Science

I have wanted to say something about science for ages but the words have escaped me.

For many people that I know, science is this mysterious world of complexity and rigour which they can only but admire from a distance. But with a certain disdain as well, based on the constant media feed of false negatives and positives from the scientific world. Think; margarine, no, butter, no, margarine, no, butter,…

I love it when eager Gen-Y’s start posting science-based information on their FB pages (see ‘I love Fucking Science’ for example). Its a case of not knowing what they don’t know, in that they have no wherewithal to distinguish the good stuff from the bad stuff. And no awareness of this lack of wherewithal either. And since their audience doesn’t either, whadya?

It might surprise them that science only teaches us to ask the questions, to catalog information, to make and test hypotheses, and to agree on useful generalizations. When science is used to draw definitive conclusions or to make things, it has become engineering. Or, alternatively, it has become abused.