Over at Physics and Physicists, I saw the post entitled Graduation Speaker Perpetuates Myth, in which the old “science says bumblebees can’t fly” canard is reported, yet again. What gets me is about such stores is the willingness to accept that scientists are imbeciles — embracing the idea that we would advance models as truth, despite the fact that they are so trivially falsified. In science, if the theory does not match the experiment, you know something is wrong with the theory, so you change the theory. (in this case, a combination of the assumption about the rigidity of the wing and the nascent state of aerodynamic modeling limited a back-of-the-envelope calculation at a dinner party)
Worse, in addition to (or perhaps a subset of) the willfully ignorant, we have the conspiracy theorists. Not only is the science wrong, but we’re all actively covering up the flaws. Never mind that if any technology based on the science actually works, it’s a bit troublesome for their position. My favorite is the anti-relativity crowd scrambling to explain how GPS actually can work.
In light of that, it was interesting to read about what has been termed scientific impotence: When science clashes with beliefs? Make science impotent
What Munro examines here is an alternative approach: the decision that, regardless of the methodological details, a topic is just not accessible to scientific analysis. This approach also has a prominent place among those who disregard scientific information, ranging from the very narrow—people who argue that the climate is simply too complicated to understand—to the extremely broad, such as those among the creationist movement who argue that the only valid science takes place in the controlled environs of a lab, and thereby dismiss not only evolution, but geology, astronomy, etc.
So now we have the addition of science isn’t equipped to answer that question.
Of course beliefs are stronger than science.
My lecturer of Cognition made an interesting point; regardless of how low all your cognitive abilities were if you had a strong cognitive ability to communicate well, you would always be considered intelligent. But if you didn’t have this communication ability, regardless of how smart or intelligent you really were, you would always be considered a little stupid.
One problem scientists have, is their inability to communicate with the masses. I find those with scientific minds often give up trying to explain their ideas to the general public because the general public are ‘stupid’.
One of the main abilities religious leaders have is their ability to communicate. They don’t even need to try to communicate because they have an intrinsic ability to do so; so they never give up; they just get more and more followers to believe in them.
I’m a non native speaker of fluent colloquial Japanese. And I often here two things from others trying to learn Japanese. 1. ‘Japanese is an impossible language to learn’. 2. ‘Japanese are stupid because they can’t understand what I’m saying’. In regards to 1, there are many Japanese of the ages 2, 3 and 4 who can speak very good Japanese, so Japanese can’t be that hard to learn. In regards to 2, there are 120 million Japanese who have no problem what so ever in communicating with each other, so the problem isn’t the Japanese people.
I feel this example is applicable to many scientists. They try to explain something but nobody seems to understand what they say. Whose fault is it? It’s easy to blame others for your own inabilities (that is communication abilities). There are many people in the English speaking world who are 2, 3 and 4 years old who have an amazing ability to communicate their own thoughts and feelings. Yet there are scientists out there who can’t communicate their own thoughts and feelings as well as a 2 year old. Yet these same scientists call/imply the general public is stupid.
The general public are not scientists. THEREFORE ALL THEY HAVE IS BELIEF. WHO ARE THEY GOING TO BELIEVE? Some scientist who can’t express the simplest of emotions let alone a scientific principle or some religious leader who makes them believed they are loved?
People don’t disregard scientific information. The problem is the communication of this scientific information.