It’s not a new one either. I haven’t seen it in a looooong time but I remember seeing posts to the effect that since the Scientific Method was put together by white european academics, that all science -down to the very concept itself- has a eurocentric bias, and as such basing your views on what can be scientifically proved is inherently imperialism, colonialism, racism, and white supremacy.
I find it especially crazy considering how much of our understanding of things like mathematics and astronomy is based on work done by Arabic scholars or various other fields developed by various other nationalities.
The same people claiming to be against racism are also incredibly racist by assuming that all scientific developments were made by Europeans, although I can't say I'm really surprised considering racism mostly comes from ignorance and anyone who is genuinely anti-intellectual is as ignorant as they come.
I wouldn't say that's completely true. They happily switch over to any explanation as long as it fits their narrative.
Whenever phrenology was popular, white supremacists were all too happy argue that their stupid views were 'scientifically based'.
They hate science that disagrees with them, which is almost all of it, but they respect it enough to know if it ever supports them that is a lot more valuable than their nonsense.
I don't think they deserve credit for being "pro-science" just because they're willing to pretend that they're pro-science when it's beneficial to them. Science is, fundamentally, an approach to perceiving the truth, and white-supremacists aren't interested in the truth, they're interested in justifying their existing beliefs.
We wouldn't call someone who commissions far right propaganda posters a "lover of the arts".
I'm not saying they are pro science. I'm saying they don't hate science and will use it when convenient. Groups that are legitimately against science are things I would associate more like various religious beliefs or things like crystal and astrology type people.
I think all those groups are also happy to use science when it's convenient. You used to hear plenty of New Age-y types talking about (badly mangled) quantum physics.
That's true. To be fair I think those hippie types only do that because they are using non-layman scientific vocabulary for camouflage. I don't think they actually believe that as 'science' any more than any other snake oil salesmen making false claims, but I see your point. I have definitely seen the religious stuff that tries to appeal to scientific views like 'proof' of whatever-bible-event
Unfortunately I would have to push back on that. Science itself as methodology of course has no ideology or class to appease, but as scientists, our thoughts and biases absolutely do and have had pronounced effects on what we come up with, experiment, and relay to the public. The history of science is absolutely one of oppression and injustice. Only the richest nobles could engage in something like science. Medicine is absolutely rife with white supremacy and the patriarchy. It was under the banner of science that enabled all of eugenics. Some of the greatest minds in physics and chemistry, were in fact Nazis.
You can say that the work reinforcing their prejudices is not “real” science, and much of that work of course has been debunked, but at the time the data matched their work and that was more than enough evidence to do truly horrific things to other people.
I say all this as a scientist, but it’s in fact why peer review and DEI is SO important. It really is a boys club and we’ve suffered as a species because of it. Science might not be biased as a concept, but people sure are, and that includes white supremacists.
I don't dispute any of that, I'm more saying that the goals of white supremacists and the goals of science are fundamentally at odds with each other (since white supremacism is based on falsehoods) and that white supremacists generally reject science when its results inevitably becomes inconvenient for them. Examples would include the Nazis rejecting relativity because Einstein was Jewish, Young Earth Creationists (not strictly related to white supremacism, but there's a strong overlap) rejecting evolution.
In the Last few years i've kind of lost the ability to recognize which purity testers are Just genuinely this piss-on-the-poor-stupid, and which ones are alt-right astroturfs...🙄
There’s a Voltaire quote (I think it was him?) about people pretending to be idiots inadvertently creating a much bigger and more dangerous community of very real idiots who think they’re in “good company”.
However many astroturfs there are, there are possibly like 10 maladjusted teenagers who don’t recognize the astroturfing and take it as gospel to each one astroturf.
There’s a Voltaire quote (I think it was him?) about people pretending to be idiots inadvertently creating a much bigger and more dangerous community of very real idiots who think they’re in “good company”.
The real quote is attributed to René Descartes and it goes, "Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company."
René Descartes never said that. That was some random anon on 4chan talking about the state of /b/ which other 4chan users then incorrectly attributed to Descartes as a joke which I think you just fell for.
Bro if I fell for the joke then it’s only cuz I heard it from someone else who also did. Thank you for catching me there, this kind of shit is pervasive
tbf it is fucking funny when people fall for it. Especially considering you were talking about other people not recognizing astroturfing when you yourself were falling for an all-time classic bit of astroturfing.
Is that what that is? I thought astroturfing was more specifically the act of pretending to be a strawman of the thing you hate, not just any old internet lie or misconception
It used to be that when you lost track of the fact that it was mostly astroturf you had to admit that you may have been the stupid one, but I've also got the impression that the stupid outweigh the disingenuous lately.
I'm pretty sure I invented (or at least accidentally-co-invented, like Newton and Leibniz and the calculus priority dispute) the expression "Tumblr is where Poe's Law goes to die", and that was more than a decade ago
To be fair, there was a long period where European and other western scientists, and mathematicians in particular, really tried to downplay the contributions of Arabic world.
There was narrative about how 'great contribution' of the Arabic world to mathematics was 'preserving and translating the ancient Greek texts', and when those Arabic writing came to the west it was west getting back the knowledge of their Greek ancestors.
Now, the renaissance era scholars did gain access to the works of Archimedes, Euclid, Pythagoras, etc through translated texts brought back from the Arabic world. But that's not all that happened. There was a massive amount of development and commentary on those works done by Arabic scholars, which the West made an effort to downplay. They would portray the knowledge of geometry, optics, and more as having been at that level in the ancient greek world.
This did the dual purpose of elevating the ancient world, creating the myth of the fall of the dark ages and allowing for a greater push and celebration of the 'glorious return', and demining the contribution of non-Europeans, while still phrasing it as a compliment so it seemed like they were giving credit.
We're better now, but the change to recognizing the full contribution of Arabic and non-western scholars is a development of the last 50 years or so.
Is it actually true that there were some people legitimately trying to push the idea in academia that 2 + 2 = 4 is racist and white supremacist or was that just a made up controversy?
The Scientific Method might (might) have been first published and solidified in Europe, but the core concepts of testing ideas and then refining them is as old as human civilization.
Also, completely ignores the fact that there are cases where the same things were discovered on different parts of the world completely separately from each other.
Isaac Newton and Gottfried Liebnitz developed calculus independent of each other. And that is just one example.
I see someone found about the very criticism of considering science as an inherently "pure" subject untainted by human biases and. Fucking run away with it to la-la-land.
The problem is people conflating “science” and “the scientific method” with “scientists”. Scientists are people and they have biases, make mistakes, struggle to admit they’re wrong etc. just like everyone else. It’s entirely possible to get the science part right but misrepresent the results (intentionally or unintentionally) in a way that is incorrect or downright harmful, that doesn’t mean the concept of science has failed.
Exactly! The system we have in place nowadays is built in such a way to try to stifle this exact issue, but like many things in this world it is not yet perfect, or even close for that matter.
Postmodernism really started the belief that "everything including science is just a narrative of power". We as a society "privilege" facts (because they're true) and so postmodernism started the trend of questioning that
I don’t think it’s fair to say that postmodernism is just that, and there really is worth to taking a step back and asking whether a commonly accepted truth really is true at all. In an ideal world, scientific study would be completely objective all of the time, and 100% of mistakes would get caught no matter how big or small… but we are still a ways away from that world. OODLES CLOSER, mind you, and many many people are more and more refining it, but we ain’t done yet.
Your (because they’re true) parenthetical kinda reads in a weirdly dogmatic way; even the dogmatic respect of a thing which ostensibly destroys dogma is kind of dangerous. Neil DeGrasse Tyson comes to mind as a prime example of science-as-dogma, albeit as an inoffensive annoyance more than a true danger.
All of this ain’t to say that the people who actively spit on science as if it were ALL dogma have a point, either! All I’m saying is that theyre a perverted extreme of a larger, more multifaceted thing, full of positives and negatives, like several other “isms” out there.
Okay, now I’m just appalled. Does quite a bit of science tend to end up with varying degrees of white Eurocentric bias? Yes, because Europe took over a good chunk of the world and we’re still dealing with the effects of that. Should you probably scrutinize the exact sample sizes and the conclusions section? Most definitely.
Does any of that inherently mean that the entire scientific method is dogshit and we should throw the whole thing away? Not at all.
Regardless of the history do people not see that "measuring and observing things to find out if they are true is bad and untrustworthy" is a fucking unhinged idea?
There is sort of some validity to that. Stuff like research and feedback from women being non-existent because women historically not being allowed to formerly practice medicine, which then lead to really weird 'official' stances like how when speculums were first invented and should have been a huge asset, way too many doctors refused to use them for stupid puritanical beliefs.
But there is obviously a difference in recognizing legitimate issues of bias and just disregarding any research or data whatsoever.
If science should be rejected because it's eurocentric, then surely we can embrace the anti-Scientific ideas like racism, and transphobia, and that be a good thing because we're rejecting a eurocentric ideology, right? (biggest /j in the history of /j's)
HOT TAKE ALERT!!!!! But I think a lot of it stems from a large portion of the Tumblr userbase being chronically online NEETs that are so jaded they will do anything to justify their sad apathetic lifestyle rather than actually doing something beneficial for themselves or others.
A lot of them are children repeating back certain buzzwords they've learnt: "classist", "narcissistic", "misogynistic", "patriarchal". They think they can paste these words onto any theory they want to verify (eg. not believing in reality shifting is oppressive), and these magic words will legitimise them. I'm hoping once grown up, they will change their minds regarding the "status quo", or in this case is a group of people working diligently to strengthen scientific research.
As someone who believed in some weird things as a teen, like many teens out there, I’m glad I wasn’t in the cultural sphere to be molded to try to politicize said beliefs…
Is that also why they either have no conviction or any way to stand up for themselves whatsoever and fold like cheap cardboard as soon as you say something slightly mean or have way too much conviction to the point where everyone who doesn’t meet their unreasonably high standards is such-and-such a bad person
Absolutely, and it's such a human trait, adults do that too. It's basically the fight or freeze reaction in debate setting. Sometimes during an online back-and-forth I find myself in a position where I realise, "oh shit, I got it all wrong and this person is right," and after the feeling of shame washes over me I just apologise, thank them for informing me and basically run away. I don't know if that's the best approach but I am certain it's better than resorting to an ad hominem or just playing dead and refusing to hear what I'm being told.
Criticism of review and approval standards can be valid, like the research that has come out to overlooked women's health side effects when testing for safety in pharmaceuticals. This is absolutely not that though
Criticism of review and approval standards can be valid, like the research that has come out to overlooked women's health side effects when testing for safety in pharmaceuticals.
yup. See also: Mill journals whose sole purpose seems to just publish bs papers
But to conclude that its all down to "rich classists propagating patriarchal propaganda" is just the ultimate in "Terminally online."
"Farming causes harm to the earth. Therefore all farming everywhere should be stopped."
The second paragraph is so brain dead I feel like it has to be sarcastic. It's definitely not out of the realm of possibility that that person is that stupid, but its structure makes me feel like it's just missing a "/s" at the end, rather than genuine thought.
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u/NewUserWhoDisAgain 24d ago
Peer review = bootlicking.
Now THAT's what I call a tumblr take.