Does more science happen on 4Chan and Twitter/X than in science academies?
This should be a weird question, but…
An ad hominem attack is considered a proof
While both sides steelman their own arguments and strawman their opponents.
While both sides ignore whatever facts or evidence is inconvenient.
Even the piece of propaganda "An Inconvenient Truth" had so many KNOWN lies in it, that it should have been used as a documentary about Wrong Science.
When our "News" shows use these same kinds of manipulations, how can we, the people, and scientists especially, be asked to do better?
The first rule in modern scientific studies is:
Control the question.
If the question is, "What are the effects of eating grains?"
This is a really broad question, and very not testable.
It would be a great area to do research in, but funding sources want a much more defined question
If the question is, "Does humans eating a low grain diet improve health?"
This question is still too broad, and ignores many known factors. It could be proven that people eating grains have poorer health, but is that the grains, or is that the roundup? And, if you were Monsanto, you would be very careful to phrase questions in this way.
If the question is, "Does humans eating wheat affect digestion?"
Again, so many things answer this question, but are meaningless.
It is the same as "9 out of 10 doctors suggest you eat wheat for better digestion".
And, that might be EXACTLY why this question in a science grant, is asked in exactly this way.
This question leaves out SOOO much, that no one would clearly be able to figure out what was done in the test. Did they eat wheat flour? White flour? Whole wheat flour? Freshly ground entire wheat berry flour? Was it a cracked wheat cereal? Was the wheat GMO? How much roundup was in the Wheat? What was the test subject's usual diet? Was the rest of the diet written down and catalogued.
If the question is, "Does the level of round up in wheat affect brewing beer?"
Now, this is close to a scientific question. And, only beer companies want to know the answer to this. AND the marketing people want this study to NEVER happen. So, it won't ever be "publicly" funded. And it won't be a study done, because the answer is obvious. Many beer brewing companies have switched to organic wheat because the amount of round up in the regular wheat was killing off all the brewing yeasts.
And this kind of weasel wording the question has made things like "Global Warming" and the tests on it, meaningless. We cannot determine if there is man made global warming because the question asked is "Assuming man made global warming is true, how much global warming do we create" Meaning, if we were all net CO2 positive (what does that mean?) the test would come back saying that there is man made global warming.
When looking at a theory, check its assumptions
So many things are packed into the assumption.
Like, the much vaunted Theory of Relativity.
It assumes that the speed of light is fixed.
And that one cannot tell the difference between being in a box that is accelerating, a box sitting on the ground (affected by a planet's gravity)
Those are both an entire area of research in and of themselves. Not proven. Not even obvious. And mostly in the realm of sci-Fi thought. However, since the Theory of Relativity is accepted by Modern Materialistic Science, then all these assumptions are accepted to. (and these assumptions are false, and that will come back and destroy Modern Materialistic Science)
What is really bad is that there are so many arguments on-line where two parties are yelling at each other, and they just skipped over the assumptions. They just allowed the other party to set up the question, and assume many things, and then argue about the results.
This is VERY true about such things argued on television. You could say that they skipped reading the premise, leapt over the logic, and went straight to rhetoric (telling you what you should think/feel)
Lawyering has infected science!
Neither law, nor Modern Materialistic Science concerns itself with truth.
Law is about two lawyers telling their version of the story, and a judge deciding which story sounds better. There is nothing in the court case about truth. (especially since one side can lie without much regard for being punished)
If you watch a lot of legal cases, you will notice a STRONG similarity with how people are arguing science. Especially on-line. Attacking people's character to discredit what they said. Disallowing evidence into the case to weaken the other side's argument. Both sides giving an emotionally persuasive argument.
Unfortunately, there is no "judge" in the on-line community. (which is probably for the better) So we never get a conclusion.
In the academia world, the "judges" are extremely biased, or they would never be professors. And so, in the world of academia and scientific study we find very little actual discourse. We find all the "judges" agreeing, even if what they're defending is complete lies, and they know it.
Winning the argument/lawsuit is all that is important. Truth be damned.
The only people giving money for research want something out of it. They want the research to support them in how they think and what they are doing, and to move people to buy what they are selling.
Think about today, how we are terrified of lead. Especially lead based paints (although the lead is all lead oxide and very tightly held in paint structure, we are made to feel terrified of it being there.) Now, remember this, and lets cast our minds back in time when unleaded gas was reintroduced. There was leaded gas. Gasoline that head lead compounds in them, that would melt and stick to the intake manifold making like a gasket between the valves and the seats giving a higher compression. And thus, made the cars have more horsepower. But, out of the tailpipe and into the air, much lead was being thrown.
AND IT TOOK DECADES to prove that this was bad. Mostly because no one was working on finding the truth. We had one side that wanted to keep selling the gas that made the cars have more vroom, with lots and lots of money. And the public who wanted to stop lead poisoning.
We never stopped and had an honest conversation. We still don't.
If we are going to science, we had better to learn to argue truths. We need to learn to put our emotions aside, the ones that tell us we need to "win the argument, else we will be seen as a loser…"
We need to learn logic, and we REALLY NEED TO LEARN TRUTH.