science

I'm fine with "Never let businessmen."

I want to scratch the surface and look slightly deeper at this. I think we all agree on the one hand “Science, duh.” and this kind of headline is of course dispiriting.

It sparked an interesting thought for me though. What role does “trust” actually play in science? Scientists certainly don’t operate on trust with one another. The entire practice is based on peer-critique and no one’s results are trusted until someone has repeated them.

Yet somehow we think there is a boundary on this, a sort of outer membrane past which everyone who is outside any scientific field is just supposed to “trust science,” when science itself is a huge, distributed, diverse, and not always especially accountable or even identifiable conglomeration of different people. Not all science is carried out with the same rigor, the same sample size, and there is membership card. A corporation can conduct science. A private individual can conduct science. Exactly who and where is this “Science” we are meant to even trust?

Every study I’ve ever seen shared on Lemmy is looked at critically. There’s no “trust” about it.

So not to trust science honestly sounds like the most scientific thing for a smart person to do. Science also doesn’t require trust. It operates on proof, openness, repeatable experiments and data. Science never asks for “trust.”

It's about style. Who are you going to believe, academics who are careful in what they claim and are forever hedging because even 6 sigma isn't 100% or business people who are absolutely certain when they speak whether their certainty is warranted or not?

My suspicion is social media. The hustle culture and billionaires are glazed over; as in there is subliminal messaging to condition to the plebians to worship the rich and lick their boots.

They've been raised in a culture that has taught them "freedom" means being addicted to entertainment and convenience, and that everyone who doesn't look, act and believe like they do is an existential threat.

they are stupid and don't even believe basic history like palestine for the last 150 years

• people are very stupid and gullible, on average, and groups of people even moreso
• business people have (or are) marketing people, which is effectively the discipline of socially engineering people to buy your shit

Corporations own the media, not scientists.

People are emotionally driven. Everyone is, to an extent. Scientists are less likely to use that to support their point, or they'll have emotionally displeasing things to say.

Unless they're paid off by big corporations to do studies favorable to a company's products, in which case they bring nice sounding lies. Like how Monsanto wrote entire passages of the paper supposedly proving the safety of their glyphosate.

Source

This shit killed my grandma in her late 60s along with millions of others worldwide.

But I think this is due to a broader incentive problem in science. There's incentive to find new and interesting things to publish or die. There's no incentive (in fact strong incentives against) replicating other studies to see if their results hold up to external verification.