I still feel the ideal should be a search for truth, even if human institutions do the work. I'm a fan of Feynman's stuff:

>...As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. When someone says, "Science teaches such and such," he is using the word incorrectly.

>Science doesn't teach anything; experience teaches it. If they say to you, "Science has shown such and such," you might ask, "How does science show it? How did the scientists find out? How? What? Where?"

>It should not be "science has shown" but "this experiment, this effect, has shown." And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments--but be patient and listen to all the evidence--to judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at. https://feynman.com/science/what-is-science/

I always took that for granted but seems some don't.

I always found that quote kind of funny. So the scientists who have views on political issues that are the extreme opposite of yours (because there are many such people)... what then exactly?

Scientist 1: If we put a sugar cube into water whose temperature is exactly 74.7373 degrees centigrade, the water will likely turn pink. here is our evidence for this.

Scientist 2: we tried this and found that if the water is cooling that it doesn’t work, it has to remain at a constant temperature.

Scientist 3: we tried it with refined and unrefined sugar. unrefined sugar did not work.

scientist 1: we took another look - it seems there was some weird additive in the refined sugar, when this additive added to water at 74.7373 degrees centigrade the water turns pink.

that’s a very silly and stupid example of “challenging” other scientist’s work. you precisely explain what you tried and how it differed, in the hope it leads to a more specific and accurate picture down the line.

flat earthers et. al just “say stuff” they think is right, where the evidence does not actually challenge any hypothesis or existing evidence because the claims are just … bad.

this is not “challenging” science. it is stubborn ignorance. pure and simple.

most of it is so easy to refute any random youtuber with a spare hour can do it (read: 6-12 months [0])

- https://youtu.be/2gFsOoKAHZg

however, your point about platforming is important, because people who wouldn’t have had a soapbox 15 years ago, now have a soapbox anyone in the world can find them on.

if you’re looking for something to confirm your world view, there’s something on the internet for you.

rule 1 of the internet should be spammed in front of everyone’s eyes for seven minutes before anyone is allowed to use a web browser — don’t believe anything you read on the internet.

[0]: there’s a running joke about how long this person takes to make new videos.

I don't think it helps to cancel them, probably hurts. It's not as if you have to either censor or send your highest-status scientists to debate them, and that exhausts the finite menu. In a diverse info ecosystem someone will have their comparative advantage on engaging with cranks. The important thing about overall ecosystem health is, is it reasonable in what it amplifies?

Scientific American hasn't seemed very healthy after the 80s. In the decades before, it was an unusual labor of love by one or two chief editors (I don't remember specifically).

> Not just search for truth and fact, but use these truths and facts to develop ways that benefit people.

Wait, when did "how to use these truths" become part of science?? How you use science to develop things that benefit people (or organizations) is normally called engineering! Science is normally concerned only with finding useful facts about the world. There are some exceptions, like when you're using the scientific method exactly to figure out what benefits people (or any living organism), for example, using pharmacology to develop drugs that help people. But I would argue that even then, the main concern of pharmacology is to figure out what kinds of drugs have what effects on humans in certain conditions - i.e. it fits perfectly into the definition of "searching for truth and facts".

How you apply that knowledge science gives you to solve problems that affect society is called policy - and policy, while can be analysed using the scientific method, is normally not itself science. It's hard to use the scientific method to study policy, though, because there are far too many factors involved in anything to do with large groups of people, and far too little room to do experiments on them.

>I mean literally costs lives

We have overpopulation anyway. And we don't have shortage of normies by any measure. In fact some social problems like monopolies are due to overabundance of normies.

The science on vaccines is solid, but there are potential side effects (that's also solid science). So when it comes to, for example, giving kids the vaccines, we have to balance the likelihood of serious side effects with the necessity of preventing the disease. In the case of COVID, the disease's risk to kids is extremely low, but they are still vaccinated. That is a political decision, and it is perfectly reasonable to dispute it.

That's a particularly clear cut example. There are many more complex scenarios where "trust the scientific experts" is dubious because science has a limited domain of applicability. When you pretend that non-scientific decisions must be made on a scientific basis, people see through it and become sceptical.

It used to be all the science-y people on one side and Bible thumpers on the other... decades ago.

There has been something of a sea change.