Comment by aww_dang | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aww_dang | Hacker News Reader

The history of the church in the middle ages provides an interesting comparison. Instead of technocratic experts, there were priests who claimed a monopoly on truthiness. Members of the laity or even academics like Galileo were declared heretics when they diverged from official truths.

Yes, smoking is bad for your health and tobacco companies famously worked to cover it up. Interestingly, they employed scientific studies (with credentialed scientists no less) in their attempts to downplay the risks of smoking.

The US gov. also employed scientists to buttress cannabis prohibition. Funding was made available for researchers who toed the line and denied to those who did not. After millions of arrests, CBD is now touted as the latest panacea. The DEA still lists cannabis as a schedule 1 substance with "no therapeutic value".

Then there are the experts who sold us the war in Iraq. Skeptics were labeled conspiracy theorists.

Media outlets parroted official narrative of the war in Iraq, the war on drugs and other elite promotions.

As a hypothetical, consider that climate change and COVID both give license for increased central planning. Observe that the research is funded largely by the same institutions which will gain power when these objectives are reached. Putting aside the contentious debate, both sides should be able to accept that there is a conflict of interest here.

Yes, we should look to history. There is a long history of experts, technocrats or otherwise anointed individuals attempting to smear dissenters. Attempts to claim a monopoly on truth are regressive. We are all worse off for it.

Science is not a system of belief. It is a system of rational inquiry. Those who seek to shut down discussion by labeling dissenters as "science deniers" deserve to be scrutinized.

https://maps.org/news/media/2986-war-crimes-suppressing-scie...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470431/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Blix

https://norml.org/blog/2008/06/24/still-more-on-cannabis-can...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/one-doctor-vs-dea-insid...

>Those who seek to shut down discussion by labeling dissenters as "science deniers" deserve to be scrutinized.

Exactly this. In line with my theory that Covid (or at least, the overall response to it) has accelerated all that was going wrong in the world, I have seen similar disturbing trends among scientific academics. That is - the science (couched in terms impenetrable to the layman) is right, actions are being taken in the best interest of all, and daring to question it marks you as anti-science (when questioning the status quo really is the essence of science). The comparison to state-sponsored religion is very apt.

Questioning science by offering a better hypothesis supported by evidence is good science.

Questioning science by offering a personal opinion supported by conjecture is anti-science.

It's really quite simple.

> The history of the church in the middle ages provides an interesting comparison. Instead of technocratic experts, there were priests who claimed a monopoly on truthiness. Members of the laity or even academics like Galileo were declared heretics when they diverged from official truths.

Ah this trope again. I am just gonna post this for a more complete picture:

http://blogs.nature.com/soapboxscience/2011/05/18/science-ow...

> Admittedly, Galileo was put on trial for claiming it is a fact that the Earth goes around the sun, rather than just a hypothesis as the Catholic Church demanded. Still, historians have found that even his trial was as much a case of papal egotism as scientific conservatism. It hardly deserves to overshadow all the support that the Church has given to scientific investigation over the centuries.

> That support took several forms. One was simply financial. Until the French Revolution, the Catholic Church was the leading sponsor of scientific research. Starting in the Middle Ages, it paid for priests, monks and friars to study at the universities. The church even insisted that science and mathematics should be a compulsory part of the syllabus. And after some debate, it accepted that Greek and Arabic natural philosophy were essential tools for defending the faith. By the seventeenth century, the Jesuit order had become the leading scientific organisation in Europe, publishing thousands of papers and spreading new discoveries around the world. The cathedrals themselves were designed to double up as astronomical observatories to allow ever more accurate determination of the calendar. And of course, modern genetics was founded by a future abbot growing peas in the monastic garden.

Are we now denying the centuries of state-sponsored religious oppression that thrived in Europe? Assuming you are in the US, you might want to remember why the first settlers attempted to start a new life.

As someone whose national history is full of religious oppression, persecution, and acts of horror perpetrated in the name of god, you are welcome to walk this path for yourself, but I will not be following you.

I'm not sure if he is specifically denying these issues.

It is possible to read his comment as defending the church's involvement in research.

To clarify my own comment, I don't deny the church's involvement in the sciences. The assumption that I am promoting some kind of "trope" seems like a misreading of my own comment. Just part of commenting, these things can happen.

Copernicus (who Galileo cited) was a member of the clergy. However, he was reluctant to share his work on the heliocentric model for political reasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus#:~:text=to...

I think that the point being made is not that religion has facilitated negative outcomes, but that the trope of "church impede scientific process. church absolute bad" is an example of a biased retrospective view adopted as a common myth in the modern, western worldview. It is important for societies to hold myths as part of their common culture for purposes of cohesion, but we must also acknowledge that reality is more complex and these myths are often ahistorical.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com