Science begins with guessing and then proceeds to proof.
Scientists is a susceptible to cognitive biases as any human and must work to overcome them.
Separating the cranks from the visionaries requires judgment and patience.
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”
Politics can and often do pollute science.
“We saw that the bias in psychological research is in favour of publishing exciting results. An exciting result in psychology is one that tells us that something has a large effect on people’s behavior. And the things that the studies that have failed to replicate have found to have large effects on people’s behavior are not necessarily things that ought to affect people’s behaviour, were those people rational. “
Read MoreThis is the consequence of political consensus ruling over scientific inquiry. Scientific objectivity is thwarted by intellectual McCarthyism. Dissent is demonized, careers are destroyed. It is more like religious fanaticism than science. Yet they have been able to brand the right with the pejorative of being anti-science. Moral superiority justifies illiberalism. Obvious conflicts of interests are ignored.
Read Morefrom The New Yorker, EVERYBODY’S AN EXPERT by Louis Menand Tetlock also found that specialists are not significantly more reliable than non-specialists in guessing what is going to happen in the region they study. Knowing a little might make someone a more…
Read MoreHow Progressives Cherry-Pick Science They Like from Mona Charen at National Review Science, however, to be respected, must be purely the search for truth. The organizers of this “March for Science” — by acknowledging that their demonstration is modeled on…
Read MoreJeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe writes a wonderful piece to start the year, What experts predict, reality will contradict “I think that you listen too much to the soldiers,” wrote the British statesman Lord Salisbury to the viceroy of…
Read Morefrom Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe, Healey’s Exxon witch-hunt: As a citizen and a politician, Healey is fully entitled to condemn fossil fuels, decry global warming, and express scorn for those who don’t agree with her and Gore. As…
Read MoreThe internet gave rise to Google and Facebook. The iPhone gave rise to Uber. The ideologies are important only to the extent that they facilitated ideas. Our current development is less dependent on assets and physical capital than ideas. We…
Read Morefrom Olivia Goldhill at Quartz, Many scientific “truths” are, in fact, false: For example, there’s massive academic pressure to publish in journals, and these journals tend to publish exciting studies that show strong results. “Journals favor novelty, originality, and verification of…
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