Thread by @curryja

This is soooo good. Unfortunately behind paywall. A few choice quotes follow in this thread
wsj.com/articles/parti…

One can often tell that an appeal to science is unwarranted without knowing anything about the science in question. If science is treated as a solid block, each part of which is as indubitable as all the others, then science has been misunderstood.

Some scientific statements prove false; that’s how science works. Those who claim that to doubt any part of the consensus is to be “antiscience” or “a denier” are themselves being unscientific.

Science operates by a process of criticism. Scientists don’t experience divine revelations, they propose hypotheses that they and others test. This rigorous process of testing gives science the persuasiveness that mere journalism lacks.

If a scientific periodical expels editors or peer reviewers because they don’t accept some prevailing theory, that process has been short-circuited. Those who call for such expulsions have missed the whole point of how science works. They are the true deniers

When researchers fear losing a grant or being subject to personal attack if they question a predominant belief, that belief no longer rests on scientific grounds. True or false, it is superstition in scientific clothing.

To doubt a scientist is not to doubt science... personal authority is precisely what science dispenses with. Dr. Fauci’s assertion of authority creates skepticism about all his assertions-because the distinction between science and a particular scientist is essential.

To be sure, nonscientists often have to trust scientists to inform them what the science has discovered. But that is all the more reason that scientists bear the responsibility of not letting political or other nonscientific criteria affect their explication.

If scientists expect their statements to be trusted, they must themselves be trustworthy in making them. One had better be scrupulously honest before asking people to surrender their own judgment and simply believe what they are told.

Scientists should be especially careful not to misrepresent political or policy judgments as being scientific. And they must protest vigorously and loudly when other influential people claim to speak in the name of science while misrepresenting it.

Perhaps the clearest sign that a scientist, or anyone else, is misrepresenting science is a confusion of a science with political or social claims that it is thought to imply. Such claims are never scientific. They are a clear sign of pseudoscience.

One must argue for or against the social or political implications of a scientific discovery in the same way as for any social or political ideas.

When President Biden, or a politician from any part of the political spectrum, claims he is only “following the science,” one can be sure that he isn’t. Science can inform a policy decision, but whatever judgment one makes, it cannot be based wholly on the science.

The greater danger to the public’s trust in science comes not from the uneducated but from politicians and journalists who claim to speak in the name of science.

Still more, it comes from scientists themselves, either because of what they say publicly in the name of science or their failure to correct others’ misrepresentations of it.

Author is Gary Morison, with new book "Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us"
amazon.com/dp/B08K3T5FLT/…