The “Follow ‘the Science'” Clown Show

[Valin]

Power LineSteven Hayward

Steven Hayward

July 28 2021

“Follow the science” has become one of the most tiresome clichés of our time. It didn’t begin with the climate hustle, and it won’t end with the government’s COVID power lust, which is doing more than the endless hyperbole of the climatistas to reveal to the public what a clown show “authoritative” science has become.

The roots of this pretence stretch back to the Enlightenment and the rise of the narrow empiricism which holds that the only propositions that can be considered “true” are those that can be verified by the “scientific method,” i.e., things that can be studied with “objective” data and replicated. Of course, lots of things in the supposedly subjective world of political and social “values” can be replicated, like socialism, for example. *Just how many times do we need to replicate the East Germany/North Korea/Cuba/Venezuela experiment before we reach a solid conclusion—a “consensus” even—that socialism doesn’t work?

Instead, right now the U.S. is embarked on twin replications studies in the real world of Keynesianism in economic policy, and lax law enforcement in social and urban policy. Don’t expect many “social” scientists, who attempt to replicate the empirical precision of physics and chemistry with extraordinary zeal, to recognize the repeat failures from these replication studies; most of “social” science today seems dedicated to denying or obfuscating what anyone with common sense can see. Which is why Aristotle’s social science is still the best. In social policy, we appear to be back to the good old days of 1960s-style “root causes” liberalism, when in fact the root cause of a lot of our social ills is . . . liberalism. No wonder liberals don’t—and won’t ever—get it.

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* Those were just practice. This Time We'll Get It Right!

Right hand to god This is what they think (I use the word Think in its loosest sense to the word.)