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The fact that capitalism taints everything it touches is not a criticism of the things it touches.
Yet, it’s not as simple as “scientists are under capitalists’ interests”, but “the ideologies within capitalism permeate the way we do science”. A common example is how we measure functionality (and therefore pathology itself) in medicine.
Actually, it is.
No, it isn’t.
Whether or now “it” is touched by capitalizm is relevant. Because if it is touched, then “it” at least needs fixed if not viable at providing benefit anymore at all.
What about the scientific method is ‘unviable’? What is the issue with empirically driven analysis? Is your issue not with those things? If it’s not, then your issue is not with science, but capitalism. It’s pretty simple, really.
Also corporations tie employment of scientists to the number of papers they publish, as well as burying data that is financially harmful.
It doesn’t matters what it is, if you use a strawman I will automatically disagree.
You’re going to hate wojak comics
🔫👨🚀 I always have.
True but people also use this as an excuse to dismiss any research they disagree with which is idiotic.
Most research is legit. It just might not be interpreted correctly, or it might not be the whole picture. But it shouldn’t be ignored because you don’t like it.
People are especially prone to this with Econ research in my experience.
For sure, but it’s important to keep in mind in fields with large financial interests.
Medicine especially. Most studies claiming Cealiac disease (gluten allergy) was not real before it was conclusively proven to be legitimate were funded by bread companies. You won’t believe the number of studies funded by insurance companies trying to show that certain diseases aren’t really disabling, (even though they really are).
And sugar probably kills as many people as smoking, but… yup.
Then again, we all are okay with killing children too, so long as it is with a gun and unwillingly rather than safely in a doctor’s office and medically necessary or at least expedient.
That seems like a crazy low estimate for deaths caused by sugar…
Sugar or HFCS? I’m actually asking because I don’t know, not to be snotty.
Both, but the studies were literally prevented from happening or those that were done anyway then the results shared with Americans - the USA threatened to boycott the WHO iirc if it did not remove language to the effect that sugar could be dangerous, in excess.
HFCS lowers your metabolism, so makes every additional calorie count for a greater effect.
Stores sell what they want to sell, in part based on what people will purchase (e.g. fast food companies like McDonald’s tried offering healthier options such as salads - people wouldn’t buy them), and things with higher shelf life. They aim for profits, not service for its own sake.
The entire thing is an edgy strawman. Honest practitioners obviously take seriously the need to understand and articulate the limits of empiricism, and are hostile towards those who abuse the public trust placed in scientific authority. It would honestlt be great if we could do the same with our critiques of capitalism.
Isn’t there a replication crisis. I am not sure you can really claim “most” research is legit.
I wouldn’t call it a broad crisis, and it isn’t universal. More theoretical sciences or social sciences are more prone to it because the experiments are more expensive and you can’t really control the environment the way you can with e.g. mice or specific chemicals. But most biology, chemistry, etc that isn’t bleeding edge or incredibly niche will be validated dozens to hundreds of times as people build on the work and true retractions are rare
That’s just not true, false research gets posted alot in biology and can go for years without getting caught
For example, the whole Alzheimer’s research thing. A paper that was published in nature faked data and sent everybody down the wrong path for Alzheimer’s cure for 20 years. They claimed to have found that a certain protein causes Alzheimer’s, therefore all new research went towards making drugs that strip that protein.
This was a landmark paper that was in a “hard science” field and still fooled alot of people
Sure, there will be examples of problems in any field that has hundreds of thousands to millions of humans working in it. That doesn’t mean there’s a broad crisis, and it doesn’t mean that most research is faked or fallible. In your 2004 example, all of the data wasn’t faked, some images for publication were doctored. There’s been potential links between alzheimer’s and aBeta amyloids since at least 1991 (1), long before this paper that posited a specific aB variant as a causal target. Additionally, other Alzheimer’s causes and treatments are also under investigation, including gut microbiome studies since at leasg 2017 (2). Finally, drugs targeting aB proteins to remove brain plaques work in preclinical trials, indicating that the 2004 paper was at least on the right track even if they cheated to get their paper published. This showcases science working well: bad-faith actors behaved unethically, but the core parts of their work were replicated and found to be effective, so some groups followed that to clinical trials which are still ongoing, and others followed other leads for a more holistic understanding of the disease.
Also, I’d very much argue that human neurological diseases are both bleeding edge and niche, which inherently means that recognizing problems in studies will take more time than something that is cheaper or faster to test and validate, but problems will eventually be recognized as this one was.
- Cras P, Kawai M, Lowery D, Gonzalez-DeWhitt P, Greenberg B, Perry G. Senile plaque neurites in Alzheimer disease accumulate amyloid precursor protein. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 1991;88:7552–6.
- Cattaneo, A. et al. Association of brain amyloidosis with pro-inflammatory gut bacterial taxa and peripheral inflammation markers in cognitively impaired elderly. Neurobiol. Aging 49, 60–68 (2017).
There’s a replication crisis in a handful of more recent fields that use human subjects and didn’t have hard rules and restrictions on how to treat human subjects in the early 20th century. Psychology is the field that has had the biggest issue, with many old studies having what we now see as serious methodology issues. It doesn’t inherently mean all of those studies are wrong, just that they need to be revised with updated methodology to confirm if their results are accurate.
There’s also about 1500 years of scientific study aside from that which doesn’t relate to human subjects at all, and by this point has been replicated numerous times, so I would not doubt the claim that most research is replicable and valid. I would expect about 80-90% of our collective scientific knowledge to be accurate.
This is a clean example of an ignoratio elenchi fallacy.
Statement B attempts to use Statement A to make an unrelated point that isn’t necessarily untrue, but it is still unrelated.
This could be done with any combination of…
“Under capitalism, <random thing> is…”
“Under <random ism>, science is…”They would all result in a statement that supports Speaker B, but is no longer relevant to what Speaker A stated, as the topic has changed. In this case, from science to capitalism.
I.e. It’s an anti-capitalism meme attempting to use science to appeal to a broader audience through relevance fallacy. Both statements may be true, but do not belong in the same picture.
Unless, of course, “that’s the joke” and I’m just that dumb.
Edit: I’m not a supporter of capitalism. But I am a supporter of science—haha, like it needs me to exist—and this is an interesting example of social science. It seems personal opinion is paramount to some individuals rather than unbiased assessment of the statement as a whole. Call me boring and autistic, but that’s what science be and anything else isn’t science, it’s just personal opinion, belief, theory, etc.
I think you’re reading statement B too literally. I’m pretty sure the idea behind it is related to critical theory and is an objection to the idea that rationality is trustworthy and that class conflict should be regarded as a higher truth. In that way statement B is relevant to statement A; it’s an implicit rejection of it.
It’s not literal; as the fallacy credits, neither is it necessarily wrong. But(!!!), they’re just not related.
The entire post itself—and your reply—is social science. But science is incapable of alignment to any -ism. All isms are human-made. If they are 100% true, they are not isms.
Edit: Sorry, I’m drunk af, so probably you are right…maybe… At least in my mind, I’m just reading Statement B as literally as Statement A and therefore can’t see correlation without social agenda—theyre just two very different things. Science and agenda; or agenda using “science”. It’s bias. That’s very unscientific.
can’t see correlation without social agenda—theyre just two very different things. Science and agenda; or agenda using “science”. It’s bias. That’s very unscientific.
The idea is that the place the OP meme is coming from is likely a belief that science and agenda are not different things and rather are inseparable. It is very unscientific, it’s a fundamentally anti-intellectual attitude.
In this context, you use the term “belief” very well.
This post is discussing the phenomenon of people thinking that science is objective and rigid when in reality it is anything but. The first statement is not true because it’s nonsensical. There is no universally objective truth; it is still filtered through our relativistic perceptions of reality which are fabrications of our mind created from the raw abstractions of the data we perceive.
This post is discussing the phenomenon of people thinking that science is objective and rigid when in reality it is anything but.
It’s not though. That’s all you.
The irony of such a statement…
Pure objective truths exist, but humans are not objective creatures so our process of finding those objective truths is flawed at times.
Wow thanks! I’ve seen other instances of this fallacy but never knew its name (nor recognized that it is a common fallacy form).
Any process unless specifically adjusted to compensate for it (and the adjustment itself is a distortion of it and has secondary effects) will be affected by the environment it is working in.
So specifically for Capitalism and the practice of Science under it, funding and the societal pressure on everybody including scientists to have more money - as wealth is a status symbol in that environment - are he main pathways via which Capitalism influences the practice of Science.
It’s incredibly Reductionist and even anti-Scientific to start from the axiom that environment does not at all influence the way Science is practiced (hence Capitalism is unrelated to Science) and then just make an entire argument on top of such a deeply flawed assumption
Assuming this meme is some form of Marxist propaganda, it would be a self-defeating meme, since Marxism is rooted in dialectical materialism which is itself a scientific process. At least according to Marx.
ITT it’s still the 1920s I guess.
Political theory has moved on since those days, you know.
Granted, there are people who quote Marx like he’s a religious figure but those people are wrong and stupid.
Woah woah woah, I’m not a Marxist, but you’re going to have to back up your claims on how “political theory has moved on” and why that ties into Marxism not being based on dialectical materialism.
Please list all the recommended political theory you’ve read from the 1920s to now that disproves whatever you’re claiming is purely 1920s political theory.
Heh, you’re a leftist? Name every leftism.
Look up critical theory if you want to.
Buddy this is critical theory.
I think I somehow replied to the wrong comment, it was meant to be a reply to the guy who randomly started talking about Marxism
I don’t want to deflate your assumption, but “Science is pure objectivity and truth”.
The assumption you introduced just added another layer on by bringing Marxism into it. And here’s the thing with that fallacy; you may be very right! But, it’s got nothing to do with the original statement anymore. It’s just going down tangents of a tangent that should be explored under their own initiative, not the blanket of “science”.
Well i guess you’re right. I just wanted to point out an observation. Guess i just got ignoratio elenchied
Unfortunately that’s not how communism works in practice
Thank you. Something about me was rubbing me the wrong way, but I couldn’t articulate it.
You’re dead on. Science is a process. I can science the shit out of baking soda and vinegar to make a volcano, and I don’t need government funding to do it. What you science is effected by capitalism, but capitalism is just a scare word. No matter what you want to do, if it requires a significant amount of power or work to create your materials, a cost is accrued somewhere, and someone has to pay it, whether it costs dollars or beaver pelts.
This is reductive to the extreme.
Clearly if all you want to do is to build a baking soda volcano you can go ahead.
It’s also pretty clear that baking soda volcanoes aren’t the kind of science the meme is talking about.
Capitalism isn’t just about “things need funding” the point of the meme is that capitalists determine what gets funding. A socialist state might put economic force behind other scientific endeavors, ones driven by capital are intended to create profit. The profit motive drives innovation instead of the pure ideological pursuit of truth or any other driver.
Correct, capitalism is just a system intended to prioritize capital using markets. Science is a methodology of determining truth. As a method, it is tautologically “perfect” because all failures are to be accounted for by the very methodology. The choices that capitalist systems make and socialist systems would make may be different, but the decision-making process itself could be run scientifically.
This is a fair point. It becomes a matter of which questions we’re asking as a society, though. Of course we are not at a stage where capital is the only driving force for science (thank goodness for public funding) but it’s not far fetched that we might be, and a world where questions are only asked in the context of profit generation (and unsatisfying answers are suppressed) is a dystopian world indeed.
It’s fair to say capitalism is having a negative impact on science (e.g. journals) but it’s not as dire as what’s suggested
Also statement A isn’t the truth either. It’s a highly exaggerated belief.
“science is good” turns to “science is pure truth and always right”
When actually science can be manipulated because humans are, well, humans. It shouldn’t be taken as always 100% fact.
This statement is
on the verge of beinga strawman argument. The first compares science to other systems of knowledge, while the second criticizes the subjects of scientific study under a capitalist influence.These two statements do not refer to the same thing in context.
Edit: clarity
I would beg to differ. There is a THOU MUST PUBLISH OR STARVE ethos in modern research, which is directly incentivized on both sides by capitalism – researchers want to eat and pay rent and institutions want to be fancy so rich people bribe them to let their kids in. This has led to it becoming common place to do a study and THEN form your hypothesis, which is just not science. That’s how you get so many “chocolate cures ass cancer!” headlines. Somone is researching if chocolate blocks a protein you never heard of, it doesn’t, but through the magic of random sampling, this set of subjects had a low rate of cancer in five years so, we’re publishing that even though that’s NOT how science works. You’re identifying quirks of sample sets, not challenging hypotheses because of the direct intervention of capitalist incentives.
Now you’re just arguing the strawman
It’s almost like they didn’t get your point
“Almost”
Why is it a strawman? Are you saying that doesn’t happen? I’ve read a fair number of respectable sources saying it does. If not, where do the “study shows coffee causes cancer” and “study shows coffee cures cancer” articles come from? Are you just being contrarian, because Science™ is now a blue MAGA v original flavor MAGA political thing? What’s the angle here?
Bro, what point are you actually arguing against? The person you replied to never made a point about research bureaucracy.
Google ignoratio elenchi
I’m not trying to take a side in some weird internet flat earther thing, I’m just saying like Thomas Kuhn has a point in Structure of Scientific Revolutions… I’m not a Lacannian, but based on the one Slavoj Zizek talk I saw in grad school about his triad of reality, my understanding is he also had pretty good points about the inherent unreliability of second order reality, which is inherently run by some manner of corruptible authority, that addresses the same concern that research can be institutionally tainted and biased by the structures within which they exist… Capitalism is provably directly producing unscientific research at research institutions, especially in health contexts that have the most direct impact on people materially… Just look at the Perdue Oxycontin studies.
Capitalism is provably directly producing unscientific research at research institutions,
So you agree the second statement is not really about science.
The fact that you are this thorny about besmirching the name of Science in vain is sooooo telling.
Yes, I agree, it is not Science as per The Enlightenment, what I as a pedant, call inductive reasoning, but when Neil goes out there telling you to wear a mask, is that backed by Science™, unless he’s taking Science’s name in vain (he was)? Science is inductively reasoned truth to what extent it is truth, and the very people who want to lecture us about Science™ want to throw things at the wall intuitively like shamen to calm us, and dictate what we should know for fear of our behavior, like an unordained Sangha using effective means to guide children
Edit disclaimer: I’m in no way antivax, I had em all you should too, and especially kids, but those are legit 95% certainty PROPER science as per claimed efficacy
I very clearly explained the strawman.
Just because I pointed out that your argument is flawed doesn’t make me Maga or some kind of Trump supporter. It just means you made a bad argument.
In what regard? Is this trolling? I am legitimately confused, which leads me to think you’re one of the abusive Cheney Dems on this platform, but I am open to other interpretations if you provide me room for that…
I have no horse in this race, topically speaking, but your continual return to name-calling (“Cheney Dems”, “Blue MAGA”) belies your attempt to come across as a good-faith participant in this discussion. There are people out there that think differently than you, and there always will be. Using pejoratives, reducing people you don’t know to mere “thought-terminating cliches”, is not conducive to civil discussion or persuasive dialectics.
If you’re going to ignore everything, I’ve already said, I see no reason to continue. You’re obviously arguing in bad faith, and I’m not going to enable that compulsion.
I am legit confused about this outrage, ELI5, please… I am legit not arguing in bad faith and am seriously confused, but I did not google your thing because I am lazy and don’t care if this meme is some cancelled thing I was arguing the underlying point that as per Kuhn, Scientific stuff is within a cultural/economic/geographical, yada yada like all human activity
This is why the last step of science is broad consensus, which has solved literally every single example of bad science in this entire thread. All this means is people should pay more attention to sources.
Broad consensus may be the “last step of science” only insofar as the scientific community accepting a theoretical framework as a complete, perfect, objective truth would mean no more science and no more scientific community, only fools and fanatics.
Let’s also not forget that Scientists are also humans. Humans with their own beliefs and biases which do get transferred into studies. Peer review can help reduce that but since peers are also humans with their own biases, but also common biases shared amongst humans it’s not bulletproof either.
There will always be some level of bias which clouds judgement, or makes you see/think things that aren’t objectively true, sometimes it comes with good intention, others not so much. It’s always there though, and probably always will be. The key to good science is making it as minimal as possible.
Science doesn’t change just because some groups try to use it to forward an agenda.
ignoring the other examples you’ve been given: it absolutely does even when it goes well. The scientific method is literally based on “other people must change and refine this, one person’s work is not immutable nor should be taken as gospel”
Also what science is has changed. Science used to be natural philosophy and thus was combined with other non-scientific (to us) disciplines. Social sciences have only been around 200 years tops.
Some would debate that applied mathematics is science, others would say all sociology isn’t science.
I’d argue the scientific method does not have to include multiple people at all. All it is, is the process of coming up with a hypothesis, designing an experiment to check that hypothesis, and then repeating while trying to control for external factors (like your own personal bias). You can absolutely do science on your own.
The broader field of academia and getting scientific papers published is more of a governance thing than science. You can come up with better hypotheses by reviewing other people’s science, but that doesn’t mean when a flat earther ignores all current consensus and does their own tests that it isn’t still science.
I’d counter argue that a test that is not communicated, reported, described or otherwise transmitted to another party is identical to it not happening, therefore one needs to tell “someone” (even if that is a private journal), and while in theory falsifability is possible solo, it increases the problem of induction, and science is, in essence, a language: a description of phenomena not the phenomena itself.
I’d agree for the result to be useful to society, the science should be published. But science can still be useful to an individual without sharing. I use the scientific method regularly in my daily life for mundane things, and often it’s just not worth the time to communicate to others because the situation is unique to me. I write it down for myself later, which doesn’t make the science any less valid.
The broader field of academia and getting scientific papers published is more of a governance thing than science.
You cannot separate the 2. There is no pure science out there which can be done without “governance”.
I’m explicitly arguing that you can separate the two. I can perform a completely independent experiment in my house.
For example:- I make a hypothesis that my stove can boil 1L of water in 10 minutes.
- I then measure how long my stove takes to boil that water.
- I can then record these results to inform my future cooking and water boiling experiments.
- Proper use of the scientific method may also attempt to measure atmospheric pressure, water contaminants, and other factors that may affect the result.
I don’t have to publish the results anywhere or even talk with another person, yet I’ve still used the scientific method. I’m not a professional scientist, but I am an amateur one.
I can perform a completely independent experiments in my house.
And I can scream into the abyss, it’s just as relevant. The absolute majority of actually useful and relevant science is performed socially for social purposes.
I make a hypothesis that my stove can boil 1L of water in 10 minutes.
You aren’t even supposed to do a scientific experiment in the way you have just described. Or rather, there is neither a universally agreed upon scientific method, nor would your described experiment hold up to any standards.
An actual scientific experiment into water boiling would involve at the minimum
- A model predicting the speed of boiling based on relevant variables
- A collection of many data, and preferably corroborated by independent sources
- Statistical analysis of the data (there are many methods to choose from) to gauge confidence in the model.
- Publishing or proofreading of the results.
However, at each of these steps, you have a choice of how to approach the problem. And this depends on what you are trying to do, and what the best standards in the industry are. The process has also changed over time.
And this reveals the problem of many people’s metaphysical approach to science. They treat it as if it were a platonic ideal, or floating constant in the human minds pace. In reality, “science” is an industry with its ever-changing standards, culture, interaction with the rest of society, and a million other complexities.
I think we have a fundamental disagreement on what counts as science, and that’s okay.
Your methodology seems to imply a valid scientific experiment must be sufficiently rigorous as to improve on the current scientific consensus. And I do partially agree, it’s a waste of time collecting data that’s just going to be worse than previously collected, more controlled experiments.
By my philosophy is a lot looser. To quote Adam Savage: “The only difference between screwing around and science, is writing it down”
What it is vs how it’s (ab)used
Or “real science” versus “imaginary science”
Bonus round : “real science has never been tried”
One more to fill the bingo card
No True Scotsman argument sort of.
Now, I’m not saying we ignore science or throw it out, but there are flaws.
Is it made by humans? Yah, there are flaws.
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But it does. Cigarettes were healthy and climate change didn’t exist 50 years ago
Climate Change has existed for over 110 years in science.
just the start, too.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/
https://theconversation.com/what-big-oil-knew-about-climate-change-in-its-own-words-170642
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/01/desmog-fossil-fuel-industry-climate-risks-1950s-denial/
Neither of those things were backed by science. Confusing convincing lobbying with science is a problem today was it was then.
There was never any science saying “cigarettes are healthy”.
Define healthy. Nicotine is a stimulant and does improve mental acuity.
I mean those things didn’t change, it was just about how research was manipulated by money and human biases.
The truth doesn’t change. Scientific consensus does. Scientific consensus has been wrong on countless things. After all, science is about getting things a little less wrong every time.
Exactly.
Yes but science is a process, not a thing, and that process is corruptible.
There is a differentiation between the natural world for how it’s made and the human process that quantifies that knowledge.
Science has always changed, just like human culture did
Science is the process of getting things a little less wrong.
If you catch your friends using Science as a religion, tell them they’re not a skeptic, they’re a cunt.
Am scientist (well, was, before career change), can confirm. Fuck dogmatic scientists, they’re worse than regular dogmatists because they’ve been given many opportunities to know better.
Ah SoleInvictus, he is an average [Insert Career Here], but he was a BRILLIANT Scientist!
Memes aside - (https://youtu.be/F_DFJ-OXTzQ)
This is such a common problem that it’s lead to the phrase “Science progresses at the march of funerals.”, what with all the people so attached to their pet theories they can’t humor anything that contradicts them…
Hah, I haven’t thought about Dragonball in ages. Thanks for the laugh.
Progress through turnover is true, and it’s maddening because the core tenets of science are explicitly against this. At our hearts, we’re still just apes with extra inflated egos.
Well look here buddy this was proven better than p>0.05 therefore it is scientifically accurate !
Why not both?
What’s decided to be worthy of study is subjective. The process to hypothesize, experiment, and conclude what’s being studied is objective.
Ideally, absolutely. That’s what makes the hallmarks of a great scientist.
In practice, institutionalized science can be just as dogmatic and closed-minded as some of the worst religions.
I have had advisors/coworkers/management straight up ignore certain evidence because it didn’t fit their preconceived views of what the results “should be”. This doesn’t make the process of science objective anymore when people are crafting experiments in ways to fit their views, or cherry picking data that conforms to their views.
And you would be surprised at how often this happens in very high-stakes science industries (people’s lives are at stake). It’s fucking disgusting, and extremely dangerous.
Even by itself, the first statement might not be the case. I don’t remember the book that well, but I remember thinking it was a good introduction to this topic. Philosophy of Science: A Very Brief Introduction by Samir Okasha.
Do you or have you ever worked in science? I did for a bit and that was not my impression.
One cannot really argue that science as practiced is very effective at certain things but it is also extremely far from being objective in practice. Especially the further you stray from simple physical systems.
Also like I never saw someone formulate a hypothesis in any sort of formal sense haha.
Do you or have you ever worked in science? I did for a bit and that was not my impression.
I imagine it depends heavily on the field. In some fields there are ideas that one can’t seriously study because they’re considered settled or can’t be studied without doing more harm than any believed good that could be achieved. There are others subject to essentially ideological capture where the barrier to publish is largely determined by how ideologically aligned you are (fields linked to an identity group have a bad habit of being about activism first and accurate observation of reality second).
Probably depends on the field or even the institution. My experience is much more positive.
Science is a method of empiricism and inductive logic.
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Cuz that’s what this meme is trying to abandon - science
There’s antitrust litigation against the publishers. Here’s one article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2024/09/16/scientists-file-antitrust-lawsuit-against-six-journal-publishers/
