Nonscientists are often naive about science, Eric Falkenstein says, even when they have great faith in it:
If you go to The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, you invariably hear a bunch of caricatures of those who disagree with conventional wisdom on science — most of which truly are quacks, but not always — and they pedantically emphasize how these alternative views are ‘not science’: they have beliefs that do not have peer-reviewed tests supporting a falsifiable hypothesis. Or listen to Chris Mooney, a journalists who thinks the masses are insufficiently scientific, and argues that Republicans hate or are ignorant of science. He argues we should have more ‘pro science’ candidates, reflecting the 19th century progressive notion that with education, most disagreements and bad policy disappears. Most importantly, if the masses knew more, he surely thinks then popular opinion would converge to his. This from a journalist, a clan whose scientific proficiency is similar to the athleticism of mathematicians.When journalists talk about science in general this is usually a pretext for saying those who disagree with their favorite idea are wrong, because they are unscientific. Who can be against science? There isn’t a formal anti-science movement because it’s indefensible in principle. They then caricature their opponents, taking the most inarticulate advocates from the other side, and skewering their illogic. They then sit back and take take inordinate pride in their scientific pretensions, as if their selective discussion was objective. The fact is, most ‘big’ scientific issues do not conform to the scientific method, where one puts out testable hypotheses, rejecting ones that are falsified.
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God is dead, but faith did not disappear. Rather, people always have faith in whatever they think is really important. With God out, now what is important is some big cause that, when fixed, will create a better world. As Eric Hoffer noted in The True Believer, ‘all mass movements are interchangeable’, meaning nationalistic, religious, social, political movements have the same true believers. Western civilization has tossed off nationalism and religion, but we are just as ideological as ever, only now we pride ourselves that our beliefs in social or ecological justice as the result of truth, divined through science. If only.