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Poll: How can science get its mojo back?

1 points by taxicabjesus ↗ HN
Many of you seem to be on Team Science™, but even on HN the discontent is boiling over. Recently someone asked about non-mainstream ideas to treat GBM (cancer). There were 373 comments over 7 days.

There’s always been dissident voices in the scientific community. Attention goes where money flows: extremely serious mistakes in the scientific consensus didn’t matter until the powerful realized Science™ could be used to make money.

Many of you are dismissive of people who question [0] if it was wise to try to prevent infections of a rapidly mutating seasonal cold virus with an experimental first-in-class vaccine targeting the proteins that are most like our own tissues [1]. It’s been 3 years - most the population has become anti-booster.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28908797

[1] e.g., https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-96233-7.pdf

A few decades ago only a few peasants were upset about Medicine™ using incomplete science to make work for the medical industry. One got the ear of RFK Jr., who was then focusing on environmental law. The pitchfork-wielding peasant said, essentially, “Science™ is hurting children, please help us.” RFK Jr. considered the dissident science compiled by the angry peasants, and realized they might have a point: medicine might’ve been captured by charlatans.

Many of you think Cheeto Hitler 2.0 is a crazy guerilla who’s deploying teams to smash everything good and pure about science. But the pitchfork-wielding peasants are cheering Saint Trump’s having given Saint Elon root access to the Imperial Mainframe. The peasants’ latest celebrations are of this week’s consecration of Saint RFK Jr. as secretary of Health & Human Services.

Science had a pretty good run, but now it’s in desperate need of help. If Team Science™ wants its mojo back, one strategy is to acknowledge that mistakes were made. What mistakes can be acknowledged?

11 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 36.5 ms ] thread
talldayo
> But the pitchfork-wielding peasants are cheering Saint Trump’s having given Saint Elon root access to the Imperial Mainframe.

Literally where? I have yet to see a single non-politician support this behavior. Everyone I talk to is worried about Musk's track record with personal information, his chronic lying and the potential anticompetitive advantages of his federal ascension.

This entire post is a pretty delusional tirade but this takes the cake. If it was a populist decision then Congress would have voted on it... but they didn't, even with a Republican majority. Trump's behavior is so plainly illegal he can't trust his own fucking party to support him.

taxicabjesus
> I have yet to see a single non-politician support this behavior.

I think it was Scott Adams' who related to me that Mike Benz has been pointing out the corruption of USAID for a while... https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber

> This entire post is a pretty delusional tirade but this takes the cake.

  "Tongue in cheek" is an idiom that means 
  something is said in a humorous or ironic 
  way, and is not meant to be taken literally.
talldayo
Scott Adams' has been posting deranged shit on Twitter for years now. His credibility as a social commentator is exhausted, and if you don't know that then you're going to be sent on some pretty moronic alt-right snipe chases at his behest.

> "Tongue in cheek" is an idiom

Your "joke" is 6 paragraphs long. Go get a hobby or a girlfriend or a job or something, this is not a healthy expression of irony or frustration with the government. Repeat this shit in another thread or comment and you'll be run out of this site on a rail.

taxicabjesus
I'm just a simple former taxi-driver. I went the extra mile for some of my passengers - bailing them out of jail, etc - and made notes about people's struggles with the machine.

The guy who I bailed out - a few years ago his friend shared on facebook that he'd been arrested again. I went to his hearing - he saw me. The judge was very stern with all the other people, but said to my passenger, "you haven't caused any trouble since you were arrested years ago, but you did miss your court date so I have to do something..." She was going to give him 30 days with work release, but he said he'd just miss the next court date so they might as well keep him. I sent him some money for his books, he sent me a post card saying that it meant a lot to have the support of someone on the outside.

> this is not a healthy expression of irony or frustration with the government.

Sometimes all you can do is make fun of your predicament.

I'm about to head out to hustle for a while, will respond to you later tonight.

DamonHD
You could barely make this question more "leading" if you tried.
taxicabjesus
Not sure what you mean. I hoped to start a discussion on HN about whether the scientific enterprise has been captured by profiteers.

Lots of people are angry about the COVID-19 vaccines, and are no longer getting 'boosted': https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/11/19/60-of-ame...

I think the character limit for a poll is ~2000 characters, so I couldn't write a whole essay.

DamonHD
It's not any sort of reasonable discussion if you present a very very slanted set of contentious 'options' which presume malice on the part of "science" (as if that were one cabal), and do not for example list any counter examples of self corrections or false accusations such as the autism/MMR issue, or phlogiston or the aether or the bananas claims about covid vaccines and 5G phone reception...
taxicabjesus
I put a top-level post on this submission requesting more poll options.

> contentious 'options' which presume malice on the part of "science"

My poll attempted to ascribed malice to the powerful people who use the trappings of science to concentrate wealth. I made a similar comment 2 days ago: "[...] the medical system has been gamed to concentrate wealth. Doctoring pays well, but doctors are much lower on medicine's economic dogpile than insurance and pharmaceutical companies." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43053362

> self corrections or false accusations

I went to a seminar around 2004. The speaker mentioned a foundational science mistake from the 1800's. In the past year I've heard this mistake was corrected, but the correction was classified. <shrug>.

There is no official guide to "how to prevent your child from becoming Autistic", so this issue is still open.

Thanks for the feedback.

taxicabjesus
One of the neat features of the HN Poll is that I can add more choices. Respond to this comment with your favorite 'science mistake', and I'll consider adding it to the poll.
fullshark
There’s nothing to be gained in admitting mistakes. Team science should take credit for the weight loss drugs that are in the process of making everyone’s lives measurably better.
taxicabjesus
What if admitting science-mistakes made the weight loss drugs unnecessary? I'm sure the causes of the obesity epidemic could be acknowledged without framing it as a mistake.