Scientific method is the best tool we have to achieve “pure objectivity and truth”, but it’s not perfect. The primary point of failure being application of it by extremely subjective creatures.
I know right? It baffles me how transphobes use “science” to be transphobic, like Sir/Ma’am, where in the chromosomes is it written “woman” or “man” or any of the stereotypes attached to those words. We made that shit up, we looked at what was there and then added meaning to it that wasn’t there. We interpreted the data according to our current age’s biases. Sure those wiggly things usually determine the parts you’re born with, but where in those parts is it written that women are soft and belong in the kitchen?
If you were to do some unethical science you can even add/block hormones that go into the fetus during its development for it to develop bits that it wouldn’t normally. Hell, you can do that well after birth and new features will develop because human bodies are rather “customisable”
sorry rant over, I don’t often get to talk about this from this perspective because getting into the intricacies of subjectivity of science in regards to how human beings and our languages are flawed is a bit too advanced for the average bigot
Or if you want a shorter version, “circle the part of the chromosome where it says men hold the door open for women”. There are obviously differences between what’s written in genes and the billion little social rules surrounding gender. It makes sense to have different terms to differentiate biology from social rules, and “sex” and “gender” can do that just fine.
A person’s sex is science, but their gender is a social construct. I sometimes wonder if trans people would even be a thing if there were no socially defined gender roles (or assumed gendered language) and people could just be who they are. I suspect there would not be as there wouldn’t be anything to be “trans” from.
A person’s sex is science, but their gender is a social construct.
Even sex is not the black and white dichotomy most people make it out to be. The way we define and dictate someone’s sex isn’t reproducible for everyone. The intersex population is larger than what most people assume, and can vary in ways that defy the way we normally evaluate sex. It can range from someone having different chromosomal pairings, to having a varied arrangement of secondary sexual organs.
Anyone saying that someone’s sex is scientifically dependent on “x” is either ignorant, or academically dishonest.
Trans people would still be a thing without socially defined gender roles. Even without gender, my sex was still wrong - my brain still told me, in times like trying to get comfortable to fall asleep, that my boobs weren’t supposed to be there.
how so?
edit: if you mean the “Sir/Ma’am” bit I belive it is a valid assumption to make that a transphobe wouldn’t consider other options lmao
Even if we were beings of implacable logic, there would also be the issue that we aren’t omniscient. We are never going to reach the full truth of everything because we aren’t going to be able to gather all the data.
We can’t be sure of that. Maybe we will constantly be approaching the truth and never reach it. Or maybe we will just figure out every rule governing the quantum physics and extrapolate all the macro physics. Who knows.
Maybe there are meta physics responsible for creating our physics. Like, laws governing the creation of universes with different physics in each of them. Maybe it’s meta physics all the way down…
The general laws of physics, sure, I have no solid reason to think they’ll be forever out of reach (only doubt), but in order to determine if there was intelligent life (even moreso civilizations) in galaxies that have already stranded away from our field of vision, we would need to have immense luck for physics to allow us to cheat the limits we know about today.
Extremely subjective creatures, many of which believe they’re always right (including many “scientists”).
But yeah, you’re right, the reality is somewhere between the two extremes of the meme. Although we might also want to have a conversation about what “pure objectivity and truth” means.
We like putting things into boxes. It simplifies things. It’s easier to put things into objective boxes in math and physics, but the further from those you get, more subjective these boxes become. Biology is almost entirely subjective, we just draw a line in the sand where it suits our needs (at the time) the best.
Absolutely, and a big part of being a good scientist is acknowledging that subjectivity (and well as the degree of uncertainty in all our knowledge). In social science, subjectivity is baked in… there’s no way to avoid it, no matter how hard you try.
That’s not to say subjectivity means science can’t do anything useful in these areas. Most of the problems with subjectivity come from pretending something is objective when it’s not.
“science academia is also an industry”
FTFY
How do we rewild academia? Like I feel like this sounds like me being a JAQ off, but like, actually. I want academia to be rewilded. I don’t know how to do that. I want to talk to someone about how to do that
Yeah, but homeopathy is still bullshit.
I know that’s not necessarily the intention of this meme but it’s way too common in woo circles.
considering the political skew on lemmy i think this is more an admonition of capitalism than of science
Even so, academics is such a niche and marginal problem compared to, like, anything else capitalism fucks up.
Scientists are still doing good things all the time under capitalism. Environmental sciences criticize problems that capitalists are loath to address all the time, but also apparently capitalism funded their research for a century.
This post is just more populist tanky agitprop to make dumb people angry and distrust institutions and science whenever it tells them something they don’t like.
The founder of homeopathy did the first blinded studies, in a time where allopathy was doing bloodletting and their theories about how things presumably affect the body were, well, bullshit, quite often doing more harm than good. Humour theory and everything, even as a systemic view it’s crude AF compared to what Indians and Chinese came up with.
Now, as in currentyear, homeopathy is bullshit because we are way better at blinding and know that homeopathic drugs are no more effective than placebo.
Which just goes on to show that yes, science is a process.
It’s good to be skeptical of institutions, just don’t go dismissing or accepting science based on ideological/class association, that’s how you get shit like Lysenkoism
Both wrong.
It’s just a process. Find evidence, make theories. Find more evidence, adjust theories or replace them.
People gotta stop injecting their religious beliefs about “the truth” or “socialism” or whatever into science. These are just your personal beliefs and science don’t give a shit about any of that.
See: Lysenkoism
Though being aware of the biases involved in the literature is always important
The Big Bang Theory has that silly name because it’s what people trying to discredit it termed it.
There’s bias in everything, but empirical evidence wins out in the end.
Empirical evidence wins out in the end but… it’s not that simple. One name said a lot about this : Thomas Kuhn. Try giving The structure of scientific revolutions a read whenever you can. It’s old and there are more contemporary work, but Kuhn is still a reference in epistemology.
