The main premise of this article comes from Ian King's book Barbells and Bullshit.
Last night I got on Facebook saw a post that blew my mind. Ian King was offering one of his eBooks for free. I was pumped because this normally costs around 30 dollars.
I started reading this book and I was shitting my pants because the premise of his book was exactly what I've been thinking about for some time. He talks about dogma and its various forms. He states that society used to blindly follow a mind set because the "the Bible used to tell me so," and now society has a new bible, Science.
People will blindly follow any paper that comes out. They incorrectly apply science to their own point of view and think because something has statistically been shown it is fact. This simple minded state will continue to exist for some time. Because they've read one Fox News or Huffington post article they are immediately an expert on the topic. They KNOW that they are correct and will argue their "proven" perspective furiously, even if it defies common sense.
Par of this could be due to the format of the education system in the United States. We are fact learners, we are "scientifically" based, and we've killed art. We've killed intuition and we've accepted the notion that if something works for you and it's contrary to science you are wrong.
Science is a wonderful tool. Sadly, the vast majority of people in the United States have no clue how to use it. Science tells you what happened based on a set of parameters. You hope that the data is valid, and you should be more willing to accept that it's valid based on how many people are capable of reproducing the data given the parameters.
Next point. Professionals are dying. We had a professor that told us the difference between doctors and nurses. He said nurses are technicians. They follow guidelines and they are not supposed to use intuition. Doctors use intuition, experience, and knowledge and use it as an art form blending it perfectly together. They will fail, and they will be held accountable, but they will do their best. That is a high ass standard, but there is nothing else I would rather have. Teachers and doctors are in the same boat. We are over regulated and overly influenced by money. The students and patients best interest are not taken into account. The title given to this is evidence based medicine and standardized testing. Professionals need to be able to modify their practice in order to best suit their client, student or patients, needs. As soon as you start basing everything in your life off of statistics and numbers you are dead. And this is why I believe science is the new religion.
Lifting and Diet:
I've been training for a power lifting meet for about 5 weeks now. The meet is on April 6th and I've been using Paul Carter's Strong 15 program. Which is pretty much a 9 week strength peaking program. I struggled mentally because I cut down to 3 training days a week. I'm buying in and I don't want to evaluate the program until it's completed.
My weight is fine. I've cleaned up my diet especially since lent began. The one thing I will say about Islam and Christianity. Lent and Ramadan (sorry if spelled wrong) are phenomenal times of the year. They allow you to refocus. As much as I love to say we should be doing shit right all year, which we should, it's nice to have the ability to start a new habit. These seasons I think are better than New Years because they have start and end days. It gives you a goal to start a good habit or end a bad one. Typically by the end of the period of time it has become an ingrained part of your daily life.
Quote:
Time is the profound magnifier. If you are making a mistake it will become magnified with time, and if you're doing something right it will show with time.
I (and Zak, especially) balk at the notion of science as religion, because on the surface, the comparison makes no sense. But when I re-read your article, I believe I know where you are coming from, and it largely has to do with perception of science based on bias and shoddy reporting. In a perfect world, science reporting would include information on replication, variables, and professionally developed applications. Same goes with education research. But I don't think this is the definition of science that you are referring to.
ReplyDeleteWhat we see instead in science and research reporting are brief snapshots of preliminary information which people then apply to their own existing bias. You could find A single study to back up virtually anything, without knowing whether it was a control study or anything. I read an article recently talking about the benefits of some drug (I wish I could remember where I saw it) where the "reporter" went on and on about how miraculous it was, until the very final, two-sentence conclusion where they admitted that the researchers themselves said it was preliminary and "could not determine with certainty whether the results were causation or correlation. Well... okay then. Hysteria for nothing.
Same goes for applications of educational "Research." In a perfect world where all variables were accounted for, standardized testing would be great. But students eat different things, come from different family backgrounds, are on different levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, etc. etc. Medicine and education depends heavily on research and science. But they are also an art, heavily dependent on intuition and experience. I wish more people were actually science literate (the real culprit here, along with the media) so we were able to apply learning in a more meaningful and reasoned way.
tl;dr I agree with you.
If you ever want clarification on the position I'm trying to present please ask. Thanks for the comment. Mad love.
ReplyDeleteA point I was trying to present was accept things for what they are. Don't try to make things more than they are. When you get a suggestion, whether it's from an "expert" or form a scientific paper, apply it to your life and see if it holds true. Experiment on your own. Determine strengths and weaknesses. Recognize the good that can come from science and religion, and recognize their limitations.
To elaborate on a point you made in your last paragraph. In real life there are an infinite number of variables. Good science always tries to limit variables to a minimal amount. Unfortunately this means science does not always translate to what was a seemingly similar scenario. This is what I believe is the greatest limitation in most science.