Post by Radrook Admin on Jul 31, 2022 3:21:43 GMT -5
Is a Degree in Hard Science essential to spot Drivel?
Just recently, when discussing abiogenesis on the lichess discussion forum, I was told that I could not be expected to properly assess the abiogenesis proposition because I have a degree in the Social Sciences and not one in the hard sciences.
Is that really so? Is a degree in the hard sciences really absolutely necessary to properly assess whether scientists are going contrary to the scientific method and substituting drivel and quackery in its place? Well, that would mean that a person who is familiar with cogent reason would suddenly be unable to detect any logical flaw in a scientific proposition, such as overgeneralizations based on scanty or unrepresentative evidence, hasty conclusions, inconsistency of policy based on selective blindness, flawed premises, unjustifiable declarations of fact based on conjecture.
In other words, persons trained to evaluate flawed thinking are supposed to suddenly become awed into a dead silence because the person guilty of the flawed thinking has a science degree? Really? To me that is the epitome of stupidity and identifies the person making such an absurd suggestion as being undereducated.
In fact, the assumption of such a ridiculous proposition is merely a projection of that person's own inability to properly evaluate the drivel that he is presenting as science and so the person assumes that his inability to properly evaluate quackery is typical of everyone who is not a scientist.
It is very obviously symptomatic of a profound ignorance based on a lack of basic education. Why? Simple. Because a properly educated person, such as one with at least a respectably earned high school diploma, knows in the humanities which overlap considerably with the Social Sciences, and whose courses are taken as electives, by persons studying the social sciences, people are trained to do just that- to evaluate flawed thinking.
Such a properly informed person is aware that an intimate familiarity with the principles of cogent reasoning qualifies a person to easily spot quackery even when such quackery is presented camouflaged as science because of the flaws of thinking are glaringly obvious. So no, a science degree is NOT necessary to spot flawed thinking by scientists. Just familiarity with the principles of cogent reasoning, are suffice and nothing more.