The mantra of Follow the Science is a betrayal of science. It is an attempt to transform a method of attaining knowledge about the natural world into a religion or a political party. It would reduce science into a shibboleth to be invoked as a club against those of differing religious or political views and is usually voiced by those who are often quite illiterate about actual science. We have been down this path before in the totalitarian regimes of the last century and it does not end well.
Follow the Science
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Behind every “Trust the Science” there’s someone looking for blind trust. I don’t trust politicians and certainly not “journalists”, but I also don’t trust scientists -they’re people too.
My sons and I were talking, as we are wont to do. They said something that I think is spot on. There is no greater indictment on science than transgenderism. If we accept what they now say about transgenderism, with there being no real, objectively biological gender, or there being more than two genders, then the entire scientific world was 100% wrong for the history of the scientific world. I went through their old science books from homeschooling, and some old books I still had from school and college, and they’re right. In no section about gender was there ever a footnote or suggestion that gender was anything other than male and female, evolution of sexual reproduction, chromosomes and anatomy and the like. If transgenderism as currently promoted is true, that’s saying the entire scientific world can be 100% sure and yet end up being wrong. Therefore, waving the ‘follow the science’ banner the way the press does should not have the punch it has, if the press is right about transgenderism. . I think they’re onto something.
Not the scientific method. Post-modern science starts with the paid-for or politicized finding and strives to convince everybody the agenda-driven opinion is science.
Science: How TX has no China virus panic restriction (38,000 people in a ball park) and fewer China virus cases than MI which has harsh restrictions and 20,000,000 fewer people.
The view from 30,000 feet: Those people love the China virus. It’s their “Woodstock.” They never want it to end.
The oligarchs politicized it from day-one. They used it (and massive vote fraud) to remove the first American President since Reagan. They never let a crisis go to waste.
You could do an ongoing series of posts about this covering gender, marriage, pro-life, Covid, etc. The problem with following the science is that in reality people only “follow” the data they like and ignore, downplay, dismiss or over-scrutinize the data they don’t like.
One of the great truisms of the human condition Ben is that too many people only see what they want to see.
Off topic a smidgeon but look at this jackass get in the face of a citizen;
https://twitter.com/ArthurSchwartz/status/1379517355533942784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1379517355533942784%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.westernjournal.com%2Fwatch-biden-gets-inches-womans-face-tells-social-distance%2F
Put a leash on him…please.
No different Philip than those police officers who stood on the altar of the Church in London the other day in a loud bellowing voice the officer was threatening to fine people for breaking Covid lockdown laws. And yet the restrictions on the Faithful at
Church service gatherings is – no singing and responding in quiet whispered voices. No different- both hypocrites on a power trip.
from my article: https://catholicstand.com/credo-scientific-dogma-part-ii-powerism/:
“Scientist Soldiers
In his thoughts about the use/abuse of science by those in power, Robert S. Cohen begins with two spot-on pertinent quotes, one from C.S. Lewis and one from Max Horkheimer:
“ C.S. Lewis: ‘What we call man’s power over nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men, with nature as its Instrument.’
Max Horkheimer: ‘The ideological dimension of science comes to light, above all, in what science closes its eyes to’. ’’ (Cohen, Id. P. 223)
For Cohen, many scientists who had become “servants of power,”have enlisted now as are “soldiers of power”. Soldiers must obey, says Cohen, and, in the past, the task of the scientist was to question, not to “obey” when someone said something was true (Id., pp. 226-227). Today science is permeated, funded, and corrupted by the “scientific obedience to power.” (Id., p. 227). Scientists have become the laboratory mercenaries of powerism.”