How About Fantasyland?

Law #7: You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.

This entry's title refers to the 1986 comedy Back To School.  Rather than try to explain it here's the actual scene.


Granted, Rodney Dangerfield is the "hero" in this story but in this clip he's just dead wrong.  Though Dangerfield's character is a successful businessman, he's here injecting his own methods and procedures into what has been established as standard factual business teaching material.  Yes, it's still funny but that leads me to the point of this entry.

I'm a scientist.  I started out in the marine sciences and later expanded to computer science.  Biology, chemistry, zoology, etc.  If there was an -ology after it there's a good chance I studied it at some point or another.  In science we rely on facts.  You see, we can't EVER assume things.  Mostly at the time it was because if we did we'd probably get a failing grade on our report.  The bigger picture though was that if our results could not reproduced we don't get to call it a fact.  It's like we just made it up.

So why the rant?  Because lately (and by lately I mean pretty much my entire life) science has found itself under fire simply for stating facts that prove to be inconvenient for certain people.  By certain people I mean politicians. Despite my political affiliation I've said time and again that anytime politicians make an effort to regulate science they are bound to just screw it up.  I'll let author Michael Crichton, who himself was a scientist, explain why:

“I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.”

Here's my issue.  Too often I see facts twisted, bent, obliterated and even ignored just to push an certain agenda.  The people pushing this agenda feel that if they can get consensus on their side then the facts are irrelevant.  Then once they've achieved that consensus, they act as if the consensus is fact.  It's not.  Period.

Oh, and Rodney does eventually learn the material.