this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
The teaching of natural sciences has lost its former rigour in favour of social science claims that are blatant nonsense, such as the argument that scientific knowledge is not based on observation, hypothesis generation and rigorous testing by the world scientific community, but is “constructed” within the framework of the political and social convictions of scientists.
Those societies that have lagged behind are those that tried to subordinate science to social convictions, including religions and such political dogmas as Marxism, nazism, fascism and similar movements that forbid free, critical thinking.
The need to show mistakes, a core part of the scientific method, has become more and more at odds with the publishing process, where scientists are required to tell perfect stories that will satisfy journal editors and peer reviewers.
During the pandemic, this early sharing of research became a matter of life and death, and led to thousands of findings being made available as soon as they were ready.
Servers such as bioRxiv (pronounced “bio-archive”) and medRxiv grew rapidly to accommodate this new movement, and it has been encouraging to see the trend continuing into other areas of biomedical research.
But the basic conclusion that he settles on – “In a nutshell, scientists are thought to be part of the elite and, therefore, not trustworthy” – fails to recognise that a well-organised, well-financed, and ruthlessly aggressive campaign against science (regarding not only the efficacy and safety of vaccines but the critical planetary threat of climate change) by rightwing politicians, their donors and their media promoters, intended only to advance their political goals, is largely to account for this decrease.
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