Science is a Method of Inquiry, Not A Set of Dogmas
There has been an awful lot of talk lately about “the science" and its implications for public policy. Whether in connection with pandemic management, or climate policy, or vaccine efficacy, a chorus of influential voices admonish the public to “follow the science” and adhere strictly to whatever government-approved scientists tell them. People have been urged to disregard any information or evidence that has not passed through the filter of government-appointed “expert” bodies like the WHO or the CDC.
These admonitions are deeply regrettable, because they only serve to mislead citizens into thinking of science as a sort of mechanism for churning out dogmatic truths to be assented to by the faithful. The tone of the discourse surrounding the Covid vaccines should be proof enough that journalists and scientists in positions of great influence have become completely disconnected from the whole idea of scientific inquiry as an ongoing debate and a fallible body of knowledge that advances in spits and spurts.
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Science is not a religion, nor is it an ideology, nor is it a fixed set of beliefs about the world, or a consoling narrative to make us feel better about our way of life or our system of government. Rather, it is a method of inquiry resting on provisional hypotheses to be defended and put to the test through rigorous logical inference, making use of transparent assumptions and empirical evidence. Scientific hypotheses are just that: hypotheses, not dogmas. As such, they are, in principle, falsifiable in the light of emerging evidence and theories with less flows or with superior explanatory value.
It does not take a professional scientist to understand that fundamental aspects of the scientific enterprise have been turned on their head in public debates about infectious disease, climate policy, and vaccines. For those who have seriously engaged in rational, evidence-based debate, even in humanistic disciplines like ethics, philosophy and political science, it is obvious that the truth in any field of inquiry emerges gradually, through a process of trial and error, and that it cannot emerge if the exchange of ideas is suppressed or every divergent voice is chased out of the public square.
This idea of an open exchange of ideas, theories, and evidence, has been displaced in the last few years by an idea of science as a fixed ideology to be harnessed to government purposes and imparted to the citizenry through massive propaganda machines. The gentle transmission of knowledge and understanding has been replaced by shameless indoctrination and fear-mongering.
Here are six elements of the false narrative about science that has become disturbingly influential in the West since the inception of the pandemic and the consolidation of the “end-is-nigh” climate narrative. Exposing these false assumptions is an important preliminary step to take if we wish to resuscitate a culture of intellectual openness and rational inquiry and expose the dangers of pseudoscientific blather: