Science is not something that needs defending. It is like truth: it is its own defence. Scienidolatory, like Scientology, is a series of faulty and flawed beliefs that does need defending.
Consider this tweet for science day. There are some errors.
- The model of global warming is precisely that: a model. a hypothesis. It is not a series of facts. The facts are the measurements of temperature.
- Vaccinations work for populations, but some have significant side effects for individuals
- Evolution is as much a necessary hypothesis in biology as sociobiology, Freudianism, or the work of Lysenkon
It gets worse. From the daily fishwrap. The current politics relating to intersectionality and the local treaty of waitangi are as related to science as the proclamations from the current chief Mullah of the Islamic State.
The event protested against the rejection of established climate science, the “injustice” of laws that exclude people from scientific communities on the basis of their country of birth, race, or religion, and marginalisation and exclusion of women and minority scientists.
“We acknowledge that in Aotearoa New Zealand the scientific community has yet to live up to the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and that there is an ongoing process of decolonisation required to achieve greater inclusion of Maori in the scientific community,” organisers stated on the event’s website.
They also pointed to former prime minister John Key’s dismissal of concerns aired by freshwater ecologist Dr Mike Joy about the impact of the dairy industry on water quality; and also a code for “public engagement” previously proposed by the Royal Society of New Zealand, which some scientists feared could have a silencing effect.
There are necessary truths: those which we know are true, and which we have seen with our own eyes or have overwhelming evidence for. There are then conditional truths, those which we accept as correct because we trust the work that has been done by others. But conditional truth can be refined. It is a model. It is not graven in stone. The Newtonian cosmology was refined by Einstein. His work will be further refined.
Truth needs no march. This the face of converged science: the face of antiscience, and the face of limited utility. For those of us who grind in the mills trying to get studies done with limited money, this helps not a whit.
Do not be them and do not be like them.
“Te Tiriti o Waitangi” so ‘Tiriti’ is a loan-word from English; presumably the Maori didn’t have the concept themselves before the pakeha came, eh? 😉
No. Their version of a treaty was to digest the corpses of their enemies. Literally. By the time of the Treaty (1840) they had, in general, been converted to Christendom, realized that mass warfare using muskets was a form of mutual genocide, and the USA or French would, in five seconds, take them over. They chose to become British.
The Maori were many things, but stupid they were not.
On the 3 lines in the picture from the tweet:
1) Only some do. There’s been plenty of failed ones over the years. Some only work for certain population groups. And there’s been a number that have ruined lives while doing no good. (See: Gulf War Disease)
2) Which version is a “fact”? Darwinian Evolution died over 100 years go. Facts aren’t nebulous terms. “Evolutionists murder children” is more of a fact.
3) Tautology. Climate is always in the process of change. In other news, the Sun rises in the morning.