thewanderer1983 7 months ago

To quote him "Whereas previously he seemed to agree with mainstream scientific opinion" Can someone please explain to me how we managed to get a whole generation of the western scientific thinkers who think the scientific method is consensus of scientific opinion? The author lists Isaac Newton, Hooke, Boyle . All of these prominent minds made scientific breakthroughs that didn't stick to the consensus views of the time.

People interested should look at The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn.

To quote from Wikipedia: Its publication was a landmark event in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. Kuhn challenged the then prevailing view of progress in science in which scientific progress was viewed as "development-by-accumulation" of accepted facts and theories. Kuhn argued for an episodic model in which periods of conceptual continuity and cumulative progress, referred to as periods of "normal science", were interrupted by periods of revolutionary science.

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mike_hearn 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

It's farcical. The Royal Societies motto is "take nobody's word for it", yet this particular author is so keen on the idea that science is people agreeing with each other that the highlighted research on her home page is a paper from nearly ten years ago titled "CATALISE: A Multinational and Multidisciplinary Delphi Consensus Study."

What exactly is a "consensus study"?

"Our goal in this study was to use an online Delphi technique to see whether it was possible to achieve consensus among professionals on appropriate criteria for identifying children who might benefit from specialist services"

"These responses [from experts] were synthesised by the first two authors, who then removed, combined or modified items with a view to improving consensus ... The resulting consensus statement is reported here"

This is what she thinks of as her best scientific work! It's not even science at all, just emailing a bunch of people trying to get them to agree to things and anytime someone doesn't agree she "synthesizes" them out of the picture.

No wonder she hates Musk. The Royal Society is far better off without people like this. It's not like Musk would care if it booted him out anyway!

https://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/people/dorothy-bishop

	▲	thewanderer1983 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		This is called Argument from authority and is a logical fallacy. To steal a good part from wikipedia: Scientific knowledge is best established by evidence and experiment rather than argued through authority[13][14][15] as authority has no place in science.[14][25][26] Carl Sagan wrote of arguments from authority: "One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority.' ... Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else.

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seabass-labrax 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The difference is that Elon Musk has not challenged scientific consensus by publishing revolutionary studies or conducting risky experiments, but rather by republishing inflammatory statements online. His actual achievements (including super-heavy rockets and electric cars) are largely independent from his unconventional views on vaccines, for instance.

You can't compare him to figures like Newton and Hooke, who made both their names and their living from science.

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edanm 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

> You can't compare him to figures like Newton and Hooke, who made both their names and their living from science.

Not disagreeing with the rest of your post, just making a minor nitpick - didn't Newton actually spend most of his time on alchemy and at the Royal Mint? He definitely made his name from science (or math & science as I prefer to think of it). But his living? I don't know about that.

	▲	seabass-labrax 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		I'm no scholar of Newton's life, but I am aware that Newton became a professor soon after attaining his master's degree at Cambridge. I believe he kept this role for the rest of his life in addition to the later posts at the Royal Mint (which were supposed to be merely sinecures, but jobs that he nonetheless took rather more seriously on his own initiative). As for the alchemy, I think one can reasonably consider that science, as the modern principles of chemistry were still a couple of centuries off - Newton did at least conduct proper experiments, which is basis of the natural sciences. All in all, I think that he certainly made his living from his success in science at first, even if he could have later maintained himself simply on his esteem and lofty networks at Cambridge.

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whywhywhywhy 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> publishing revolutionary studies

Just because you put it in PDF doesn't make it something more.

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whamlastxmas 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Elons success is in very large part due to challenging the status quo

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tordrt 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

Whats his unconvential views on vaccines? I am not convinced he has any. Could not find anything obvious at leadt

	▲	tim333 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not aware of any. I think the author misinterpreted him with: >Musk tweeted: "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci", thereby managing to simultaneously offend the LGBTQ community, express an antivaxx sentiment... Musk actually explained he wasn't in to the pronoun stuff and: >As for Fauci, he lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people. Not awesome imo. ie. lab leak, not vax

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mdp2021 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

> People interested should look at

People, evidence is, should be better educated in the History and Philosophy of Science (and in Mathematics and in Logic). It should be part of the mandated curriculum.

	▲	thewanderer1983 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		How do you determine what is scientific evidence and what isn't? That is done via the scientific methods.