Big Science Shocked At Its Own Cluelessness
Major journal blames the public for how out of touch Big Science finds itself.
“Everyone is queer except me and thee, and thee is a little queer.” So said a proverbial clueless old man, priding himself on how isolated he felt, shocked that nobody shared his brilliant insight into the nature of things.
As the US election remains deadlocked in disputes, the prestigious journal Nature is acting out the role of that old man. “Scientists aghast as hopes for landslide Biden election victory vanish,” writes Jeff Tollefson. “With so many votes cast for Trump in US election, some researchers conclude they must work harder to communicate the importance of facts, science and truth.”
Facts, science, and truth.
AAAS (Science Magazine) is America’s Tweedledum to Nature.
What does Nature know about those things? Isn’t that the rag that insists that human brains are the result of a long series of accidents? Isn’t that the bullhorn formed originally to promote Darwin’s pseudoscientific view that the Stuff Happens Law explains all of reality? Wasn’t Nature penitent a few years ago over its political bias (1 Dec 2016), only to revert back this year to even more flagrant political bias (14 Oct 2020)?
Facts, science and truth.
Nature is aghast because they believe they ‘own’ these qualities, but hordes of unwashed Walmart shoppers clinging to God, guns and religion don’t. Well, one thing their ‘science’ lacks is the ability to make predictions.
As the possibility of a landslide victory for US presidential candidate Joe Biden vanished in the wee hours of 4 November, some scientists saw the deadlocked election as a sign of their own failure to communicate the importance of science, evidence and truth to the general population.
In other words, Nature‘s lack of science, evidence and truth about the election motivates them with the obligation to teach science, evidence and truth to the general population. Commentators on both sides of the political spectrum are bemoaning how wrong the polls were – often by more than 10 points (Washington Times, USA Today). Those are ‘scientific’ polls in which Nature had been trusting for the promised Biden landslide that vanished into the media black hole. Biden may still win, but not by a landslide, and not with a Democrat Senate to support his goals.
The Hard Truth
Under this subhead, Tollefson feels motivated to start a scientism crusade.
For some researchers, the fact that the election has come down to the wire is evidence that scientists simply aren’t connecting with the general population. Whatever happens, says Naomi Oreskes, a science historian at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “we have a lot of work ahead of us”.
In other words, Nature‘s political party lacked facts, science, and truth, but feel obligated to teach those things to others. But if they lacked facts, science and truth in this case, what would they have to teach except falsehoods, pseudoscience and lies?
What they really mean is that Nature needs to work harder in its role of pushing Democrat Party talking points to the public, sanctimoniously anointing that message with the imprimatur of Science. Big Science has lost its mission, and joined the socialists, globalists and progressives exemplified by the Democrat Party.
Maybe none of this is about facts, science or truth. Nature‘s editors and those of most other major outlets of Big Science are committed Darwinists. So maybe their new animated behavior, propelled by the evolved ‘aghast’ response, is just about fitness – that amoral attractor that’s all about power, not facts, science, or truth (25 Oct 2020).
Big Science communication is all one-way. They don’t take advice from anyone outside their echo chamber. They fancy themselves as the Mandarins of the culture, telling everyone else about reality. “If I want your opinion,” they think, “I’ll give it to you.” Humility is not their strong point. Everybody is dumb except them.
They are like the hobo who was tricked while asleep by a practical joker who smeared Limburger cheese in his beard. He got up and walked by a beautiful woman. “She smells bad,” he thought. He walked by a rose bush and turned up his nose at the odor. A sidewalk cafe smelled putrid to him. “What’s going on?” he exclaimed. “The whole world smells rotten!”
Big Science needs to wash the scientism off its face, humble itself, and step down from its Yoda pedestal to join the “general population.”
Again, we honor all individual scientists who do good work with the non-evolved qualities of integrity, honesty, and diligence. Big Science does not speak for you.