Worship science? Not so fast!

According to the online Merraim-Webster Dictionary there are two definitions of scientism. The first is "methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to the natural scientist". The second is "an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities)".

It was the second definition that I was thinking of as I read this article about fraud in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Key quote from the article:

Some 120 papers published in established scientific journals over the last few years have been found to be frauds, created by nothing more than an automated word generator that puts random, fancy-sounding words together in plausible sentence structures. As a result they have been pulled from the journals that originally published them.

The rise of scientism in Western society - an outright worship of science, in some cases - is one of the most disturbing societal trends in human history. Science has become a religion to many secularists, and is in danger of ceasing to be science at all.

Two examples of this scientism are the theories of evolution and global warming. Both are asserted to be "settled science" (read: holy scripture) by their more fanatical believers. Advocates of these theories in the scientific community are worshipped as priests or prophets. Dissenters, even if they are scientists, are smeared as heretics and enemies of the True Faith. Science is in danger of becoming a sacred priesthood in which only those who state a priori that everything must have a naturalistic explanation, or whose theories conform to what a handful say is real science, will be considered authentic scientists.

I believe than most scientists are distressed by the fraud uncovered in the aforementioned article. One of the forces driving this fraud is the "publish or perish" mentality in most major universities, in which young faculty members seeking tenure must publish a certain number of articles in peer-reviewed journals. In those circumstances the temptation to cut corners is powerful. But despite what many scientists may have come to believe, publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal is not part of the scientific method. Perhaps it is time to reconsider the unusual emphasis many universities have on publication in journals.

Yet the real problem posed by scientism is not from those in the scientific community, although hucksters and hotheads like Dr. Michael Mann and Dr. Richard Dawkins don't help science very much. Instead, it is non-scientists in politics and the media who pose a bigger danger. These individuals see science (or, to be more accurate, scientific-sounding jargon) as a weapon that can be used to squelch ideas and opinions they disagree with. The use of the phrase "settled science" is revealing, since it indicates the speaker knows little or nothing about actual science. If they did, they would know that outmoded scientific theories are abandoned because they no longer attract any defenders, and not because some talking head on TV says so. Evolution and global warming are on shaky ground because - contrary to their advocates most fervent beliefs - the scientific evidence for both is weak.

Scientism asserts that science is supreme, the one human pursuit that holds the promise of being completely free of bias and error. The truth is exactly the opposite: science can be just as biased and inaccurate as any other human endeavor - and all the more dangerous because some of its advocates are bogus enough to claim otherwise.