Mgoblue201
Won't stop picking the right nation
Again, I was talking about what science aspires to be. Without recognizing that crucial distinction, of course one would miss the point; and it's okay, because frankly I didn't mention it in the first post.OpinionatedCyborg said:I agree, but this is a lot different from your initial arguments.
And I think we are talking about people who have a naive view of science, not the opposite. These are people who believed, like you claim, that "entire basis of science is openness and free expression." When they discover that scientists actively repress new information, shroud their methods in secrecy, re-write the process in which they made their discoveries, and often follow preconceived notions in the face of overwhleming evidence, they tend to dismiss science as a whole.
Your initial argument represented this naive, and frankly dangerous, conception of science. By perpetuating the myth that science is purely objective, open, and free, we mislead the layman into believing science is something that it isn't -- and when the layman discovers inconsistencies in the story we have been telling, he or she becomes distrustful of science as a whole and becomes susceptible to charlatans who can them claim that scientists are motivated by political beliefs, fame, or fortune.
Your follow-up comments better defend evolution than your initial arguments, which appealed to authority and mis-represented science.
And I'm pretty sure I know what I was arguing about initially: which is, people who would say that there is a huge active element within science attempting to suppress the freedom and openness that science needs. None of your examples are the same thing. Either they were individuals who were flouting scientific rigor on their own, or they were scientists who did not yet recognize the greatness of an idea, which is hardly venal. In order to think that evolution is false, you would probably have to reach the conclusion that there is system-wide malfeasance occurring within science. This is unprecedented, at least in the United States. But there probably isn't a point in arguing about this further.