Scientism


DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT AN ANTI-SCIENCE CUNTING

The modern cult of ‘The Science’ and seeing science as dogmatic.

‘Scientism’ is an idea that science is the be all and end all of human enquiry, that everything worth knowing can be extrapolated from science, that is has prescriptive as well as descriptive qualities.

Nowadays it’s more of an attitude, exemplified by some quotes;

‘Follow The Science’
‘The Science is settled’
‘We Own The Science’

Two of these are from Politicians, the first is from a journalist from The Washington Post.
The last one is particularly bizarre and spectacularly arrogant, and was uttered by Jacinda Ardern.

It sums up an attitude of certain non-scientists in the media, politicians and activists and hip randoms on the internet who like to treat ‘The Science’ as either a doctrine or dogma. It’s an orthodoxy. They think of it as unalterable and unchanging; i.e. what was written in The Naked Ape in 1968 still holds for evolutionary biology and anthropology today. They do not understand how science is dominated by a paradigm in certain eras, eventually to give way to a new paradigm when more accurate observations and weight of evidence demands it.

We’ve seen much scientism, mandates to follow The Science and abandonment of openness and curiosity recently, discounting of theories and evidence because it’s politically inconvenient, be it in origins of Covid, climate policies and gender differences.

I have a few friends who aren’t scientists but are interested enough to want to learn about it, even at a technical and relatively complex level. Those who are interested approach with humility and also curiosity regarding the logical underpinnings of what makes science actually work as an investigative tool.

There are others I’ve known, who are poseurs, bleating out ‘Yay, science!’ but they are followers of the cult of scientism and dogma, usually via the media. They’ll pay lip service to contributions to civilisation but fail to examine anything that might challenge the current thinking. They all fell into the new atheist personality cult and assume owniing 4 books by Richard Dawkins is a substitute for genuine curiosity.

They’re the ‘Walts’ of science fandom. They inhabit Facebook pages and Reddit threads, and the YouTube comments. I knew a bloke in his forties who genuinely thought watching Cosmos and reading a few non-technical pop-science books was equivalent to a BSc in Astrophysics, whereas I also know two people who’ve earned that through actual rigour over 3-4 years at Russell Group universities.

These people are such cunts, I sometimes pretend to believe in creationism just to wind them up.

The Scientist.

Nominated by : Cuntamus Prime

Apologies for not having a nomination at 10.00 am. The next one today will be at 15.00. C.A.

Hopefully it is fixed now, tech is a cunt. C.A.

29 thoughts on “Scientism

  1. Jacinda Ardern did own the science.
    No one was allowed to question the nonsense that passed for science in New Zealand’s stupid lockdown.

    • Indeed science is peer based. Everything is under deep scrutiny, unless it is covid and climate change. Then it is we know what is right, those who know differently are obviously all cunts.

  2. Covids proved once and for all that the words ‘Government’ and ‘science’ are mutually exclusive.

  3. Who ever came out with the term, it isn’t rocket science, needs one up the arse.

  4. The science is settled.

    The Sun orbits the Earth, bubonic plague is divine punishment, and one species out of 8 million can control the Earth’s climate.

    • And herd immunity isn’t a thing….. but once was a thing…. and now is a thing again because there’s no profitable reason to say it’s not a thing.

  5. The events of the past few years have clearly demonstrated that science contaminated by the grubby hands of politicians and,never forgetting,basic human fallibility can lead to some quite fucking awful outcomes.

    Money and propaganda has poisoned a great many very fine minds.

    Such is life.

    Fuck em.

  6. I’m behind this nomination as it is accurate but I just wish there were a different word to describe it other than “scientism”. That word has been tainted due to it’s use by creationists, flat-earthers and other assorted nutjobs to the point where I can’t take seriously somebody using the word in a genuine sense aimed at genuine fuckwits.

    • i agree, which is why I had to set out the definition at the beginning. I am largely an advocate of skepticism and empiricism in general, but you do get these people who declare something is real or true because ‘science’, when they really haven’t looked at evidence or journals/papers. It’s what Dave the BBC’s science man tells them it is.

      Not as irritating as the creationist/woo crowd but still need reminding what science is.

      I think these people woukd be confused by Richard Feynmann’s attiitude – ‘don’t take.my word for it’.
      They need someone to tell them what to think.

      • Permit me a minor correction Cuntamus. His name isn’t Dave, it’s Justin Rowlatt.

      • His sister has something to do with XR, JSO, or was it Insulate Britain, one of those nut job organisations.
        Who’d have thought it? 🤔

  7. I assume admin was wanking furiously over ‘A Brief History of Time’ last night and this morning. Following the science.

  8. fuck the science, me and Mrs Civvydog refuse to go on a cruise as we know the ship will fall orf the edge of the world, I knew people back in the sixties who went on a £10 cruise and we never saw or heard from them again .

    • The Costa Concordia got to close to the edge and look what happened there. It should be a warning to all of us.

  9. Not sure on this c@nting.

    Properly used and subject to peer review by transparent processes, I’d sooner trust science than anything else.

    Nullis in Verbum. Check everything. And if it can’t be checked or is incapable of refutation, then it’s b@llocks …

  10. I am not a religious man but I have some family members who are.

    My response to them is always the same:

    It isn’t the word of God I doubt but rather the mouth of man speaking it.

    I feel the same way about science:

    I don’t doubt the science, but I do doubt the scientist.

    This cunting is scientifically, metaphysically, spiritually, philosophically and religiously righteous.

    • Doubt is desirable and science is meant to be about doubt which is why there are checks and balances like falsification, peer review, repeatability etc. Science without doubt is just dogma.

  11. I went to Specsavers recently and the optometrist I saw tried to flog me long distance glasses, which I don’t need, the corrupt, money-grabbing bastards. Yes I do need reading/ computer glasses but everything is crystal when I look up or beyond. So much for the science. You can’t trust them if money is involved.

    • For most of my life Mrs C I could read a car number plate at three times the distance required by law but being a bit obsessive I wore glasses anyway which gave me a far longer distance. In my opinion the legal minimum distance is far too short and the idea that there are people driving about who cannot meet even that requirement is frightening. I once had an eye test when I was flying regularly where the woman testing said that she could sharpen up my eyesight slightly but it wasn’t worth having. I elected to go for it anyway and was pleased with the result. At 2000′ feet the horizon is 40 miles away and to be able to see stuff clearly at that distance is brilliant.

      It occurs to me I’m being a bit nerdy here and I really am not criticising you. I don’t imagine you have a need to see things at 40 miles very often! Best wishes.

      • Do you fly Arfur? Amazing! An expensive hobby non?

        I genuinely think I can see a long way off. The charlatan said to me ‘your long eye sight is gone’. I have no idea what she was on about. I can see the details in the tree line in the hills away yonder! I’m looking at it all right now! I’ll get a second opinion at some point, in the meantime my 1.25 el cheapo magnifiers from Amazon work brilliantly for reading.

        To be sure if you can’t read a number plate across the road etc, you need specs. Just don’t trust the weasels at Specsavers.

      • Certainly is expensive Mrs C. In the early eighties a Cessna 152, a piston single cost £42 per flying hour. By now it must be into three figures. Mind you I met a man who paid more for a season ticket to the football than I was paying annually to fly. I’ll confess to a couple of frightening moments up in the sky but overall absolutely tremendous fun. As the kids got older and more expensive I was pretty well priced out by about the millennium. In 2016 I had a minor heart attack and stents fitted and although I’ve had no problem since I would be chary of flying now without a check pilot.

        Company I worked for had a contract with Specsavers. Their prices are keen but they seemed a bit of a Heath-Robinson setup. I once went to their branch in Lavender Hill because half their machines were down. When I got there I found there was a foot of water in the basement and it had taken out half their mains! I told them to call an electrician and left.

        As regards drivers who can’t see, my wife had an uncle who would not wear glasses on the grounds they would make him look “sissy”. Before he took his driving test he walked up and down the street outside the test centre and memorised the numbers of the nearby cars knowing the first thing the examiner would ask him was to read one of those plates.

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