Sometimes, Science is About Power

^^^^^^Watch the full story and hear me read it to you ^^^^^^^^

In the modern world, there’s a commonly held belief that there’s only one way to evaluate the accuracy of your perspective on the world - and that’s application of an empirical scientific method. Can you show it through a double blind controlled study? No? Well then you’re probably one of those pseudoscientific cranks!

So you take your knocks, knowing there's nothing you can say when the insults start flying.. But then, over time, you start noticing that the narrative around your perspective is changing.

Suddenly, there are articles being written about it in big newspapers. Popular magazines that are entertaining the perspective you’ve held all along, testing the waters. In some cases, the paradigm shifts completely and almost silently. Life continues on, but the very idea that was dismissed as “unscientific” slowly becomes a well-accepted - perhaps even beloved - addition to the canon of human understanding.

We were curious to understand how the pejorative language is used by some members of the scientific community to muddy the waters, and to manage the narrative of what can be known about the world... Especially over the last century, as measurement and explanation became intertwined and then hopelessly confused.

Is there a place for these power pejoratives in discourse about how we know the world, and if there is, where does the line lie? Join us as we figure it out in this week’s episode with our favorite AlienScientist - Jeremy Rys:

Full conversation with @Jeremy Rys, the AlienScientist:

For your listening pleasure:
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3dADQ3g
Apple: https://apple.co/2RbkKcr
RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss