You're nitpicking. Medicine is concerned with what's good and bad for someone's health. Medical doctors literally advise their patients on that and evaluate the effects of actions with respect to what's good and what's bad for their health. What's good and bad for someone's health is simply one form of instrumental goodness. Other sciences evaluate in similar ways, though they are perhaps concerned with other aspects of what's good and bad. Climate scientists are not concerned with what's good and bad for mankind in some abstract philosophical way, but they should without a doubt lay out good or bad consequences of climate change. If the temperature sinks by 10 degrees Celsius in Northern Europe, that would be a bad consequence for the affected countries.

It's false and somewhat naive to claim that such evaluations play no role in science, they are a crucial part of many sciences. For instance, they're needed to find worthwhile subjects of study. Not everything is theoretical physics.

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joquarky 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You're talking in ideals, not reality.

In reality, medicine wants your money and that's all that matters to them.

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9rx 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Medical doctors literally advise their patients on that and evaluate the effects of actions with respect to what's good and what's bad for their health.

You're talking about a consultant now. Yes, consultants take scientific understanding and help translate it into what the customer wants to hear: doing their best to interpret what the other person is likely to think is "good" or "bad". Which, I will add, is not absolute. Often patients reject the doctor's opinion of what is "good". It is technically possible for someone to be both a scientist and a consultant, of course. Humans can do many things. But generally medical doctors are focused on operating consultancies alone. There usually isn't enough time in the day to be both deeply engrossed in science and other professions at the same time. Generally speaking, medical doctors are not scientists in any meaningful sense. That's literally why we call them medical doctors or physicians instead of calling them scientists... Yes, there are some exceptions, as there always is. But, to be sure, even in those exceptional cases, we don't call them scientists when they are operating in a consulting capacity.

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13415 9 hours ago | parent [-]

I really don't get you stance. Of course, you can make more fine-grained distinctions and that's fine. You can claim that medical doctors act as medical scientists when they conduct studies and as doctors (consultants) in their practice with patients. But that doesn't mean the value judgments aren't part of the science.

If a seismologist has evidence that an earthquake is likely to occur in a certain area, should they not warn the public about it? I would say they clearly should, and any other view about this seems bizarre to me. I find it equally implausible to not call a seismologist who warns about an impending earthquake a scientist. They're a geophysicist or geologist. Or take an astronomer warning about a possible collision of a meteor with Earth -- astronomy is a science, so why would that person not be called a scientist?

There is a an array of scientific disciplines for whom consulting (in your sense of the word) is a frequent, though not primary part of their activity, and we certainly still call them scientists. Material science, vulcanology, epidemiology, seismology, meteorology, biology, climate science, economics,... basically any science that involves the study of processes that might have important consequences for mankind.

	▲	joquarky 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What delineates a scientist from a crackpot? The Internet gives equal voice to both, but the latter will drown out the former until people stop listening altogether.