I run into old friends of the JunkScience.com who say–well let’s stick to science, no reason to consider the social/political/economic/pedagogical stuff. Why do you mess with the economics or social sciences?
After all, we are serious about science and we don’t waste our time with such nonsense as the soft sciences, say these JunkScience.com afficionados. They say, let’s talk about chemistry or physics, or astronomy, meteorology, WHATEVER. Well, sorry but hard scientists know stuff that is essential to the creeps that occupy the CHATTERING CLASS that expounds on the soft sciences.
Here’s what I would respond–wanna play, get in the game. The soft and sometimes ridiculous “disciplines” (yes I used the quotes marks to emphasize my displeasure) end up sweeping us hard scientists up in their noisy efforts to dominate the debate.
Here’s what I say, we who are trained in the disciplines of science, have an immense advantage over he monkeys who come from the social sciences or the commentariat, the nomenklatura. We can pretend that it’s not important for us to keep a monitor on these clowns to the disadvantage of the public at large, who don’t have a clue.
It is not possible to explain it completely,but it has something to do with a search for the truth.
My position is that we must never, ever, give up our effort to find the truth and we must condemn the nonsense that we see around us pretending and posturing as a search for the truth, WHEN WE KNOW IT’S BS.
Agreed.
My only argument is that you can’t win by responding in kind. The “tu Tu quoque” fallacy is powerful among the uninformed. Junk science is junkscience whether you agree with the goal or not. Logical fallacies show a weakness of argument. If we are to achieve the meritorcacy you seem to prefer, we must be vigilant that we are not guilty ourselves. The biggest pitfall in all sciences “hard” or “soft” as you’ve characterized them, is confirmation bias. You can’t accept shoddy research and mischaracterized statistics simply because you want them to be true.
Oops! Make that the Wikipedia article titled “Archimedes “.
To those who discount the importance of the illiterati to those who seek empirical truth, I point out Plutarch’s account of the death of Archimedes: “According to the popular account given by Plutarch, Archimedes was contemplating a mathematical diagram when (Syracuse) was captured. A Roman soldier commanded him to come and meet General Marcellus but he declined, saying that he had to finish working on the problem. The soldier was enraged by this, and killed Archimedes with his sword. ” (Wikipedia, ‘Arfchimedes’)
You can’t ignore them! Today, science is permeated with politics, and socioeconomic forces. Behind almost every Junk Science method that is uncovered lies some some social or political policy or economic force that wiggled it’s way into process of science, which results in obscuring the truth or flat out lying. To constrain the pursuit of truth only to science, without also looking at the forces acting upon science, would not be very, well … scientific.
Amen!
All of this is very well and good, but NONE of this is what GH05T called you out on.