@smaragdus:Well, it's a bit of a digression, but I don't think I would disagree with much of what you say there. I mean, look at
The Royal Society's motto "Nullius in verba" - which is taken to mean
"take nobody's word for it" - yet it doesn't stop them from issuing edicts of "scientific" hypothetical dogma, signed apparently by lots of their members.
That would seem to be
3 (three!) logical fallacies right there:
- argumentum ad ignorantiam (forwarding a proposition without any certain proof).
- argumentum ad populum (appeal to the people/consensus, popular sentiment - appeal to the majority; appeal to loyalty).
- argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to authority; conventional propriety).
Fascism loves an appeal to the consensus. The German Population in 1939 was estimated as approx. 80,600,000 people (i.e., before they started killing off their Jewish citizens wholesale). Apparently the Germans were right behind their Führer to a man. One wonders:
They couldn't possibly all have been mistaken, could they?Regarding science, a bloke called Eisenhower nailed it in 1961:
In those notes, Haapala also writes (my emphasis):
In his farewell address to the Nation in 1961, President Eisenhower cautioned against the power of money from the government in influencing scientific research, and the “danger that public policy could itself become captive of a scientific-technological elite.” Andrew Montford has articulated how this danger comes about. Please see links under “Politicizing Scientific Organizations” and Article # 1.
.
-IainB
But I'm still curious as to what
@Tuxman might have been getting at re the 2 potentially "contrary truths" he seemed to be referring to.
