Thought for the New Year: The Death of Science

As readers will know, in past posts I have frequently bewailed the decline in standards in Stonehenge-related research and have sought to analyse what is going on. 

Every year we seem to see standards slipping further, with papers published (with massive accompanying PR) which should never have seen the light of day.  I wonder, on such occasions, what sort of peer review process operates, and what motivates editors to accept and publish material which is so blatantly defective. But of course the answer almost always is that Stonehenge is "special" and that normal rules do not apply.  Stonehenge bluestones?  Even better.  There is an insatiable public and media demand for Stonehenge articles and books, and there is no sign of any shift in opinions and priorities. "Give them what they want!" is the battle cry of editors and media moguls, and where there is a demand there will always be those ready to supply.  So papers flood out, with vast amounts of repetition, and with full-colour illustrations including inscrutable and unreadable graphs, maps and tables demonstrating the technical expertise of the authors.  Over and again technology is dressed up as science, and non-scientists portray themselves as scientists because that is the cool thing to do. 

Who reads these articles? Very few, actually.  Many people look at them, but they do not READ them or apply any sort of scrutiny.  Most people who open up an article (assuming it is not behind a paywall) on the web read the abstract and look at the pictures, and then move on to something else.  Far more people just read the press releases, which are nowadays carefully manufactured (often by university press officers) for maximum impact and which may have remarkably little to do with the article in question.  Don't get me going on that one.........

I don't necessarily blame all of this on the authors -- the pressure to publish is enormous nowadays, and as long as there is a university or other institution behind you to cover the publishing costs, you can always find a journal happy to enhance the establishment mythology of Stonehenge and the bluestones. here are some of my earlier posts on this miserable business:

 https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-lost-circle-and-death-of-due.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2019/07/post-processualism-and-death-of-evidence.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/11/bluestone-wedges-and-death-of-science.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2021/01/state-corruption-and-suppression-of.html

Actually the reason for this post is the appearance of a new book called "The Death of Science".  It's by Paul Goddard and  and Angus Dalgleish and is causing quite a stir particularly in medical circles. here is the blurb:

Science is on its death bed. Lies, specious argument and fraud abound in a variety of scientific endeavours including the treatment and vaccines for Covid-19. Managers and politicians have taken over where previously the scientists were in charge. They have been able to utilise the bizarre language and contradictory processes of political correctness, making themselves into the high priests of a new religion, one which spawns more politically correct managers and despises experts.  But there is hope and possible answers are proposed.

Comments about the book

" ...alleged scientific certainty is today being scandalously exploited to serve a perception of truth….. The views expressed in this book are timely and important ….” Sir Richard Dearlove KCMG OBE

"We are following the science was the strap line that led in the UK to a national catastrophe from which we are still recovering….Issues have become battlegrounds for ideological debates rather than reasoned discussions based on scientific consensus…." Professor Karol Sikora.

This book must be read widely. The message is extremely important and is well presented.

I watched a discussion about this book on YouTube.  One of the matters discussed was the obsession (in the Covid crisis) with the phrase "Follow the science!"  Andrew Dalgleish (one of the authors) had a go at that, and said that anybody who uses that phrase doesn't have a clue what science is, or how it works.  I agree with him.

Fauci says "Follow the science!"  What he means is "Follow my science, and enable me to become more powerful and influential than I am already!" The more I read about him and his self-serving manipulations of the truth, the less I trust him to say anything worth listening to......... He is one of the villains exposed in the new book.  

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There is another book (2016) with the same title, by Andrew Holster:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Science-Companion-Corredoiras-Scientific/dp/1627340769

Book summary:

Modern science is in unprecedented crisis. It is a crisis at many levels, continuous with larger crises of modern society. It is a crisis for the vocation of the scientist working within the modern institutionalised structures of science. It is a crisis for our capacity to use science benevolently to help solve larger material, organisational, and ultimately political problems of the modern era. And it is a crisis for philosophy, for the role of natural science to help inform our world-view. The Death of Science is an account of deeper causes of this malaise. It starts by taking up the reins of López Corredoira's (2013) The Twilight of the Scientific Age, a recent critique that concludes with modern science on its death bed. It dissects key themes in detail, illustrated in the same frank style, drawing on personal examples. It starts with deep issues in the philosophy of science, recounting failed modern concepts of scientific progress, method and truth, going on to failures of peer review and gate-keeping as quality control systems, the domination of propaganda and marketing channels as the critical tools for professional success, and the major outcome for creative scientists themselves: the destruction of scientific creativity and exclusion of heterodox thinkers in this degraded environment. It connects the behavioural symptoms with a psycho-social analysis of the bureaucratic mode of organisation under which science, like all other modern vocations, is now subsumed. The account supports López Corredoira's appraisal, which sees a modern science industry driven by greed and ambition, repressing imagination and freedom, destructive of novelty and diversity of ideas, controlled by bureaucratic-academic power hierarchies. While science is irrevocably corrupted by its modern mass-institutionalisation, the true spirit of science can only be sustained by individuals with a real vocation as scientists, or natural philosophers, who seek understanding and meaning and wisdom, rather than technocratic specialisation and careers. But it is increasingly impossible for scientists to withstand forces of professional conformity, and maintain their personal sense of value. A number of current controversies in some core sciences are also discussed, and it is argued that the greatest revelations of real science are yet to come. While Establishment Science has locked itself into dogmatic paradigms, the failures of present theories show that we are really on the cusp of major revolutions, spanning sciences of physics and cosmology, information and intelligence, biology and evolution, and mind and consciousness. If these are realised, they will profoundly change our understanding of the nature of the world and ourselves. But any such revolutions challenge a Science Establishment locked into the self-interest of its power-brokers, and are unlikely to occur except through independent scientists working outside the institutional system. The book concludes with a brief discussion of the place of independent scientists.

This book has not attracted a single review on Amazon -- that fact is rather interesting in itself!