LaVar Hosting Jeopardy July 26-30 Stan Account 👁

4/For example, take the argument over science and eugenics. Some people like to say that eugenics was once "accepted science", and use this to argue against trusting science too much in the present day.

6/Now, one can argue that these historical scientists were doing bad science. And skeptics of modern science will then say that you're committing the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. But in fact, it's no fallacy, because "science" has multiple meanings.

7/"Science" can refer to the body of ideas and knowledge that we call "scientific". It can refer to the people and institutions who do what we call "science". Or it can refer to a way of thinking and learning about the world.

8/Many of the people who fell in love with eugenics in the early 20th century were "scientists" in the second sense. And many people believed eugenics belonged in the body of "scientific" knowledge in the first sense.

9/But very little of eugenics was produced using the methods of thinking and experimentation that we think of as "science". There was a lot of mistaking correlation for causation, making empirically ungrounded assumptions, failing to test theories, etc.

10/Thus, while eugenics is a good cautionary tale about how the scientific *establishment* can go wrong, and about how bad ideas make their way into popular consciousness, it says little about whether the scientific method is a reliable way of investigating the world.

11/The accidental or intentional use of the failures of the scientific establishment shouldn't be used to discredit the idea of investigating the world through scientific means.