Reflections From a Murky Pond

It’s impossible for any sane, right-minded person to “trust the science” in these times, in which scientists are professionals earning their living through scientific research at the behest of corporations and various national and international agencies. Simply put, it’s reasonable to believe, and often a proven fact, that these science workers research what they’re told to and deliver as close as possible to the results their employers, be they corporations or governments, desire… because they need to keep their jobs.

Tags: Humor | Junk Science | Politics | Science | Scientism | Scientists | Society

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 19th, 2025 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Politics, Science, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, a fairly adequate scientist, a pretty solid administrator, and a generally effective and quite respected science communicator, just got owned on Twitter by the social media coordinator for Steak-umm. 😆

Tyson: The good thing about Science is that it’s true, whether or not you believe in it.

Steak-umm: Nope. Science itself isn’t “true”; it’s a constantly refining process used to uncover truths based in material reality, and that process is still full of misteaks. Neil just posts ridiculous sound bites like this for clout and he has no respect for epistemology.

The irony of Neil’s tweet is that by framing science itself as “true”, he’s influencing people to be more skeptical of it in a time of unprecedented misinformation. Science is an ever refining process to find truth, not a dogma. No matter his intent, this message isn’t helpful.

NOTE: I’ve corrected capitalization and punctuation in transcribing this sequence of tweets. I have, however, left “misteaks” in place under the assumption that it was intended.

Sure. It would have been more succinct and probably more fitting for Twitter if Steak-umm’s response had been just, “The real thing about science is that it’s probably wrong, whether or not you believe in it.” But, that wouldn’t have been as much of a burn I guess.

And it’s true. Science as we understand it in any field or context within a field is almost certainly wrong. That’s why what science “says” changes all the time. Perhaps the most fundamental example of this is the Law of Gravity. Sir Isaac Newton originally codified it, but a generation later Pierre de Laplace had to correct the formulae, then, a century-and-a-half later, Albert Einstein, changed our whole understanding of what gravity actually is, and various experts in Quantum Mechanics are again altering our understanding of the fundamental nature of gravity.

Or we could just turn Tyson back onto his own, earlier words:

The scientific method is do whatever it takes– whatever it takes– to not fool yourself into thinking something is true that is not, or into thinking that something is not true that is. That’s the scientific method, whatever it takes. And that pathway– it’s not straight. It’s curved. It has off-ramps that lead nowhere.

— Neil deGrasse Tyson
The Scientific Method Master Class

Honestly, like way, way, way too many people of notoriety and influence, Dr. Tyson really should log off of Twitter. The platform encourages short, inevitably stupid statements like the one he recently made.

And, to dispel certain sorts’ accusations, I actually like Dr. Tyson. Not only have I greatly enjoyed his lecture series, which I have watched so very many times, my admittedly quite few, personal interactions with him were eminently pleasant and sometimes educational.

And, again to dispel certain sorts’ accusations, I and my wives at various times pre-Panicdemic, volunteered at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) which the Hayden Planetarium (Dr. Tyson’s bailiwick) is part of.

Tags: deGrasse-Tyson | Science | Scientism | Social Media | Society | Truth | Twitter

This entry was posted on Monday, August 15th, 2022 at 7:00 am and is filed under Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Yeah, we don’t talk about Pluto being a planet or why it was “reclassified” as a Dwarf Planet. It’s highly frowned upon amongst the “intelligentsia” to do so and even more derided among the Liberals and Progressives, who will call one some variant of “knuckle-dragging science-denier.” Nobody is supposed to talk about how in August of 2006 a mostly European conclave of accepted masters of the astronomy, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), needed to make a new definition for planet so that an American wouldn’t be credited with discovering Planet X.

And, for the many of you that don’t know, Pluto was just collateral damage. The IAU’s exuberance of Humpty-Dumptyism was aimed at permanently refuting the discovery by and American of a planetary body past Pluto.

Accepted by so many, secular science and scientism aside, the effects of this choice and insult may just be more far-reaching than the vast majority of people want to understand and internalize. I mean really? You can’t look back and see what’s happened – and at what pace! – to the world since 2006 vs. what was happening before then? 😉

Tags: Astronomy | Clerisialism | Clerisy | Hades | Humor | IAU | Pluto | Religion | Science | Scientism | Society

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 2nd, 2022 at 7:50 am and is filed under Humor, Religion, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

I do understand that there are some that require that scientific explanations for everything and anything in order to believe in the possibility of their existence. I also understand that there’s a subset of those devotees of scientism that require mathematic proofs before they will consent to grant that something is possible.

With this understanding I’ve decided to help the many fans of the Cretaceous dinosaur known as the Velociraptor ( Velociraptor mongoliensis & Velociraptor osmolskae) I’ve decided to provide such mathmatic proof of their existence some 71 million years ago.

The Velociraptor Equation

So there you go, mathmatical proof via equation that the velociraptor did in fact exist. That we haven’t yet discovered and conclusively proved the existence of the distraptor or timeraptor shouldn’t be any more of an issue for anyone than the fact that we haven’t actually proved the existence of: dark energy, dark matter, quarks, tachyons, the Higgs-Bosun particle. or the graviton. 😉

Tags: Dinosaurs | Humor | Mathamatics | Physics | Science | Scientism | Velociraptors

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 21st, 2013 at 9:29 am and is filed under Humor. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.