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NancyLebovitz comments on Publication: the "anti-science" trope is culturally polarizing and makes people distrust scientists - Less Wrong Discussion

13 Post author: ancientcampus 07 February 2014 05:09PM

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Tags: vaccines cultural cognition project

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 10 February 2014 05:32:47PM 0 points [-]

Is there any risk that we (as a society) may lose science (or rather scientific literacy) in the medium run to religous or other anti-science factions?

This has been a background worry for me ever since I saw C.S. Lewis bring up the possibility.

Science is essentially a moral enterprise-- scientists (and those who fund them and those who use scientific results) need to engage with the difficult real world rather than just seek status and convenience.

I'm more concerned about science just deteriorating to the point where it isn't useful (we see a fair amount of that in medical research already) rather than it being taken down by active opposition.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 10 February 2014 07:01:51PM 0 points [-]

I don't see the medical case as much different from other science. And it is not clearcut either. The problems being

  • corporations wanting/needing to reap gains

  • unhelpful incentive structures

  • missing meta science (efficiently driving or aggregating research) and missing base level expertise

  • and of course politics

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