The level of intelligence exhibited by many people, especially the young these days, as evidenced by the comments posted on scientific You Tube videos is ghastly. It is worse than disgusting. It is a sign of retrograde amnesia.
Take for example the simple concept of the scientific method. I was introduced to the idea in grade school. When I entered my major in college it was again presented, but in much better detail. The purpose of the scientific method is to weed out opinion, conjecture, fraud, and provide a framework in which anyone, anywhere, can repeat a given test and verify the results. If an hypothesis is falsifiable then it is a valid one. That means any test performed MUST have the ability to demonstrate by its results whether or not the hypothesis can be proven false.
Tests are then conducted, data gathered, experiments performed, and the results directly or indirectly either refute or validate the hypothesis. OPINION has nothing to do with the falsification process. An hypothesis is not valid or accepted based on how many people believe or agree with the conclusion. Validation is not a numbers game where the majority rules.
But here is John Q. Public insisting that CONSENSUS among scientists is what determines if an hypothesis is correct or not! Consensus is group opinion. It is not data. It is not evidence. It is politics. And it originates in the ivory halls of universities which receive research funding from the government. Simple concept.
But John Q. Public just cannot get these simple concepts into their brains. There are thousands of people insisting that CONSENSUS among scientists is what makes Global Warming a FACT. My Sage dictionary defines consensus: "Agreement in the judgment or opinion reached by a group as a whole." For an hypothesis to be validated (really proven false), the addition of other testers performing the same experiment, deriving the same evidence or data, does not make the results any more correct, no matter how many people perform the test. But if only one test is performed that yields evidence (data) contrary to previous testing or falsifies the hypothesis, the hypothesis fails and everyone starts over with a new one. The size of the group has no bearing on the validity of the findings!
Consensus has to do with politics; that of management, or juries, or government bodies and commissions, and creation of religious dogma. Policy, strategy, or dogma may be formulated based on the results of scientific tests, but that is not science. It is not evidence. A colossal problem develops when a group of scientists agree to a particular judgment or opinion on a given hypothesis, and use that as the basis for peer-review before publication. Rather than examining the contrary hypothesis for sound data presentation, logical errors, procedural errors, or misapplication of mathematics, such a review system becomes a filter by which opposing research and proposals are screened out of publication. This is not the application of science de rigueur, this is politics.
We have re-entered the Dark Ages of religious bigotry in the form of politicized science at the highest institutional levels. And it is sustained by the creeping, cancerous high density gray matter, excuse me, I mean dark matter--those singular black holes between the ears of publicly educated citizens.
John Q Public has a conceptual problem: 1) His vocabulary lacks sufficient breadth and depth because he doesn't fully understand the meaning and use of words he bandies about in his thinking. 2) The lack of self-confidence in his own (absent?) analytical thinking and fully functioning vocabulary (which produces muddled perception), induces him to substitute faith in the dogma of mass-movement authority. He has become the quintessential True Believer defined and characterized by Eric Hoffer. Two qualities of the True Believer is the vulnerability to adhere to cult movements, and engagement in cognitive dissonance as the means of reconciling reality from dogma. It is no coincidence these same people use the label denier, as they cannot distinguish the difference between denial and refutation when they see it.
Here's my hypothesis: All physical Ice Ages are preceded by educative failure and the freezing of rational, critical thought in the human specie. A bogus notion for sure, but it makes great fodder for the credulous who walk out of public education today with toilet paper diplomas.
SethSmee
Have a Merry Winter Solstice Holiday!
