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Comment by dave2000 | Hacker News Reader

dave2000

Hard to tell whether this is serious or not. What field is this describing? Scientific papers? Random idiots just posting on websites? If the idea is to challenge it everywhere you're setting yourself up to being that person who never sleeps because "someone is wrong on the internet".

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Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit is a relatively respected philosophical treatise of rather recent origin. Whether or not it approaches science depends on how one views the origins of scientific method in philosophical treatises of post-aristotealian early modernity: e.g. Locke, Leibnitz, Descartes, Bacon, etc [or whether Aristotle hisself was being scientific].

As with much in philosophy, it often boils down to deciding for onesself rather than appealing to autority. http://www.stoa.org.uk/topics/bullshit/pdf/on-bullshit.pdf

If you read the article, you discovered that it was talking about politicians, marketers, scientific fact deniers, scientists, researchers and generally regardless of a person's "roles in society".

> What field is this describing? Scientific papers?

Most likely yes. The author works in a scientific institute and has number of publications.

So...peer review, then? I suppose you could rebut comments from muppets if you were feeling a little bored but it's unclear what that would hope to achieve. Could you imagine stopping the industry which talks rubbish about the lunar landings and 9/11 with well written, carefully reasoned replies?

Don't wrestle with pigs; you both get muddy, and the pigs like it.

> So...peer review, then?

I'm guessing it applies to the way research money is attributed. Whoever follows the most recent hype gets all the funding.

>So...peer review, then?

Yeah, because it has proven so effective thus far /s

The problem with science is that it's findings get exaggerated by the media and by politicians. People latch onto one positive result, and ignore all the negative results. The media reports on findings that haven't been replicated yet, and significantly distort and exaggerate them.

Even within science, there are problems like publication bias and political bias.

I would reply you with an elaborate response about this but someone was wrong on the internet first...

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