How can we trust in science when scientists are so untrustworthy?

Another piece of evidence:

Nor do the women feel that they got what they wanted from Dr Neubauer. “I really was hoping that he would take responsibility for what he had done so many years ago,” says Elyse.

“He refuses to be open to the possibility that they were wrong,” says Paula. “No matter what, we can’t make up for the 35 years that we lost. We are different people because of being separated.

What Dr Neubauer did was arrange the life-long separation of twin baby girls.

5 thoughts on “How can we trust in science when scientists are so untrustworthy?

  1. Jim

    Absolutely. It’s entirely fair to generalize to the entire class of scientists from a single case. They’re all untrustworthy. Yep. All of them. This proves it. If they were trustworthy, they wouldn’t be scientists.

    Just like when an FV fellow traveler converts to Rome. It proves that FVism is Romish. Totally.

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  2. mark Post author

    Jim, your response is entirely justified. I should have made it clear that I was responding to “the myth of science”–utopian faith in science. I actually suspect such utopian fantasy encourages people to forget about ethics.

    But all this was not included in my off-the-cuff remark. Should have been. Sorry.

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  3. pentamom

    It’s not clear from the article or else I missed it — were the twins being separated for the purpose of doing twin studies? I think it’s implied, but I couldn’t tell.

    I could understand separating them on the theory that people don’t generally want to adopt twins, though I’m not sure that would have been right. But deliberately directing the adoption so as to make a child’s entire life an experiment is just creepy.

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  4. Jim

    Thanks, Mark. You won’t find a greater critic of scientism than me. But I think “science” is important to humanity.

    The study you link would not have been approved given today’s standards. I’m curious to learn why it lasted as long as it did. There is an entire layer of review for experiments now that include human subjects. My grad students complain about the paperwork, but the example you link is precisely why the bureaucracy is needed.

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