I'm not talking about what individual corporations are doing. I'm not too impressed with Monsanto at all. I have no faith in corporations to ever do the right thing as long as they are motivated by short term profits. However, the basic idea behind GM crops could save our entire species, or at least avert all sorts of unpleasantness.

Maybe, as with cars, we will happily accept a certain amount of collateral damage as long as it works out in the big picture. Cars, as you know, kill many, many people every year, but no one ever even thinks to say "Maybe we should not use cars," because we're prepared to accept that cost/benefit analysis.

Or maybe you're right and it's just a stupid thing to even try and we're all doomed. Time will tell.

They are held as infallible by the scientific illiterate alone.

80% of preliminary medical research that has not ran through the gamut of rigorous peer review, and multiple Large RCT's is plain wrong in its initial findings. (ie 100% of what gets reported on is supposedly cutting edge, which translates as preliminary and probably wrong)

Ethics also ties our hands in regards to certain experiments that would yield definitive results (which leaves us with statistical analysis as the main stay and if you do not understand statistics your definitely not going to be able to put the research into proper context, this would mean 99% of journalist). Technology moves us forward by removing ethical issues, allowing us to verify results without cutting people up ect ect.

Get educated about real science, not the make believe science that sells popular journalism.

Good places to start.


http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/

Science is not infallible. In fact, the scientific way of putting together facts to make a general statement of how their governance works is...

... this is how it works we think, until it's proven wrong.

Science can't prove anything FOR SURE, only disprove. It can make statements that we accept, provided the statements describe events that are repeatable, and if they predict future events very accurately.


So if the media presents the findings of scientific studies as infallible, then it's not science that is infallible, but the media's view of it, and how the media directors think it best to serve up scientific findings to the public.

Is science government-sanctioned? Yes, they support research, financially.

Is the idea that science must be believed government-sanctioned? No, it is not. Government makes no provisions over who must believe what. That's why it's secular. Secular does not mean scientific, or atheist or clinical. Secular means "outside of religion", which was made necessary in the formative years of the US. It was necessary to make no preference artificially, with a government-sanctioned approval, for one faith over the other, when most immigrants were of a number of variety of christian faiths. In fact, the "secularity" of the government was not to promote atheism or science, but to promote tolerance among the many christian factions that existed at the time, and thus to create peace in the land.

I'm with you.

If humans survive long enough.Science will stop death & religions will revert back to cults.

If only that were more true. Sadly, financially motivated marketing, spin doctoring, outright lying seem to me to be the main sources of 'authority' in our culture. Scientists are not completely immune to this, but collectively they are far more honest than most would-be authorities.



The problem here is the media, and maybe our individual choices of media. Get your hands on an unedited copy of an interview with an actual scientist involved in the research, and you'll see how far removed those articles are from the truth.

Even if you give the media the benefit of the doubt, they rarely understand the interview in sufficient manner to report it accurately. Also, the urge to sensationalize everything is rampant.

If you want to know the truth, get off your *** and start reading! Scientists (at universities, not corporations) are (relatively speaking) the most transparent community of that size, period. They gain recognition, advancement, and acclaim by publishing with thorough disclosure. ((Sure, they will keep temporary secrets sometimes until they are ready to publish - but we can safely ignore any beliefs associated with those secrets as they aren't yet part of the recognized tapestry of scientific beliefs.)) The body of establish scientific knowledge is completely open for anyone to investigate. Some of us may have more difficulty than others developing the understanding necessary, but the main obstacles I've seen personally are laziness and closed mindedness, not an actual inability to understand.

You don't have to accept anything on faith. However, after approaching the scientific community and process with extreme skepticism, you will likely eventually develop deserved measure of trust in the integrity and objectivity of the community as a whole, and will find it more efficient to take things on provisional faith.




By the government, by corporations, and by the media, yes. It can be important to look at the money trail.





I agree with that part.



Wow, really? Most of my science teachers explicitly encouraged me to question scientific teachings, and none of them discouraged it.

Quoted for truth.

Yes, and this is part of the reason why science has a huge advantage over other systems of knowledge or belief. Science matures and develops as new information is obtained.



The problem here is that people embrace the non-scientific idea that a food is 'bad' or 'good' for you. The whole idea of such labellings is based on an oversimplified worldview that is itself contrary to reality.

We can say that a certain dose of arsenic given to a person of a certain body size will have a certain probability of killing them. We might say that 'arsenic is bad for you' as a kind of short hand for this truth; but saying something is 'bad' for you isn't really a scientific claim to begin with. Eggs may or may not be shown to increase HDLs, but thats different from being 'bad' for you.

This sounds suggestive of a conspiracy theory to hold back cures. While I most definitely do not trust big pharma, they aren't the only organizations involved in this kind of research.

Bushido said:


Nice. People who are both honest and science literate do not hold scientific research to be infallible.

Those who would control others using scientific authority might promote and prey on the mis-perception of infallibility.




Um.... to a degree thats true. And yet, if we take a group of two apple and combine it with a group of three apples, we will have the same size (cardinality-wise) collection of apples as if we add one apple to a group of four apples. This truth exists independent of human labellings. Oddly, its also true of sub atomic particles. Pretty cool.




Woah.... are you serious?

Mayan Capitalism?

Aztec capitalism...

Perfect example of the law of diminishing returns.

I wonder if sacrafice was their answer to Universal Medical Care.

Actually, numbers are considered "necessary" (would exist no matter what else changed) entities by philosophers. Even if no humans existed, 2 plus 2 would equal 4. If the universe we live in had never existed and the only universe that existed was a incomprehensibly large blob of chocolate pudding, 2 plus 2 would equal 4.

If you say numbers existed because they are not material but conceptual, only conceptual, then they only exist in the conceptual world; and if we are to believet that a conceptual universe does not exist outside of a sentient mind, in our case outside of human's mind or of other higher thinking forms, be they biological, alien or mechanical, then the existence of numbers is questionable.

You see, space is defined by existence, or by conceptualizing it, and both yield the same form, an infinitely large three-dimensional descriptive geometric object. Numbers, however, are not reliant on matter or physically exising things. Numbers are a bi-product of a mind that has been evolutionarily advantagized by being able to employ numbers.

It is true that numbers are concepts, truely nothign but concepts. Just like space. But concepts are dependent on a mind, and on a mind only, that can create it, or learn it, and store it. If space did not also exist in a physical form, it would also not exist when there were no sapient minds. Same with numbers: Numbers exist only if a thing exists which can conceptualize numbers into existence. No such mind, no numbers.

Numbers behave uniformly in the universe, as numbers, without any difference, if the operations that manipulate them are also identical.

But you still need a mind to bring them into existence.

Here on Earth, 2+2= 4, and two billion light years away, in sapient mind that exists there, 2+2 =4 as well. And anywhere else in the universe. But if there are no sapient minds, then the numbers don't exist, despite the operation having the capability to yield the same result of operating on the same operands in the same manner.

This is a potential yield. But without numbers, and without operations, matter can still exist, and even sapient minds. It's just that once numbers and operations have been created, then their operational behaviour is the same no matter where you find the brain that creates the numbers and the operations in the universe.

Numbers are non contingent. That means that numbers will exist, even if no mind exists that can conceive of them. Monkeys didn't just evolve into humans and suddenly numbers existed, numbers existed before any non-divine minds could conceive of them. Even if no God existed, numbers would still exist. If one monkey stands next to another monkey, that's two monkeys. Even if nobody and nothing in existence exists to say "That's two monkeys right there", there are still two monkeys. There is no way that a human mind can conceive of a universe in which 1 + 1 does not equal 2, therefore it is believed that numbers are necessary (non contingent) entities.

The great accomplishment of the science of today...

Will become obsolete and fade in the science of tommorrow.

and 2+2 = slowfizzle in a universe where an antimatter and a matter universe collide...

So numbers may not be the same if one changes the conditions where they exist.