating all police, when they are really dedicated public servants, yada, yada, yada. They would be 'blind' to seeing any problems in the system.
That's where I was coming from with my previous comment. Perhaps the scientists (and wannabes) could be a bit less defensive on the subject ...
tal
-
DannyBloem
What I think is one of the problems here is that there is a big gap between the general public and science. The public does (mostly) not understand how science works, and have a wrong image of scientists.
Maybe thanks to the media or whatever who depicts scientists as some strange wierdo doing all wrong kinds of experiments in his basement.
In many fields it is all group works, the individual is becomming less and less important. There are also so may controls.
Anyway, I think it is true that a scientist is under a lot of pressure to get something to be published. This can cause some scientists to fake (or adjust) some data or whatever. However a scientist has to describe the way he conducts his experiments and soon other will try the same. If the experimental data of the other researchers are constantly very different, it is easy for the scientist to get a blame as fraud.
About the big bang therory, it is very interesting information. It is true there are many holes in the theories, or better to say things that we do not understand. This does not have to indicate however that everything is wrong. But in the article I think there is not given a better theory or suggestion. So as long as there is no better theory that can be verified, it is best to hold on to the existing theory and try to prove or disprove it, and continue to calculate its concequences.
Anyway it is good for scientists to have an open mind on theories that they use. I know most of them are, as there are as view things as exiting as proving a accepted theory wrong.
On the other hand, scientist need to use older theories to build something new.Danny