Kit, as a long retired scientist of sorts I have mentioned before my witnessing decades ago the interface between scientists, 'advice', and UK public / political decisions with at times serious dire results. It is part sadly of the UK 'science story'. Malign actors will look to leverage 'public discontent' and it is easy enough to find scapegoats, especially if they can be represented to cost a lot. (I do not agree personally with the idea of dispensable scientific investigation; it is a bit like getting rid of or 'consolidating' fire brigades on the grounds that they sit around doing very little most of the time.)
But 'science' is not one thing. Critical thinking is part of a larger project, education for life and part of public good. Science is a part of larger philosophy. Material progress is not working and is beginning to fail badly in some quarters, which we can see if we get our heads together and look up. In 'this age of information' we face massive uncertainty.
People like Erica Thompson working on 'model land', and Ed Conway (Sky) sketch the immense complexity of 'our' material lives; well certainly me and you are completely dependent on a fragile material/energy world, let alone the biosphere.
Ringing an ever louder warning bell has not worked. Nor does science, nor 'technology', provide 'solutions'. 'Science' attitudes fail to convince while 'we' insist on such notions as 'progress', 'growth', piecemeal 'solutions' while ignoring their obvious contradictions? We are in for constrained times, and Western high end societies look to join the majority of humanity. What gets trimmed is not fair or sensible, but dangling the carrot of 'progress' seems unlikely to spare us the loss of good science and education work, let alone existing pay and security differentials, etc. etc.... at best, I guess.
I will join you nevertheless in sticking up for and perhaps saving some of what is good.👍
The pendulum is swinging back from "populist left" scientific concepts such as "men can have babies", CO2 causes global warming, vaccines are "safe and effective"., etc. I have been a scientist my entire career and always followed the data, whether is was for or against the popular consensus at the time. "Populism" has nothing to do with truth in science.
‘This effort should go hand in hand with a renewed emphasis on science education in schools, where curricula must prioritize critical thinking, evidence-based reasoning, and an understanding of scientific methodology. An informed and educated public is far less susceptible to the distortions of populist propaganda’
An informed public? How can a public be informed when science research is firmly behind pay wall? How can the public be informed when there exists so much vocabulary change between different groups describing the same thing?
How can the public trust evidence based science in an atmosphere of publish or perish?
How can the public trust ‘evidence based’ science when scientist are writing and promoting ideas in books that glamorize metaphysics and not physics, such as the Many Worlds Theory which is based upon trying to interpret and satisfy a mathematical model which is only a model which uses math dependent on concepts like infinitely small?
I could go on and ask about issues with complexity and chaos but the point is that sometimes science has its own temples of beliefs and it’s own priests.
Kit, as a long retired scientist of sorts I have mentioned before my witnessing decades ago the interface between scientists, 'advice', and UK public / political decisions with at times serious dire results. It is part sadly of the UK 'science story'. Malign actors will look to leverage 'public discontent' and it is easy enough to find scapegoats, especially if they can be represented to cost a lot. (I do not agree personally with the idea of dispensable scientific investigation; it is a bit like getting rid of or 'consolidating' fire brigades on the grounds that they sit around doing very little most of the time.)
But 'science' is not one thing. Critical thinking is part of a larger project, education for life and part of public good. Science is a part of larger philosophy. Material progress is not working and is beginning to fail badly in some quarters, which we can see if we get our heads together and look up. In 'this age of information' we face massive uncertainty.
People like Erica Thompson working on 'model land', and Ed Conway (Sky) sketch the immense complexity of 'our' material lives; well certainly me and you are completely dependent on a fragile material/energy world, let alone the biosphere.
Ringing an ever louder warning bell has not worked. Nor does science, nor 'technology', provide 'solutions'. 'Science' attitudes fail to convince while 'we' insist on such notions as 'progress', 'growth', piecemeal 'solutions' while ignoring their obvious contradictions? We are in for constrained times, and Western high end societies look to join the majority of humanity. What gets trimmed is not fair or sensible, but dangling the carrot of 'progress' seems unlikely to spare us the loss of good science and education work, let alone existing pay and security differentials, etc. etc.... at best, I guess.
I will join you nevertheless in sticking up for and perhaps saving some of what is good.👍
The pendulum is swinging back from "populist left" scientific concepts such as "men can have babies", CO2 causes global warming, vaccines are "safe and effective"., etc. I have been a scientist my entire career and always followed the data, whether is was for or against the popular consensus at the time. "Populism" has nothing to do with truth in science.
‘This effort should go hand in hand with a renewed emphasis on science education in schools, where curricula must prioritize critical thinking, evidence-based reasoning, and an understanding of scientific methodology. An informed and educated public is far less susceptible to the distortions of populist propaganda’
An informed public? How can a public be informed when science research is firmly behind pay wall? How can the public be informed when there exists so much vocabulary change between different groups describing the same thing?
How can the public trust evidence based science in an atmosphere of publish or perish?
How can the public trust ‘evidence based’ science when scientist are writing and promoting ideas in books that glamorize metaphysics and not physics, such as the Many Worlds Theory which is based upon trying to interpret and satisfy a mathematical model which is only a model which uses math dependent on concepts like infinitely small?
I could go on and ask about issues with complexity and chaos but the point is that sometimes science has its own temples of beliefs and it’s own priests.