Science vs Religion - There is room for both.

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Surely, that's Orwell's point?

(Honestly, it's hard to work on a forum full of the irony-impaired! )

To what extent is 'science' similarly described? Research no longer takes place in the individual conception of the thinker, but is now permeated by the politics related to public and private funding, commercial viability, the Zeitgeist? That is not to suggest that the work is not, in and of itself, valid; but rather than the work has begun to serve interests outside itself.

It is?

ruveyn

All of these statements are BS and indicate me you spend way too much time in conspiracy forums.

Yes. YECs often cite famous scientists who "support" creationism by virtue of having lived and died before Darwin put forward his ideas. It's a ridiculous claim to say that Newton or Bacon rejected evolution; just like it would be ridiculous to say that Newton rejected quantum mechanics.

All of them are BS? Is that truly what you believe?

Are you suggesting that research money is doled out exclusively on merit? That who's in favour and who is out of favour within a University has no impact on who gets time with critical equipment? That private funds are not going to come forward on the the basis for potential return on investment?

I'm not suggesting conspiracy, simply suggesting that the competition for patronage has made researchers (and hence research) subordinate to those who control the resources.

You appeared to be suggesting that this is somehow a departure from historical norms. Nothing could be further from the truth.

But anyways, that is only one small part of the dynamic in the research community. Researchers are driven by what they find interesting, and they will often write... shall we say... creative... grant applications to convince others that their projects are worth funding and will produce viable rewards.

Right. documentaries can be similar. I once watched an awesome one on whales, and in the last 2-5 minutes or so they had a little spiel about global warming, showed sky scrapers hundreds of feet under water, whales swimming above them. It felt very tacked on, and it was blatantly obvious they did it for funding.

I see now. I thought there was a mistake on the dating of things.

ruveyn

There is enough room for both science and religion on the head of a pin.

ruveyn

Definitely, because you generalized. There is research subject to politics and funding, but thinking all of it is subject of such is BS.


This is all BS. Your assumption is that just because there is money required for research it means the studies are flawed. But accepted studies have always had to disclose bias and it is always the case that they go through review by scientists associated with the other side anyway.

There are always going to be biases everywhere. But science's method works in a way that it is very hard to just fabricate something just because you got funding from it. Because before gaining acceptance you would have to made your research in a transparent way, so much that the people not liking to accept your conclusion will be ready to bury you professionally if they find fraud.

There is a large amount of fraudulent research and data, but they are caught up almost instantly. The "Vaccine causes autism" ones are a great example. Mr. Wakefield had a lot of personal interests (related to winning lawsuits) in making his theory that vaccines caused autism look legit. He commited a lot of fraud, but nevertheless, he got caught, 10 years later he lost his doctor license.

There is always going to be fraud, but science has plenty of ways to detect it, and the research and data that is generally accepted have gone through strong inspection and repetition of experiments.



This generalization is BS. Simply as that. It shows that you are against all sort of evidence. In fact it indicates me that you have been supported the sides that have had no evidence whatsoever in favor for so long that you have a need to use "money" fallacies to attack the whole bunch of scientific studies made. My question is why are you afraid of evidence?

I may or may not agree depending on the status of the Higgs boson.

There is not enough room for both in my soul.

I'm sorry to hear that.

I should merely let the irony speak for itself. But I will point out that I have never suggested that all research is subject to politics (though I challenge you to present significant research that is immune from it). You are creating an error when you ascribe a broader sentiment to my thinking than that which I committed to text.



Again you are ascribing assumptions to me that are not supported in the text. My original post on the subject says, "That is not to suggest that the work is not, in and of itself, valid," so you have wasted four paragraphs defending something that I did not call into question.

I have never suggested for a moment that political and funding pressures create fraudulent research (though clearly they can). My concern is more insidious--that political and funding pressure focus research activities into areas that serve the interests of those pressures, at the expense of potentially beneficial research elsewhere.

In short, the research that is done subject to pressure isn't wrong, but potentially it is skewed.



And yet again your lack of intellectual rigour presents itself. My aim is not to attack scientific studies, per se, but rather to have a better understanding of those forces that might be manipulating science for uses other than the straightforward contribution to human knowledge.

Orwell may be quite correct that this is no departure from historical norms, but I remain to be convinced that the systems of patronage that funded scientific inquiry in the 17th through the 19th centuries were similarly biased as the systems that exist today.