A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
True but people also use this as an excuse to dismiss any research they disagree with which is idiotic.
Most research is legit. It just might not be interpreted correctly, or it might not be the whole picture. But it shouldn’t be ignored because you don’t like it.
People are especially prone to this with Econ research in my experience.
For sure, but it’s important to keep in mind in fields with large financial interests.
Medicine especially. Most studies claiming Cealiac disease (gluten allergy) was not real before it was conclusively proven to be legitimate were funded by bread companies. You won’t believe the number of studies funded by insurance companies trying to show that certain diseases aren’t really disabling, (even though they really are).
And sugar probably kills as many people as smoking, but... yup.
Then again, we all are okay with killing children too, so long as it is with a gun and unwillingly rather than safely in a doctor's office and medically necessary or at least expedient.
The entire thing is an edgy strawman. Honest practitioners obviously take seriously the need to understand and articulate the limits of empiricism, and are hostile towards those who abuse the public trust placed in scientific authority. It would honestlt be great if we could do the same with our critiques of capitalism.
Isn't there a replication crisis. I am not sure you can really claim "most" research is legit.
I wouldn't call it a broad crisis, and it isn't universal. More theoretical sciences or social sciences are more prone to it because the experiments are more expensive and you can't really control the environment the way you can with e.g. mice or specific chemicals. But most biology, chemistry, etc that isn't bleeding edge or incredibly niche will be validated dozens to hundreds of times as people build on the work and true retractions are rare
This is a clean example of an ignoratio elenchi fallacy.
Statement B attempts to use Statement A to make an unrelated point that isn't necessarily untrue, but it is still unrelated.
This could be done with any combination of...
"Under capitalism, is..."
"Under , science is..."
They would all result in a statement that supports Speaker B, but is no longer relevant to what Speaker A stated, as the topic has changed. In this case, from science to capitalism.
I.e. It's an anti-capitalism meme attempting to use science to appeal to a broader audience through relevance fallacy. Both statements may be true, but do not belong in the same picture.
Unless, of course, "that's the joke" and I'm just that dumb.
Edit: I'm not a supporter of capitalism. But I am a supporter of science—haha, like it needs me to exist—and this is an interesting example of social science. It seems personal opinion is paramount to some individuals rather than unbiased assessment of the statement as a whole. Call me boring and autistic, but that's what science be and anything else isn't science, it's just personal opinion, belief, theory, etc.
I think you're reading statement B too literally. I'm pretty sure the idea behind it is related to critical theory and is an objection to the idea that rationality is trustworthy and that class conflict should be regarded as a higher truth. In that way statement B is relevant to statement A; it's an implicit rejection of it.
It's not literal; as the fallacy credits, neither is it necessarily wrong. But(!!!), they're just not related.
The entire post itself—and your reply—is social science. But science is incapable of alignment to any -ism. All isms are human-made. If they are 100% true, they are not isms.
Edit: Sorry, I'm drunk af, so probably you are right...maybe... At least in my mind, I'm just reading Statement B as literally as Statement A and therefore can't see correlation without social agenda—theyre just two very different things. Science and agenda; or agenda using "science". It's bias. That's very unscientific.
Wow thanks! I’ve seen other instances of this fallacy but never knew its name (nor recognized that it is a common fallacy form).
This statement is ~~on the verge of being~~ a strawman argument. The first compares science to other systems of knowledge, while the second criticizes the subjects of scientific study under a capitalist influence.
These two statements do not refer to the same thing in context.
Edit: clarity
This is why the last step of science is broad consensus, which has solved literally every single example of bad science in this entire thread. All this means is people should pay more attention to sources.
Let's also not forget that Scientists are also humans. Humans with their own beliefs and biases which do get transferred into studies. Peer review can help reduce that but since peers are also humans with their own biases, but also common biases shared amongst humans it's not bulletproof either.
There will always be some level of bias which clouds judgement, or makes you see/think things that aren't objectively true, sometimes it comes with good intention, others not so much. It's always there though, and probably always will be. The key to good science is making it as minimal as possible.
Science doesn't change just because some groups try to use it to forward an agenda.
ignoring the other examples you've been given: it absolutely does even when it goes well. The scientific method is literally based on "other people must change and refine this, one person's work is not immutable nor should be taken as gospel"
Also what science is has changed. Science used to be natural philosophy and thus was combined with other non-scientific (to us) disciplines. Social sciences have only been around 200 years tops.
Some would debate that applied mathematics is science, others would say all sociology isn't science.
Science is the process of getting things a little less wrong.
If you catch your friends using Science as a religion, tell them they're not a skeptic, they're a cunt.
Am scientist (well, was, before career change), can confirm. Fuck dogmatic scientists, they're worse than regular dogmatists because they've been given many opportunities to know better.
Why not both?
What's decided to be worthy of study is subjective. The process to hypothesize, experiment, and conclude what's being studied is objective.
Do you or have you ever worked in science? I did for a bit and that was not my impression.
One cannot really argue that science as practiced is very effective at certain things but it is also extremely far from being objective in practice. Especially the further you stray from simple physical systems.
Also like I never saw someone formulate a hypothesis in any sort of formal sense haha.
The fact that capitalism taints everything it touches is not a criticism of the things it touches.
Yet, it's not as simple as "scientists are under capitalists' interests", but "the ideologies within capitalism permeate the way we do science". A common example is how we measure functionality (and therefore pathology itself) in medicine.
Science is a method of empiricism and inductive logic.
Nihilism is fun! Science as a framework for truth seeking, and big S Science are functionally different things. Nobody is making the argument that Science is free from political or economic bias, or even that empiricism is the sole arbiter of truth. Literally just finish reading Kant, I'll wait.
On the other hand, you can look at the world and very plainly see that science... does things. It discovers truth with a far better track record than every other imperfect epistemology. But sure, capitalism bad. Twitter man cringe. And the internet is just like, an opinion, or something.
science is science. it can be (sometimes necessarily) prioritized via societal influence, culture and monetary means.
socialist countries have different types scientific spend but I don't see femboys taking things in the ass for them I guess.
There's antitrust litigation against the publishers. Here's one article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2024/09/16/scientists-file-antitrust-lawsuit-against-six-journal-publishers/
And under socialism in the 20th century, science was an institution that only funds research that advances whatever narrative the hermetic powers-that-be decided to push and strengthen their grip on power, their obsession with secretiveness and projecting an image of infallibility.
Take the Soviet Union.
T.D. Lysenko and his crackpot food engineering ideas is one such glaring example. But boy oh boy could he talk a "toe the party line" game and suck up to Stalin.
Or how about how the kremlin rendered nearly one quarter of Kazakhstan uninhabitable due to their relentless nuclear testing. And they nearly did that for all of western Europe with Chernobyl.
In the name of workers and science, we shall poison your land. Science for the workers' paradise, rejoice, comrades!
OK and? Also source?
If you’d like to read into this I recommend these books.
1. “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas S. Kuhn
2. “Science as Social Knowledge” by Helen Longino
3. “The Politics of Science” by David Politzer
4. “The Science Industry” by Philip Mirowski
5. “The Commodification of Science: A Critical Perspective” by various authors
An example of why this matters would be that research claiming ME was psychological was heavily funded, by both governments and insurance companies because it meant that they didn’t have to spend money on people disabled with ME. No effort was made to look at possible biological causes. Only a couple decades later, we now know it is a neuroimmune disease. But since insurers and government don’t benefit from that fact, it took decades to show and disprove the mountain of research claiming it is psychological. This meant thousands of people died from the disease or were in severe poverty.
I meant for the femboy getting pounded in the bottom photo
It doesn't matters what it is, if you use a strawman I will automatically disagree.
Critical theory, my beloved
Also corporations tie employment of scientists to the number of papers they publish, as well as burying data that is financially harmful.