The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00872-w <comment><USER4> The way in which public considers science today is much more analogous to the way the public considered religion during the time of Galileo. Think of the way people are castigated for not believing in scientific "truths". I see signs in peoples yard saying that "in this house, we believe science is real". As someone who has studied biochemistry for years, this kind of reverence for science is truly troubling. The one thing you learn in high level science is that nobody really knows what they're talking about, paradigms shift, and further study is required. Blind devotion and rejection of different viewpoints is dangerous regardless of which cause is being dogmatically held.

This article is ironically akin to the 'The Preaching of St Paul', except that instead of burning Galileo's work, the author is trying to burn religious texts and dissenting viewpoints to their "settled science".

<comment><USER5> I believe this is a public perception problem. The reason that a troubling number of people no longer believe in science isn't that scientific method is flawed or that people don't believe in scientific method. The bigger concern is the way that scientific studies are mounted, paid for by interested parties that have conflicts of interest to produce results favourable to a desired outcome and then they're presented as science instead of politics.

When one can't trust the information they're looking at without having to dig into the political backing of the study and the results and without having to wonder which outliers have been trimmed to further hammer home the point of the stakeholders, we're no longer looking at science, we're looking at propaganda.

So the problem isn't science. The problem is the manner in which science is being subverted for financial gain. That's not science.

This is why science is losing credibility and authority outside of scientific circles.

If you want credibility and authority, you have to not only act with integrity, you have to be seen to be acting with integrity. It does't matter how honest your study or how objective your results, if people look at your study and see that it was funded by Monsanto and makes Monsanto look good, it looks like Monsanto paid for a study to make Monsanto look good and therefore it's biased and can be ignored.

This is life. If you want to be seen as having integrity, you have to act with integrity. And when people who were already distrusting of the way science is presented in the media are being told that they can't trust the media by authority figures, as ridiculous as those authority figures may be, eventually people stop listening until the furor abates.

<comment><USER6> I would say that an even larger problem exists.

Among the public, science has always had some portion of people who understood it's processes as those of a secular priesthood and those who understood it's processes as discovering the truth through skepticism and experimentation. Even among this working scientists, this division has existed (and given a society that never discarded religion, anti-science along with anti- intellectual views have naturally always been part of American thought).

The problem today is two-fold. Aside from the corruption of scientific processes others have noted, the other aspect is the majority of people aren't seeing the material gains that science offers the world - science is broadly part of progress and when the average American's life expectancy and median income isn't increasing, why would they believe in progress?

<comment><USER5> It's like hearing that science says that fat is bad... and then eggs are bad for you... and alcohol is bad... and then another study says that a glass of wine a day is good for your heart... and salt is bad... then sugar is bad... then carbohydrates are bad... and now fat is good as long as you don't overdo carbohydrates... and eggs have good cholesterol and are really good for you... and salt is necessary to balance hydration... and sugar isn't bad as long as it's balanced with fibre.

When the studies say so many different things, all contradictory and all purporting to be good and then bad and then good again, people give up trying to understand.

Why should I believe that anything I eat today is bad when tomorrow you're just going to tell me that it's good for me again?

People are tired of listening to science that appears to ebb and flow like the tides.

<comment><USER7> That's not science though - that's a single study or two being blown out of proportion. It's an element of science, a snapshot of knowledge, but the scientific method requires that we continually refine those messages and ideas, and that's not happening - we do an experiment, and then without any more corroboration or reproduction it's released to the public. We are seeing tiny pieces of science, but the problem is we're seeing every step and going "oh look, there's science!" and treating it as absolute truth instead of giving time for things to develop and figure out what it is we're looking at.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but the scientific community has in-part brought this upon themselves.

The actual research is inaccessible to the public, hidden behind paywalls in subscription-only journals, and written in a form that is very difficult if not impossible for the general public to understand.

For most of the general public, the output of the scientific community is just a poorly translated and often misleading headline.

<comment><USER7> It's also become incredibly complex and utterly alien to even practitioners in the fields - I can't read computer science doctoral dissertations with any degree of understanding. That's not a failing of the language, that's an evolution of it - we're at a point now where we need years and years of education to be able to be able to speak the language required for the research.

It absolutely is difficult for the general public, but that's not a failing, that's the state of the art.

<comment><USER9> I'd argue that this is, in fact, a failing of the language of description, and that going back and refactoring terms and systematizing the folk knowledge of a given field would go a long way towards fixing the public attitudes towards that field. We should give more respect to people who make existing concepts easier to understand, or simpler and cheaper to prove or demonstrate. Then maybe we wouldn't have to spend so much time bemoaning the poor state of education.

<comment><USER10> I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding the problem.

We do have a problem with nomenclature being fractured, even within fields, never mind between them. But that's not the problem.

The problem is that when you get deep enough into how things work, things just get really complex and they stop behaving in ways and patterns that humans experience the world. They end up being things that cannot be simplified down to a common human experience in any meaningful way. At best, you can take a portion of the concept and make an analogy to some limited portion of a common experience without lying too much. But they are fundamentally not the same, so you cannot use the analogy to discover anything new about the original concept.

There is also a problem of the time it takes to internalize new ideas and concepts. You can't quickly and easily give someone an intuitive understanding of anything - it takes work and experience and time on their part to get there. I don't see how going and reworking nomenclatures of entire fields is going to make people more willing or able to devote their time to this. Mostly you'll have to put in incredible amount of work, convince far too many people to do things a different way because you said so, and all you'll have really done is save some (significant) annoyance from students getting their feet wet in a new field.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, I didn't see your reply to this until just now. I hope that you get a chance to see mine:

I have to disagree that nomenclature being fractured is not the problem. Within any given field, it is true that as you go deep enough into how things work, it gets complicated and hectic. However, as we have done throughout the entire written history of humanity, we have a special set of tools to help us engage with those complications, and reduce them down to complexes of simple objects whose behavior we understand - mathematics. If we are unable to reach deeply enough within a single field, it is because the tools we teach are not up to the task.

A large part of the issue is that the mathematics in common use in these disciplines, and at the elementary level, is in need of an upgrade. That upgrade is in the process of being performed (category theory), and as we learn to apply it in more and more fields, concepts and processes that seem deep, difficult, and essentially different turn out to be related in mathematically precise 'analogies'. This means that the same set of 'deep concepts', applied with different sets base objects and different operators that obey the same rules, will unfold into some of the main ideas in each discipline. Baez's Physics, Logic, Topology, Computation, a Rosetta stone is a good example of the beginnings of this, but googling 'applied category theory' or 'applied category theory course azimuth' ought to bring you some interesting extra links.

More generally, what we see of as specific processes within a particular field, when viewed through the right lenses, I expect we will find are instead instantiations of much more general processes that are the same across most, if not all, fields of discipline. How will we convince everyone to use these different naming systems and toolsets? Because those people who do use them will perform better, and the logic of competition will pull the educational system and society along with them.

If you disagree, I'd love to hear more about it. Nomenclature and Education are near and dear to me - I always jump and an opportunity to discuss with someone who does so in good faith.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> About this:

" _Hanging in the Louvre Museum in Paris is an imposing painting, The Preaching of St Paul at Ephesus. In this 1649 work by Eustache Le Sueur, the fiery apostle lifts his right hand as if scolding the audience, while clutching a book of scripture in his left. Among the rapt or fearful listeners are people busily throwing books into a fire._ "

Okay, but in the USA, over the last 60 years we've seen an astonishing loss of religious authority, as well as parental authority, as well as teaching authority. There is no way to bring back scientific authority without also discussing the wider loss of authority.

Nor is the USA alone, but it is not the entire West that is effected. Anyone who wants to see the contrast can visit Britain, and then Poland. In Poland, you can still see the older social structures, and older notions about both religious authority and teaching authority and parental authority.

In the USA, in the year 2019, it is common to see these things:

1\. a person at a party says they are "spiritual, but I don't believe in organized religion"

2\. a parent spanks their child because their child misbehaved, and the parent is then investigated by the authorities

3\. a teacher goes off script to offer their personal opinion of the Vietnam War, and then finds their whole career is at risk

Every single profession is now under attack in the USA. The older spirit of independent professions is now under attack.

I'm not saying this is good or bad, I'm just pointing out it is a fact of life. There has been some progress made in stamping out certain abuses of power, but at the cost of stripping most of the professions of their previous independence.

If you'd like to bring back scientific authority, you need to address the wider issues.

<comment><USER12> It's not so much "authority" but "trust" that has gone down.

There used to be institutions that were regarded as the gold standard for truth: the FDA, top science journals, the CDC, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and so on.

These weren't necessarily regarded as _infallible_. But it was widely recognized that they undertook a _best effort_ to get at the truth, and would tend to err on the side of caution.

That trust is falling apart. Many people, including in the HN community, cheer this decline. They see it, not entirely unreasonable, as the downfall of despised "elites" and opening the discourse to other voices, making it more democratic.

But while the tearing down of institutions is well ahead, there is little indication that the envisioned surge of bottom-up publishing is anywhere as successful: almost no structures have appeared, for example, that provide the nitty-gritty coverage of local politics.

Nor can I think of any actual corruption by these organisations exposed by amateur sleuths. Even Snowden relied on traditional media to get his message out. Just today, the Seattle Times (old media) revealed their investigation of the broken process of Boeing's certification of the 737 Max.

"Critical thinking" is what's usually recommended in these times of information overload and bad actors. But the term just seems to give license to everyone to make up their own facts as needed. The result is a discourse devoid of agreed-upon facts. If you cite inflation data in economic discussions, the most likely reply is a conspiracy theory about the data being corruptly influenced. "Think critically", they say, "who profits from <X>, I bet they get a big fat payoff from <Y> for telling this lie".

<comment><USER13> > Nor can I think of any actual corruption by these organisations exposed by > amateur sleuths.

Wouldn't the simple fact that the CDC now owns patents on vaccines qualify at least as a conflict of interest that would justifiably erode trust?

Trust is power and power corrupts. Its part of a natural cycle that occurs. This is why we develop organizations with strict constraints and methods of accountability such as the separate branches of government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> alan-crowe The article is dated 18 March 2019, but it asks "So: what went wrong?" and then mentions neither p-hacking nor the replication crisis in psychology. Perhaps the author has a rebuttal to those who think that questionable research practices have brought about the fall of scientific authority, but he doesn't give it here.

Some of the problems lie closer to home than the content of scientific journals. Henry Gee is a senior editor of Nature. He wrote an article for the Guardian [https://www.theguardian.com/science/occams- corner/2013/sep/1...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/occams- corner/2013/sep/19/science-religion-not-be-questioned)

Rashly, he attempts to explain p-values, and gets it wrong, saying "For example, one might be able to accord a value to one's conclusion not of "yes" or "no" but "P<0.05", which means that the result has a less than one in 20 chance of being a fluke."

Respect for scientific authority has fallen because of self-sabotage by senior figures.

<comment><USER14> This has been going on since long, long before p-hacking and the replication crisis. And I honestly find these to be very different issues.

It was common for people in the US to reject the idea of smoking as a cause of lung cancer until like the 1980s. Scientific consensus on this fact was reached in the 60s and was suspected for a while before that. Yet, it took like 40 years for the public to agree.

Think about what's happening now with climate change. Scientists aren't undermining their own position, their authority and credibility is under direct attack; originally by moneyed interest, but today mostly through political indoctrinates. People view scientists as left-wingers out to undermine conservative policies and seek to undermine their authority and influence. Today, these people have much more reach and influence than in times past.

<comment><USER15> > It was common for people in the US to reject the idea of smoking as a cause > of lung cancer until like the 1980s. Scientific consensus on this fact was > reached in the 60s and was suspected for a while before that. Yet, it took > like 40 years for the public to agree.

You're exaggerating.

It did _not_ take until after the year 2000 for the public to believe that smoking causes cancer.

<comment><USER14> No I'm not...

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3894634/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3894634/)

> The public relations campaign -- which would extend for over 40 years -- was > designed with the goal of reassuring the public, especially current smokers, > that the question of whether smoking caused harm was an "open controversy" > (1, 4, 14).

> A poll conducted in 1966 found only 40% of Americans recognizing smoking as > a major cause of cancer, while 27% said it was a minor cause and one-third > said the science was not yet able to tell (2). In 2001 Gallup re-asked this > same question and found 71% of Americans naming smoking as a major cause of > cancer, with 11% saying it was a minor cause and 16% unsure (26).

<comment><USER15> Wow. Yikes!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the whole idea of scientific authority is troubling. Of course (as another poster pointed out) we should all be convinced of the value of the scientific method in school. It doesn't require evidence. Believing the scientific establishment, however, is an epistemic challenge.

The way I think of it, for us to believe physicists to the extent it affects us is easy. We just buy gadgets, and they seem to work. We outsource the vetting of the science to companies, who outsource to engineers, who outsource to scientists. The engineers should be able to see pretty quickly if the science is somehow wrong.

Medicine affects us as well, and it's a bit harder. Cause and effect is a lot harder to determine, and as such there's a lot of controversy. Since there's ambiguity, there's an incentive to sell us bogus cures, and as such a (in my mind) reasonable skepticism of what we're being sold.

Climate science is even worse. There's only one climate, so cause and effect is really hard to determine, at least for the "consumer" (voter). There's not only business motives, but political motives.

I think science advocates should think in these epistemic terms, rather than throwing a tantrum because the ignorant masses don't believe them. Maybe there's a way we could set up credible institutions that could vet the scientific establishment for us. "Peer review" is not credible, especially given all the bad stories I hear about how that system is broken. Can a maverick get in there and publish something completely contrary to the "consensus" and be taken seriously? I have no idea. All I hear about is "quack scientists" who don't believe in climate change, and I get real suspicious.

<comment><USER16> (oops, this was actually supposed to be in reply to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19421709](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19421709))

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The more scientific authority is used for political aims - politics being "help my friends and hurt my enemies" the more it will lost it's authority.

Politics corrupts what it touches. It's corruption itself so it looks for sources authority to accomplish it's goals. When it finds one of those sources it uses it and then turns it into itself.

<comment><USER18> Agreed, I feel like Heterdox Academy is one of the few collectives that actually care about solving the problem rather than blaming their outgroup. [https://heterodoxacademy.org/the-problem/](https://heterodoxacademy.org/the- problem/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I agree with the author that the public perception of science today is in a sorry state, but I don't think that a heightened reverence for authority (of any sort) is the way out.

We design our scientific curriculum based on the philosophy of Popper, who was all about the scientific method. We teach that there are rules which lead to progress. There are counterpoints to Popper that don't appear in the modern curriculum.

There was Lakatos, who said that scientific "progress" was more about regime change, and Feyerabend who thought that science was a fundamentally anarchic activity.

If there were a little more Feyerabend in our curriculum, and a little less Popper, I think we'd be in a much better state. It's a scary step to take--to admit that all facts are alternative facts--but once you take it you find you're faced with the same old problem, just without the authority: which facts to use? Well, that depends on theories are available for the combination and utilization of these facts, and as it turns out, the theories that the "authorities" champion happen to still be the better ones.

But we don't teach people to evaluate competing theories, we teach them to settle down and apply the _right_ theories, because we have the authority to do so. It is that very attachment to authority that is undermining our ability to educate people about science.

<comment><USER20> _> which facts to use?_

That's easy: the ones that are confirmed by experiments.

Feyerabend was correct in calling science "anarchic" in that there is not one "scientific method" that will always point you at the right facts. Scientists do whatever works.

But Feyerabend was wrong in thinking that, because of that, "all facts are alternative facts". It _is_ possible to establish facts. You do that by experiments. It's just that there's no rule that will tell you in every case which experiments to do. You have to figure it out each time.

<comment><USER19> It's easy if you're deciding between two masses for an electron. In that case you've already decided that some theory which describes electrons is the one for you--so in that context one is a fact that the other is just plain false.

But it gets tricky in cases where you're deciding between facts whose enclosing theories are incompatible. Is gravity a force, or is it an acceleration? Each is a fact in its own theory--the more relevant question has to do with your situation: which theory is more useful?

Your epistemology appears to allow for the absoluteness of facts to be itself an absolute fact. Mine doesn't. From your perspective I must appear to be out of touch with reality, and from my perspective you appear to be resting an awful lot on circularity. People have been having this debate for millennia, I don't think we're going to resolve it this year.

I think that a more fruitful question would be this: If one highschool uses textbooks that acknowledge that the philosophy of science is not itself a science--and presents the various competing views, and another highschool uses textbooks that assert the absolute truth of scientific facts without justification--which highschool produces more parents that opt their children out of vaccinations?

The nature of facts meta-epistemic, and therefore can't be a matter of knowable truth--in that domain, utility is all we have. The vaccination debate, however (I just picked an example from a hat, feel free to substitute your favorite pseudoscience) is a clash between two theories, one with great justification, and one with hardly any. It only persists because we don't educate people to evaluate competing theories, so low-effort alternatives appear to wide audiences as viable contenders.

<comment><USER21> >Is gravity a force, or is it an acceleration? Each is a fact in its own theory--the more relevant question has to do with your situation: which theory is more useful?

I would call that a model, not a fact. And, as the saying goes, all models are wrong.

If it's impossible to do an experiment that shows one model to be better than another in a situation, then the choice is meaningless. Both are fine.

<comment><USER8> I would like to see a tool that lists all modern scientific hypotheses and theories along with the published experiments that support or refute the theory/hypothesis. The theories should be linked to show what builds upon what. Wikipedia is probably the closest we have to this right now.

As science gets more complex, we either need to create a way for people to perform this bottom-up reasoning themselves, or we need to appeal to authority.

Appeal to authority is dangerous and anti-scientific. IMO, people are right to reject that.

<comment><USER20> I would love to see this too. Unfortunately, at present I don't know if we even have an institution that everyone would trust to provide this information in an impartial way.

Also, there are still judgments involved even with this task as you describe it. How is it decided which experiments support or refute a given theory/hypothesis? How widely do we cast our net for what theories/hypotheses get included? Do we impose requirements on the experiments themselves, and if so, what?

<comment><USER8> If I were designing it, I'd have the experimenters determine support / refute. In order to be included, they would have to have a clear write-up of the experimental setup, detailed results, etc.

All theories could be included, the better the theory, the more confirming experiments it should have.

<comment><USER20> _> I'd have the experimenters determine support / refute._

Wouldn't that be a conflict of interest?

<comment><USER22> I don't think that this is an issue. You can make these support / refute conditions visible, and leave it to the viewer to judge if they're reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Really science shouldn't operate on authority in the first place ideally - <USER2> should speak for itself. In practice however there are limits to both time and ability to understand. It should be listened to for being more right as opposed to position.

The most disturbing part isn't not trusting scientist but not trusting evidence, even that gathered by themselves.

It is one thing to say believe light has infinite speed but after playing around with a laser and a receiver noticing the reflection time varies. It is another to insist it has it even after doing research and experimentation.

I suspect Sophism is the main culprit really - arguing based on feelings as opposed to facts. Now feelings have their place but their role is to guide goals. Not wanting to take another part time job on top of a full time one for more money is fair. Denying that taking an extra job would boost total income is delusionals (the sustainability of doing so is another topic).

<comment><USER24> > In practice however there are limits to both time and ability to understand.

It does seem that for some big ticket items like global warming the way to go would be have an open sourced app people can download and play with the simulations themselves.

The scientists working on this stuff do make efforts to put this material together in a comprehensible form, so it's all out there. But it's very hard to trace anything back to the original data, and it seems like we're getting to the point where enough tools to do this are becoming ubiquitous.

> I suspect Sophism is the main culprit really - arguing based on feelings as > opposed to facts.

I think that's very much our default behavior. When I've seen policy discussions it seems overwhelmingly that people look at it through a personal lens, and then they've set themselves up so criticism of their position is criticism of them. And then it's bloody difficult to deescalate without seeming condescending.

<comment><USER25> > It does seem that for some big ticket items like global warming the way to > go would be have an open sourced app people can download and play with the > simulations themselves.

It all depends on who writes the simulation. Tweak a few parameters and you have a balmy, lush green paradise in the Midwest without any winter snow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The opening paragraphs of this article are just another example of what appears to be an ongoing attempt to manufacture conflict between "religion" and "science". The books that were burned at Ephesus were explicitly identified in Acts 19:19 as sorcery books, not "books of nature". Stuff like this gets published in Nature and people wonder why "science" is losing its credibility?

<comment><USER27> Oh, well, as long as it was sorcery. Burning those books is a _completely normal thing_ for _completely normal people_ to do.

<comment><USER28> Have you... read the passage, or done the slightest research into the historical context in which it was set?

<comment><USER27> Have you? Did you read the article? What in god's name is phd514 arguing with?

No where in the damn fine article is the phrase "books of nature" mentioned. The article is describing the _context_ in which modern scientific thought gained currency among the educated and the powerful, both in 17th century Europe and the 19th century Ottoman Empire, how that authority waned in the mid-20th century and today, and how we can work to use those historical examples to "break the whack-a-mole" machine rather than playing whack-a-mole with vaccine deniers, flat-earthers, and so forth.

Here is the _context_ from the fine article the poster is upset with:

"Hanging in the Louvre Museum in Paris is an imposing painting, The Preaching of St Paul at Ephesus. In this 1649 work by Eustache Le Sueur, the fiery apostle lifts his right hand as if scolding the audience, while clutching a book of scripture in his left. Among the rapt or fearful listeners are people busily throwing books into a fire. Look carefully, and you see geometric images on some of the pages."

In the _context_ of 1649, a painting that depicted the burning of geometry books had a very particular meaning. However, instead of noticing that the discussion is focused on Le Suer's painting, phd413 decided that his religion was being attacked.

Does this _context_ make phd514's comment make any more sense? If not, in what context does it make sense?

The only context that I can see is that of a religious person who _didn 't read the fine article_ before getting upset and commenting.

As an aside, so what if the bible says those books were full of sorcery? So what if they were? I don't reckon at any time that burning books has been a considered a great idea by people who read, you know, _books_. (I might make an exception if you found an authentic functional Necronomicon.)

<comment> identity-haver It's not at all clear that the books contain "geometry" per se in the painting. I can't find a source either way but if you've ever seen alchemical or astrological figures they could be mistaken for math.

The people were destroying their own books after hearing a new way of looking at the world. How different is this from some kid throwing away his Joel Osteen book after taking a philosophy class? But I agree that this was impulsive and they should have given them away instead of destroying them.

phd514 makes a valid point: this article needlessly provokes conflict between science and religion, even saying with concern that "St Paul is making a comeback", the horror, as if encouraging people to burn books and "reject science" is his main work in history.

<comment><USER27> Replying here since we ran out of room down below:

Compared to this _Nature_ article, Ataturk was very direct. Read these quotes that I found using 3 seconds of difficult googling, and then decide on what side of the debate he would land.

"I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men" [1]

"It is known by the world that, in our state administration, our main program is the Republican People's Party program. The principles it covers are the main lines that illuminate us in management and politics. But these principles should never be held equal to the dogmas of books that are assumed to have descended from the sky. We have received our inspirations directly from life, not from sky or unseen." [2]

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

[1] Quoted in Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey, by Andrew Mango; "In a book published in 1928, Grace Ellison quotes [Atatürk], presumably in 1926-27", Grace Ellison Turkey Today (London: Hutchinson, 1928)

[2] Atatürk'ün Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi'nin V. Dönem 3. Yasama Yılını Açış Konuşmaları (in Turkish). "... Dünyaca bilinmektedir ki, bizim devlet yönetimimizdeki ana programımız, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi programıdır. Bunun kapsadığı prensipler, yönetimde ve politikada bizi aydınlatıcı ana çizgilerdir. Fakat bu prensipleri, gökten indiği sanılan kitapların doğmalarıyla asla bir tutmamalıdır. Biz, ilhamlarımızı, gökten ve gaipten değil, doğrudan doğruya yaşamdan almış bulunuyoruz."

<comment> identity-haver This is fair, and not inconsistent with other public speeches I've found, which mention the failures of "Pan-Islamism" and spurn the idea of a caliphate. So I think I was off base about Ataturk. He was also a hardcore nationalist by any modern standard, which helps a lot when trying to get people in a nation to do stuff. I still think that, in the US at least, sneering at religion or defining it against science is a terrible way to further science.

There are really 2 types of "religious" people in the US [1], the "USA #1 + God" group, and the "church every week" type. These need to be approached a bit differently, I think. The first group's opinions really fall into the existing political polarization issues more than any explicitly faith-based concern. In both cases, understanding and using the groups' language would help a lot to communicate science.

[1] [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/29/religious- ty...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/29/religious-typology- overview/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Galileo lived in an era that knew two principal sources of authority:

For a counterpoint: Galileo went to prison for his convictions. Do scientists nowadays project the same force of argument and power of will? There is widespread distrust from scientists themselves about a lot of the science being published. Most sciences leech off credibility from the success of physics. But credibility ranges from "most findings being published are likely false", to being unable to reproduce, to liberal arts where "everything goes". When scientists can't be even arsed to publish their preprints on a public repository, are they willing to stand by their science like galileo, and is it a surprise that laymen have started having their doubts? Also, I follow a bunch of scientists of my field on twitter and half their tweets are political. Perhaps if some scientists were not so overly political, the public would not respond in kind.

> The authority of science rested on people, not on tools or methods or charts > and data.

But Mustafa Kemal was a military general, and it was the military that took it upon them to guard the secular state in Turkey, up to this day (last coup was 2 years ago). It's not easy for science to win over people. it takes work

</comment><comment><USER30> There is now a general crisis of authority. Just recently I have learned one peculiar theory (from [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mmlmxamw_k&fbclid=IwAR3A42D...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mmlmxamw_k&fbclid=IwAR3A42D-jUmsST5llIw7LQDjf_pYN0sJ909WI01NLOjqwNgPuGjGyiK9X20)). Some moon landing photos (and maybe films) are really fake. There are people who believe that this is a proof that the whole moon landing was just staged - it is kind of natural to think like that, but a more probable theory is that it just proofs that a press officer did not have good material and just used what was available. Traditional media are kind of not very strict with this - I even have some personal experience about that, but people have much more romantic view on it and treat each photo or other material as fact and true. With the internet we have more to reconcile. I don't think this is bad - <USER3> media just needs to change. With some time we'll adapt.

It is similar case with science, maybe it is not that perfect as we used to view it. It is very good at where the incentives are well aligned - but they are not always 'adequate': [https://equilibriabook.com/inadequacy-and- modesty/](https://equilibriabook.com/inadequacy-and-modesty/)

</comment><comment><USER31> There are two dangers. One is the rejection of the power of science and the understanding it gives us of various kinds of natural phenomena. The other the over-extension of science into areas outside of its domain, the belief that science itself can single-handedly guide politics, history, and the self.

</comment><comment><USER32> A bigger problem is when and how to rely on "subject experts". My car mechanic knows far more about cars than I do, but he/she may also be biased into recommending unnecessary costly repairs to line her/her pocket.

Climate change skeptics often question the financial motivation of climatologists. It's certainly something to consider, but they rarely propose alternatives.

For example, a committee could be set up to investigate climate change science. The members would be already-retired volunteers from non-climate STEM disciplines who get the same stipend regardless of their findings, and are not permitted to receive money for books or speeches on the subject afterward. Their background would have to be mostly apolitical, meaning any political opinions in the public record are fleeting and incidental. The selection process would be similar to jury duty.

<comment><USER33> _> Climate change skeptics often question the financial motivation of climatologists. It's certainly something to consider, but they rarely propose alternatives._

I don't think this argument is being made in good faith.

More importantly, it's kind of absurd on face. Science pays horribly. See: literally any thread on HN about PhD programs. See also: levels.fyi vs. the starting salary for asst. profs at your local state university branch campus.

Whenever someone makes this argument, I show them a picture of the apartment I lived in during grad school and then point out that even the "winners" of the rat race who get professorships can leave academia and double their income over night.

<comment><USER32> The fact they are not paid well may be used as more evidence they are "bribe- able". I'm not saying they have been bribed, only that low pay cannot be reliable used as evidence either way.

<comment><USER33> It'd not just that they are not paid well. It's the fact that they have very explicitly and consistently chosen science over money. If they wanted money, they could switch jobs tomorrow and have more money (and more free time).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The title says it all: the author thinks science is supposed to be an "authority". That way of thinking about science is precisely what has to stop.

<comment><USER27> But that's not what the article says.

<comment><USER20> _> that's not what the article says._

Meaning, the article doesn't say science is supposed to be an authority? Let's see:

"It is tempting to think that scientific authority is natural and will soon reassert itself like a sturdy self-righting boat knocked over by a rogue wave. The ugly truth is that science is more like Facebook, whose positive features are also vulnerabilities. Precisely because it allows us to connect and share, Facebook creates opportunities for misuse. Similarly, science is an exemplary form of enquiry because it is technical, fallible, done in communities and able to reshape our values. But these very features allow detractors to reject the authority even of eminent experts."

Sure sounds to me like the author thinks science should be an authority.

"Early proponents of the authority of science had to understand the machine and develop countermeasures. Galileo, a rhetorical bulldozer, was a master at it. When his enemies appealed to theology, he went right back at them by citing their own authorities in neat ripostes, such as "The Bible tells us the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go!" This strategy is harder in today's world."

In other words, bullshit arguments from authority are harder to make today than they were in Galileo's time. And the author thinks this is a _problem_.

<comment><USER27> Words have multiple meanings. What you are doing is dishonest strawmanning by conflating multiple meanings of the word "authority."

<comment><USER20> _> What you are doing is dishonest strawmanning by conflating multiple meanings of the word "authority."_

No, what I am doing is giving meaning to the word "authority" according to how the author actually uses it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Maybe nature should first take responsibility for their own role in discrediting science before asking others to do so, and stop publishing articles on discredited takes on complex problems such as the gender pay gap [1].

There is no excuse for a scientific magazine to publish articles with methodology that has been shown to misrepresent the problem at hand so many times. It certainly doesn't help people's trust in science when they do so.

[1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04309-8](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04309-8)

</comment><comment><USER35> > Contemporary science deniers have not one (religious) motive, but many — > greed, fear, bias, convenience, profits, politics — to which they cling with > various degrees of sincerity and cynicism.

While doubtless describing many, this is a straw man when it comes to broad mistrust of scientific expertise. Issues like psychology's replication crisis and the continuously flip flopping advocate-science in areas like nutrition make people justly suspicious of the scientific establishment, regardless of how they would feel about an ideal scientific process.

</comment><comment><USER36> Adding to the comments of science politicisation, I also believe that the "popularisation" of science has taken a significant blow to its public perception.

Take all "I f-g love science"-like websites that portray research as people spending public money on if chocolate makes you better at sex.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've been thinking about this piece all day and I can finally articulate what my problem is with it.

Science is the rejection of authority in the 'authorial' sense of the word. Pre-scientific thinking relied almost entirely on authorities to determine what was right or true. Science is thus the rejection of the notion that an authority of any kind is a substitute for evidence.

Scientific knowledge, when presented as an authority is thus just as abhorrent as text from any other authority. We scientists trust it because we often have no other choice, but also because over decades of training we have all done the labs to actually see these principles operate first hand. Thus we accept the principles based on our own experience of them.

I hate to say it, but if someone hasn't had at least some exposure to a laboratory setting of some kind, or experimentation of some kind, then the fact that scientific knowledge is "right" is completely lost on them, and it is indistinguishable from any other knowledge from authority. Belief in the scientific process might be a substitute, but at that point it is no different that belief in revealed truth -- right for the wrong reasons means failure is just as likely.

</comment><comment><USER38> "Scientific authority"? Science isn't a religion, it isn't politics. Why talk of it in that manner?

There shouldn't be an appeal to "scientific authority" but rather to empirical replicable testing and theories.

Also, the basis of science is the humble admission that what we believe to be true today is only true until further testing disproves it. It's the basis of scientific theory that it is true ( not forever ) but only until future tests may show it to be false. And this is why modern science has continually progressed since there isn't an "authority" to prevent new discoveries and thoughts and ideas. It's why the current "lamarckian" epigenetic studies can happen which goes against the "darwinist orthodoxy" of biology the past 150 years.

The problem with science today is the same problem with news, media, religion, schools, etc. Politics. Somehow politics has pushed its way into every facet of our life and politics tends to ruin everything it touches.

</comment><comment><USER39> " _The imperial powers, especially after Sultan Abdülmecid I (1823–61), saw the cause as a lack of Western-style science. Yet could they import it, and still be faithful Muslims and patriotic citizens? The debate took place at all levels of Ottoman society, from government to popular culture, in novels, plays and even cartoons. When Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder and first president of the Turkish Republic, declared in 1924 that "the truest guide is knowledge and science", it was the outcome of an extensive self-examination that amounted to a large-scale humanities education. The debate turned on who the Ottoman people thought they were, and who they wanted to become. The authority of science rested on people, not on tools or methods or charts and data._ "

And yet, is not Turkey still struggling with that same question, 100 years later?

" _[Authority], [Hannah Arendt] thought, is neither innate nor automatic, and facts alone don't have it. It is possible only thanks to institutions that create what she called public space. Without that, it is possible for people who are not personally accomplished, who pontificate in recycled stock phrases, who polarize situations and who are insatiable braggarts coveting media coverage, to acquire power and influence._ "

And how often have proponents of science been guilty of those same actions?

<comment><USER40> _" Without that, it is possible for people who are not personally accomplished, who pontificate in recycled stock phrases, who polarize situations and who are insatiable braggarts coveting media coverage, to acquire power and influence."_

This is almost perfectly personified in the form of Bill Nye the Science Guy post-2000 or thereabouts. I also feel this applies to practically all figures in the "pop science" scene to a lesser degree. Few meet the standard of being an _" insatiable braggart"_ but most are attention hungry and willing to abandon their stated principles in pursuit of furthering their influence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Science became commoditized and we found out ( just like we found out with doctors ) that lots of scientific authority came from the science being behind the closed doors with People Who Know guarding the access.

And just like with basic medicine people are now saying "Show me!" and "What about this?" and the scientists are either unwilling or unable to defend their positions.

That's why the trust in science is eroding.

</comment><comment><USER42> People by large still believe in the scientific process, they just don't trust the people who claim practicing science. To an outsider it seems that these days that universities mostly concern themselves with activism and feelings and less so with facts and logic. In their claim of intellectual superiority they come off very unintellectual and people notice it.

</comment><comment><USER43> Many of Galileo's peers were threatened by him, as they were more interested in interpreting Aristotle then investigating nature. So, they used political processes to attack him instead of engaging him in honest debate. They used authority rather than truth. The authority / government of the day in his area was the Catholic Church. Despite these attacks, Galileo remained a committed Christian, saying "God is known by nature in his works, and by doctrine in his revealed word."

Science that depends on authority for success is the kind of science that attacked Galileo. It's the kind of science that attacks people today for not caving to whatever prevailing consensus holds sway.

Science questions the status quo to see what reality really is, and is not threatened when questions are asked.

</comment><comment><USER44> No. People don't care about right or wrong on the abstract. As long as science is producing for them, they'll believe it. When it's not, others will attempt to penetrate the market.

Right now science is automating their jobs, nagging them about driving their cars (CO2), and generally making the world complicated. Others tell them that it's someone else's fault, and all they need is the will to attack that enemy. Science has no counterpoint to this marketing message. So why buy into a product that doesn't tell you it has a solution to your problems?

Science isn't producing, so the ever-fickle public looks for market competition.

</comment><comment><USER45> Like many instruments of human thought, science can be co-opted for malevolent and exploitative purposes. The antidote is critical thinking.

How to teach one to think critically? And do so truly without bias or prejudice?

</comment><comment><USER46> This book is worth a read, on the subject:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise)

</comment><comment><USER47> Science by nature is constantly changing and discovering the ways in which it was wrong before, so the idea of "scientific authority" was always more or less imaginary. Furthermore, what gets presented to the public as "science" is increasingly a series of clickbaity tall tales and biased studies.

Scientific authority is dying because it's not in people's interest to take scientists as an "authority". That's not to say that the cynicism that's replacing it is better, though.

</comment><comment><USER48> Stop giving creedance to people that can say with a straight face "the science is settled". That would be a start. It's the oxymoron of our times.

<comment><USER49> The earth is not flat. The science is settled.

<comment><USER48> The theory seems well supported. Unless the 'evil demon' of epistemology is having his way with us...

I'm not sure that's settled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Replace 'scientific authority' and replace with any institution.

The collapse of the news (economically-classifieds, technologically-fake news from Russia, literarily-the best jobs are outside of media organizations, locality - no local news, etc.) has caused people to lose faith in every institution.

The fun is in predicting where this ends up...

Especially now that fake video news will easily be disseminated soon.

</comment><comment><USER51> The notion of "scientific authority" is contradictory with the scientific method. The scientific method is to independently validate an idea, theory, experiment.

The scientific authority is that belief instilled to the public that there is an advantage, or a reason for doing things in a way backed by science, as opposed as doing things backed by authority.

</comment><comment><USER52> Meanwhile, at the top of reddit is this article:

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hip-hop-and- mozart...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hip-hop-and-mozart- improve-flavor-swiss-cheese-180971721/)

>Scientists Played Music to Cheese as It Aged. Hip-Hop Produced the Funkiest Flavor

</comment><comment><USER27> >TFW you visit "Hacker News" and find that the prevailing attitude is "Epistemic Helplessness."

:3

</comment><comment><USER53> No mention of the role of WW2 (and previous industrialized wars) in cementing science as something worth investing in?

The victors of WW2 were countries that invested heavily in science and technology, and they won _because_ they invested heavily in science and technology. Radar, sonar, flight, automatic fire-control computers, industrialization, oil refining, steel, penicillin, synthetic rubber, codebreaking, nukes - it's very likely that without them, the winners of WW2 would be very different. And many of those innovations were made by scientists who ethnically were born into "the other side", but left Europe because of Hitler's persecution of academics and scientists. This was not lost on either the US or USSR during the Cold War - we invested heavily in science & science education in the 50s and 60s because it was a way to gain a military advantage over our adversaries.

Most of the people who fought in WW2 are dead now, the institutional memory is fading, the idea of a future war for survival is largely unthinkable, and so many people don't see the point in better understanding the natural world through rigorous observation. When you're alive, you're free to have all sorts of different opinions; when you're dead, the only fact that matters is that you're dead. The natural world doesn't care whether you're alive or dead, and selection bias is the most powerful force in science.

This is not an argument that we need another war to get people to believe in science! The biggest success of science is in building a world where people are free to not believe in it. But it's worth remembering that that world might very well be temporary, and if it disappears, I'd rather be on the side with the better models of reality.

<comment><USER54> > The victors of WW2 were countries that invested heavily in science and > technology

So were the losers. But you are right, both sides were forced to concentrate on developing new technologies by the mutual struggle. The more capable side won.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Foucault brings up interesting points regarding science and power. In that those with power have control over what kind of information is created and distributed. We can see this through corporate sponsored science, where they both control the production of new knowledge, and attempt to convince the public of one thing or another that supports their cause through the production of knowledge.

IMO this is one of the reasons we are observing an epistemic crisis in our political sphere, "post-truth" if you will. Where it isn't about _what_ is said, but about _who_ says it and the manufacturer of such knowledge. A lot of modern "woke" thought (anti-vax, flat earth, climate change denialism) centers around an opposition to modern institutions of knowledge manufacture. So anti- vax is less about believing that vaccines are harmful, and more about being opposed to the western medical establishment and forced medication by the government. Climate change denialism is less about holding the view there is no change, but more about opposing the "progressives" and the "NWO lobbyists" who are trying to force change down our throat. Flat earth movement is less about believing that the Earth is flat, and more about being opposed to anti- christian sources of knowledge as well as being opposed to information manufactured by the government. I won't say that they don't _believe_ these things, but when we are talking about scientific authority, we need to understand why these people choose to let certain knowledge manufacturers have authority over others. In some respects, their heart is in the right place, being opposed to centralized institutions of knowledge production, it is just sad that a lot of them are prone to irritating theories like these.

Another issue with current science is of course funding difficulties and publication bias. The feedback loop of needing to have something to show for your work that is going to provide immediate benefit somewhere isn't doing any favors.

</comment><comment><USER56> We need a distributed scientific inquiry system that exists on the scale of social media. Imagine if instead of Twitter optimizing for attention, it optimized for rigorous scientific inquiry. The world would be a much more intelligent, reasonable place.

</comment><comment><USER57> Two recent events relevant to scientific authority: the past recommendation of a nutritional pyramid that contributed to a generation of obesity and the anti-vaxxer movement that has resulted in a measles outbreak. Neither of these are black and white scenarios. Perhaps the nutritional pyramid had some positive effects. And perhaps not getting vaccinated has resulted in the savings of thousands of lives. Scientific authority rests not on being right, but on reasoned disclosure of evidence.

We have "scientific studies" being paid for by companies with a vested interest in the results. (Disclosure, I am writing this on an iMac with my iPhone sitting next to me). Today you can read how the Apple iWatch will detect AFIB. It is a study paid for by Apple, published by Stanford Medicine. From med.stanford.edu "The results of the Apple Heart Study highlight the potential role that innovative digital technology can play in creating more predictive and preventive health care". And who can argue with the truth of that?

But certainly the study is presented with the expectation of encouraging people to buy Apple products. Neither the Apple site nor the Stanford site make it clear that false positives for AFIB can result in unnecessary medical procedures along with their financial costs and health risks.

I'm not singling out of Apple or Stanford - I have great respect for both of them - but I have less trust in them than I did yesterday. There are far worse instances: [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2016/09/13/493739074...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists- to-point-blame-at-fat).

Bringing back scientific authority requires earning trust.

</comment><comment><USER58> I think to get science back to authority Simply 3 things need to happen

a) Academia must rid self of clandestine corporate sponsorship (so make it very transparent, or do not use it)

b) Academia must rid itself of 'Coins-for-grades' systems of grading academic progress of the students

c) Academia must rid itself of so-called-new humanities that are basically preparatory schools for political activists

It is also fairly exhausting to read these maniacal conjectures, as presented by Robert P. Crease in the article, linking US President Trump with various fringe movements.

It will not work, it will not change the public view of his achievements, successes and his progress on dismantling the corrupt, do-as-we-say-but-not- as-we-do conglomerates in business, education, politics and entertainment industries.

"... The same is true of the ebbing of scientific authority, seen in everything from denialism over vaccine utility to the ambivalence in US President Donald Trump's administration over the Iran nuclear deal, hammered out by scientists. .."

</comment><comment><USER59> "Science" has real problems. We can't even discuss controversial viewpoints, such as case-specific dangers with vaccines (yes, they are real, and the CDC covered up data) and climate skepticism (does lowering CO2 really do anything meaningful, vs. the fact that we're coming out of an ice age from 10K+ years ago).

But it's impossible to have an evidence-backed rational conversation about these topics with scientists, let alone the general public.</comment>


Who Needs a Conference on Modern Stoicism? - <AUTHOR> https://stoicon-2017.eventbrite.ca <comment><USER2> Who needs stupid submission titles?</comment>