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Mike S's picture

Addressing a few thoughts

Thanks for your comments.

First, science is very much unlike religion in the most fundamental of ways. Science, if performed well, does not seek observations to support its theories or assumptions, but instead seeks observations that invalidates them. Religions (of the sky gods) typically do not do this (though many Eastern religions, or maybe better stated, philosophies, do). For a practitioner of religion to act scientifically, they should not seek affirmation of their beliefs, but instead seek the one observation that would cause them to give up their beliefs. In science, there are no miracles, just unknowns (which may present themselves as outlying observations) with explanations to be discovered. In many religious practices, I would ask, why is it that if one child out of thousands is spared a death by cancer that this is evidence of, say, a miracle, but the other thousands of deaths have no bearing as observations that can make statements  for or against belief? Religion, then, seems to discount many, if not most, observations of the natural world, whereas science has an obligation to confront all observations. To say 'I don't know' or claim a miracle would effectively end the process of science, and thus be self-defeating. I actually don't categorize religion as pseudoscience though. I categorize it as nonscience.

 

Second, as individuals, scientists might have some insight as to what is ethical or not, but in another sense there is a real conflict of interest in having them tell others what is acceptable behavior on their part or is not. For instance, would you believe a study from a drug company that said their drug was harmless and cured all disease if the funding for the study of that drug came from the drug company itself? I would not, largely because the result would seem self serving. You should hold the same skepticism of scientists.

 

Lastly, science is ideally value free. As you point out, scientists are human and bring along all of the baggage that comes with being human. So, of course there are biases. That said, as humans, we can contemplate those biases and try to minimize them. I disagree with your stated assumption that humans are creatures with a moral and ethical center. Morals and ethics are human constructs as well (by the same reasoning you give to science). Acting morally or ethically probably boils down to acting within a set of evolved social rules, which can be shown to change with time (and aren't morals supposed to be universal truths?). Given the likely consequences of violating evolved ways of doing things, it isn't likely than many individuals, regardless of their occupation, would act immorally (their genes might not be represented very well in the next generation of humans if they did).

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