Public Dissentiment

[James A. Donald]

On 1/27/2017 1:07 PM, John Newman wrote:
 > Huge mistakes in medical sciences have most definitely been made,
 > but they tend to be self correcting over time. That's how science
 > works.

It does not work like that any longer.  Science has been politicized.

People’s opinion on things they don’t really have first-hand
experience on is just social posturing, i.e. signaling. Messing with
signaling brings heavy social consequences so of course people get
angry.

You can’t convince people of what would harm them socially if it were
true, or what is not readily observable. That is why science was so
hard to invent, and is so hard to maintain these days.

The social forces that prevented science before the seventeenth
century, are once again preventing it today.

Science died shortly after World War II.

Science ruled intellectually starting in 1660 when the King, the fount
of all honors mortal and divine, gave his imprimatur to the Royal
Society.  The Royal Society knew what the Scientific Method was, and
gave status to scientists that followed it successfully, and denied
status to scientists that failed to follow it.

The King gave Kingly status to the Royal Society, in order to give
Kingly status to the Scientific Method.

Following World War II, Harvard got the upper hand over the Royal
Society, and Harvard does not know or much care what the Scientific
Method is.  Following the scientific method is no longer rewarded with
status, and violating it no longer penalized by loss of status.