How Expert Worship Is Ruining Science
American Mind,
by
Pasha Kamyshev
Original Article
Posted By: StormCnter,
10/24/2020 7:07:33 AM
What is science? Has it changed from past to present? Is it still working? The coronavirus pandemic has put a spotlight on the question of science as a whole and biology and drug research in particular.
Now, the popular narrative is that if only we listened to the scientists, we would have prevented this, presumably contrasting scientists against “politicians” and perhaps some un-specified “non-expert” others. The pandemic is happening against a completely unprecedented backdrop of censorship of what seems to me like normal-people discussion about the effects of different drugs and therapies.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
franq 10/24/2020 8:00:27 AM (No. 582479)
Science is still here, in corporate product development labs. It died in the media and politics.
9 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
geminale 10/24/2020 8:14:10 AM (No. 582497)
This article is deserving of a must read. Science has been politicized for a long time, of course this is not news. However this article does a great job of noting where the problems and inconsistencies are in the way science is currently being abused for the issues of our day.
5 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
petrichor 10/24/2020 8:46:42 AM (No. 582528)
I think that term "expert" does not mean what everyone thinks it means.
7 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
IowaDad 10/24/2020 8:49:47 AM (No. 582531)
Science should discover facts, and explore theories that might explain the facts. So what facts do we have concerning masks?
To what extent does wearing a mask reduce the infectivity of an individual with COVID? (Should be a percentage +- the experimental error)
To what extent does wearing a mask reduce the risk of an individual becoming infected with COVID?
In the absence of good data (there are none), scientists should not be pontificating
9 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
MSUDoc 10/24/2020 8:51:14 AM (No. 582534)
Politics defiles everything. People rightly are skeptical about drug companies funding research, but what about government? People act as if they are a benevolent unbiased support of objective science. They are not.
If you wanted a government grant in the 1980’s, just submit a proposal with “AIDS” in the title — you will get funding.
In previous decades, if you use “global warming” or “climate change” in your proposal you will receive funding — but if your data refutes those theories it is highly unlikely it will be published, and you are not going to receive anymore government grant money in the future.
Today, if you want big research grant $$, design your research around “racial disparities in health care,” or “systemic racism in medical school admissions,” or “attitudes of LGBT youth toward cis-gendered health professionals.”
Not sure what the answer is, but clearly there is an agenda at work with funding — and definitely in studies designed to favor a preferred outcome.
16 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Strike3 10/24/2020 9:12:37 AM (No. 582553)
#5 nails it. Scientists do not produce an actual product, they produce knowledge based upon previous knowledge. They do not make money through normal means to pay for their education and research, therefore they must entice government and academia to award them grants. That's where it all becomes suspect.
I was watching an interesting video on jellyfish the other day and one of the divers spotted a small starfish in waters that were claimed to be too cold to sustain starfish. Voila! Climate change is warming the water. What can man do to cool the water? Nothing, just as there is nothing man did to warm the water. That research team will no doubt receive a huge grant to "study" the starfish, which could have been placed there in front of the camera. You don't find a lone starfish on the ocean bottom, there is either none or a colony. It's all a money game and the cheating is intense.
10 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Proud Texan 10/24/2020 9:36:06 AM (No. 582574)
I think a great synonym for "expert" is the word "constipated."
2 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
BarryNo 10/24/2020 9:36:43 AM (No. 582576)
There is no science.
There is only political pandering. I mean this in the broadest sense, since various businesses and groups have, for years, paid 'scientists' to concoct studies that are predetermined to show what that group wants.
Smoking is good-it relaxes the nerves. Smoking is bad, it causes cancer. Eggs are good, eggs are bad. Beef is good, beef is bad. You name it.
2 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
franq 10/24/2020 9:45:23 AM (No. 582587)
To #5's point - there should be no government-funded research. If the private sector won't do it, it shouldn't be done.
1 person likes this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
mathman 10/24/2020 9:47:08 AM (No. 582590)
In actual science (beginning in the Renaissance) one framed an hypothesis and then tested it. Either the hypothesis was confirmed or rejected. Such is no longer the case. A "scientist" these days is one who first establishes a truth ("I know this is true") and then finds reasons to justify the truth. The pathway to advancement in the world of Government grants is to find politically correct truths and confirm them. Anthony Fauci is such a seeker of political correctness. He was wrong about HIV in the 1980s, but politically correct. So he has been rewarded lavishly ever since that time.
By the way, no Government grant has ever been given for a second, independent test of an hypothesis. There is no way Government money can be wasted on second tests. Confirmation is not needed; the truth stands.
Fauci is dead set against pure randomized tests which are set up without bias. He wants only results which confirm HIS truths. The bulk of the "science" of Anthropogenic Global Warming has been established by hidden data processed by hidden software. Whee. The "science" of COVID has similarly been established by fraudulent reporting of COVID-19 deaths when the death occurred for other reasons. But money gets paid only for COVID-19 deaths, so that is the way the reports are written. If you don't like this, you are not scientific.
4 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
davew 10/24/2020 9:53:54 AM (No. 582597)
Our brains are built on models and causal diagrams so it is natural that science would try to generalize on this evolutionary approach. The way we learn is by gathering data from our environment using our senses, comparing that against our mental model of what we should expect, applying learned causal relationships to simplify the computations, and then adjusting our mental model to try to minimize the error it has with the external data. This is how a batter hits a curve ball and we are normally not even aware of it.
Models in science are mostly "toy" models because nature is messier than we can handle with even the most powerful supercomputers. Medicine is even messier because each organism within a species has its own genetic history and metabolic equilibrium point based on factors like nutrition, social position, environment, and external competition.
The most adaptive way in medicine to discover what works is to use a bottoms-up search algorithm based on past knowledge, graduated risk and safety analysis, comparison with expected benefits, and expansion of the search to maximize the benefits. This is how real world complex systems explore solution phase space to find "what works". This is how Dr. Vladimir Zelenko from NY developed his approach to treating his patients with HCQ, Zinc, and Azithromycin based on papers he had read for its use with previous novel coronaviruses.
This bottoms-up approach runs into conflict with authoritarian command-and-control "top-down" decision making processes that must first "find the TRUTH" and then disseminate it to their population. This is typical of Soviet Union science and medicine and the agrarian policies of China under Mao. By the time they realize they have failed its too late for the masses. Fortunately, it was also responsible for the failure of the Nazis to develop atomic weapons ahead of the allies.
Our reliance on the CDC and FDA experts to find solutions to treating the pandemic ran into the top-down, institutionalized inertia of central planning and undermined what would have been a natural bottoms-up solution to dealing with the majority of COVID-19 patients. Fortunately, President Trump disrupted the hierarchy and at least accelerated the bottoms-up approach to therapeutics and vaccines from private industry to save as many lives as possible but the political mistakes such as sending infected patients back to high risk populations and interfering with the use of therapies like HCQ took their toll.
The Federalist approach to government in the US is designed to leverage this bottoms-up strategy to problem solving but powerful forces are working even now to undermine this genius and shackle our inventiveness and problem solving effectiveness in their pursuit of maximum power over peoples lives. Its not science that is the greatest threat but our own flawed human nature.
6 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
The Other Guy 10/24/2020 10:32:19 AM (No. 582637)
An expert is any ordinary person 100 miles from their home base, dressed in a suit and carrying an attache case.
3 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
HotRod 10/24/2020 11:01:33 AM (No. 582676)
Science is still good, and getting better all the time. The problem is that politicians seek out and present scientists who are political activists. They present them as arbiters of what's ''settled.'' They avoid scientists who only seek and report the truth.
Some scientists even need a little ''walking around'' money now and then....
4 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
czechlist 10/24/2020 11:10:18 AM (No. 582689)
Eisenhower's farewell address warning on the military industrial complex is ubiquitous. But, he also warned of the influence of money on science.
And then there is Feynman's caveat " science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts".
3 people like this.
In two or three years, there will be some "science" about the present pandemic. Perhaps in five or ten years, there will be "settled science" about it. After that, sooner or later, there will be exceptions found that do not fit that "settled science." It will then be elaborated and refined to cover those exceptions, resulting in a new, more complicated, and exact "settled science. That is the way science has always worked historically. Right now we are in an era of more or less informed guessing and conjecture, not "science." That is the bad news.
The good news is that the heavy investment and intense study prompted by the current outbreak will almost surely result in breakthroughs in our knowledge of viruses and how to treat them. One can hope it might ultimately result in the sort of advances in treating viral diseases that occurred in the treatment of bacterial diseases following the discovery of sulfa drugs and penicillin.
2 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
DARling 10/24/2020 12:35:13 PM (No. 582782)
There's an expert on every street corner. Not one will totally agree with the other.
2 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
stablemoney 10/24/2020 2:56:45 PM (No. 582885)
Those holding themselves out as scientists are the ones ruining science. They are not objective scientists serving the public trust, but activists serving those paying them. There should be a licensing for public practice, and a code of ethics for those providing advice to the public, including license forfeiture, suspensions, and fines for violating ethical standards. Otherwise, the scientist should confine their work and advice to private employments.
0 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
jeffkinnh 10/24/2020 3:31:25 PM (No. 582958)
Politics and media have had a terrible effect on the search for truth. To politicians, truth is malleable, especially to achieve their political agenda. Media offers to make everyone a rock star. Both of these effects are corrosive on science. Following agendas and pimping egos will never allow you to find truth. However, if you don't play their games, you don't funding or recognition. What we get instead of scientists is bureaucrats, who know are expert in working within the system but have nothing to contribute and resist anything that comes from outside their sphere of influence.
This is why the State department was furious with Trump for ignoring their advice on the Middle East. Trump's success makes them look bad and in the bureaucratic game, looking bad can be a death sentence for your career. Meanwhile, Fauci insists that a vaccine can not be ready for years because that is the bureaucratic way, where absolute adherence to the testing protocol is the only standard. The bureaucrats cannot accept that when faced with mass illness and death, accelerating the production and release of a vaccine is the right choice. Suppose something slips through the virus trials and during general distribution 100 people die from some odd complication with the vaccine? However, 300,000 people don't get sick from COVID and 10,000 don't die. In the situation we are in that should be an allowable tradeoff. Bureaucrats can't accept that because their "procedures" weren't followed. Fauci is an "expert" and he would demand the assurance of his protocols.
1 person likes this.
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