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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Many Americans cannot understand science...


Many Americans are stuck in a "Middle School mentality" of buzzing queen bees and barking playground bullies. 

By virtue of intellectual deprivation, these lifelong bigots are blithely unaware that any scientist worth her salt deliberately structures experiments to get results that lie beyond their biases and suppositions.

In effect, scientists try to prove themselves wrong, a concept that is COMPLETELY alien to any American knows that his opinion is "all" that matters. (The defining characteristic of perseverating middle schoolers is the assumption that they are right and that they alone are right.)

Scientific hypotheses are sometimes based on bias and supposition, but any self-respecting scientist designs-and-conducts research in full knowledge that "Truth is what it is" and that personal biases are likely to thwart the clarification of Truth.

To keep this penchant for obstructing Truth, well-trained research scientists are keenly aware they can only circumvent obfuscatory opinion by designing scientific experiment so that personal preference is profoundly suspect.

In effect, scientists work individually -- and "in concert" -- to prove their opinions false. Only then have they used their intellectual gifts to maximize the likelihood of proving Truth for what it is.

Yes, there are a few "bad eggs" in research science. But there is such a preponderance of irrational, anti-scientific opinion pandering on "the right side of the aisle" that these panderers feel righteous when they project their own corruption-of-Truth onto mainstream science. If this absurdity persists, America depart the island of Knowledge to flounder - yet again - in the Sea of Superstition that has been the fundamental affliction of humankind ever since homo erectus stood straight.

Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got til it's gone?

Against this backdrop, America's ever-expanding Middle School mentality -- indeed any frame of mind that is not properly prepared to understand research conducted within the strict limits of Scientific Method -- assumes that Life's most passionate manifestations (i.e., religion and politics) depend, existentially, on which presumptuous loudmouths can create the most noise.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Never mind that "it's just a squeaky wheel" and not a peer-reviewed scientist presenting his findings in carefully composed prose after months (or years) of carefully conducted research.

All aging Middle Schoolers beset by arrested development assume that life's most burning questions are essentially unrelated to scientific Fact.

Instead, these Middle Schoolers champion the particular assemblage of opinion-spouting partisans that is most adept at using superciliousness, ire and ad hominem vilification to degrade "the other."

Furthermore, decrepit Middle Schoolers vilify "the other" not because they themselves are demonstrably right, but because "the other," by virtue of being "the other" is, ipso facto, wrong and thus deserving of opprobrium.

Typically, the other is wrong because he is not "real patriot" or a "good Christian" (which, again, reveals that most biases pertain to thoughtless visions of Church and State). 

To grasp the depth of witless prejudice, consider the following views of Barack Obama, whom 238 presidential historians consider the 15th "Best President" ever. 

The cartoon that begins this post could only have been produced by someone who does not understand the orderly pursuit of Science and therefore projects personal desire with the unwitting intention of replacing knowledge with whimsical opinion..


Barack Obama: The Democratic View and The Republican View:
Which party has the firmer grip?






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