this post was submitted on 29 May 2024
1311 points (98.1% liked)

Science Memes

11161 readers
1919 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] booly@sh.itjust.works 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Only facts should matter, only agreed truth should be the topic the rest of it is very obviously poisoning the entirety of the effort to understand our world.

I don't understand how you'd prioritize things using only facts, and not some kind of extrinsic value system that assigns weights to those facts.

Let's say you have a huge infrared telescope sitting at a Lagrange point, between the earth and the sun. How would you determine what it should be observing at any given time? There's only 8760 hours in a year, and the telescope was designed to last for 5 years, with the hope of 10 years. How do you divide up that finite resource?

Now do the same for every particle collider, double blind medical study, paleontological excavation, test nuclear reactor, etc., fighting for a finite amount of science money, and you'll have no choice but to define priorities according to projections and uncertainties and value judgments.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Necessary evils, such as committee meetings, vs. runaway political madness suppressing actual work.

The former is implied by organization, the latter is more prevalent than ever in the state of modern science (because money).

[–] booly@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago

Are committee meetings immune to runaway political madness? Who's on the committee? How does the committee make decisions? Can those decisions be revisited?

I'm not convinced that today's state of science is any different than in eras past, tracing all the way back to kings and wealthy patrons throwing their political and economic might behind their preferred scientific endeavors.