Further to: And high school students don’t believe because …
Courtesy commentator Derek Hunter:
What’s amazing is how ignorant they expect people to be when it comes to science. Few people are scientists, but we understand the concept.
Science is the seeking of truth, a never-ending quest for understanding. It is rarely “settled,” and is never, ever a majority vote.
How accepting of majority vote would progressives be if pro-lifers flooded the field of biology and overwhelmingly said life begins at conception? They’d reject that in a heartbeat. Would they consider themselves “deniers”? Of course not. They’d demand “proof.” (Which, if provided, they’d promptly reject.) So why should the vote of people whose very livelihood is dependent upon government grants to study climate change be taken at their unproven word?
The list of “settled science” overturned by continued study is legendary (Earth the center of the universe, anyone?).
Indeed, we may take it as a given that most of the people who beat the drum for “settled science” would insist that somehow, even though dogs procreate dogs and cats procreate cats, humans undergo a period lasting forty weeks during which the offspring is not human.
It is the only form of human uniqueness they defend instead of disputing.
See also: Consensus science
Hunter, obviously, is talking about climate change doomsaying. But cronyism plays a role in debates around evolution too. There is a huge amount of money tied up in education that is either mandated by law or required for a profession. Cronies protect the turf on which they, for example, spout Darwin’s truths at people who must listen. But they can’t force them to believe. And apparently, after all these years, most people still don’t believe.
One recent approach has been to try to make lack of belief in the unbelievable into science denial. (Whereas giving our money and our liberties to the cronies and the crooks to make everyone like us should get us “admitted” … to what?
Some opt for a Wave 3:
Collins, although he does not admit it in Are We All Scientific Experts Now, started out as a keen “Wave 2” defrocker of science’s priestly caste. His views are now closer to “Wave 1”. He argues that now we need a “Wave 3” of science studies: “To understand science one has to set aside scientific fraudsters, scientists who are driven primarily by greed and scientists who are driven by fame. We have to set aside the muscular capitalists who proclaim that science is primarily about the generation of wealth. We have to set aside the theoreticians who allow themselves limitless licence to speculate, and the wild-eyed Darwinists. We have to set aside media scientists, lobbying scientists and small groups who meet to slap each other on the back because they are all so clever and can see the future. Like the paedophile priests, none of these represent what the profession of science is about … we have to look for those whose prime goal is to find out what the world is made of.”
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