{"id":25185,"date":"2014-04-16T08:38:47","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T13:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=25185"},"modified":"2014-04-16T08:38:47","modified_gmt":"2014-04-16T13:38:47","slug":"thought-experiment-in-media-reports-replace-scientist-with-some-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/04\/16\/thought-experiment-in-media-reports-replace-scientist-with-some-guy\/","title":{"rendered":"Thought experiment – in media reports, replace “scientist” with “some guy”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frank Fleming<\/a> makes an interesting point:<\/p>\n

Our society holds scientists in high esteem. When scientists say something \u2014 whether it\u2019s about the composition of matter, the beginning of the universe, or who would win a fight between a giant gorilla and a T. Rex \u2014 we all sit up and listen. And it doesn\u2019t matter if they say something that sounds completely ridiculous; as long as a statement is preceded with \u201cscientists say,\u201d we assume it is truth.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s just one problem with that: There are no such things as scientists.<\/p>\n

Okay, you\u2019re probably saying, \u201cWhat? Scientists are real! I\u2019ve seen them before! There\u2019s even a famous, blurry photo of a man in a lab coat walking through the woods.\u201d Well, yes, there are people known as scientists and who call themselves such, but the word is pretty much meaningless.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Which brings us back to our problem. So much of science these days seems to be built on faith \u2014 faith being something that doesn\u2019t have anything to do with science. Yet everyone apparently has faith that all these scientists we hear about follow good methods and are smart and logical and unbiased \u2014 when we can\u2019t actually know any of that. So often news articles contain phrases such as, \u201cscientists say,\u201d \u201cscientists have proven,\u201d \u201cscientists agree\u201d \u2014 and people treat those phrases like they mean something by themselves, when they don\u2019t mean anything at all. It\u2019s like if you wanted music for your wedding, and someone came up to you and said, \u201cI know a guy. He\u2019s a musician.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat instrument does he play?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a musician.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIs he any good?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a musician.\u201d<\/p>\n

You see, when other occupations are vaguely described, we know to ask questions, but because we have blind faith in science, such reason is lost when we hear the term \u201cscientist.\u201d Which is why I\u2019m arguing that for the sake of better scientific understanding, we should get rid of the word and simply replace it with \u201csome guy.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s not exactly a new phenomenon: Robert Heinlein<\/a> put these words in the mouth of Lazarus Long, “Most ‘scientists’ are bottle washers and button sorters.” It was true then, and if anything it’s even more true now as we have so many more people working in scientific fields.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frank Fleming makes an interesting point: Our society holds scientists in high esteem. When scientists say something \u2014 whether it\u2019s about the composition of matter, the beginning of the universe, or who would win a fight between a giant gorilla and a T. Rex \u2014 we all sit up and listen. And it doesn\u2019t matter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,16],"tags":[213,51,810,101],"class_list":["post-25185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-science","tag-newspapers","tag-pr","tag-skepticism","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6yd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25185"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25187,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25185\/revisions\/25187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}