At left is something 19th Century Scottish author George McDonald had to say on the subject of truth and why brave and honest people feel compelled to call their most cherished beliefs into doubt.
It speaks quite broadly, but most certainly includes the scientific method. Part of the beauty of science is that it is constantly trying to undermine itself. Sure, we believe X about climate science, Y about viral pandemics, and Z about the fundamental building blocks of the universe, but we’re also persistently trying to prove these beliefs incorrect, or at best incomplete, so they can be replaced by better understanding.
In preparation for my first book, Renewable Energy–Facts and Fantasies, I recall asking V. Ramanathan of the Scripps Institute, one of the world’s most visible climate scientists, if he was aware that some people claim that he and his peers are steadfast in their positions merely because it enables them to take in more government grant money.
He laughed. “Yes, believe it or not, I have heard that. What these people don’t seem to know is that, regardless of what they may think about my character, is that I could actually become rich if I could prove that the theory of anthropogenic global warming is fundamentally flawed.”
We have to conclude that scientists in all disciplines have to content themselves with a cruel fact: that what they may believe today is under constant attack by those who want to alert us to a better understanding of the world around us, and that this indeed is a positive feature.
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There are so many tragic aspects to life in today’s United States that it’s hard to name them all.
For my money, one of the saddest elements to the American zeitgeist is its glorification of ignorance.
Up until recently, if you wanted to know what science believes about anthropology, climate change, or particle physics, you asked a scientist in the relevant discipline, who not only has a college degree, but normally a ton of education on top of that.
Now, you ask a congressional Republican, preferably, an evangelical Christian.
To the author of the meme here (if it’s an actual human being, vs. a Russian bot): to the best of my knowledge, the only actual major “scientific fraud” in world history was “Piltdown Man.” In 1912, a pseudo-anthropologist attempted to fool the scientific community into believing he had discovered the “missing link” between apes and humans.
Now, are there examples of instances when the science of the day turned out to be incorrect?
Of course, and new instances of this surface every day.
Think of how little when scientists believed 200 years ago is still intact today. Perhaps most obviously, Newtonian mechanics has fallen to relativity and quantum physics, but there are hundreds of other paradigm shifts in health and medicine, psychology, cellular biology, chemistry, and particle physics.
Contrary to what conspiracy theorists want you to believe, science is not a set of facts; it’s a methodology whereby we come to learn more about ourselves and the world around us.
Are there other methods by which we “learn?” Sure. Some uneducated guy goes on YouTube and becomes convinced that our consumption of fossil fuels is not causing the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans to rise. I would argue that this conduct is inferior to the scientific method.
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