Thread by @AlisonBlunt

..."and so the question therefore becomes: Why do we do this as scientists? I mean, no one in this room needs to be told that science is always getting it wrong. Everyone in this room knows that the person who invented the idea that continents shift destroyed his career by so..."

..."doing. Everyone knows that. Everyone knows that Semmelweis in Vienna destroyed his career by suggesting that obstetricians should wash their hands before rather than after delivering his babies. We all know that science is constantly correcting itself, and yet, at any one..."

"moment, it's always the same: 97% of scientists agree that the science is settled. And the government makes it worse."

There's a very good paper by a man called Daniel Sarewitz, which has got — again, it’s available online, and he points out — here we come back to the..."

..."government funding of science. This is what happens. Before — in this country, America — before 1950, the government in this country did not fund science. Something that’s often forgotten is that there was no federal government funding of science apart from military stuff."..

.."But there was no federal government funding of science for the purpose of supporting science for its own sake or supporting economic growth. Because you were utterly committed to the concept of laissez faire, so even when Smithson gave the money for the Smithsonian..."

..."Institution, there were votes in the con — quite a lot of it. I mean, it was really debated — “Should we take the money?” — even though it was someone else's money, because this wasn't the federal government’s responsibility. In the end, it was taken, but that was the.."

..."beginning and end of American involvement in science until 1950, and the reason for that was laissez faire.

And then, in 1950 the Truman Doctrine was announced, and you entered on permanent war with the Soviets, and the Cold War, and then you started to fund science..."

..."as part of the military initiative, in fact. But you then created a monster. And the monster is the NIH and the NSF, and all the other funding bodies."
[transcription continues] ...
...
..."if someone like Ancel Keys comes along and says, “97% of scientists agree that..."

..."the science is settled, and eggs give you heart attacks,” then the only papers that get — the only grant applications to get accepted, the only papers that get published,the only people who get promoted to tenure are those who say all the right things."
[transcription cont..]

.."And so what we have done is we have created a self-referential system by which you are rewarded for reinforcing the prejudices of people who may well be wrong and will never know, because their science hasn’t been tested against reality." ...

..."They're getting the money from Congress, and they're giving money to their chums. And that doesn't work so well in nuclear physics. It doesn't work so well when you've got a rocket going to Mars, but once you're in the world of low-grade statistics — and here..."

..."the first talk really couldn't have put it better — once you know, you can use statistics for anything."

Quote from transcript of 'Dr. Terence Kealey and the Myth of Scientific Objectivity'
Transcript crossfit.com/health/terence…