Losing belief in Science.

in #science8 years ago



Has Science lost the grandeur?

I remember being a child growing up my favorite class in school being science. I loved it so much that in fifth grade I was in the top 5 of all the MEAP scores in the state of Michigan. I never pursued science as a career but I never lost the love for it, that is up until a few years ago. I started to get the feeling something was not right, Stephen Hawking's Multiverse book and the theories on black holes were some of the things seemed to leave more questions than answers. In fact we reached a point were science stopped answering questions and started creating more. Not just a few but exponentially more. I was catching up on a few videos I had missed that were recently posted by the Thunderbolts Project on Youtube, when I had come across these comments posted below. It is nice to know I am not the only one feeling this way.

What is highlighted in yellow really stood out to me. I have been studying up on these subjects for a while now and they have definitely piqued my interest again in real science. I found it rather amusing that what was mentioned are exactly the same things that left me questioning how much do I trust science? (I am trying to refrain from using the term "mainstream")



Can science lie?

First lets define science. From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science we have 3 a: knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method. Oh we have one more thing to define, scientific method again from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scientific method which states: principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.

By these definitions, no science cannot lie. After all it is the scientific method that leads to a general truth or laws. So if science doesn't lie how are people loosing faith in science? Well we have the human factor. Humans can have motives to skew results, to fudge numbers or see something where nothing was. Why would scientists do such a thing if their field is in the pursuit of truth? The simplest answer I have found is funding. Go against the grain on a common belief and watch the funding for your research pulled.



Restoring the Glory.

Rupert Sheldrake has said it best when he stated that science has become a religion and so much so it even has dogmas (he has a really good book on the 5 dogmas of science). It is these dogmas that are holding science back from making the great leaps and discoveries as we were making a hundred or so years ago. We do have an ever growing number of scientists that are standing up and speaking out about this terrible run of bad dogmatic science. It is more and more looking like we are turning toward a crossroad and not just in physics or cosmology. One of the biggest caveats in science today is separation of specialties. Now more than ever scientists from multiple fields are coming together to share knowledge with each other which is opening more and more doors to pursue truth about life, the world and universe that we inhabit.

I will leave you will some videos about the subjects that restored my belief in the scientific community, hopefully they can rekindle your belief too.




Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion


Wallace Thornhill: The Elegant Simplicity of the Electric Universe


Graham Hancock - Discoveries of Ancient Civilizations




More on the Thunderbolts project: https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/
Youtube comments from this video: Plasmoids are the Power | Space News by Thunderbolts Project


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No it hasn't lost its grandeur. No its not rife with corruption. No publishing things that are against the status quo does not cause loss of funding.

Bad science causes loss of funding, poorly designed experiments that do not test what they are intended to test cause loss of funding (due to inability to publish).

Sigh.

I too, used to love science.
Now I know that everything I learned in science class is wrong.

Even the scientific method. (The observer is part of the equation, and so cannot be excluded from the data. Also, we use inductive reasoning, reductive reasoning to get to solutions. the scientific method demands you only go one way.)

It is not only funding that gets cut, you actually get blackballed from the community. Where is your peer reviewed research? Well, I do not agree with all the peers, because I have data that shows the old ways are wrong, and so, I have nothing peer reviewed or published.

The observer is part of the equation

That's the problem. If the observer hasn't taken time to know themselves then they can't remove their bias because they are not aware of it. I became more aware of the influences we find ourselves subject to without knowing when I started replacing my sexual hormones and playing with my chemical balance.

Then I knew that there was no way a person could know that they are being influenced if they've always been influenced. Before that I could had swore I am always in total control of myself, now I know that I don't even know all the things that influence my every-day thinking and acting.

Ah yes the peer review system. I sort of left it out hoping people would watch Rupert's video. I believe he explains it better than I could write it. The black balling is outrageous once I learned that was happening that was my final nail. That is what started my unlearning process of what I thought I knew about science. Once I discovered just how many advances that could have saved us and the resources on this planet many times over were buried because of greed. Sheesh the knots in my stomach......

At least there are some willing to stand up and speak out about it. Who also are trying to strip the nonsense and actually start connecting the real dots to understand what we are looking at.

I must have been lucky to have some very good teachers. The information was usually presented as though it was only the best that was currently known, and open to future alteration by new discoveries. I had many teachers who would spend class time teaching us things that were not in the textbooks.

I didn't encounter the dogmatic intransigence until I got to university. There things were a political game, where the highest awards went to the most dutiful slaves. Then the most obedient went on to their research grants and reinforcement of the established order. People who are disruptive don't get research grants. That is not to say it is necessarily a monolithic conspiracy, as much as it is a CYA operation, defending the paycheck of the status quo. A Richard Feynman today, would never be given tenure.

This is a man of science, from before the structures of regulatory capture had yet fully been constructed.


www.youtube.com/watch?v=obCjODeoLVw

The picking apart of education is just despicable. Alas why do we want a society of free thinking individuals, no that won't do. We need good little worker bees. This is one of the reasons I hold those working on the electric/plasma universe theory in a higher regard at least they are going against the status quo. As far back as Newton's "laws" and even questioning them. To the point that physics itself would be turned upside down and have to be completely rethought. Wallace Thornhill touches on this briefly in the video I posted.

Feynman sure did have charisma for a physicist. To bad he had to work on the a-bomb...

I think there are many science minded people who are enthralled by the incredible possibilities that the practice of the scientific method represents. The manipulating interests of money and power will always seek to control, or destroy what they can not control. Paul Feyerabend has his place, but experimental data is king.

The electric universe is intriguing to watch develop. I became aware of bits of it alongside Tom Bearden in the 1990's.

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It's true that the scientists themselves have bias. I don't this it's correct to say though that the scientific method seeks truth per se, although I know many scientists say that when philosophising. It describes a way go gain knowledge which seems correct, and more importantly a way to verify and challenge that, based on what is observable and testable. General theories are laws become laws only by lack of refuting evidence. In my opinion this makes calling them "truth" dubious.

I really liked the TED talk with Rupert Sheldrake when I saw it first a while ago, he makes some great points. I'd be more skeptical of Graham Hancock and ancient knowledge stuff, it's so hard to know things well. In my observation, bias and jumping to conclusions is rife there. I wouldn't want to conflate then, Hancock is a serious scientist, but this Ancient Aliens Debunked movie is very funny and worth watching

But the EU stuff is really out there and highly contentious. I don't believe they employ the scientific method, funny enough it seems like more of a belief system than a branch of science. Theories of everything are like alchemy. Here's an interesting take on them: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/electric-universe-theory-thunderbolts-project-wallace-thornhill

I agree wholeheartedly on the science ever being a truth or law. I just wanted to use a more textbook definition than my personal one. I enjoy watching most of Sheldrake's talks. I know Graham has aligned himself with some oddballs, but personally the only message I see from him really pushing is that humans are far older than we think we are and showing evidence of that. That vice article is some straight propaganda written by someone who never has watched the videos of experiments or read the data they and others supporting the theory put out. Not everything is sound with it, but the fact remains plasma and electromagnetism do play a much bigger part in this than we are usually told. I have dug into a lot of older theories and this is really old think coming back with more modern experiments and data to support it but as before fraught with contention.

I think Graham claims and infers a lot more than that, but I kind of like his style anyway. I think a lot of us were told in a general way that people long ago were very primitive and stupid and I like things that challenge this notion, it's clearly quite wrong and I believe the agenda there is largely to support "enlightenment" ideas without challenge.

I'll look into EU more, I guess I'm not well read up on it enough to say more. I will say though (it's obvious) that old / ancient knowledge is not correct by virtue of it's age or reverence by peoples or cultures in which it was developed. If you don't let the research guide you then bias is baked into the results. But that mightn't apply here!

In any case thanks for putting me on to EU, regardless of what it turns out to be 😁

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