Again, there are multiple cases in the history of science where the >same data< and the >same evidence< could be and were used to support different theories. I can give quite a few examples: Newton and Young on the nature of light, Proust and Berthollet on the nature of chemical reactions. James Clerk Maxwell's theories took half a centu…
Again, there are multiple cases in the history of science where the >same data< and the >same evidence< could be and were used to support different theories. I can give quite a few examples: Newton and Young on the nature of light, Proust and Berthollet on the nature of chemical reactions. James Clerk Maxwell's theories took half a century to be accepted, Darwin knew that his theory would take decades to be accepted. Ptolemy's geocentrism was perfectly fine and practical (to this day some when Galileo came up and for no reason went against it, not even being able to explain certain physical phenomena.
He explicitly says it: "The [fringe science] authors have not been able to get their work published in the scientific journals that would have been chosen by professionals. Such journals are peer reviewed, and no reviewer would have approved the work. This is because professional reviewers have no difficulty spotting fatal shortcomings"
These people would disregard Galileo and Darwin and they're not even hiding it.
Also this is kind of irrelevant to my point. My point is that the scientific establishment often is wrong and only admits it decades later. You can't just blindly accept whatever scientists (which, by the way, is different from science itself) say, especially in social issues.
That would be fair and all, but your argument is precisely to put science in a pedestal of not being questioned unless there is evidence. But my point is that evidence pretty much does not matter in scientific debate, because the biggest arguments aren't about the data and evidence, but about entire worldviews or what Kuhn called paradigms. Science is not about evidence, and that kind of view is very, very naive. Again, the two books I suggested at the very least would make you rethink your assumptions. Philosophy and history of science is something very nuanced and far from what I or literally all my colleagues saw in college either in engineering or hard sciences.
This reminds me of Lord Kelvin. Anyone would be stupid to say Lord Kelvin, whose name is in my absolute favorite mathematical theorem, was anything but brilliant, but if it were up to him, X Rays and quantum mechanics would never have been accepted because they didn't fit his worldview. And, guess what, he openly disdained and questioned the scientists behind valid experiments regarding such topics. Scientists and the scientific establishment ARE NOT SCIENCE ITSELF.
Science is a tool, it can be used for good or evil. In the 19th century (not only) american biologists were adept to things like skull measurements and such to promote things like eugenics. School textbooks promoted such things, for example. In the 30s, the New Deal gave space to many of these people (look up for Rexford Tugwell for the greatest example). Scientists are normal humans with their own personal biases and their own little college professor class to protect, and like normal humans, they're gonna try to protect their own class.
Galileo thought his strongest argument for the earth’s rotation was his interpretation of the tides, which turned out to be wrong. New knowledge proved him wrong about the tides, but other evidence showed him to be correct about the earth’s rotation. We are all fallible humans. The best among us learn from mistakes by examining them carefully.
... how? I am being very clear in my position. The mainstream science establishment is very biased and very often gets things wrong. It's always been that way, but at least in the past scientism wasn't a thing.
That was hardly my point, I was mostly talking about mainstream science vs what 't Hooft called "fringe science" and how mainstream science is rigid and authoritarian (and, guess what, often wrong). Maxwell, Darwin, Proust, Newton and many others were, at a point, not part of the scientific establishment and were part of the fringe science that Neil DeGrasse Tyson types attack so much. The bias comes from the position established scientists have and want to protect so much.
Also, more data is not reason enough for someone to change the paradigm they work in. The advance of science is not a matter of mere data, but of different ways of seeing the same data, hence why I mentioned Kuhn.
Darwin was most certainly a fringe scientist and he himself knew it: “Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume (...), I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. (...) But I look with confidence to the future,—to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality.”
Newton was literally an alchemist who published most of his work in smaller publications before actually being recognized (which actually just happened completely way after he died because, among other things, most people who tried to replicate his observed motions of the moon failed to do so and failed to see how his Principia applied to things other than cosmology). Principia even needed financial help from others to be published lmao
I didn't say that the scientific establishment >never< accepted fringe science. These were all fringe scientists in their times, but as time went by, the scientific establishment accepted them. In fact, all established science was at a time fringe science. But my point is that the scientific method often gets things wrong, like in all those cases, Galileo and many others, and it cannot be used as an absolute as in, say, COVID policies, which turned out to be mostly terrible decisions. It's easy for you to say all those things when you're centuries in the future, looking back at everything that happened because of these guys, but at the time, your logic would lead you to go after them with torches and pitchforks.
I'd also add that the scientific method is horrible at discovering new things and it's no wonder that most scientific revolutions came from individual minds being unorthodox (Galileo, Maxwell, Planck, Einstein) or through sheer luck (Fleming).
Edit: I particularly enjoy the example of Galileo because... imagine if nowadays someone invented their own machinery to make experiments and, because of their observed results, they said that modern physics needed to be thrown away and started from scratch. All scientists in the entire world would call him crazy at the very least, and certainly words like "fake" or "hack" would be thrown around, too. That's precisely what Galileo did at the time! He was even called out by Descartes - one of the fathers of the scientific method, mind you - for it: "It seems to me that [Galileo] suffers greatly from continual digressions, and that he does not stop to explain all that is relevant at each point; which shows that he has not examined them in order, and that he has merely sought reasons for particular effects, without having considered … first causes … ; and thus that he has built without a foundation."
Again, there are multiple cases in the history of science where the >same data< and the >same evidence< could be and were used to support different theories. I can give quite a few examples: Newton and Young on the nature of light, Proust and Berthollet on the nature of chemical reactions. James Clerk Maxwell's theories took half a century to be accepted, Darwin knew that his theory would take decades to be accepted. Ptolemy's geocentrism was perfectly fine and practical (to this day some when Galileo came up and for no reason went against it, not even being able to explain certain physical phenomena.
Science as we know it today is basically a trust of academics, and it isn't really even something they're not aware of. Take a look at 't Hooft's take on "fringe science": https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/fringe-oct-2017.pdf
He explicitly says it: "The [fringe science] authors have not been able to get their work published in the scientific journals that would have been chosen by professionals. Such journals are peer reviewed, and no reviewer would have approved the work. This is because professional reviewers have no difficulty spotting fatal shortcomings"
These people would disregard Galileo and Darwin and they're not even hiding it.
Sure. But what decides the controversies? New evidence.
Also this is kind of irrelevant to my point. My point is that the scientific establishment often is wrong and only admits it decades later. You can't just blindly accept whatever scientists (which, by the way, is different from science itself) say, especially in social issues.
Sure, it is always rational to evaluate sources without bias or preconception.
That would be fair and all, but your argument is precisely to put science in a pedestal of not being questioned unless there is evidence. But my point is that evidence pretty much does not matter in scientific debate, because the biggest arguments aren't about the data and evidence, but about entire worldviews or what Kuhn called paradigms. Science is not about evidence, and that kind of view is very, very naive. Again, the two books I suggested at the very least would make you rethink your assumptions. Philosophy and history of science is something very nuanced and far from what I or literally all my colleagues saw in college either in engineering or hard sciences.
This reminds me of Lord Kelvin. Anyone would be stupid to say Lord Kelvin, whose name is in my absolute favorite mathematical theorem, was anything but brilliant, but if it were up to him, X Rays and quantum mechanics would never have been accepted because they didn't fit his worldview. And, guess what, he openly disdained and questioned the scientists behind valid experiments regarding such topics. Scientists and the scientific establishment ARE NOT SCIENCE ITSELF.
Science is a tool, it can be used for good or evil. In the 19th century (not only) american biologists were adept to things like skull measurements and such to promote things like eugenics. School textbooks promoted such things, for example. In the 30s, the New Deal gave space to many of these people (look up for Rexford Tugwell for the greatest example). Scientists are normal humans with their own personal biases and their own little college professor class to protect, and like normal humans, they're gonna try to protect their own class.
You misjudge what I said.
Not really. I mentioned Galileo precisely because of that.
Galileo thought his strongest argument for the earth’s rotation was his interpretation of the tides, which turned out to be wrong. New knowledge proved him wrong about the tides, but other evidence showed him to be correct about the earth’s rotation. We are all fallible humans. The best among us learn from mistakes by examining them carefully.
... how? I am being very clear in my position. The mainstream science establishment is very biased and very often gets things wrong. It's always been that way, but at least in the past scientism wasn't a thing.
That was hardly my point, I was mostly talking about mainstream science vs what 't Hooft called "fringe science" and how mainstream science is rigid and authoritarian (and, guess what, often wrong). Maxwell, Darwin, Proust, Newton and many others were, at a point, not part of the scientific establishment and were part of the fringe science that Neil DeGrasse Tyson types attack so much. The bias comes from the position established scientists have and want to protect so much.
Also, more data is not reason enough for someone to change the paradigm they work in. The advance of science is not a matter of mere data, but of different ways of seeing the same data, hence why I mentioned Kuhn.
But Feyerabend is the MVP in this subject.
Darwin was most certainly a fringe scientist and he himself knew it: “Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume (...), I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. (...) But I look with confidence to the future,—to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality.”
Newton was literally an alchemist who published most of his work in smaller publications before actually being recognized (which actually just happened completely way after he died because, among other things, most people who tried to replicate his observed motions of the moon failed to do so and failed to see how his Principia applied to things other than cosmology). Principia even needed financial help from others to be published lmao
I didn't say that the scientific establishment >never< accepted fringe science. These were all fringe scientists in their times, but as time went by, the scientific establishment accepted them. In fact, all established science was at a time fringe science. But my point is that the scientific method often gets things wrong, like in all those cases, Galileo and many others, and it cannot be used as an absolute as in, say, COVID policies, which turned out to be mostly terrible decisions. It's easy for you to say all those things when you're centuries in the future, looking back at everything that happened because of these guys, but at the time, your logic would lead you to go after them with torches and pitchforks.
I'd also add that the scientific method is horrible at discovering new things and it's no wonder that most scientific revolutions came from individual minds being unorthodox (Galileo, Maxwell, Planck, Einstein) or through sheer luck (Fleming).
Edit: I particularly enjoy the example of Galileo because... imagine if nowadays someone invented their own machinery to make experiments and, because of their observed results, they said that modern physics needed to be thrown away and started from scratch. All scientists in the entire world would call him crazy at the very least, and certainly words like "fake" or "hack" would be thrown around, too. That's precisely what Galileo did at the time! He was even called out by Descartes - one of the fathers of the scientific method, mind you - for it: "It seems to me that [Galileo] suffers greatly from continual digressions, and that he does not stop to explain all that is relevant at each point; which shows that he has not examined them in order, and that he has merely sought reasons for particular effects, without having considered … first causes … ; and thus that he has built without a foundation."