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from the whom-do-you-trust...-and-why? dept.
Given that collaboration [in science] is the norm, you may be asking yourself the eternal question: Who cares? How does the image of a lone scientist hero cause any danger to me?
The problem arises when there is a debate about a scientific topic. Following this structure, debate is a necessary and encouraged part of the scientific process. This debate happens before the idea is released to anyone outside of a few scientists and, while it can become heated at times, takes place with great respect between proponents of different viewpoints.
The danger can come when scientific results are released to the public. Our society now provides a platform for anyone to comment, regardless of his or her education, experience or even knowledge of the topic at hand.
While this is an excellent method of disseminating knowledge, it can also provide a platform for any opinion—regardless of the weight of data behind it—to be equal to that released in more traditional scientific ways.
Particularly in today's largely populist climate, people are looking to see the lone scientist hero overthrow the perceived dominance of facts coming from academia.
And herein lies the problem. In this situation, the opinion of a lone commenter may be considered on equal footing with that of tens or hundreds of people who have made the subject their life's work to ensure their interpretations are correct.
Everybody is entitled to their own scientific opinion, but everybody is not entitled to their own scientific facts?
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Thursday November 23 2017, @04:25PM (1 child)
No, because punishing those who express doubts is inherently dangerous. It supports groupthink and raises the bar for the introduction of contradictory evidence through a mechanism of fear.
Consider the possibility that there is some accepted theory. Then, multiple people discover different weak or circumstantial evidence against it, but none of them come forward because of fear of excommunication. This means that all the evidence is not being heard, that alone is not scientific. Additionally, in such a circumstance, it would be possible that the totality of such weak, independent evidence amounts to stronger counter-evidence......except once again, because of this culture of punishment, it is never heard.
Suppression of evidence, even weak or circumstantial evidence, is not good for the advancement of human knowledge.
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Thursday November 23 2017, @09:47PM
As Carl Sagan once said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If some theory becomes established to the point that it is considered a scientific consensus, it got that way because there already exist multiple very strong lines of evidence supporting it. To overturn something like that you need to have some very strong counter-evidence or else a reasonable theoretical basis for believing that the present theory has problems. If you have some evidence, even if it might not be really all that strong, pointing to problems with a current accepted theory that is enough for you to publish a paper that will be taken seriously, if only for other scientists to try to refute you or explain your evidence in a way that shows that the current theory can still explain it. Take for instance Lambda-Cold Dark Matter Cosmology, another theory on which there is a strong scientific consensus. A paper showing how galaxy rotation curves challenge dark matter [soylentnews.org] caused a considerable stir within the astrophysics community because it seemed to give good evidence that rival theories to dark matter like modified gravity might be plausible, but it was later shown that the evidence found there could still be explained by dark matter [soylentnews.org].
Once again you have asserted things like "excommunication" or a "culture of punishment". Please show some actual evidence (there's that word again!) that such a culture actually exists to a significant degree in the modern scientific community, enough to show the effects you mention. So far you have only made assertions without any evidence that that is actually how the modern scientific community operates.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.