Trust Me, I'm a Scientist - Richard Dawkins

Apparently the first recordings of the ozone hole over one of the poles was so far from expected, that it was initially disregarded as recording equipment malfunction.

However, the scientists concerned didn’t just leave it there. They checked everything, verified the equipment, and took the measures again. Then they questioned their models in the light of new evidence.

Science as it should be.

At least that is how the story I heard goes.

 

Quick Google brings this up. Close enough to my version of the story I guess.
http://www.theozonehole.com/ozoneholehistory.htm

 

Intrigued about why this conversation would irritate you?

Personally, Claudia Hammond has me shouting at the radio regularly!

 

Totally agree. I think it makes sense to believe in the scientific method but at the same time be aware that it is probably not going to reveal the ultimate truth of the universe to us any time soon. Personally, I'm ok with not knowing the ultimate truth of the universe, I'm not sure our brains are able to comprehend everything all at once!

The "science is the only way to truth" argument that the scientist puts forth in the discussion I linked leads him into a bit of a corner where he's forced to admit his believe that western culture are more advanced than other cultures around the world which is hugely problematic.

 

Well just for you I have just listened to it again and re-lived the trauma. It irritates me because of the way the subject matter was dealt with, and the style of presentation.

First the style of presentation. I teach BA students how to give presentations, and one of the things I'm quite strict about is avoiding fillers like "um", "kind of", "y'know", "like" etc, for reasons of clarity and consideration for the audience. I lost count of the number of times the guy being interviewed, Amol Rajan, a paid radio presenter, said "kinda". But of course, being the UK, he phrases this as a class issue, and goes on and on about how he shouldn't have to sound posh to convince people that he knows what he's talking about. Having said that, he fills his phrases with unneccessarily long words (the piece ends with an out-take of him explaining "perspicacity" to a couple of cooing female members of his team) which presumably isn't him trying to sound posh, but trying to sound clever, which is ok. He goes on about "being myself" ("that's wicked"), about how much money he's earned and how rich he is which he deserves to be because he's worked hard for it, "I plead guilty to being a graduate and I take pride in it", etc etc.

I listen to podcasts to keep up to date with current affairs, and other podcasts in this series do that, so I wasn't prepared to hear a self-obsessed millenial banging on at length about his views on his self-assigned class and other hang-ups. I found myself shouting "I don't fucking care" at my car speakers at regular intervals whilst he was going on about himself. Having left the UK 26 years ago to live in a country where everybody is lower-middle class, I get easily irritated hearing British speakers turning everything into a class issue. Germans can have a trampoline in the garden without it being a class indicator.

The interviewer isn't much better. Of course she has to declare that she is a woman (I guessed) and working class, and the pair of them go on smugly about that for a while. Duly taking her seriously as instructed, I was surprised to hear her cooing over her male colleague's use of the word "perspicacity" at the end of the program. I expect that was an act of liberation or something.

They talk about what they wear and how they dress, Amol says "If you can combine dressing in a way that's really you with knowing what you're talking about ..." and I scream at the speakers again. I just want to hear about current affairs without having the personalities of the presenters constantly thrust under my nose. The smell is putting me off my driving.

All of the above has nothing to do with the subject of the podcast, which is "Who makes the news?"

When they finally stop talking about themselves and get onto that, ie "Is the way we consume news changing and who decides what the news is ...?", they make a few interesting points, but completely miss the elephant in the room and prefer to talk about twitter as if that's the source of all the problems. I start every day checking the BBC news website and have noticed the increase in click-bait headlines (phrased as questions containing no information), churnalism, celebrity gossip, and abysmal science reporting where ME news is either ignored, misreported or dictated by the SMC.

Our hero rebel man of the people with loads of money and not ashamed of it Amol then describes the BBC as a great trusted reliable source of impartial information, and suggests they should bring their editorial integrity to the platforms where young people are gathering. During his criticism of social media tweets, likes and dopamine addictive behaviour, not a mention of BBC clickbait headlines.

I scream at my speakers again.

So all in all a very enjoyable car journey, if you like being annoyed by a self-obsessed prick on the way to work, which I occasionally do, but not too often.

 

I didn't listen to the podcast but now I'm screaming too.

Hoping it's cathartic in some way . . .

 

When answering a question about the origin of life Dawkins suggested it might be due to seeding by extraterrestrials. I find that hugely problematic, rather like the belief that the earth sits on a succession of turtles - turtles all the way down.

 

@TiredSam Aha! Now I get it and am feeling suitably annoyed, thank you

I think first time round I was swayed, despite him sounding arrogant and smug, because I do think that there is a problem with class representation in the media and publishing. Virtually everyone in these industries seems to have gone to a private school.

 

retweeted by Michael Sharpe:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1069284579708678146


etan that thread:
https://twitter.com/user/status/1069292447870541829

 

There are some advocates who, at times, I do wonder if they are working as double agents for the BPS crowd.

 

Oh good so does that mean Michael Sharpe is planning to start earning trust by doing science properly now ?

 

In politics the perception is paramount, not the evidence. Spin, avow your position, denigrate your opponent, its all standard fare in politics. Its not science though.

 

I see my good friend Amol has contributed an analysis to this article:

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-46486707

in which he writes about Question Time:

There is his favourite buzzword again - "editorial integrity". Despite his tendency to dictional obfuscation, the paucity of his vocabularic range soon becomes apparent.

 

Catching up a bit on threads from when I was in the jungle.

I haven't listened to this and prefer not, but did peek at 2020.

These people are on another planet - a planet of endless trivial dinner party conversation from the 1970s that has got horribly out of focus. It is not that the odd drop of dirt slips past the peer reviewers. A river of drivel as wide as the Mississippi is flowing out of the journals all the time like some sort of Boschian sewer.

And when the chief of the MRC cannot understand flaws in basic experimental methodology things are in a bit of a state I would say. Not helped by mediocre scientists doing this sort of PR campaign about things they do not understand.

The problem is clear - the wrong people are in charge of science. But maybe they always were much of the time.

 

That is already known. The answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42.

[Couldn't resist. Not even sorry.]