Politics and science; is science being corrupted? (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, February 13, 2010, 16:40 (5396 days ago) @ David Turell

The following website contains an essay by a former Dutch Science Acadamy member. He explains why peer review is such a bad system, why it is entangled with bureaucrats controlling grants, that jargon isolates branches of science, and other brilliant observations. If you will remember, when Matt discussed this development in science, I wrote stating that it was not a good development, coming from the old school as I do.
> 
> We depend on science in our discussions here. Is it safe to depend too much on current scientific conclusions and theories? Again to harp on current climate science, the answer is no.
> 
> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/12/scientist-i-don%e2%80%99t-want-to-remain-a-member... have been uncovering the hoaxes of other scientists--now as they always have been. Everything always comes out in the wash, David, and I see no reason to blanket the entire profession with a "cloud" for the acts of climate scientists seeking pub. (Though the seeking pub part should be rectified.)-Having worked in one of the "hard" sciences for some time now, I generally have a certain level of disdain for everything below chemistry in the "order of logical purity." Biology and everything else below it on this continuum end up becoming more and more interpretation-based explanations culminating all the way at the other end with sociology. What you're talking about as a systemic problem is GOING to exist however you try to reform it, because the nature of the study is heavily interpretive and very open. -A webcomic will illustrate what I'm getting at: 
http://xkcd.com/435/-It jokes, but its pertinent. -I think your time spent in the trenches of working in what IS grouped in the social sciences category has kinda jaded your view here. You recognize rightly that it is often a battle of mentors, but I think its naive to think that you can take the social aspect out of a social science. It's easy for math/phys/chem because those fields are very clear-cut. It might take 100 years for a bad idea to be expunged from a social science, and that's just a fact of life. Social changes are extraordinarily difficult.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"