Strategies of Communication on Climate Change

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Science: we did everything wrong

(Image h/t Mike Haywood, highlights mine)

by Paula
from "Mythodrome"

Ordinary Person: Every night, my dog knows when my wife is coming home from work 10 minutes before she gets here, no matter what shift she works. Maybe my dog is psychic! How cool would that be?
Scientist: There can be no such thing as psychic dogs because the universe is a machine. It is either coincidence or you are lying.
OP: I’m not lying and it is not a coincidence. I see it every day!
Scientist: Your subjective experience is worthless because it cannot be measured in machine units.
OP: Oh okay, well screw you then.
Ordinary Person: I took this herbal medicine and it made me better.
Scientist: Your body is a chemical machine that requires specific chemicals in specific quantities. Studies prove that herbal medicines do not contain the chemicals necessary to make your body better. It was a placebo effect and therefore doesn’t count.
OP: Well regardless of what caused it to happen, the herbal medicine made me better. How does that not count?
Scientist: “Placebo effect” means your subjective experience is worthless because it cannot be measured in chemical units.
OP: Oh okay. Well screw you then.
Scientist: Global warming is a serious problem we need to address immediately.
Ordinary Person: I don’t see any global warming, in fact it’s been very mild this summer.
Scientist: The snows of Kilimanjaro are gone. The North Pole is a lake. You can see it with your own eyes!
OP: Why should what I see with my own eyes matter now when it doesn’t anywhere else? You said my subjective experience is worthless, so screw you.
Ever since I was a little kid I’ve loved science. I love microscopes and telescopes and stethoscopes and oscilloscopes and every kind of scope there is. I have never been able to understand why others aren’t as fascinated with the natural world as I am. I have not been able to understand why practically the whole of the United States has banded together against science and scientists not only with regards to global warming, but also in relation to just about everything science does. I had thought it was because science did not do a very good job of communicating with the general public. And this is true, technically; in reality, science is straight up insulting to people who don’t tow a machine-universe party line. In recent years, self-described militant, atheist scientists such as Richard Dawkins have exacerbated the problem by working to deliberately alienate anyone who does not share his (decidedly unfounded) faith in the machine universe (a.k.a., “materialism”).

Read the complete post at "mythodrome"


  1. Me too, I am very disillusioned by science. I arrived to the conclusion that all the equations and laws that I've studied have only managed to lead my way of thinking on fake and sterile paths.

  2. Reading the original complete post, I cannot help thinking Mrs Paula is building a "straw man" of science. Not that she is completely wrong, or that scientists DO communicate so awfully that she can post these things and have people believing this is science.

    For example, let examine these two claims. Dogs do not perceive psychically when they owners arrive. Scientists know this not because psychics do not exist, but because they tried to OBSERVE if this was true. It was not.

    Scientists don't say that herbal remedies don't work. They don't say that a remedy does not work because they don't know how it should work. They say that it has to be tested, it works if people that use it heal better than people that use a placebo. If such a test fails, if it is the same if you take your remedy or a similar tablet contains only sugar, well, take the sugar.

    We are very bad observers, we observe only things that hit our imagination, and not ordinary things. We must observe things methodically, taking note of things that support our claim and of things that do not. We must use instruments like statistics, to determine if something is just a chance or something really happening. But this hurts two important feelings, the idea that there MUST be something interesting, out of the boring stuff that happens everyday, something that gives meaning to our life, even if it is only a supernatural ability of our dog. And the idea that we don't need to observe CAREFULLY, a first glimpse is enough. We cannot be fooled by a meaningless chance. Science tell us that we can err, in global warming, in psychic dogs, in a miracle cure that "worked".

    Mrs Paula probably has a pre-concept idea that psychic exists, some proven ineffective remedies work, and global warming exists. And then blames scientists for be against two of her three believings.