Thursday, December 5, 2019

How false ideas become fake science


This is how falsehoods sneak into the allegedly "scientific" arena, and become standards against which reality is measured.

You’ve almost certainly heard some of the following terms: cisgender, fat-shaming, heteronormativity, intersectionality, patriarchy, rape culture and whiteness.

The reason you’ve heard them is that politically engaged academicians have been developing concepts like these for more than 30 years, and all that time they’ve been percolating. Only recently have they begun to emerge in mainstream culture. These academicians accomplish this by passing off their ideas as knowledge; that is, as if these terms describe facts about the world and social reality. And while some of these ideas may contain bits of truth, they aren’t scientific. By and large, they’re the musings of ideologues.

How did this happen? How have those worked in what’s come to be called “grievance studies” managed to extend their ideas far beyond the academy, while convincing people that their jargon adds something meaningful to public discourse? Biologist Bret Weinstein, who was run out of Evergreen State College by a leftist mob in 2017, calls the process “idea laundering.”

It’s analogous to money laundering. Here’s how it works: First, various academics have strong moral impulses about something. For example, they perceive negative attitudes about obesity in society, and they want to stop people from making the obese feel bad about their condition. In other words, they convince themselves that the clinical concept of obesity (a medical term) is merely a story we tell ourselves about fat (a descriptive term); it’s not true or false—in this particular case, it’s a story that exists within a social power dynamic that unjustly ascribes authority to medical knowledge.

Second, academics who share these sentiments start a peer-reviewed periodical such as Fat Studies—an actual academic journal ... Eventually, after activist scholars petition university libraries to carry the journal, making it financially viable for a large publisher like Taylor & Francis, Fat Studies becomes established. Before long, there’s an extensive canon of academic work—ideas, prejudice, opinion and moral impulses—that has been laundered into “knowledge” ... Eventually, they institutionalize their ideas in the larger academic system. This process, which has been propagating laundered ideas for at least three decades, now has enough “scholarship” behind it to have a significant cultural impact.

There's more at the link.  Recommended reading.

The full article is essential reading to understand how so many politically correct shibboleths have come to dominate discussion in so many scientific fields (e.g. climate change, "gender studies", illegal aliens, and so on).  Facts have been conveniently replaced by feelings, and the latter have been transmogrified into "scientific consensus" when, in reality, there's no such thing.  That's also how the "soft sciences" (e.g. psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc.) have been elevated to almost the same level of scientific authority as the "hard sciences (e.g. physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc.).  In reality, the hard sciences have it all over the soft sciences - but that's not what you hear the "soft scientists" say.

There's an old English saying that "Little things amuse little minds, little pants fit little behinds".  That's a pretty good summation of the soft sciences, IMHO - and of the sort of academic fraud that the article describes.

Peter

6 comments:

Old NFO said...

Interesting idea...

boron said...

The reason CO2 became a poison gas was one of the dummies in your 9th grade General Science class who when the teacher said "Carbon monoxide (CO) is a poison gas." figured that since Carbon Dioxide has the formula (CO2), it must be twice as deadly.

capt fast said...

"any lie can be made a truth if it is printed enough. any false fact can be made a true fact if it is printed enough. anything is possible." A. Gobbles 1937

 Ashley said...

It is fair to say that most people don't really understand science and the scientific method. Fewer people understand statistics. Out of this situation arises such fripperies that Peter Boghossian rails against.

We get misuse of statistics in even the hardest science papers from what's called "P" hacking. I'm not sure it can be stopped, and the softer the science, the worse the problem gets.

I think this has been driven by social changes that generate the perceived need for everyone to have a degree. A second order consequence of a well meaning intention to educate people for the demands of future employers.

Will said...

"A second order consequence of a well meaning intention to educate people for the demands of future employers."

Ashley,
a major problem with this intent is the fact that one of the first things the Progressives did is deliberately dumb down the schools and teachers to prepare people for the mind-numbing drudgery of factory work, and to become the "masses" needed to support their programs. They set this in motion by the turn of the 20th century. Schools just got worse on a continual basis. If you wonder why the Founders and others seemed so intelligent in comparison to today's "unwashed masses", there you go...

Aesop said...

The foundation stone of the soft "sciences" are the fundamental fallacies that correlation equals causation, and that the plural of "anecdote" is "data".

Everything else they do in service of their camouflaged agendas, and not anything even vaguely resembling science, proceeds from those original errors.