Thursday, February 17, 2011

Musings: the Pursuit of science

Is explaining things by science to the public actually ever helpful or even true? Without a very strong basis in science (and I mean one of multi-discipline multi-year study, really) it is very easy to make mistakes in the interpretation of science, and even in the pursuit of science. This happens pretty much every time scientific information is presented by the media to the public, with some sort of scientific background. This background is often paid for by the companies that benefit from it--unsurprisingly, since they're the only ones who have enough reason for the financial investment. However, many times the research does not even live up to the standards of peer-reviewed, pseudo-scientific method science that the academic world requires. But, when something is told to the public, if it's convincing at the first, it will live on long past the science. Therefore, should science even be used as a basis for media-mediated advice? Does this not just tear down the credibility of science every time the opinions go back and forth? On the other hand, what's the point of science if it is not used to change people's lives (or at least animal's lives, the environment, etc)? If the problem is the system, not the goals or the science, then is there another system that would work better? (other than the level of democracy/capitalism we use today)

Is striving for unbiased science actually worthwhile? Does it not need there to be an absolute truth to reach? To what extent should we try to be unbiased, and how far can we actually go? Since everything we 'know' is through our own senses, so is automatically biased. But which is more worth knowing: What we can perceive through our senses or some absolute that we cannot?

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