A few thoughts about scientists “lying” and “being wrong”:

As anyone who has read Thomas Kuhn’s The Structures of Scientific Revolutions knows, each scientific field goes through “paradigm shifts” that completely rewrite the rules and assumptions upon which all observations and data are based. Scientists and theories which up until the time of the revolution were universally assumed to be “right” were suddenly all “wrong.” Including all the great scientists of history. All of them, almost without exception, were “wrong” in reference to our modern understanding of things. Newton and Galileo were totally “wrong” about gravitation once the Einsteinian theory of space-time replaced Newtonian/Euclidian physics. All the biologists in history were suddenly retroactively “wrong” once Darwin and Mendel unlocked the mysteries of life. All the chemists who ever lived prior to the 20th century were rendered “wrong” as atomic theory was recognized as the correct paradigm.

Anyone who has studied scientific history knows that all the stuff we now think to be incontrovertibly correct will eventually be overturned by a paradigm shift that will make everything that came before look foolish. Such shift are a rare occurrence — once every couple centuries is the normal pace — but they simply don’t stop coming. Everything we think we know will be in the garbage can of history eventually.

That said, most scientists alive today are doing “the best they can” within the frameworks of our current paradigms. Geniuses who change the course of history are extremely rare; so most modern scientists are basically just bean counters, not theoretical revolutionaries. They plod along in tiny sub-fields doing studies that likely aren’t going to change anyone’s view of anything. Just adding, if they’re lucky, a tiny grain of data to the enormous sand dune of knowledge.

But in recent decades there has been a new spectre in the world of science: politics. It affects all sides of the spectrum. Anyone who disagrees with the majority is presumed to either be lying or is accused of being funded by nefarious groups of some sort or another or has some ideological bias they’re trying to promulgate by fudging facts. And the outsiders inevitably accuse the insiders of the same malfeasances. Suddenly every single scienctist is a neo-Lysenkoist.

It’s gotten to the point where the layperson can not sort out the false accusations from the true scandals, and so many charges are flying left-to-right and right-to-left that one doesn’t know what to think any more.

To make things worse: Even if someone does get funded from politcally motivated groups, and even if one does have a bias, doesn’t mean that person is inherently wrong. One person could be funded by Exxon and another by Soros, one could be a grant-chaser, another a denialist, but their data could still be totally valid.

How is the average American expected to sort this all out? The political white noise machine is drowning out any semblance of clarity, and it’s gotten to the unfortunate point that one chooses which side one is on mostly for political reasons, not because one has accurately assessed the data. Because the data is simply too complicated, too specialized, and too politicized to assess.

Science used to be a discussion. Now it’s a room full of people with their fingers in their ears saying “Lalalalalala I can’t hear you!”