WEBVTT 00:00:00.170 --> 00:00:03.509 Welcome to Overeducated and Underemployed. I'm 00:00:03.509 --> 00:00:07.710 Fettin, and today we are talking about the scientific 00:00:07.710 --> 00:00:11.310 method. And how the scientific method has actually 00:00:11.310 --> 00:00:16.350 contributed to the mistrust and lack of understanding 00:00:16.350 --> 00:00:20.190 of science. E .O. Wilson, who was a Pulitzer 00:00:20.190 --> 00:00:24.410 Prize winning biologist and someone that I actually 00:00:24.410 --> 00:00:26.410 met a couple of times before he passed away a 00:00:26.410 --> 00:00:30.160 few years ago. E .O. Wilson, Ed Wilson. Once 00:00:30.160 --> 00:00:34.340 said, we're drowning in information while we're 00:00:34.340 --> 00:00:37.359 starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will 00:00:37.359 --> 00:00:40.579 be run by synthesizers. People able to put together 00:00:40.579 --> 00:00:43.000 the right information at the right time, think 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:45.579 critically about it, and make important choices 00:00:45.579 --> 00:00:47.899 wisely. I'm not going to pretend to be one of 00:00:47.899 --> 00:00:51.039 those people. But I do think that I've stumbled 00:00:51.039 --> 00:00:57.179 upon a pretty clear explanation for why there 00:00:57.179 --> 00:01:02.289 are so many people that are so quick to be dismissive 00:01:02.289 --> 00:01:05.170 of scientific inquiry. We're going to talk about 00:01:05.170 --> 00:01:07.349 the scientific method. And we're not going to 00:01:07.349 --> 00:01:09.489 just talk about the actual scientific method 00:01:09.489 --> 00:01:12.670 and whether or not there even is one. And we're 00:01:12.670 --> 00:01:15.810 going to talk about the traditional scientific 00:01:15.810 --> 00:01:19.030 method that is taught to people in science education 00:01:19.030 --> 00:01:23.549 across the world that most of us are already 00:01:23.549 --> 00:01:26.829 thinking about right now. Observation, hypothesis. 00:01:28.569 --> 00:01:32.530 experiment, etc, etc. I know I jumped around 00:01:32.530 --> 00:01:34.090 there and that doesn't really matter because 00:01:34.090 --> 00:01:40.030 that's a heuristic device that was largely constructed 00:01:40.030 --> 00:01:44.769 in the 19th and early 20th century as a way to 00:01:44.769 --> 00:01:48.209 help professionalize science. Is it a description 00:01:48.209 --> 00:01:52.510 of the way science works sometimes? Sure. I don't 00:01:52.510 --> 00:01:55.790 think there's anything wrong with using the way 00:01:55.790 --> 00:01:59.700 that the Scientific method is described in science 00:01:59.700 --> 00:02:02.920 education as a heuristic device to understand 00:02:02.920 --> 00:02:07.560 how science works. That's fine. What it is not 00:02:07.560 --> 00:02:11.180 is the way that science always must be done all 00:02:11.180 --> 00:02:14.219 the time, or even the way that science is actually 00:02:14.219 --> 00:02:18.840 done most of the time. Science is definitely 00:02:18.840 --> 00:02:22.000 bound by our culture, but what makes it different 00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:26.319 than, say, religion or... superstition or mythology 00:02:26.319 --> 00:02:31.560 or even just a regular belief is that the findings 00:02:31.560 --> 00:02:35.759 of science can be repeated the public has access 00:02:35.759 --> 00:02:38.240 to those findings and the evidence that supports 00:02:38.240 --> 00:02:43.759 them and the fact that we are willing to update 00:02:43.759 --> 00:02:48.080 our understanding of the world in the scientific 00:02:48.080 --> 00:02:52.099 community with new information when new information 00:02:52.099 --> 00:02:55.240 presents itself We can integrate that information 00:02:55.240 --> 00:02:59.500 into our worldview. The worldview isn't fixed, 00:02:59.780 --> 00:03:02.699 right? That being said, science at any given 00:03:02.699 --> 00:03:07.280 time is only the best understanding that we have 00:03:07.280 --> 00:03:11.680 of the physical world at that time. So the scientific 00:03:11.680 --> 00:03:16.319 method, if taught as an example, can help people 00:03:16.319 --> 00:03:20.120 understand some of the ways that we... validate 00:03:20.120 --> 00:03:22.759 the information within the scientific community 00:03:22.759 --> 00:03:26.439 and the processes that they follow. They're not 00:03:26.439 --> 00:03:29.539 universal though. And teaching them is part of 00:03:29.539 --> 00:03:35.900 what has led to some of the biggest misunderstandings 00:03:35.900 --> 00:03:40.500 of the way that science operates that we've seen. 00:03:40.620 --> 00:03:44.180 When you think about the way science is actually 00:03:44.180 --> 00:03:47.830 conducted, versus the way that we talk about 00:03:47.830 --> 00:03:50.930 the scientific method in science education, the 00:03:50.930 --> 00:03:53.990 way science is actually conducted is messy and 00:03:53.990 --> 00:04:01.590 full of cultural presuppositions and bound by 00:04:01.590 --> 00:04:06.710 the desires of the people that make decisions 00:04:06.710 --> 00:04:10.689 about what gets researched and what gets ignored 00:04:10.689 --> 00:04:14.009 and what projects get funding and what don't. 00:04:14.349 --> 00:04:17.850 There's no denying any of that. And to talk about 00:04:17.850 --> 00:04:20.449 the scientific method without talking about any 00:04:20.449 --> 00:04:25.089 of that makes it seem like science really isn't 00:04:25.089 --> 00:04:28.689 trustworthy once you start to learn about all 00:04:28.689 --> 00:04:33.009 these cultural influences that can happen with 00:04:33.009 --> 00:04:36.170 science. But the difference is repeatability, 00:04:36.370 --> 00:04:41.589 time, and our willingness to adjust our worldview 00:04:41.589 --> 00:04:44.660 based on new information. Now, some philosophers 00:04:44.660 --> 00:04:48.019 of science have said that you don't ever really 00:04:48.019 --> 00:04:52.199 convince people that disagree with you once you 00:04:52.199 --> 00:04:54.839 have new information. Once they're set in their 00:04:54.839 --> 00:04:58.500 ways, you argue with them until they die. And 00:04:58.500 --> 00:05:00.720 a new generation of scientists is brought up 00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:03.920 in the newer worldview. But that's going down 00:05:03.920 --> 00:05:05.740 a rabbit hole that I'm not really prepared to 00:05:05.740 --> 00:05:09.060 tackle today. What I am prepared to tackle is 00:05:09.060 --> 00:05:13.069 the idea that the... scientific method and i'm 00:05:13.069 --> 00:05:16.550 using air quotes here the scientific method is 00:05:16.550 --> 00:05:19.490 even a thing in fact the way that the scientific 00:05:19.490 --> 00:05:23.389 method is taught in schools varies and the way 00:05:23.389 --> 00:05:27.029 that it's framed to students has a severe impact 00:05:27.029 --> 00:05:30.889 on the way that they understand how science works 00:05:30.889 --> 00:05:34.850 that's been well documented you can check out 00:05:34.850 --> 00:05:38.670 a paper from 2003 called attitudes towards science 00:05:39.310 --> 00:05:41.569 It's a review of the literature and its implications. 00:05:41.889 --> 00:05:44.370 It's from the International Journal of Science 00:05:44.370 --> 00:05:49.209 Education. Essentially, just exposing exactly 00:05:49.209 --> 00:05:51.589 what I'm talking about. Traditional education 00:05:51.589 --> 00:05:56.709 has taught that there's this set of strict methodology 00:05:56.709 --> 00:05:59.769 and step -by -step process that scientists operate 00:05:59.769 --> 00:06:02.649 by. And scientists have been pushing back for 00:06:02.649 --> 00:06:06.689 a long time against this, arguing that there 00:06:06.689 --> 00:06:11.139 isn't a unified future. scientific method that 00:06:11.139 --> 00:06:15.480 doesn't reflect how science actually works it 00:06:15.480 --> 00:06:17.800 like i said it can be used as a heuristic tool 00:06:17.800 --> 00:06:20.519 to help people understand some of the scientific 00:06:20.519 --> 00:06:23.199 processes and things like that but if science 00:06:23.199 --> 00:06:27.060 is bound by our culture and bound by the attitudes 00:06:27.060 --> 00:06:30.379 and presuppositions of the people that do it 00:06:30.379 --> 00:06:33.660 and the way that we teach science to the general 00:06:33.660 --> 00:06:36.980 population affects how they view science as a 00:06:36.980 --> 00:06:41.800 field then we're automatically poisoning the 00:06:41.800 --> 00:06:46.100 well before they even decide whether or not to 00:06:46.100 --> 00:06:49.420 become scientists sometimes. If we're not teaching 00:06:49.420 --> 00:06:52.839 a clear understanding of how science does work, 00:06:53.040 --> 00:06:57.600 it makes people think people aren't doing science 00:06:57.600 --> 00:07:00.379 when they see scientists doing things other than 00:07:00.379 --> 00:07:02.399 what they were taught as the scientific method. 00:07:02.680 --> 00:07:08.779 And it also gives people a very rigid view. of 00:07:08.779 --> 00:07:12.500 what science should and can be, which results 00:07:12.500 --> 00:07:16.839 in a very narrow focus in the science being done 00:07:16.839 --> 00:07:20.220 by the people with those worldviews. And I'm 00:07:20.220 --> 00:07:24.180 talking about scientists who just have a very 00:07:24.180 --> 00:07:28.759 limited view of what they think science's underlying 00:07:28.759 --> 00:07:33.439 methods are, right? That being said, we're constantly 00:07:33.439 --> 00:07:37.639 shifting the way that... experiments are done 00:07:37.639 --> 00:07:41.540 hypotheses are tested how even observations are 00:07:41.540 --> 00:07:45.720 formed even the tools that we develop can change 00:07:45.720 --> 00:07:49.819 our understanding of what an observation is or 00:07:49.819 --> 00:07:54.500 what can be observed so if science doesn't really 00:07:54.500 --> 00:07:57.339 operate by the scientific method and it's bound 00:07:57.339 --> 00:08:00.980 by our culture how can we trust it what does 00:08:00.980 --> 00:08:05.620 hold the scientific community together if it's 00:08:05.620 --> 00:08:09.560 not a set of standard methodologies. When I started 00:08:09.560 --> 00:08:11.399 this episode, I really thought I was talking 00:08:11.399 --> 00:08:14.180 just about the scientific method. As I started 00:08:14.180 --> 00:08:17.120 planning it, I started realizing that I'm really 00:08:17.120 --> 00:08:21.259 just talking about the reasons people do not 00:08:21.259 --> 00:08:24.279 trust science. That brings me to Lee Smolin. 00:08:24.519 --> 00:08:31.000 So if scientists are bound by anything at all, 00:08:31.160 --> 00:08:34.740 it's not a methodology. The first double -blind 00:08:34.740 --> 00:08:40.000 study wasn't even conducted until 1937. Placebo 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:43.600 study was not even conducted until 1937. What 00:08:43.600 --> 00:08:47.720 we can observe now would have been unfathomable 00:08:47.720 --> 00:08:51.720 to scientists 200 years ago. You couldn't even 00:08:51.720 --> 00:08:56.639 really explain some of the discoveries that we've 00:08:56.639 --> 00:09:01.419 made now to somebody from 200 years ago because... 00:09:01.850 --> 00:09:05.889 the foundations of what make up our belief have 00:09:05.889 --> 00:09:09.690 changed so much. It hasn't even been 200 years 00:09:09.690 --> 00:09:12.929 since the origin of species by means of natural 00:09:12.929 --> 00:09:15.529 selection was released. Now that's a really good 00:09:15.529 --> 00:09:19.690 case study of how science works. Because you 00:09:19.690 --> 00:09:22.789 had a man who did a lot of the things that you 00:09:22.789 --> 00:09:24.669 might be able to recognize in the scientific 00:09:24.669 --> 00:09:28.669 method, but he made multiple observations based 00:09:28.669 --> 00:09:32.059 on... entirely other fields of science or sometimes 00:09:32.059 --> 00:09:35.340 not even science at all. Around the time that 00:09:35.340 --> 00:09:38.500 Darwin was on the Beagle, they were building 00:09:38.500 --> 00:09:43.580 railroads across the United States and tunnels. 00:09:43.840 --> 00:09:46.919 And when you blow up mountains, you start to 00:09:46.919 --> 00:09:50.639 find fossils. You also start to understand geologic 00:09:50.639 --> 00:09:53.879 time in a new way when you cut into a mountain. 00:09:54.200 --> 00:09:57.980 So all of these things were bound by our culture. 00:09:58.649 --> 00:10:01.389 The fact that we were building railroads at all, 00:10:01.429 --> 00:10:05.649 had the advance in technology to colonize further, 00:10:05.909 --> 00:10:10.870 to need railways to transport goods, all of these 00:10:10.870 --> 00:10:13.850 things that were bound by our culture and our 00:10:13.850 --> 00:10:16.690 human achievement that really didn't have much 00:10:16.690 --> 00:10:20.210 to do with science, are what led to geologists 00:10:20.210 --> 00:10:24.450 understanding just how old the Earth was. And 00:10:24.450 --> 00:10:27.870 when you increase that geologic timescale, And 00:10:27.870 --> 00:10:31.389 you start to recognize changes over time in certain 00:10:31.389 --> 00:10:34.250 populations of species. And then you bring in 00:10:34.250 --> 00:10:37.809 something like Malthus, right? Who's a sociologist 00:10:37.809 --> 00:10:40.370 who talked about how there would never be enough 00:10:40.370 --> 00:10:45.029 resources to feed the number of people in a society. 00:10:45.429 --> 00:10:49.129 We would always have some level of starvation 00:10:49.129 --> 00:10:52.649 and poverty. And he puts all these things together 00:10:52.649 --> 00:10:55.009 and then combines them with his observations 00:10:55.009 --> 00:10:58.070 in the natural world. To develop his theory of 00:10:58.070 --> 00:11:00.850 natural selection. And then he sits on it for 00:11:00.850 --> 00:11:03.649 20 years and he confirms it. And essentially 00:11:03.649 --> 00:11:07.169 does what the scientific community is set up 00:11:07.169 --> 00:11:10.809 to do after a discovery is made. But he understood 00:11:10.809 --> 00:11:16.350 the implications of his discovery. And he wanted 00:11:16.350 --> 00:11:19.070 to be very sure. And I'll tell the story a little 00:11:19.070 --> 00:11:21.690 bit later down the line in the podcast. Another 00:11:21.690 --> 00:11:25.590 episode about Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles 00:11:25.590 --> 00:11:29.690 Darwin. Thomas Henry Huxley and how this young 00:11:29.690 --> 00:11:32.570 dude with barely any evidence almost published 00:11:32.570 --> 00:11:35.470 Darwin's theory right out from under him. But 00:11:35.470 --> 00:11:38.350 if anything, that just suggests that the theory 00:11:38.350 --> 00:11:41.509 was somewhat inevitable based on the information 00:11:41.509 --> 00:11:44.870 that we had already discovered as a society, 00:11:45.049 --> 00:11:49.590 as a humankind. Now, what Darwin discovered has 00:11:49.590 --> 00:11:53.070 been refined and changed and there have been 00:11:53.070 --> 00:11:55.090 all sorts of new discoveries made about what 00:11:55.090 --> 00:11:58.009 he was talking about. But you couldn't even really 00:11:58.009 --> 00:12:06.190 talk biology to someone prior to 1859 with our 00:12:06.190 --> 00:12:09.769 lexicon and way of thinking. If you go to Animal 00:12:09.769 --> 00:12:13.610 Kingdom at Disney World and you visit their little 00:12:13.610 --> 00:12:17.649 conservation island, Rafiki's Conservation Island, 00:12:17.870 --> 00:12:21.529 right? You enter their conservation center and 00:12:21.529 --> 00:12:25.509 you see a Dobchansky quote, Theodosius Dobchansky. 00:12:26.080 --> 00:12:28.840 who said nothing in biology makes sense except 00:12:28.840 --> 00:12:31.639 in the light of evolution. He said this in 1973. 00:12:35.639 --> 00:12:39.539 124 years after the theory of evolution, the 00:12:39.539 --> 00:12:42.259 theory of natural selection, rather, was published. 00:12:42.559 --> 00:12:47.659 In just 124 years, the view of scientists was 00:12:47.659 --> 00:12:51.620 that nothing in biology even made sense anymore. 00:12:52.440 --> 00:12:54.639 if you didn't look at it through the lens of 00:12:54.639 --> 00:12:57.279 Charles Darwin's work. And that brings me to 00:12:57.279 --> 00:13:00.740 Lee Smolin. So if science isn't operating on 00:13:00.740 --> 00:13:06.279 like a set of methodologies, then what is it? 00:13:06.340 --> 00:13:08.379 Because there's obviously something holding it 00:13:08.379 --> 00:13:12.600 all together. Smolin boiled it down to two ethical 00:13:12.600 --> 00:13:16.860 principles that we all follow. So in 2013, Lee 00:13:16.860 --> 00:13:21.379 wrote an essay, article, for Big Think, which... 00:13:21.850 --> 00:13:24.669 is an online publication. The publication isn't 00:13:24.669 --> 00:13:27.669 really what matters because the author is credible. 00:13:27.970 --> 00:13:31.909 Lee Smolin is a very well -regarded philosopher 00:13:31.909 --> 00:13:37.309 of science. Big Think is a pop science type website. 00:13:38.289 --> 00:13:41.250 This was not in some kind of academic journal, 00:13:41.450 --> 00:13:44.330 which is really a shame because I think he's 00:13:44.330 --> 00:13:47.070 onto something here. Lee Smolin says there is 00:13:47.070 --> 00:13:49.309 no scientific method. That's the name of the 00:13:49.309 --> 00:13:52.549 article. He says that science is actually guided 00:13:52.549 --> 00:13:55.769 by two ethical principles. He says, we agree 00:13:55.769 --> 00:13:58.529 to tell the truth and we agree to be governed 00:13:58.529 --> 00:14:01.629 by rational argument from public evidence. Okay. 00:14:01.850 --> 00:14:05.570 And secondly, when the evidence is not sufficient 00:14:05.570 --> 00:14:08.049 to decide from rational argument, whether one 00:14:08.049 --> 00:14:10.110 point of view is right or another point of view 00:14:10.110 --> 00:14:13.350 is right, we agree to encourage competition and 00:14:13.350 --> 00:14:17.889 diversification. He goes on to clarify that he 00:14:17.889 --> 00:14:21.389 does not want. Some kind of a free -for -all, 00:14:21.429 --> 00:14:25.830 anything goes scenario. He's still talking about 00:14:25.830 --> 00:14:30.450 science being done by accredited scientists who 00:14:30.450 --> 00:14:33.169 had scientific training in a university. And 00:14:33.169 --> 00:14:35.190 he's talking about the ethics within the community 00:14:35.190 --> 00:14:37.629 of people who have that accreditation and are 00:14:37.629 --> 00:14:40.269 working within that community. I think thinking 00:14:40.269 --> 00:14:42.710 about science as being guided by these ethical 00:14:42.710 --> 00:14:46.250 principles instead of being guided by some methodology 00:14:46.250 --> 00:14:51.230 is... really useful in a lot of ways for one 00:14:51.230 --> 00:14:54.990 our ethical principles are something that we 00:14:54.990 --> 00:14:58.289 tend to carry around with us a lot more within 00:14:58.289 --> 00:15:02.250 our person than some methodology that just exists 00:15:02.250 --> 00:15:04.750 out there in the world it's really important 00:15:04.750 --> 00:15:07.450 that when we start to get into scientific debate 00:15:07.450 --> 00:15:10.450 with people if we start asking them about their 00:15:10.450 --> 00:15:13.110 methodology there's all kinds of ways that they 00:15:13.110 --> 00:15:15.629 can answer that because there's all kinds of 00:15:15.629 --> 00:15:18.600 ways that you can do science And I'm not saying 00:15:18.600 --> 00:15:20.320 that their methodologies would be valid, but 00:15:20.320 --> 00:15:22.940 it's a lot easier to disguise it than if you 00:15:22.940 --> 00:15:25.519 operate from, are they operating from these two 00:15:25.519 --> 00:15:29.299 ethical principles that all scientists seem to 00:15:29.299 --> 00:15:32.200 agree on? And no, I'm not talking about science 00:15:32.200 --> 00:15:35.080 shaping public policy. I'm talking about scientific 00:15:35.080 --> 00:15:38.200 discovery. When it comes to science shaping public 00:15:38.200 --> 00:15:42.100 policy, obviously it should. I don't necessarily 00:15:42.100 --> 00:15:45.679 know what the answer is when you have policymakers 00:15:45.679 --> 00:15:50.169 who are not participating in those ethical principles 00:15:50.169 --> 00:15:54.549 but to start to debate them when they aren't 00:15:54.549 --> 00:15:57.710 even operating within the same framework that 00:15:57.710 --> 00:16:01.769 you are is really a fool's errand and that's 00:16:01.769 --> 00:16:06.190 part of what has denigrated the integrity of 00:16:06.190 --> 00:16:09.309 the scientific community the perception of it 00:16:09.309 --> 00:16:12.649 at least Because when you start to have scientific 00:16:12.649 --> 00:16:14.850 debates with people that aren't even participating 00:16:14.850 --> 00:16:18.490 in the same framework of ethical principles that 00:16:18.490 --> 00:16:23.809 guide what make science possible, then you're 00:16:23.809 --> 00:16:26.309 going to be led down all these rabbit holes that 00:16:26.309 --> 00:16:30.330 have nothing to do with science. Now, why don't 00:16:30.330 --> 00:16:33.889 people trust science inherently already? Like, 00:16:33.889 --> 00:16:38.570 what makes them lean toward this kind of disposition 00:16:38.570 --> 00:16:41.139 to be? in a position where they're just like 00:16:41.139 --> 00:16:46.220 i'm easily swayed that science is false i think 00:16:46.220 --> 00:16:48.559 one you know when they're taught a fundamental 00:16:48.559 --> 00:16:51.379 misunderstanding of what science is when they're 00:16:51.379 --> 00:16:53.039 taught the methodologies instead of the ethical 00:16:53.039 --> 00:16:56.340 principles you're just talking about the things 00:16:56.340 --> 00:17:01.879 scientists do sometimes instead of what makes 00:17:01.879 --> 00:17:06.079 a scientist and so i think A lot of people think 00:17:06.079 --> 00:17:08.940 that they are engaging in scientific debate when 00:17:08.940 --> 00:17:12.519 they're not even playing by the same rules. And 00:17:12.519 --> 00:17:14.440 they're not even doing it maliciously, right? 00:17:14.559 --> 00:17:17.259 They're just having a different conversation. 00:17:17.599 --> 00:17:20.279 And a lot of the time this is the result of bad 00:17:20.279 --> 00:17:23.500 theology when it comes to people that mistrust 00:17:23.500 --> 00:17:27.559 science for religious reasons. Most people who 00:17:27.559 --> 00:17:33.000 don't believe in something like evolution because 00:17:33.000 --> 00:17:36.599 of a religious... belief hold that belief because 00:17:36.599 --> 00:17:40.500 they're usually operating from a god of the gaps 00:17:40.500 --> 00:17:44.660 type of theology and the god of the gaps is like 00:17:44.660 --> 00:17:48.960 wherever we don't know something that's where 00:17:48.960 --> 00:17:52.740 god is and it's fundamentally like it's bad science 00:17:52.740 --> 00:17:56.759 and it's bad theology because the more our understanding 00:17:56.759 --> 00:18:00.539 of the way that the physical world operates the 00:18:00.539 --> 00:18:05.670 smaller your god gets Right? So automatically, 00:18:06.029 --> 00:18:09.049 people with religious beliefs that have a God 00:18:09.049 --> 00:18:12.890 of the Gaps theology, anytime that new scientific 00:18:12.890 --> 00:18:16.089 information is brought to light, if they're operating 00:18:16.089 --> 00:18:18.769 from this theology, it's threatening their belief 00:18:18.769 --> 00:18:22.069 system. There's a really great book by a former 00:18:22.069 --> 00:18:24.609 professor of mine, my mentor, Michael Roos, called 00:18:24.609 --> 00:18:27.589 Darwinian Be a Christian. I highly recommend 00:18:27.589 --> 00:18:30.450 that book. He passed away last year, but he was 00:18:30.450 --> 00:18:33.769 very important. in the history of biology and 00:18:33.769 --> 00:18:38.130 particularly in the debate between evolution 00:18:38.130 --> 00:18:41.109 and creationism. He was actually the expert witness 00:18:41.109 --> 00:18:44.690 in the Arkansas trial. But the conclusion of 00:18:44.690 --> 00:18:46.970 his book, Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? is 00:18:46.970 --> 00:18:50.349 that yes, of course, a Darwinian can be a Christian 00:18:50.349 --> 00:18:53.430 if you don't operate from a God of the Gaps theology. 00:18:54.049 --> 00:18:57.450 Now what's another main reason as I start to 00:18:57.450 --> 00:19:01.930 wrap this episode up? Another main reason that 00:19:01.930 --> 00:19:04.710 people gain a mistrust for things in general 00:19:04.710 --> 00:19:07.769 is when they're done for profit. I've said previously 00:19:07.769 --> 00:19:09.289 I'm not going to get political on this show, 00:19:09.369 --> 00:19:12.410 and I don't intend to in the sense of talking 00:19:12.410 --> 00:19:14.809 about political candidates or even political 00:19:14.809 --> 00:19:19.210 issues, but Frank Zappa said that politics is 00:19:19.210 --> 00:19:21.369 the entertainment division of the military -industrial 00:19:21.369 --> 00:19:23.970 complex. I'm not going to talk about the entertainment 00:19:23.970 --> 00:19:25.829 division, but I will talk about the military 00:19:25.829 --> 00:19:29.319 -industrial complex. and the medical -industrial 00:19:29.319 --> 00:19:32.839 complex. And the combination of these two things, 00:19:33.039 --> 00:19:36.859 just like how the fact that we were building 00:19:36.859 --> 00:19:40.559 railroads helped determine what we were discovering 00:19:40.559 --> 00:19:45.079 in geology, the fundamental motivator of a lot 00:19:45.079 --> 00:19:48.980 of science being done is now financial. Now, 00:19:49.059 --> 00:19:51.720 the geological discoveries from the railroad 00:19:51.720 --> 00:19:55.279 were an unintended consequence of financial and 00:19:55.279 --> 00:19:59.569 economic decisions. that were driven by a multitude 00:19:59.569 --> 00:20:04.609 of human advancements. It's not like these people 00:20:04.609 --> 00:20:07.789 were going out and trying to make scientific 00:20:07.789 --> 00:20:10.970 discoveries in order to turn a profit. But that 00:20:10.970 --> 00:20:14.009 does sound really familiar, doesn't it? Does 00:20:14.009 --> 00:20:15.970 that process sound like something that you've 00:20:15.970 --> 00:20:20.269 seen? Because with medicine being for profit, 00:20:20.309 --> 00:20:24.990 with large amounts of what is being studied, 00:20:25.680 --> 00:20:28.039 nowadays, being determined by who gets grants. 00:20:28.380 --> 00:20:31.779 When you combine all of these complications that 00:20:31.779 --> 00:20:35.700 go into what has shaped the scientific community 00:20:35.700 --> 00:20:39.519 today, you really start to understand how, with 00:20:39.519 --> 00:20:42.579 just a little bit of motivation and a fundamental 00:20:42.579 --> 00:20:46.400 misunderstanding of what unites the scientific 00:20:46.400 --> 00:20:49.519 community, it's not a set of methodologies, but 00:20:49.519 --> 00:20:52.440 a set of ethical principles. The scientific method 00:20:52.440 --> 00:20:56.650 was a heuristic tool. literally invented for 00:20:56.650 --> 00:20:59.970 science education. There is no the scientific 00:20:59.970 --> 00:21:04.150 method. There are scientific methods. Those change. 00:21:04.269 --> 00:21:07.410 Those are shaped by culture. The reason that 00:21:07.410 --> 00:21:10.509 science works is because of the understanding 00:21:10.509 --> 00:21:12.890 and the agreement that scientists in the community 00:21:12.890 --> 00:21:16.829 have made to do their work with integrity, present 00:21:16.829 --> 00:21:19.789 their evidence publicly, and most importantly, 00:21:19.970 --> 00:21:23.940 being willing to change their worldview. based 00:21:23.940 --> 00:21:26.920 on new information. That doesn't even mean you 00:21:26.920 --> 00:21:29.960 have to say you were wrong. Newton was wrong, 00:21:30.119 --> 00:21:35.000 if we want to be fundamentally clear. But that 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:38.339 doesn't sound like the right way to characterize 00:21:38.339 --> 00:21:41.940 Newton. Newton was the most right that anybody 00:21:41.940 --> 00:21:44.720 was at his time. And when the scientific community 00:21:44.720 --> 00:21:49.599 reaches a consensus about a topic, you can usually 00:21:49.599 --> 00:21:53.490 bet that is the best understanding. That we have 00:21:53.490 --> 00:21:57.069 about a topic at this time. No matter what drove 00:21:57.069 --> 00:22:00.990 us to get there. Now, things not being studied. 00:22:01.329 --> 00:22:04.170 Things being studied at certain angles. That 00:22:04.170 --> 00:22:06.490 all impacts things. And I'm not saying it doesn't. 00:22:06.509 --> 00:22:09.549 And I'm not saying that science wouldn't be better 00:22:09.549 --> 00:22:13.809 off if it wasn't bound by our culture. But it 00:22:13.809 --> 00:22:18.789 is. Just like everything humans do is. Pretending 00:22:18.789 --> 00:22:21.960 it happens in a vacuum. only generates mistrust 00:22:21.960 --> 00:22:24.900 when people realize that it doesn't. And emphasizing 00:22:24.900 --> 00:22:31.279 what makes science outlast those cultural parameters 00:22:31.279 --> 00:22:35.640 and scientific discovery be more credible than 00:22:35.640 --> 00:22:38.539 the conditions that they were discovered in requires 00:22:38.539 --> 00:22:42.480 a completely new understanding of the way science 00:22:42.480 --> 00:22:45.839 works as taught in our science education system. 00:22:46.000 --> 00:22:49.059 Thanks for listening. I'm Fedden. This has been 00:22:49.059 --> 00:22:52.019 overeducated and underemployed. Shout out to 00:22:52.019 --> 00:22:55.500 Lee Baines for inspiring the title. If you want 00:22:55.500 --> 00:22:58.259 me to answer a question on the podcast, shoot 00:22:58.259 --> 00:23:03.759 me an email. FeddenXR at gmail .com. That's F 00:23:03.759 --> 00:23:09.180 -E -D -D -U -N -X -R at gmail .com. Check out 00:23:09.180 --> 00:23:11.920 Fedden .net. In the next week or so, I'll be 00:23:11.920 --> 00:23:15.099 launching Fedden's Top 40. It'll be a playlist 00:23:15.099 --> 00:23:18.140 that rotates every week. I'll change it up a 00:23:18.140 --> 00:23:20.299 little bit. It'll be available on both YouTube 00:23:20.299 --> 00:23:23.880 Music and Spotify. It'll be music that I'm talking 00:23:23.880 --> 00:23:26.740 about on the podcast, music by people I'm interviewing 00:23:26.740 --> 00:23:29.599 on the podcast, and some of it's just music I'm 00:23:29.599 --> 00:23:32.460 listening to and enjoying. Once again, I'm Fedden. 00:23:32.640 --> 00:23:35.039 This has been Overeducated and Underemployed. 00:23:35.339 --> 00:23:37.700 Thanks for listening. On the next episode, we've 00:23:37.700 --> 00:23:40.019 got Cole Taylor from Classic City Wrestling. 00:23:40.640 --> 00:23:42.759 He's going to tell us all about how to start 00:23:42.759 --> 00:23:45.559 a wrestling empire. I hope you join us.