The patient, dedicated men and women, the living realities of the word scientist, working in laboratories and communicating in an esoteric language only with their peers, do not satisfy the general craving for definitive answers to social, economic, and political problems, which, so the great half-educated has been led to expect, ‘science ‘ has it in its power to deliver. An abstraction named ‘the scientist’ has been given form in people’s minds as a new figure of authority, corresponding to the priest or witch-doctor of a more primitive culture, whose ‘scientific’ statements can be accepted with child-like reliance. The notion is dangerous not merely because it is untrue but because it is irrational. The quest for absolute scientific validity is as hopeless as the quest for the philosopher’s stone. There may be incidental good in a political or religious philosophy that claims ‘Scientific’ authority and that stands ready to identify itself with the ready-made image in the popular mind of the infallibility of science; but the willingness to assume and exploit that role betrays the unprincipled shrewdness of the publicist.
“There may be incidental good in a political or religious philosophy that claims ‘Scientific ‘ authority and that stands ready to identify itself with the ready-made image in the popular mind of the infallibility of science; but the willingness to assume and exploit that role betrays the unprincipled shrewdness of the publicist.”
The CBC & Suzuki fall into that bucket. I have always found it curious why CBC reached out to PhD’s to provide definitive opinions at a level of “Real World” expertise that is “only” found, IMHO, from practicing Engineers.
A person who obtains a “Valid” PhD. is normally OPEN-MINDED & focused on the “future” direction of technology. To provide a
definitive opinion is a bastardization of that Science
So! To recap in matters of doctrine the scientist or CBC personality (pontif) cannot be mistaken, he is infallible.f8cz6b
I very much dislike the dubious word ‘scientist’ and use ‘scientific worker’ or ‘researcher’ whenever I can.
Similarly with the word ‘professor’; I much prefer ‘instructor’ or ‘lecturer’, though in dealing with medical
people I will say that I profess physics. Ignorant bastards that they usually are.
The search for truth is a messy business, brimming with mistakes, uncertainty, false leads, back tracking, and constant questioning of even the most fundamental assumption. Scientists get into trouble when they try to present it as anything else.
“As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life — so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.” ~ Matt Cartmill
I’ve always liked the term “scientician” for those who wrap themselves in the trappings of science without actually doing any. From an old parody commercial that showed a guy in a white coat and horn rims advocating for the product with the phrase “I’m a scientician.”
The on benefit for me from Globull Warming is the present ease in identifying the Slyentists from those who develop scientific theory. Cheers;
People often inflate terms to make themselves sound important. When the word scientist once denoted a serious scholar, in this era of “consensus” and limelight, it means anything but. It’s the discipline and real scientists who suffer.
I have long held that science is a religion and that like Christianity there are two basic types. There is the top down elitist and the everyman is a scientist. I grew up in a church that followed the elitist model. Some guy had special training and only he was qualified to speak to God or perform certain rituals. I was gobsmacked when I went to an everyman church. The guy in the front regularly called on random people to perform tasks that in the previous church only the trained were qualified to do. Like a duck taking to water I have embraced the everyman model and apply it to science as well. I don’t take the word of some PHD because he has a PHD. I don’t accept ‘official’ because it is ‘official’. I do my own science and reach my own conclusions.
There’s science and then there’s scientism, which is what all this really is.
Science doesn’t take a moral view and doesn’t take sides.
It can harness nuclear energy to light fifty thousand houses or it can harness nuclear energy to incinerate those fifty thousand houses. It can be used to find ways to save six million people from disease and it can used to find ways to exterminate six million people in death camps.
Scientism, on the other hand, is the belief in science as a force for progress.
That, friends, makes it simply another ideology.
(Personally, I like to use that perfectly cromulent Simpsons coinage for scientists: “scienticians”. Drives ’em nuts.)