Posted on 07/19/2022 10:07:41 PM PDT by Noumenon
There is a growing sense that there is a crisis in science, with science being broadly defined to include the soft sciences. The reproducibility crisis, as pointed out by the statistician W. M. Briggs, is close to universal. Across the academy, there is a plague of faulty and fraudulent studies being produced. Worse yet, the systems for controlling fraud seem to be encouraging it. Peer review now means nothing more than politically acceptable in the soft science fields.
Briggs offers one reason for what is happening. He notes that engineering is not having this problem. The reason is the bridge has to actually work as predicted or the engineers suffer a heavy price. Engineering is not science, but it relies upon the sciences to produce practical things. Those practical things must hold up to reality, which controls what comes out of engineering as accepted theory. In other words, everything in engineering gets tested against reality.
The academy, on the other hand, never has to face reality this way. Even in the hard sciences, reality avoidance is common. Theoretical physics has entered a world that is beyond the ability to test. Math is still math, but much of what is done is purely speculative or requires unproven assumptions. In the soft sciences, the rules have collapsed entirely and most of what comes out is narrative framing. The “science” is limited to providing cover for current fads.
Another reason for the crisis in the sciences is modeling. Anyone who has worked with models knows that the model maker can quickly become a god. He creates a model of the world based on what he would like it to be rather than as a reflection of the bit of reality he is trying to understand. Of course, model makers often have a boss who needs to be pleased. That boss could be in a corner office or the boss could be an angry mob of blue-haired harpies patrolling campus.
The point is you can make models do anything. The model maker is like a script writer in that he can make the rules do what he needs to reach his desired end. Bad script writers use clunky plot devices to solve problems for their characters. Bad model makers create a set of rules and data selection methods to close the gap between theory and reality. Since the model will never be tested against reality in the soft sciences, bad model makers can quickly become stars.
Here is where the question of causality comes into play. Is the corruption of the academic domain a symptom of larger societal trends? Has the steady decline of standards in society dragged down the academy or has the corruption of institutions subverted society, including the people in the sciences? Is it simply the natural product of multiculturalism, which needs narratives to hold it together, due to the lack of natural social bonds found in homogenous societies?
You can model this many ways, depending upon how you as the model maker feel about these topics. The last bit is a clue to the problem. The rise of narratives in social discourse tracks with the rise in diversity. Read anything from a century ago and it is free of the narrative structures we find common today. A story about an athlete was mostly the facts about his life. He was not cast as a character in a drama about social justice or the fight against exploitation.
The ubiquity of narratives gets lost in the flood of them. There is a real war going in Europe and the political class speaks of nothing but narratives. They have meetings followed by press conferences to inform the public on the status of their latest narratives and the battle of narratives surrounding the war. Meanwhile, the Russian army slowly grinds down the Ukrainian army. The same can be said of the energy crisis, which is ignored in favor of narratives about climate change.
You get the sense that the people talking about their narratives and messaging, a subset of narrative framing, think that if they get enough people to believe their story, reality will bend to that story. Put another way, if they can model reality with a set of rules and assumption in such a way that only their preferred conclusions are possible, then reality will have no choice but to comply. Like the model makers, the narrative creators have become gods in their creations.
This does not answer the question of causality, but it is clear that the problem of modeling in the sciences has a related problem in the public realm. In elite society, the focus is no longer on the things that are true, like the axioms of mathematics, but rather on the things that are true within the context of accepted rules, like the equity in the distribution of advanced degrees in the sciences. One is true whether you believe it or not, while the other is only true if you accept the assumptions.
A century ago, smart people understood this difference. Models of realty had to account for those things that are axioms of the universe. Over that time a steady shift has gone on where objective reality is excluded from the discussion of the narrative and at the same time, the narrative challenges objective reality. Put another way and getting back to the Briggs post, models are no longer tested against reality, but reality is being tested against the models.
This helps explain why supposedly serious academics sit in front of congressional committees and claim to not know the definition of a woman. They are not simply clinging to fashionable politics. At the heart of it is the claim that reality simply does not comport with the new model of society, so we have to dismiss that bit of reality, in this case biological sex. Just as the model makers can feel like a god, the narrative makers believe they can bring reality to heel.
There is a lot here that deserves further examination, but it is clear that the crisis in science correlates with the crisis in the West. The causality is not clear, but what is clear is that what passes for the smart fraction is no longer willing or able to accept that there are things that are true regardless of opinion. They are questioning the very basics of reality by claiming there is no difference between relations of ideas, their models and narratives, and matters of fact and observable reality.
Stand strong in your sense of reality. Do the work. Don't let these massive bullshitters drive the discussion.
I’m entitled to my own sense of reality. Really.
Sure you are. How are you liking it so far?
“Here is where the question of causality comes into play. Is the corruption of the academic domain a symptom of larger societal trends?”
Yes.
📂
When researchers are dependent on government grant money, and that money is allocated according to political considerations, then "research" becomes political, and the only researchers who get funding are the ones willing to play the game.
This article does a good job of shedding important light on how “hard science” has seemed to have lost its collective mind.
It isn’t the true scientists who have lost their minds, it’s the ignorant political class that’s gone crazy. True scientists are always skeptical of their science. Newton’s LAW of Gravity, heralded for centuries, doesn’t always work at extremes - cosmic distances on one end, and atomic distances on the other. Einstein was first ridiculed, then honored, and now challenged.
True scientists understand and even relish such skepticism. It’s the ignorant political classes as well as the ignorant educated classes that have gone crazy.
Who is she, seems familiar…?
Excellent essay. Sums up the problem pretty well.
“When researchers are dependent on government grant money, and that money is allocated according to political considerations, then “research” becomes politica...”
It’s not science. Science by definition can’t be politicized.
They’re trying to politicize actual science, but it becomes less and less actual science.
Government funding worked well for a long time. It wasn’t politicized and to the extent it was, the politics were good.
It’s our politics that are the problem.
Good article.
“Delores” of WestWorld. She was constantly being asked if she questioned the nature of her reality (she was essentially a robot).
Gotcha, OK. Thanks.
It isn’t the true scientists who have lost their minds, it’s “the ignorant political class that’s gone crazy. True scientists are always skeptical of their science. Newton’s LAW of Gravity, heralded for centuries, doesn’t always work at extremes - cosmic distances on one end, and atomic distances on the other. Einstein was first ridiculed, then honored, and now challenged.
True scientists understand and even relish such skepticism. It’s the ignorant political classes as well as the ignorant educated classes that have gone crazy.”
Yes, of course what you say is true. I had been banking on that truth for the past couple of decades, as political agendas contradicting scientific method gained ascendency in the media and government.
I am sad to report that when some years back I decided to attend my 40th year college reunion at an Ivy League University to see firsthand whether the political correct we’ve been reading about was really as bad as the reports indicated.
Well, the answer was a resounding “Yes!” The entire reunion was run by Leftist propagandists, young and old. Only one point of view on all topics. There was a panel discussion about “global warming,” with an array of science faculty, all declaring that “manmade climate change” was “settled science” (Yes, one used the very mantra). Real scientists know that scientists don’t fear challenges and don’t fear further experimentation and don’t fear changes in how phenomena are viewed. Real scientists are censored on YouTube, etc, and mocked among the lock step “woke” faculty. Basic science has become agenda-ized, following the pattern of social and political science. Sarlary, frants, position and prestige rely on conformity of opinion in today’s world.
You must be about the same vintage as I am. Down the road, at MIT, it seems to be just as bad. I would say even worse, as MIT, at least, used to pretend to be science. I was there more than a half century ago. I remember the first time I was there, wandering down its hallowed halls in awe, looking at names on office doors of the giants of engineering that I had only seen before in the author list in undergraduate classes in Minnesota. Now it it’s only the names of social justice warriors there that are hallowed, at least by the news.
Note that even then I complained that my room cost too much (an apartment was far too expensive) and the $50 per month charge to park my car on the lawn was atrocious.
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