Wear a Seatbelt.
Alan | 21 November, 2008 | 01:51I wince subtly whenever I hear someone say that nuclear power is dangerous. The last major nuclear disaster was 22 years ago. It was a poorly designed, poorly built and poorly managed plant. Saying that nuclear power is dangerous because of Chernobyl is like saying cars are dangerous because you can be thrown through the windshield in a crash. The issue is moot.
The same goes for shit like the Urban Heat-Island effect. Scientists knew about it from the get-go, and losers like these guys are still pushing it. Most global warming denialist (they are not skeptics, we’re the skeptics) arguments seem to fall into this category.
Or then you have those animal rights freakazoids “ZOMFG ANIMALZ IZ NOT PEOPLEZ! SCIENCE R DUM” Fucking duh.
I’m pretty sure I threw something at the TV when I found out that some skid mark was sueing CERN because he was certain that none of the hundreds of trained physicists could possibly have thought about black holes being made in the LHC. Not a chance. No way in hell could a room of the world’s best and brightest physicists have possibly thought about something so obvious.
Whenever I’m up on my little soapbox I like to say that scientists aren’t really that much smarter than everyone else, they’ve just found something to be passionate about. It may or may not be true, but I’ll tell you one thing: We’re the experts.We know what we’re doing. We’re not stupid.
You do your own damn job.
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I agree that CERN is not going to destroy the world, that the current climate warming trends are human-caused, and that seatbelts are a good idea. However, the notion that anyone who is not a scientist has no right to question anything a scientist says is, IMO, bullshit. Yes, scientists do usually know more about their chosen area than the average person, but I don’t see how that gives them the right to tell others to sit down and shut up. Saying “We’re the experts. We know what we’re doing. We’re not stupid,” reminds me of what Bush said, “I’m the Decider.”
You’re correct about that. However, where is the “shut up!” part coming from? The closest I’ve seen is “stop wasting my time”, and the most common one is “Do you know what you’re talking about?”.
Science isn’t like logic. An appeal to authority isn’t a fallacy here — authority matters in science exactly the same way it matters in medicine (“Doc says I’ve got TB, Ned says it’s just a cough. Better go with Ned!”). The clincher that prevents this from being the runaway “decider” authoritarianism is that science clinches on physical evidence. I don’t care if Stephen Hawking himself tells me black holes are made of condensed unicorn farts; if he can’t supplement his claims with evidence it’s not science.
In the case of the UHI arguments, for instance, some morons take single pictures of single stations in urban environments and say the entire world network is flawed. What they miss is that they never do analysis on the network as a whole, testing the (published!) methods of compensating for the UHI — in other words, they don’t back their claims up with evidence. In fact, infamously, one guy actually DID write his own code from the published algorithms and compared the results from only the “best” stations to the official final results (using all stations). The result agreed in what he called “an extraordinary exoneration of GISS” (the group that does the analyses), demonstrating either that the “worst” stations were adjusted for properly, or the criteria used to judge best/worst were flawed. Neither of these points sunk in on this fellow’s host nor his peers, who to this day accuse GISS of fraud every single post, ignoring an independent public demonstration of their lack of evidence.
Well of course, anyone has a right to question science, but before they do so publicly, they should do a little booklearnin’ because theres a significant chance that someone who is paid to sit around and think about such things has already addressed it.
Could you imagine an emergency meeting of biologists ” So, All of modern biology violates the second law of thermodynamics, we’re kinda hooped. ideas anyone?” or Doctors “You know, mice aren’t people, testing drugs on them is totally invalid. why didn’t we think of this before?” or a GISS formal apology “Sorry, we caused a huge public scare because we were too lazy to put climate stations outside of cities. my bad.” Its ridiculous.
[...] When faced with the abysmal ignorance of those folks who criticize science and learning without even bothering to understand what they are criticising, it sometimes helps to just rant a bit. That’s what Alan chooses to do over at Terahertz. And he’s right on target with his rant, too. It can be found here. [...]
I love this rant and have to agree with you. Kudos on the blog
I get this all the time online; I make a science-based argument against some bit of woo, and the woo-meister says; “You’re censoring me!” or “You won’t let me talk!”
It isn’t hard to come up with examples of the whole science establishment being wrong about something, but examples of Joe The Plumber being right when scientists were wrong, are harder to find.
[...] is like saying cars are dangerous because you can be thrown through the windshield in a crash. Wear a Seatbelt. | Terahertz « I shudder to think how the face-squirting effect might be used in other movie [...]
Science is not only the highly trained individuals, but also the emergent effect of many minds around the globe sharing ideas. Even though an individual physicist is better qualified then Joe the plumber when discussing black holes, individual competence is dwarfed by the super brain consisting of all scientist. For an untrained individual mind to challenge the global super brain is somewhat of a joke.