cheetah

I don't think this is appropriate for the Politics Forum, because I don't really want to talk about politics, but about science and how it is used by politics and other issues to prove points. I love science and feel so satisfied when I read journal articles that draw conclusions from the evidence. It seems so clean and honest and I loooooove that!

But, then, people start using it for issues and politics and what-not and it starts to get gross. What seemed like clean science suddenly appears to be whatever the user wants to use it for. It seems like, when it comes to using it in practical applications for makign decisions, esp. policy decisions, science is almost useless...not because it is flawed itself, perhaps, but because people can be so manipulative and deceitful with it.

I used to love it when I thought that my stances on issues were firmly backed by science. Like why its mathematically unnecessary to drill in ANWR. Or why it's important to protect the environment and species diversity. And just about anything else. Certainly not limited to the environment.

Now, I feel like, why even bother, when someone will come up with different stats to prove you wrong, then you'll prove them wrong, ad nauseum.

Science cannot tell us what is morally right to do, but I do feel like it can point the direction to sound decisions. Now, I am doubting that...

Corey Hammer

Go to the American Psychology Association's website. It is a good example of how science is used to advocate social policy.

However, logic and evidence rarely penetrate into those who minds are weak and refuse to think. They even fail to grasp basic logic.

Bill

Science is a tool. It does not always supply "answers." What it does do is it supplies a tool for gaining knowledge. If the knowledge so gained amounts to "answers" or not will depend entirely upon just what the question was in the first place.

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You can like or hate Stephen J Gould. But his idea of Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA) does serve as a model for what science can and cannot do. <a href="http://cyberbuzz.gatech.edu/kaboom/interesting/gould-magisteria.html" target="_blank">Here is what Gould said</a> about the conflict between science and religion: Most political questions end up involving the idea of we should do or not do this or that. These are more questions of morality and purpose. They are most certainly not questions of fact or theory. Science can tell me that if I build a dam in a certain place, I am likely to lose some number of biological species. Science cannot tell me if the benefits of the dam will outweigh the costs. Those concepts do not lie within the Magisterium of Science.

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Political battles are all about values. Do I value maintaining the ANWR as a pristine wilderness more or less than I value the oil which lies underneath that land? How can science possibly answer such a question?

What science can do is to suggest alternatives and to perhaps model the relative costs in dollar terms. Science can attempt to formulate practical alternatives by dealing within the realm of scientific fact and theory. But, at the end of the day, science cannot be expected to make value judgments, and anybody who uses scientific statistics in a mechanical way to support a value judgment is clearly misusing science.

== Bill

Friar Bellows

[snipped what Bill said]

Hear, hear!

Jeremy Pallant

I really don't think this is true. Political battles are about manipulating public opinion and achieving power, not about values. Political values are about apparent values, not the true values of those involved. A politician is concerned first with power and control. That's why they are politicians. Certainly they are not concerned with their constituants or their country. They aren't in it for the greater good. They are in it for the power.

By definition they cannot have true values. You see, in order for a politician to get elected he or she has two options. Either to promise those electing them what they want, with no intention of really fulfilling it, or to convince them that the principles of those being elected are correct.

The former is far easier than the latter.

cheetah

Well, either way it comes down to "My values are better than your values" so it would seem to be an impasse where things are simply decided by who's values are more important.

I was under the apparently idealistic impression that one could use science as a tool to get to the right answer, but really the truth is science can just give the tools to help make clearer what your values really are. But, it will never actually point the way to the "correct" decision. I guess I should realize this...too idealistic, though...

hinduwoman

Besides you can manipulate data to get the result you/your sponsers want. I understand that tobacco companies have scientists who argue that there is no casual link between smoking and coughing.

Half the time media itself doesnot understand what is being handed to them and they go for the more sensational aspect rather than the sober facts.

Francois Tremblay

Science is a good tool of public policy when it's used rationally and without political bias. When it has a political spin on it (such as the supposed significance of second-hand smoke or global warming), the science is basically worthless. Unfortunately, like any other endeavour, science is led by humans, for humans...

ohwilleke

This is a bit more cynical than I think politics actually is. Politics is both power and choice. No one gets into politics simply for power. You can have far more personal power in a corporation than in politics. You get into politics to obtain the power necessary to impliment values you think are good. What confuses many people is that the fact that someone can compromise is viewed as a way of saying that someone has no real values.

Politicians don't always act as mere mouth pieces for their constituencies, but they are elected by a constituency that believes through information that they are given that this guy is closer to what most people believe than the other guy.

Policy debates are much more complicated than most science, and many scientists make asses of themselves by failing to see that. For instance, I once encounted a physics professor who was sure that he could explain the number of traffic accidents that take place as a function of speed limits with an equation derived from first prinicpals, and damn the statistics. Of course, it was a farce. There are too many variables that really matter that are involved.

Even things which seem like they should only have physical causes, like the output of a manufacturing plant with a particular design, is far more complex. Two plants built from precisely the same designs in different places can have radically different outputs.