And what remains is merely a branch of the linked-bureaucracy - hence scientific success is no longer discovering something true, new and useful; but merely 'positional' success: careerism (status and its indices - jobs, prizes, money, power etc.)
Real science is essentially long-since dead and gone.
But, as the few remaining real scientists retire and die; the current generation become unaware of the gross frauds they actually are - arguing that most scientists conform to the (bureaucratic) requirements (primarily of obedience to line-management and conformity to explicit regulations); and thus are 'no worse' than average when it comes to careerism, greed, self-promotion and dishonesty.
And missing the fact that in science, the 'workers' must be better than average - especially in terms of truth-seeking and truth-speaking - much better than average (indeed near perfection is required in this respect); or else it just-isn't-science (and is just a lying, misleading and colossal waste of time, energy and money).
In considering whether our present crop of Potemkin scientists are sincerely unaware that they are not real scientists, I have to apply the corollary of Hanlon's Razor. Sometimes stupidity is not an adequate explanation. Popular edutainment stars like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson, or even Bill Nye, can hardly claim to be ignorant of the opposing viewpoints they frequently ridicule. They are too clever to fail to realize that they are deliberately employed to discredit and obfuscate actual science.
ReplyDeletePeople kept in line by bureaucratic management and the overt threat of losing their jobs/tenure/lives should they deviate from the party line cannot be considered actually deceived about the limits on their real intellectual freedom and honest discourse. They may come to be self deceived, but as the term must imply, that is their own choice.
There are a few coddled idiots, and possibly a majority of those in some of the more novel specialties of the social 'sciences' like gender-normative studies or whatever, who really are too stupid to realize that they are in no way scientists or even particularly intellectually gifted. But one has to go quite far into the culturally Marxist liberal arts before it is really true that the current generation is, on the whole, really not aware of what frauds they are.