this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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Science Memes

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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.



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[–] abfarid@startrek.website 126 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Scientific method is the best tool we have to achieve "pure objectivity and truth", but it's not perfect. The primary point of failure being application of it by extremely subjective creatures.

[–] shneancy@lemmy.world 34 points 5 months ago (12 children)

I know right? It baffles me how transphobes use "science" to be transphobic, like Sir/Ma'am, where in the chromosomes is it written "woman" or "man" or any of the stereotypes attached to those words. We made that shit up, we looked at what was there and then added meaning to it that wasn't there. We interpreted the data according to our current age's biases. Sure those wiggly things usually determine the parts you're born with, but where in those parts is it written that women are soft and belong in the kitchen?

If you were to do some unethical science you can even add/block hormones that go into the fetus during its development for it to develop bits that it wouldn't normally. Hell, you can do that well after birth and new features will develop because human bodies are rather "customisable"

sorry rant over, I don't often get to talk about this from this perspective because getting into the intricacies of subjectivity of science in regards to how human beings and our languages are flawed is a bit too advanced for the average bigot

[–] frezik@midwest.social 13 points 5 months ago

Or if you want a shorter version, "circle the part of the chromosome where it says men hold the door open for women". There are obviously differences between what's written in genes and the billion little social rules surrounding gender. It makes sense to have different terms to differentiate biology from social rules, and "sex" and "gender" can do that just fine.

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[–] mutant_zz@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Extremely subjective creatures, many of which believe they're always right (including many "scientists").

But yeah, you're right, the reality is somewhere between the two extremes of the meme. Although we might also want to have a conversation about what "pure objectivity and truth" means.

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[–] SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works 6 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Even if we were beings of implacable logic, there would also be the issue that we aren't omniscient. We are never going to reach the full truth of everything because we aren't going to be able to gather all the data.

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[–] walter_wiggles@lemmy.nz 77 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"~~science~~ academia is also an industry" FTFY

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] Cube6392@beehaw.org 10 points 5 months ago (2 children)

How do we rewild academia? Like I feel like this sounds like me being a JAQ off, but like, actually. I want academia to be rewilded. I don't know how to do that. I want to talk to someone about how to do that

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[–] fsxylo@sh.itjust.works 66 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, but homeopathy is still bullshit.

I know that's not necessarily the intention of this meme but it's way too common in woo circles.

[–] nicknonya@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)

considering the political skew on lemmy i think this is more an admonition of capitalism than of science

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[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 55 points 5 months ago

It's good to be skeptical of institutions, just don't go dismissing or accepting science based on ideological/class association, that's how you get shit like Lysenkoism

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 43 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Both wrong.

It's just a process. Find evidence, make theories. Find more evidence, adjust theories or replace them.

People gotta stop injecting their religious beliefs about "the truth" or "socialism" or whatever into science. These are just your personal beliefs and science don't give a shit about any of that.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

See: Lysenkoism

Though being aware of the biases involved in the literature is always important

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The Big Bang Theory has that silly name because it's what people trying to discredit it termed it.

There's bias in everything, but empirical evidence wins out in the end.

[–] needthosepylons@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

Empirical evidence wins out in the end but... it's not that simple. One name said a lot about this : Thomas Kuhn. Try giving The structure of scientific revolutions a read whenever you can. It's old and there are more contemporary work, but Kuhn is still a reference in epistemology.

[–] kilgore_trout@feddit.it 6 points 5 months ago

The second sentence of OP should have started with "Scientific research"

[–] SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works 33 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Man, NGT gets so much bullshit thrown his way. Sure, he's an annoying shitposter on Twitter, but the vast majority of the time he makes a public discussion with someone he's either one of or the voice of reason, and that sentence does definitely throw all nuance he has out of the window.

[–] daltotron@lemmy.world 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

No yeah for real. I've never seen him doing anything I would really consider to be annoying, or at least, more annoying than any other science communicator, and he constantly gets shit on for being like, too cocky, but then when you push back I never get any examples of things he's actually fucked up on, just that he has bad vibes.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well, I can't imagine why a prominent and professional black man who publicly supported the Covid precautions and vaccines would have been the target of a smear campaign.

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[–] Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 10 points 5 months ago (6 children)

I don't know, even on his own podcast I found him more willing to sound right than be right. Not that he was wrong, just dropping nuance and exceptions for the sake of sounding absolute and axiomatically correct.

His words end up being easy to poke holes in if and only if you know what he's talking about. Thus I find it hard to accept what he says when I don't know what he's talking about.

Paper castles look good, but a short stone wall has a better reputation.

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[–] UmeU@lemmy.world 29 points 5 months ago (11 children)

If all scientific knowledge were to suddenly disappear and we were to start from square one, it would all reappear exactly like it is. We would rediscover gravity, evolution, the expansion of the universe, etc.

Just because some scientific research is funded by entities with a bias, does not mean that the process of science is corrupted.

Often times the results of the research funded by biased corporations and institutions results in discovery that is contrary to the goal of the entity and so they just stop funding it. Sometimes they actively try to bury the discoveries, however the process of science will ensure that the truth comes to light eventually.

This meme has a poor understanding of science.

[–] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 12 points 5 months ago

If all scientific knowledge were to suddenly disappear and we were to start from square one, it would all reappear exactly like it is.

Three competing theories of evolution arose, independently, in our world - one from British and European scientists studying the tropics, another from Russian and US scientists studying Siberia and northern North America, and a third by a Japanese scientist studying statistics and genetics. While the current consensus in evolutionary biology is that all three are true (at different timescales), the vast majority of people (and even other scientists) only know the first. This is partly because Darwin got there first, and partly because a lot of powerful people benefit from spreading social Darwinist woo.

Ironically, in a post-apocalyptic world, the powers that be would probably support the symbiotic theory, with Darwinism frowned upon as selfish individualism.

however the process of science will ensure that the truth comes to light eventually.

As Keynes said, in the long term we are all dead. Science is probably the best tool we currently have to find the truth (assuming there is a truth), but it is always important to remember that it is produced by humans, funded by interests and (mostly, though this is changing) published by for-profit journals. When reading a paper, always read the conflict of interest and funding details, and hope the authors are being honest.

[–] slackassassin@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Thank you, agree. But I learned from this thread that the full pic of the femboy is apparently riding a dildo which kinda fits with the masturbatory dialog, and now I'm not sure what it's trying to say.

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[–] ekZepp@lemmy.world 28 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (7 children)

Someone is confusing true science and "Scientists says..." bullshit clickbait titles online.

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[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 25 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Science is our best attempt to understand pure, objective truth.

And more often than not, with careful reading and a little touch of skeptecism, you can pull a lot of worthwhile information out of the noise.

[–] loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works 22 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Is there a full version of the femboy wojack picture?

[–] Zehzin@lemmy.world 13 points 5 months ago (3 children)
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[–] felykiosa@sh.itjust.works 8 points 5 months ago

That s the real question here

[–] cheesymoonshadow@lemmings.world 20 points 5 months ago

Reminds me of how some people got a bunch of fake research papers published to prove how flawed the system is. And they would have gotten still more published but the WSJ caught on and they were exposed.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 16 points 5 months ago

Don't forget all the politics involved in getting funds for your research. Fun times!

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I mean, research funding is a huge problem, but half the problem is that journalists and reporters are largely people who went into English or Communications and stopped taking or learning any science past the high school level and thus don't actually know how to read papers or report on them. Not to mention that critically reading a scientific paper and evaluating in the context of other research takes a significant amount of time, more time than is given to write a normal newspaper article.

And they're reporting that science to people who on average know the same or less than them, so their mistakes and misreporting is never caught or corrected.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 14 points 5 months ago

Science is a method of systematically finding out the what, the how, the when and the why of the world.

Science itself has no answers, but has the questions that will lead to the answers that are the most accurate we can manage.

[–] Professorozone@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That's not how I define science.

[–] wafflez@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"The squirrel is an animal that can climb trees"

It's being used to describe the word, not define it

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[–] RoseTintedGlasses@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

What's the point in memes where it's putting something that's just uncontroversially true and not really that complex of an idea next to a twink wojack

Edit: just read the comments smh. My bad OP you're entirely in the right for this, apparently the basic idea that the dominant ideology reproduces itself is too complicated for people to get, also someone calling you a tankie for this lol

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[–] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Capitalists AND Reviewer 2... Never underestimate the power of Reviewer 2 in publication!

[–] MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 5 months ago

I swear it's an official rule that reviewer 2 is required to be a huge pain in the ass.

[–] Socsa@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This has nothing to do with capitalism and is literally a primary conflict between modern and postmodern philosophy. Which is incidentally also largely resolved by emerging meta modern traditions. MLs are definitely good at philosophy though, at least if you ask them.

[–] Telodzrum@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

Welcome to the internet in 2024, where “the systems I don’t like are capitalism” rules the day.

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