Event name:Confirmation for Restoring the sciences:Science Under Attack
Event time and place: December 8th 2023, Online Zoom
This excursion was a presentation by Laurence Krauss, which details the postmodern ideological corruption of science. Essentially what that means as he explained it, was that “woke science” as he called it was deemed as comical in the past since one of the main principles of science is objectivity, but now those who have an agenda that can make use of it push it towards the mainstream. One example that he gave towards this was how university/academia shouldn’t bear the responsibility of central moral education, meaning that they shouldn’t omit information gained through science because it’s not inclusive or doesn’t promote belonging.Another example being how the allocation of funds toward the pursuit of knowledge in scientific fields now can be more based on meeting inclusivity requirements instead of valuable research and data.
There are more examples throughout the presentation with the aforementioned ones being easy to understand.The conclusion he came to at the end was that when political and “moral” goals are imposed on the process and governance of science, they stifle the search for knowledge regardless of intention.Another key takeaway from this excursion is that since a lot of scientific institutions rely on funding from the government which entails political agendas, something like the perversion of science due to politics was bound to happen eventually. I did find the main points convincing. The idea of politics interfering with the pursuit of knowledge has been well documented throughout human history. Similar to excursion 1, Dr.Merck and Dr.Holtz covered that topic in lecture which related a lot to this presentation. I didn’t observe any logical fallacies or lack of critical thinking, Krauss was very thorough in his research and citings to bolster his claims.His examples of how scientifically/experimentally gained knowledge and data were thrown out in favor of things that promote inclusivity but aren’t as accurate made me question the integrity of academic institutions in their pursuit of knowledge.It seemed similar to how in the past theories and data that weren’t based on accurate data or based in pseudoscience would be accepted in places where people or groups were trying to consolidate power, if the ones proposing those theories were aligned with them or the information itself aligned with that purpose.Though the intentions of those pushing the “woke” science agenda may not be as openly sinister as those attempting to consolidate political power for their own gain, the effect might end up being similar.