Science just "is".
Actually, in the social sciences, which is where we are talking, it is not. All these "studies" are the products of human endeavor (as is work in the natural sciences but that's a slightly different argument) and thus those articles are not "science". Just lots of folk with all their flaws producing studies and writing articles. Social psychology (most of this work comes from that field) is notorious for conceptual difficulties and weak sample sizes.
I should make it clear I'm not arguing that levels of fear don't translate into all sorts of actions, personalities, and so on. Just don't think my conservative friends are any more infected by those than my liberal friends. We just disagree. Sometimes passionately. And hit moments in which we can't talk politics. But we still just disagree.
You seem to be basically arguing for ignorance, or ignoring science because you think it's going to be used incorrectly. You can say that about any science. It doesn't seem a particularly good rationale to me.
Well, I'm not arguing about physics, chemistry, or biology, for starters. But, in this case, largely arguing about social psychology. In my own field, sociology, almost every thing that constitutes a "finding" based on lots of studies, exists in a sea of dispute. So the discipline is more about a point of view and a methodology than it is about some sort of settled "findings." Despite what text books argue.
And, just to be clear, I'm not in the position of arguing that the findings of "science" are badly used. I'm rather arguing about the truthiness, to be a bit humorous, of "science" in this particular instance.
We clearly disagree. Not the first time. |
