Unsettlingly Following Settled Science

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen 

It is increasingly common to encounter phrases like, "Follow the science!" Well, first of all, science is not an entity, so it cannot lead anyone anywhere. Darwin's disciples often claim that evolution has been proven, but science proves nothing. Evolutionists tacitly admit to their pagan mythology by treating evolution and Natural Selection as decision-making entities when it suits their storytelling purpose. They also jeer at Question Evolution Day with irrational remarks like, "Ya gonna have a Question Gravity Day, too?"

Credit: CSIRO / Frank Filippi (CC BY 3.0)

Another horse apple they polish is, "Why don'tcha write up your evidence for creation and get it published in a legitimate peer-reviewed journal and win a Nobel Prize?" Come on, man! We've been over those things.

So often, people claiming to follow the science are simply virtue signaling. Urging others to do the same can many times be an appeal to authority — then the "follow the science" admonition becomes a  method of manipulation. (See "Science in Name Only".) Most of the time, it's an appeal to authority — often by people who have no inkling of how science works.

Peer review is supposed to mean something. I don't reckon that when the peer review process was estbalished anyone expected it to be a guarantee of truth. Now if something passes peer review, it is treated like holy writ from the secular science industry. As we have seen, the secular peer review process is saturated with problems, including retracted papers and a reproducibility crisis. Researchers cite other papers when building their theses, but many results in previous works cannot be reproduced. Papers have been retracted (many have been fraudulent and computer generated). It is thought that much as half of biomedical publications have been faked. Follow which science, Hoss?

Once again, someone else's work inspired my own article. It also comes from a source that is unusual for me. Although it has nothing to do directly with evolution, it echoes many of the things we have seen here time and time again.

In recent years, there have been a lot of catchphrases around science: “Follow the science!” “We believe in science!” Even “The science is settled!”

Well, sometimes it’s not settled. Sometimes it’s not even really science. But lots of people believe in it or follow it anyway. It’s a global problem.

Most recently, we learned that a widely noticed 2012 study co-authored by Dan Ariely — whom the journal Science refers to as a “superstar honesty researcher” — was based on fake data.

. . . 

Ariely’s 2012 paper found that people were more honest when they signed a promise to be honest at the beginning of a transaction than when they signed the same promise at the end. The idea was that the early exposure to the importance of honesty set the tone. The Obama administration’s Social and Behavioral Sciences Team recommended this approach to the government. It seemed like a cheap and easy way of promoting good behavior.

The only problem is, it’s not true. Other scientists found that his work couldn’t be replicated.

I hope you'll spend about six minutes and read the entire article at "We’re told to ‘follow the science’ — yet some of it is just plain wrong".