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Re:Never Again: We Need Science Based Government by giardini on Thursday October 08, 2020 @10:03PM (#24725995)
No way! Look at the book

"Wrong: Why experts* keep failing us--and how to know when not to trust them" by David H. Freedman

https://www.amazon.com/Wrong-us-Scientists-relationship-cons...

to see why. Experts and expert organizations, scientific or otherwise, often provide wisdom about all aspects of life - and all wrong!

The Covid pandemic proves this point: we can't get agreement on most anything. We'd do better to shitcan the CDC and most other academic and governmental institutions, forget about WHO and start all over again but with an eye to our failed past.

Sure would save a lot of money too, even though it would put a multitude of incompetents onto the streets looking for jobs.

Re:Never Again: We Need Science Based Government by pbw on Thursday October 08, 2020 @10:58PM (#24726289)
I have not read it, but I read this excerpt: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/books/excerpt-wrong.html

I don't think any of that applies to what I'm talking about. I'm talking about scientific consensus, not what foods cause cancer but does smoking cause cancer. Not what medical procedure is best, but do vaccines work.

Some 97% of scientists agree climate change is caused by man, but we allow the person in the highest position in the land to disbelieve that. To make decisions for 330M people based on false beliefs that everyone knows are false.

And when he's out of office, we'll be sitting around waiting for the next Trump-like person to get elected. We have to do something, if not this, something better. Yes there's a ton of science that's speculative and gets overturned, but we now a shit-ton of things for sure, about math, statistics, probability, physical, chemistry, biology, we know a lot that's not getting overturned. The third law of thermodynamics is not getting overturned.

Re:Never Again: We Need Science Based Government by diabeticApe on Thursday October 08, 2020 @11:08PM (#24726361)
Well i wouldn't be too concerned about climate change if i were you. United Nations Agenda 2030 is already in full force were likely to have dealt with those issues by then as a result of incentives given to participating business leaders like Ben Geortzel, Bill Gates and Elon Musk. But you do make a good point about about what we do about the next Trump-like president whether on the left or the right. Im not picking sides here theyre both full of shit imo but i do worry about a single person or group obtaining a monopoly on information and scientific discourse. Thats bad and will lead to a very dark future if we dont address it soon. Even if we do and we screw this up the damage could result in a butterfly effect that will be utterly devastaing to humanity in a decade or two.