The prevailing "anti-intellectual" popular opinion about science and the scientific community is very important to consider, Iceball.
Lagslayer has just misinterpreted what is going on there, because of the active misinformation being promulgated by certain political groups (who shall remain nameless. If you want to talk about that, go to the politics threads.)
These certain groups have a vested interest in shaking popular trust in the scientific method and scientific community. They do this for financial reasons (A la, the tobacco industry and their "Studies" in recent history, and more modern "Studies" in the same political vein) and this is NOT helped by the "For profit" research that has begun to dominate modern scientific exploits.
Basically, Lagslayer is saying he finds it difficult to trust in the findings of modern scientists, when there is motive to lie about the data, and lack of resources to catch the lies. However, he takes it too far, believing that there is a massive system-wide conspiracy.
The real ugly picture of modern academics is more like this (as far as I have been able to piece together):
Researchers are genuinely interested in increasing the sum of human knowledge. They simply cant afford the equipment to do this, as our understanding has progressed to a very fine, and nuanced degree. To get the resources to do their preferred work, they have to pimp themselves out to less than scrupulous for-profit groups. Biomed industries wanting to prove that XYZ pill is safe and effective, even when it might not be, etc. The only conspiracy here is that created by the for-profit motive.
Then you have the "Data is hard if not impossible to get" problem posed by rent seeking assholes like Elsevier and pals. These are historically famous scientific publishing journals that run like good ol boys clubs, where you have to be "This rich" to get in the door. While this DOES provide a fairly effective filter against junk science that isnt worth the electricity needed to publish-- it also keeps people from getting at the higher quality publications-- It also allows the financially motivated junk science to get unfair exposure, which is poisonous to good science.
Within the scientific community, there is a lot of debate and argument over free publishing, but in recent years, due to this growing anti-intellectualism that is strangling science in its crib, many researchers are also publishing in open journals, hoping that people interested in science will be able to get the papers, the datasets, and perhaps even try to replicate results from them, and further contribute to the scientific process.
There isn't some cabaal of secret scientific madmen trying to sway everyone through some secret agenda.
There IS a problem with for-profit science contaminating good science with junk, churned out to "Prove" something that is actually NOT true, so that some stock holders can make more money this quarter.
There IS a problem with good science not being able to achieve proper funding, because the people with the money to fund it want to make an immediate profit from science, and the costs of scientific inquiry are going up as methods and knowledge increase in complexity.
There IS a problem with government officials not understanding the value of fundamental science research, and constantly cutting science endowments as if they were a form of wellfare, and thus increasing the dependence of researchers on for-profit motivated "benefactors."
There still is no conspiracy though. Just simple blind greed motivators getting in the way of true, pure research, which is contaminating the public image of science, when the "Proof" presented gets found out to be false later on when held up to scrutiny.
Author
Topic: SCIENCE, Gravitational waves, and the whole LIGO OST! (Read 514916 times)