5 Idiotic Things Science Shouldn't Have To Put Up With

5 Science Shouldn't Have To Compare Research To Fiction

Newspaper headlines insist on describing incredible scientific breakthroughs in the context of fictional movies. Every headline about light-bending metamaterials says they're just like Harry Potter's Cloak of Invisibility. I want you to pay attention to this bit, because it's important: If we ever build a cloaking device, it's not going to be cool because it's like Harry Potter. It's cool because it's a goddamned cloaking device.

I get that they're trying to help people understand the science. I use fictional references all the time, but that's to make jokes about the awesome achievements, not to undermine and replace them with topically trending bullshit. We're building brand-new materials that have never existed before. We're mastering the fundamental structures of reality to invent things it couldn't. And the best professional communicators can say is, "Oh yeah, that fictional whining orphan had something like that!"

Even worse is how the Harry Pottering sets up ridiculous expectations. None of the "cloaking" materials developed so far could render a person fully invisible. When people find out that fact, they get disappointed. The fact that we can bend light in previously impossible ways becomes a let-down because people can't use it to sneak through rooms in a child-filled school.

Researchers write about bending spacetime itself and headlines don't think it's interesting unless they also mention a warp drive. Even though that's impossible for the mechanism they're talking about. And wasn't even the point of warp drive in the fictional show. A huge part of Star Trek is that their technology wasn't hard-science-fiction. It was magic boxes to make sure Kirk met new people to punch or screw every week.

Actually inventing and building something is more impressive than just making it up.

4 Science Shouldn't Have To Promise Results

If we only researched things with guaranteed results, the world's most advanced technology would be a pretty sharp piece of rock. Not extremely sharp, because we wouldn't have invented any particularly smart way of sharpening them, just the sharpest one we could find while walking around, because we couldn't justify taking time off from "looking for berries that don't make you shit yourself" duty.

When your track record is everything ever you don't need to prove yourself. Science and technology made everything material, and those materials supported all the arts and humanities. You can't compose a sonnet when you're scraping dirt from a farmed-out field because crop rotation hasn't been invented yet.

Fundamental research can't promise anything more than "we will understand the universe better than we do now," and the idea that it would even have to is terrifying. In the past people demanded to know what possible use there was for steam power or electricity. If we knew the answer to a question before asking it, we'd be wasting our time doing so.

People demand to know why scientists haven't cured cancer. As if the only reason they haven't done it themselves is a previous commitment to rewatching Breaking Bad. Asking, "Why haven't they cured cancer?" is like asking, "Why won't those traffic bollards sleep with me?" -- the question reveals that the real problem is the asker's serious misunderstanding of important concepts.

Finding a cure for cancer is like finding a cure for dog -- there are thousands of different types and it is in fact very easy to kill them. It gets tricky when they're inside someone you're trying to keep alive. Cancer isn't a disease; it's one of thousands of things failing to not go wrong with the process of cell growth. Most of which didn't used to happen, because we didn't used to live this long. Until science vastly improved our food production, medical technology, and quality of life.

3 Science Shouldn't Have To Beg For Funding

Science and technology are responsible for every profit ever. Because people are now being motivated by a paycheck, rather than the desire to sleep inside of a cave rather than inside of a saber-toothed tiger. But even though research is what took us out of those caves and into tigerless homes (unless you're Mike Tyson) it's treated like an expensive hobby, like betting on tiger fights. Sorry, I watched a documentary on tigers recently.

We should have a government research division the way we have a military (or maybe instead of a military?). It's an organization that improves the world just by existing. Research leads to a net increase in wealth by generating new industries instead of stealing the exploded ruins of old ones. Besides, the last time anyone invaded America to slaughter and steal everything was the 15th century.

Funding concerns have already shifted the National Ignition Facility back away from researching power generating fusion ignition -- which you might imagine as natural fit for the facility -- to more nuclear weapons research. It was originally built for that, but you'd think that working on free power while they were at it was a good thing. Government agents are arguing that the system should spend less time researching how to generate unlimited power and more on the nuclear warheads. When you sound like a Bond villain you are not the voice of progress.

If the world spent half the effort on science as it does on its military, the X Games would be holding cyborg skateboard competitions on Mars by now.

2 Science Shouldn't Have To Debate Over Dumb Bullshit

Science is about asking questions, demanding proof, and welcoming challenges to established fact. Like all the finest and purest things about humanity, these can be abused and betrayed by assholes. Welcoming questions doesn't mean stopping every time an idiot wants to waste your time. Especially when they're blatantly doing it to troll you in both the old "smirking time-wasting" and modern "damaging attack" senses of the word.

Anyone with genuine questions on climate change, fusion energy, genetic engineering, reproductive health, or vaccination can easily find any of the 10,000 answers available. Clearly written and widely available for free with the best intent in the world to educate and explain.

Anti-vaxxers, climate-change-deniers, and other people working to kill us all keep spawning ridiculous arguments, and every time a smart person responds, the idiots win. That smart person is now talking to a fleshy brick wall and getting annoyed, while the other is utterly immune to evidence. And when the smart person realizes this and stops responding, the other side claims victory. It's the debate equivalent of forcing an overflow error.

Which is why I'm proposing the phrase "null acquit." A simple response you can use to an obviously ill-faith question to indicate that it has no genuine value, and you're dismissing it from any further discussion. And it rhymes with "full of shit," which is what it's really telling the idiot.

In a real "science vs. anything else" debate, each side should be restricted to using its own techniques and abilities. So science and technology get to transmit by TV, satellite, and computer networks, while Jenny McCarthy goes person to person trying to convince them biologically. But only after she returns the chunks of her own face redeveloped by advanced medical science.

1 Science Shouldn't Have To Worry

The one thing science doesn't have to do is worry. It'll always win. Whether it wins with humans or a highly evolved species of dolphin is up to us. And the dolphins that work out that the sea level is still rising will be able to adapt better than those who refuse to acknowledge the changing currents. Science isn't a lifestyle choice, or a belief, or even a group of people. It's a process for figuring shit out.

You use science, or you end up burning witches. Those are the only options. Science is specifically designed to be self-checking and error-correcting. Every time a scientist is found to be lying or falsifying data, it's trumpeted as a huge scandal, while corrupt politicians are taken as wacky talk-show monologue material. The irony is that any problem in scientific results was discovered by other scientists doing science properly.

The whole point of science is that it works despite 99 percent of humanity being idiots. Including the scientists. With a 1 percent margin for error. Science is how we stop fooling ourselves. Writing things down and checking them is the only thing between inventing lightning rods and sacrificing virgin cats to the pointiest mountain. We're no smarter than people piling up the Pyramids, stabbing each other with spears, or throwing shit in the streets of ancient cities. Theory, experiment, proof, and peer review are the catchment that keeps the vast wheel of human progress from rolling back downhill, crushing people under the weight of tradition, mob fear, and other backward processes.

So it's especially troubling when the scientific community has to organize campaigns to counteract the dumbassery of politicians and celebrities glancing at things like climate change research and saying, "Nuh-uh. Science is wrong and stupid." The fact that they have to worry about that at all is horrifying. But don't worry too much, Science. Some of us have your back. And when the ants dig up our ruins, your meta-structured holograms will still be around to tell any future lifeforms how to do things better.

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If you still feel like arguing with science, please shut up and read 5 Human Flaws That Prevent Progress And Keep Us Dumb, because you're ruining the world. And if you still don't understand why you shouldn't argue with science, just stop anyway. All Internet arguments eventually become flame wars, as seen in 8 Stupid Arguments That Internet Debates Always Devolve Into.

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