• fishos@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    I think you’re confusing “politics injected into science” with science. Science is data and analyzing it. Pretending someone didn’t invent something is removing data points and I’m pretty sure science calls that fraud, just like we call the studies that found cigarettes healthy to be frauds, or the oil companies to be frauds. 2 wrongs don’t make a right.

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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      11 hours ago

      “No True Scientist” would say cigarettes don’t cause cancer or co2 emission don’t cause global warming, or glyphosate isn’t bad for the environment. Yet, it did, for multiple decades.

      You have to consider “actually existing science” with it’s political and financially directed function, choosing what questions get asked and who will answer them. You can say “oh that wasn’t science it was fraud” which is all well and good now but it wasn’t for those decades when they served to obscure or bury the truth rather than discover it.

      Actually existing science is a really troubled institution and ultimately there is no such thing as science outside of politics, science is part of the political process and cannot escape or be independent of it.

      • fishos@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        Yes, and I’m here criticizing “actually existing science”. That’s exactly my point. It’s not “real science” when it’s injected with politics and emotions like that. It’s biased in a way science shouldn’t be.

        • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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          11 hours ago

          Most science isn’t real science in that view, the problem is that most science is funded by ulterior motives, very little science is the basic, primary science of exploration. That creates both huges gaps where the political and financial establishment fails to imagine value (climate science) and also fake science where something should be true for the power that be, but isn’t (glysophate, cigarettes safety).

          We should always imagine as a flawed, politically and financially motivated enterprise, a tool in the grip of institutions that need to survive first and science second. Pure science is a rare thing and it shouldn’t be assumed be the case whenever things are happening under the name of science.

          This is the framework to avoid being surprised by scientific failures and to compensate for them.