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Location Date Europe 
1582675200 South America 1533510000 North America 1398466800 -
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Location Date Innsbruck
1546992000 Imst 1527375600 Imst District 1498258800 Graz 1495148400 Vienna 1474066800 Raaba 1433804400 Bad Aussee 1430866800 Hohenau An Der March 1411772400 -
Location Date Wed, 09 January 2019
1547052707 Fri, 21 December 2018 1545411175 Thu, 19 February 2015 1424371169
Okay, so, it is not new for me that it takes me a long time to finish a blog. I usually start, then stop somewhere, wait a couple weeks, think about what I really want to write then finish it and a week or two later I publish it. A blog almost never gets published when it was written.
However, this is the first time it actually took me a whole year between start and finish. The reason for that is that it is really difficult and it took me much more than a year to come to terms with the fact that my world view had to be substituted by a different one. But I think this is really important, so I want to share it with you none the less. I guess (or hope) that when a scientist tells you that you shouldn't believe in science too much then it should be worth more than if somebody who has never studied tells you that. Even though they may have the same reasons to say what they say. But to be honest, I think the most obvious reason why I hope you don't take my words lightly is because I hope you understand that it really cost me a lot to come to this conclusion. It's not like I read this one book and now I am all changed. I have literally travelled to several continents, studied in many different universities, talked to hundreds of people (academics and others) and read lots of books and still my world view didn't want to just shatter into pieces but at one point you just can't support it any more and you have to give in and admit, what you believed since you were like 14 years old, namely that science is the answer to every problem you might ever encounter, is just wrong. And then, once your world view is all in pieces, then comes the hard work of coming up with something to replace it. But that will be part of my next blog post (which is already there in my head, and without it I couldn't have finished this one, which is the other reason why it took so long). I back dated this post to more or less the time when it was initially started. I will write the new blog post soon and then put my actual current location, which isn't Innsbruck any longer... So here it comes. As always, please feel free to contact me with your comments, criticism and concerns:
It is time to write a new blog post again I decided. Not that there is any traveling stories to be told but even when the body rests the mind can still travel. At least, that's what mine does all the time.
So I settled down in Innsbruck. Everything here is much as it used to be apart from some changes which I won't comment because I will make more comments later on that will get some people on the barricades and I shouldn't overdo it. I got a job as a receptionist in a little hotel in the city center and quite unexpectedly I really like the job. All my colleagues are really nice and so is my boss which is probably the most important thing. I get the feeling that I am doing useful work, get to meet lots of different people, speak lots of different languages (to a degree that I am starting to create my own language which is a mix of all the languages I used to be able to speak and nobody understands) and I get quite some responsibility which is also nice. I also got a job as the coach of a girls' football team here, which was really one of the reasons why I came back to Europe (and Austria) in the first place and I got a really nice team to play on myself. Of course, they play in the lowest league but I guess by now I find it more important that I like me fellow players than that I win big matches. I can't wait for the season to start though!
So my life is great, really, which doesn't stop me from wishing that I was somewhere else doing something else about every other day. But on the days in between I am really happy :P
Well, there is this other thing, of course, I have started an undergraduate degree in psychology last autumn. And since then my world view has been trashed and trampled multiple times. It was not only my university classes but also world politics that did all of this to me. I do not want to support common prejudices if they are wrong but studying psychology to a very large part is listening to people telling you about experiments that were done decades ago when no standard methodologies were available and peer-review had never been heard of. Most of these experiments have never been replicated (or if they have then they did not get the same results) but still they are considered to be scientific truths. Those same methods that were developed out of the blue have become standard methods unless somebody (popular) came and challenged them and set up new ones. It seems that in psychology, more than in any other scientific field, a large number of (contradicting) truths can happily exist next to each other and nobody cares. Instead of learning one concept, students just learn several concepts on the same thing and are told to live with the fact that none of them are proven (right or wrong) but they all seem to come in handy at certain times when you study certain questions.
One of our profs unsuccessfully tried for three whole hours to explain to the students why scientific research is the best way to learn about the "truth". As a psychologist you definitely have to fail in this because, quite simply, the truth about the human being is just so much more than what can be put in a few numbers. And these days science is only worth to be published when it has some kind of statistics in it and statistics can only be produced with numbers. So we come up with ridiculous ways to put numbers on things like feelings which, in my opinion, is the same as putting costs (or benefits) on nature: it is denying the real, intrinsic value. If you don't agree with me, I'll happily discuss that part with you in person but will not try justify my opinion here because I'd rather do it in a dialog than in a lecture form.
Scientists, however, over the past decades, have come up with a great way to make sure that science is viewed as the only way to learn about truth: they convinced everybody that "truth" equals the result of scientific research. They completely forgot to mention that the philosophers of old, who were actually doing some important thinking that is still valid even though we don't want to hear about it and even though they didn't prove their ideas with statistical p-values and sophisticated R-graphs, knew and openly said what scientists today try to hide from the public, namely that scientific truths are always supposed to be challenged. The goal of science should be to find a new way to interpret facts not to "be right" which is what scientists nowadays made their goal. Scientists have achieved a status in society that allows them to do almost everything in the name of science.
Sadly enough, it is the climate change debate that shows most obviously how far science has come. It used to be a field where criticism was not only allowed but actually necessary for wisdom to grow. Scientists used to be proud when their research led someone else to do further research on the same subject, thereby proving the initial research wrong and helping the scientific field to achieve more knowledge. A scientific theory was simply that: a theory that was by then not been proven wrong. And ideally a starting point for further research in order to come up with a better theory. It seems that the debate about climate change is the first incident in several decades, where scientists actually have to deal with criticism. And it makes me feel ashamed to be a scientist when I see how they handle it. Because for the past ten years or so, literally all scientists have done to counter criticism on their research (or the conclusions they draw from their research) is to point again and again and yet again at the fact that this is scientific research and because it is science it weighs more than any other type of knowledge. And if you don't believe in scientific facts then you are ignorant and shouldn't be allowed to voice your concerns. It sounds a lot like religious leaders, doesn't it. That's what you get, of course, for trying to predict the future. If as scientists we were honest, we would have to admit that we don't "know" anything for certain. We can make estimates, assumptions, models etc., but because of the limited available data (i.e. because there is only one Earth and we don't have another somewhere in a lab that we could use to experiment a little bit, nor do we have a time machine so we could do experiments now and see what will happen with them in a hundred years and then come back to the present to tell the critics, scientific knowledge is just as valuable as every other type of knowledge in this particular issue. So why do scientists spend so much time and energy telling critics that "this is science, stupid" instead of actually finding other ways to make their point? If you ask me there are only two possible answers. (1) Industry is quite happy when people are spending all their time and energy discussing climate change because with the fear that this whole discourse causes a lot of money can be made. (2) Scientists are just vain and can't stand criticism, they always want to be right. In both cases, obviously, scientists aren't real scientists because if you are a real scientist criticism is part of your job and you do independent research and not with the goal to support any type of industry.
Where am I trying to get to, before I let this essay end? The thing that I mentioned briefly before and I will write more about it in my next post. I honestly believe and it hurts me to say it because I feel culpable too, science has a big part in destroying our society and our planet. Because we pretend that everything can be reduced to numbers and models thereby ignoring everything in between and persuading everybody that this is the way to live. Forget all feelings, forget everything you cannot measure, the only thing that counts are scientific facts!
In order to finish on the example I gave with climate change: instead of repeating again and again that scientific facts point to this conclusion and making even more models based on the same datasets why don't we just be honest and admit that science is not fortune telling. We don't know what the future will bring. We can give warnings of what might happen but if you decide to not believe them it is up to you because there is just no prove before it has happened. But have you ever been to the rainforest? Have you ever heard the calls of macaws flying overhead? Have you ever seen a band of monkeys feeding? Have you ever heard the sounds of the jungle at night? If you have, then I am sure you must admit that it is just an exceptional experience and you would agree that it would be sad if the rainforest got destroyed for money. And if you have never been there then you will at least understand that people's lives depend on the rainforest and everything that lives there. And if that doesn't convince you, don't you think it would be better to not use up all the planets resources in only a few decades but leave some for the next generation? If you don't care about a rainforest somewhere far away then what about that little forest where you went to have a picnic last summer. Do you really want it replaced by a shopping center? Because people don't actually want that it is just the scientific thinking that we keep indoctrinating them with. Only numbers count, forget your feelings, if something doesn't earn you money it's not worth it. But if we allowed for feelings again and if scientists would admit that actually science is just one way out of many to come to a truth, and it has proven a good way in some things (mostly in inanimate things (like the laws of physics etc.) but in others it has proven a bad way (in many ecological questions science was very wrong in the beginning). Should it not be time for scientists to take a step back, do their jobs and do them properly and allow non-scientists to enter the debate in those fields where science might not hold the whole truth?
- comments
Hugo Oliveira “namely that science is the answer to every problem you might ever encounter, is just wrong.” – very very few scientists believe that. That tends to be more of an attitude in engineers, really. “It seems that in psychology, more than in any other scientific field, a large number of (contradicting) truths can happily exist next to each other and nobody cares.” – well, check out Economics. Economics (at least the neoclassical school, which is practically the only school of economics taught and practiced) has the same capacity of predicting future events as astrology, it tries to disguise the inability of predicting something as complex as societies with baroque and useless mathematical models (no other social science has that hubris) and yet it is heralded and considered by society and governments as supreme truth. Much more than science! To be fair, ecology sometimes does that too, but with the fundamental difference that in ecology, most of the time, the scientist is not observing and participating. The fact that a scientist says lack of habitat will lead to the decrease of a bird species population will not result in the bird changing its behavior. When an economist says based on present values of certain variables and a model that a crash will happen, that will lead to a change of behavior in people thus changing the values of given variables and even the validity of the model. “So we come up with ridiculous ways to put numbers on things like feelings which, in my opinion, is the same as putting costs (or benefits) on nature: it is denying the real, intrinsic value.” – Most sciences do not put “numbers” as such. Evolution is one of science’s most successful theories and yet no one tries to put numbers on species evolution or predict when species x will become species y. The same is true of most cell biology where the effect of genes or proteins is described in more qualitative than quantitative ways. Although the labelling is a bit absurd, the higher or lower reliance on numbers is what separates the “hard” from the “soft” sciences. “Scientists, however, over the past decades, have come up with a great way to make sure that science is viewed as the only way to learn about truth: they convinced everybody that "truth" equals the result of scientific research.” – that is false! Most scientists are quite happy to acknowledge that philosophy is on a higher level than science. Some are philosophers themselves. Others recognize that science deals with the material world and that subjective impressions such as emotions, feelings, beauty, religious faith, etc, are beyond the scope of science. Some scientists are religious and other are imbued of a deep rational spirituality that they consider emanating from science but not to be science (p. ex.: Carl Sagan, Carlo Rovelli, David Attenborough). “Scientists have achieved a status in society that allows them to do almost everything in the name of science.” – the problem is quite the opposite. Science has lost its epistemological value and society less and less values science. Back in the day, governments used to listen to scientists advise. Now, look at Trump, Bolsonaro and all the other populist authoritarians we have today and the people who voted for them. Climate change?! Scientists must deal with people thinking vaccines cause autism and the Earth is flat!!! Before that they had been dealing with creationists and people who do homeopathy. Anti-science is not a new phenomenon but it’s getting much much worse. Just like people go to see a medical doctor thinking they know what they have because they went to Dr. Google first, scientists must deal with a huge lack of confidence on science because people read all sorts of s*** in the internet. And if most scientists are quite happy to see society not accepting its authority unquestioningly (good scientists never liked to be priests), it’s despairing when someone asks you after a public talk (like I had happening to me) “So, do you think if we inject ourselves with plants extracts we can do photosynthesis? I read on the internet there’s a scientist in CERN who believes it is possible. That’s quite exciting isn’t it?”. What do you answer to this? How do you engage with this level of ignorance? “A scientific theory was simply that: a theory that was by then not been proven wrong. And ideally a starting point for further research in order to come up with a better theory. It seems that the debate about climate change is the first incident in several decades, where scientists actually have to deal with criticism. nd it makes me feel ashamed to be a scientist when I see how they handle it. Because for the past ten years or so, literally all scientists have done to counter criticism on their research (or the conclusions they draw from their research) is to point again and again and yet again at the fact that this is scientific research and because it is science it weighs more than any other type of knowledge. And if you don't believe in scientific facts then you are ignorant and shouldn't be allowed to voice your concerns. “ – It’s not just climate change. How do you counter anti-vaccine movement? How do you as a scientist that KNOWS as a fact that vaccines save lives of children because all the best available evidence and hypothesis that have been tested and tried over and over again deal with people saying “Oh, you know, vaccines being effective it’s just a theory that hasn’t been proven wrong. The fact is that we don’t know for sure they don’t cause autism. I think scientists should be more humble. Also they’re all in cohort with the greedy pharma industry. I read on several websites about loads of evidence that vaccines cause autism and the companies hide that so I’m not vaccinating my children and will tell everyone not to do the same. And if you tell me I’m wrong, Mr. Scientist, you are just being arrogant.”. And what about “flat-earthers”? The fact is that climate-change denialism, anti-vaxxers, flat-earth, etc, all come from the same source. Science has been so effective in solving so many problems (though not all, of course: social problems like racism and inequality continue to be beyond the scope of science) that people take it for granted. Also, individualism in capitalist societies has gone so far that people confuse “democracy” and “free-speech” with “although I never read a book in my life, this is a democracy and no scientist knows more than I do, my opinion is as valid as the opinion of someone who spent a whole career looking at something… freeeeedooooom”. As for the mentioning of Karl Popper in the title of your post… the two climate-change denialists I had the displeasure of engaging in conversation with (both were scientists, one of them - incredibly - working on how climate affects plants) quoted Popper and falsificationism as if it was a valid argument (it’s not). Also, both were quite prone to conspiracy theories and had a “Galileo Complex” (everyone thought Galileo was crazy and turned out he was right, so you think I’m crazy now but you will see better when I’m heralded as a genius). Kuhn, Lakatos Feyerhabend, Thagard, Bunge… all these philosophers of science have reflected on Popper’s theories, found inconsistencies and limitations and superseded it (well, as much as philosophers can be superseded). Falsifacionism sounds very appealing but it has its flaws and it’s a long stretch to bring it to the climate change debate. “So why do scientists spend so much time and energy telling critics that "this is science, stupid" instead of actually finding other ways to make their point? If you ask me there are only two possible answers. (1) Industry is quite happy when people are spending all their time and energy discussing climate change because with the fear that this whole discourse causes a lot of money can be made. (2) Scientists are just vain and can't stand criticism, they always want to be right. In both cases, obviously, scientists aren't real scientists because if you are a real scientist criticism is part of your job “ – scientists are not vain. But imagine the despair of a physicist when someone is about to throw themselves from a 100th floor saying that science proves nothing and that they can fly because, I don’t know, moon’s gravity who is strong enough to cause tides will allow them to float. Understandably, the scientists is not going to go on a lesson on Newtonian physics, she is going to say “You’ll die, you f***ing moron!”. To which the guy will say “You scientists, always so arrogant!” and jump. Quite frankly, I think climate scientists are very patient and understanding towards society. I would have despaired long ago. “Because we pretend that everything can be reduced to numbers and models” – I’m not a fan of mathematical models of complex systems such as climate, weather, economies, etc, but the IPCC models strike me as very robust, tremendously supported by empirical evidence and constantly improved and updated. They also give quite a lot of leeway in their predictions. It’s the best evidence we have. You know, the spread of a flu epidemics or the organization of road systems is also based on models and no one questions that we use them to implement public health measures or schedule road lights to make traffic flow. But except for a few visionaries/deluded idiots (depends on your point of view) no one tries to reduce to numbers or models the progression of History or the enjoyment of a Beethoven concerto. “why don't we just be honest and admit that science is not fortune telling. “ – science is not fortune telling and never claimed to be, but it’s damn good at predicting most things. When you get on a airplane, science cannot tell you it won’t crash, it’s not fortune telling. But it tells you that given the normal circumstances you will safely fly to your destination. You disregard science advise at your own peril. “But if we allowed for feelings again and if scientists would admit that actually science is just one way out of many to come to a truth (…) do their jobs and do them properly and allow non-scientists to enter the debate in those fields where science might not hold the whole truth?” – the truth is a philosophically lidden concept. Science is something that works, has an inbuilt self-correction mechanism, and uniquely amongst other competing epistemological systems like faith, common-sense or “I read s*** on the internet” it does not claim to present the truth, only the best possible explanation given our best knowledge at the moment. Non-scientists are more than welcome to enter the debate. But imagine you as a football coach invite basketball players to advise you and they say “oh, I know a good strategy for your team to win, they should grab the ball with the hands and pass it around in the hair to the hands of other players!”, or “Hey, the other team has 11 players, why don’t you play with 30 in your team, surely you will win then, hu? It’s a democracy, when can play football the way we damn want! Freeeedooooom!”
Hugo Oliveira Argh... how do you edit the posts??!!
Hugo Oliveira “namely that science is the answer to every problem you might ever encounter, is just wrong.” – very very few scientists believe that. That tends to be more of an attitude in engineers, really. “It seems that in psychology, more than in any other scientific field, a large number of (contradicting) truths can happily exist next to each other and nobody cares.” – well, check out Economics. Economics (at least the neoclassical school, which is practically the only school of economics taught and practiced) has the same capacity of predicting future events as astrology, it tries to disguise the inability of predicting something as complex as societies with baroque and useless mathematical models (no other social science has that hubris) and yet it is heralded and considered by society and governments as supreme truth. Much more than science! To be fair, ecology sometimes does that too, but with the fundamental difference that in ecology, most of the time, the scientist is not observing and participating. The fact that a scientist says lack of habitat will lead to the decrease of a bird species population will not result in the bird changing its behavior. When an economist says based on present values of certain variables and a model that a crash will happen, that will lead to a change of behavior in people thus changing the values of given variables and even the validity of the model.