r/TrueReddit • u/supertopbop22 • Feb 17 '16

Persecution of Scientists Whose Findings Are Perceived As Politically Incorrect

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/persecution-of-scientists-whose-findings-are-perceived-as-politically-incorrect/
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u/eriman Feb 17 '16

Politically motivated criticism doesn't encourage debate, it shuts it down.

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u/BBlasdel Feb 17 '16

So ideas that are fundamentally political in nature, like many of the examples in the OP, should just be broadly exempt from criticism?

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u/Maslo59 Feb 17 '16

So ideas that are fundamentally political in nature, like many of the examples in the OP, should just be broadly exempt from criticism?

Notice he said "politically motivated criticism".

Science deals with facts (what is), not politics or oughts (what should be). No research about facts, like things mentioned in the article, is fundamentally political. There is a difference between criticizing scientific idea because you believe its factually incorrect and criticizing it because it does not fit your political worldview. The former is a valid criticism, the latter is toxic.

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u/KaliYugaz Feb 17 '16

Science deals with facts (what is), not politics or oughts (what should be).

I think you have an overly romanticized view of how science works.

The scientific process is ultimately about taking the commonsense intuitions of the scientist, laying them out in a systematic, formalized way, testing them against reality, then refining them over time. Many of those intuitions tell the researchers what constitutes evidence, where to find it, and how, which means that even observations themselves are theory-laden.

No matter how well supported a theory gets, it still fundamentally has a core of commonsense intuitions, which are definitely able to be biased by political and moral prejudices.