LHC and Faith-Based Science

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maybe not ignorant, but certainly uninformed

People don't believe in evolution, the moon landing, general and special relativity, or the fact that earth is not flat because of soil erosion, DDT, or nuclear war. They believe in those things because they weren't taught, or failed to learn, the logic behind scientific thinking, such as critical thinking, testing a hypothesis, and keeping correct units together. Often it is scientists, or at least those who understand science, who fully understand the full implications of work in their field, e.g. Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein. This is not always true and we can see this in the case of the damage done by the creation of DDT by the petrochemical industry. Nobody in that industry was there pointing out that there was anything wrong with DDT. But it was wildlife biologists who started to notice a decline in the number of chicks that were being hatched by hawks and eagles and it was biologists that figured out why. In fact it is very possible to do a great amount of damage without the use of science and without science we would never know that there is a problem, e.g. sprawl or overgrazing. Furthermore many of the failures that you point out are as much a failure of policy or society as they are of science. Soil erosion is a well understood problem as is ocean dead zones and global warming, and yet the problems persist. The dangers of nuclear war are readily apparent to everyone and yet that is a threat that does not go away. The point is that you can not simply dismiss a scientific project because of past failings that have to do with science, especially if they are in an unrelated field. If you really want to point out the faults in a scientific project then you need to educate yourself and be able to talk to a scientist and express yourself on their level. And the reason that I believe people will simply dismiss things like evolution, is that they are not willing or able to understand the educational level of a PhD evolutionary biologist so they simply dismiss the whole thing as voodoo. Really the fault lies at the feet of our government, educators, and scientists. More effort needs to be put into teaching complex concepts in science and scientific reasoning. Our scientific endeavors need our societies support like a business needs financial backing from shareholders. If we loose their support we loose the science.

Posted by: alaire   Posted on: 09/09/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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