Science Lies!

[Weird Harold]

Aren't you ignoring the great role the Arabs had in founding scientific thought?
Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (965-1040), later known to Europeans as Alhazen, is often credited as the founder of the scientific method.

Nope, not ignoring the Arab contribution at all -- Where do you think the Jesuits got many of their ideas?

The point is that what Europeans consider "Science" -- which until relatively recently did completely ignore the Arabic contributions, along with many other sources the Jesuits cribbed from -- is derived and formulated by people who were "Jesuit Trained" and who shared basic assumptions drilled into them as "facts" by their instructors.

Many of those basic assumptions are only now being challenged as we gain the ability to measure more closely and detect ever smaller particles. Just as the once indivisible atom powers our computers by being split, the basic assumptions that our reconstructions of pre-history are constantly changing.

Which brings me back to the point that reconstructions from fragmentary evidence are not proof and without proof, there can be no dis-proof. The only real difference between Ussher's calculations and the calculations of when the BIg BAng occured is that Ussher didn't believe there was anys uch thing as Prehistory, there was just biblical times and the present.

"Preponderance of the Evidence" is avery strong argument, but it isn't proof, and until HG Wells deigns to stop by an loan us his time machine, there is no way to get more than a prepondereance of evidence for any event prior to the invention of writing and History.

 

[xssve]

True, it does require a leap a certain leap of faith to get from evidence to probability - the scientific method for instance predicts that the sun will rise tomorrow and even where and when - naturally, based on the knowledge that it doesn't "rise" at all, but the Earth rotates and orbits the sun, etc. - cause and effect.

Religion is the art of coming up with magical explanations for natural phenomena, i.e., the sun is a bronze disk pulled across the sky by a team of horses, or whatever. Which may be the reason, at least in Christianity, nature is viewed with the utmost suspicion, fear, and even hatred, as it is chock full of malign and mysterious magical forces - when 100,000 people are killed by an "act of god" for example, they must have done something to deserve it. Nature is not unpredictable, but it is chaotic.

Hence duality, which is essentially a politically convenient way of oversimplifying complex phenomena, given impetus by appealing to the desire to avoid such "divine" punishment through ritualized behavior.

Corporate science, unfortunately, often takes advantage of the same sort of fear and gullibility that makes religion so popular - as I say, they are both human institutions - it's just that science is, strictly speaking, a process, not an institution per se.

 

[xssve]

Anyway, reality breaks down like this: the parent object is objective reality, i.e., the actual state of all energy in the universe at a given moment, and exists outside your senses.

We can, however, only apprehend this objective reality via our senses, and we construct subjective, individual models of reality, which we then compare, discuss and argue about in order to come to some sort of consensus about what is real and what isn't.

There are, of course, two competing models: objective consensus reality and subjective consensus reality, and any given paradigm usually includes a bit of both.

Science represents objective consensus reality, insofar as it represents a process of examining objective reality for clues about how it works, and the result is, eventually, useful and predictive information - I say eventually, because the process never really stops - the hierarchal, Aristotelian paradigm has been supplanted by chaos and systems theories, Cartesian duality by bio-psychology and evolutionary psychology, etc., i.e., more advanced and predictive paradigms, and this is because science is not an institution, but a methodology, even if scientists often behave as an institution, and as such, theoretically represents the current state of objective consensus reality.

The propensity to generate and perpetuate static models that is the hallmark of religion must be conceived of as a largely a human trait, we are, for the most part, prone to the same hierarchal political patterns of our primate progenitors.

This means essentially that we fight over status, and the institutionalization of status provides certain inherent advantages for the individuals empowered by these institutions, be it religion or science, and thus there is always the impetus by the socially empowered to protect the status quo - not because it's an objective analysis, but because it's convenient to them personally.

The OP presents a case where a certain status quo was being presented and defended, for reasons that are not entirely clear, though the suspicion on my part is that the primary motive was to let insurance companies off the hook for a chronic condition, which they wouldn't be required to compensate for if it didn't exist.

Thus, what we have is not science "lying" - there were dissenting viewpoints, and empirical evidence to back up this dissent, i.e., scientific debate - what we have is what is most likely a politically appointed committee spinning the science for the convenience of certain insurance companies, i.e., protecting status quo by suppressing the opposing viewpoints - politics in short.

Insurance companies are not in the game to advance human knowledge and contribute to our understanding of objective reality, they aren't even in business to compensate people for their troubles, they're in business to make money, and naturally, the most profitable thing to sell is that which costs you nothing to produce.