science

i’ve never understood the whole “the science has been settled on this issue” argument. it kind of gives science a bad name. it’s statements like this that make conservatives hate science and deem its arguments meaningless or frivolous.

the real deal is that science never settles on anything. anything. that is why i love it so ardently. scientific research doesn’t prove things, or provide succinct answers… rather, it makes the questions more invigorating, and answers more mysterious.

[note: the question of the earth being flat and other such self withstanding phenomena are outside of the realm i am addressing because they are not correlational with other phenomena. likewise, we may someday discover that earth really isn't round after all, but is part of a ten dimensional schema which gives us the perception of its being round.]

how do i place any weight in the arguments made by science if i believe this to be the case? well first of all, you have to make the distinction between basic science and pseudoscience (or the politically preferred, applied science). the former being research for the sake of making connections between cause and effect, and discovering interaction between phenomena with the understanding that what the discovery reveals may or may not be the answer to an important question… like the cure for cancer (which for the record, i believe is RNAi). the latter, then, is science for the purpose of moving money: find this cure, find that technology, we will fund you if you provide us with an answer, we will fund you if you side with us on this policy issue. i fucking hate money.

that being said, in believing that scientific answers lead to heightened mystery, i avoid discrediting the substance science provides by referring only to basic science, and excluding pseudoscience. pseudoscience takes the hints and suggestions of scientific findings and exaggerates and tweaks them to make a pronounced argument (lead levels in kids causes this behavior, tobacco causes cancer, etc.). basic science takes the same hints and suggestions and throws them into society as just that – possibility. this has been shown to work under a set of conditions which are all we have to rely on at this point in time to mimic the conditions of the public. let’s throw the information (or drug) out into society and see if those conditions were accurately mimicked and if our discovery has enduring merit. i astutely believe that the answers provided by basic science - if properly interpreted by the public in the way i’ve just described – can provide answers to questions while at the same time be subject to contradiction by progression of scientific inquiry. that is the nature of science. all answers are subject to being proven wrong, or to one of several possible answers.

so yes, the science is settled in pseudoscience to the end that it settles where the money tells it to, and does not respond well to criticism or contradiction. basic science, on the other hand, is never settled. and yet, i believe the latter is the genre that lends greater value to expanding our understanding of the world and our implementation of technology and healing processes.