Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ar-Curunir | Hacker News Reader

Erosion of faith in science (whatever that means) is not due to research fraud lol.

It's not possible for you to objectively know the extent of erosion of faith in science or the causes, you can only speculate.

If science wants to wear the crown of supreme human cognition, I really wish they'd educate their fan base about how it should be done.

whats it due to then in your opinion?

There are many reasons, including continuous attacks by politicians on scientists and the scientific endeavour, inaccessibility of modern research to the average person, (seemingly) diminishing returns from scientific research, to name just a few.

Do you think there is anything wrong within the scientific community, or do you think the diminishing trust is completely caused by outside forces?

I think the scientific community is complicit in some of the issues I listed, but they're not 100% responsible.

Well scientists are shitty. For example, the entire masking bullshit could have been avoided if the science policymakers just said "hey we don't have any evidence, just dont be an asshole and put a mask on".

That's not what happened, and they discredited themselves. Guess what. The public does know what the scientific method is, and they smelled a rat.

Why should we trust scientists if they violate their own principles?

> continuous attacks

Yeah. These are often warranted. Scientists MUST be held to a higher standard because (unless they're funded by HHMI) they're using the public purse.

> diminishing returns

That's a real thing. It's not supposed.

Poor science journalism. The joke that depending on the day of the week coffee is 'scientifically' either the best or worst thing in the world is what's killing trust in science. Most people aren't reading or hearing what scientists say directly, they're hearing cut up overly summarized tidbits or reading a clickbaiting journalist's interpretation of a paper that most of the time the journalists don't even consider to be worth linking to.

Notably, public university press departments are scarcely any better in this regard than for-profit popular science publications. These are journalists who should have direct access to the researchers and they still get stuff laughably wrong.

Post modernism. There’s a well established field of thought going past to at least the 60s that believes truth is relative, knowledge is subservient to language and therefore science is inherently biased and a tool of “power”. It’s extremely popular in the west, especially among the elite and in the universities

Post modernism is a relatively niche ideology.

As someone working at a university, it's definitely not the dominant ideology amongst the decision makers. Maybe in some humanities departments, but not in the rest of the university, and especially not in the administration.

I think you are underestimating the effect.

Science had a religious like following, doctors were considered infallible, and so on

The fact that it is a well established notion that pharmaceutical companies buy studies is a new phenomena (relatively to before post modernism set in)

The extreme manifestations is anti-vax, and it’s usually not due to them coming out of a humanities department

Reply on news.ycombinator.com