Stop Equating “Science” with Truth
Yes, our institutions of science are flawed and subject to human biases. However, what alternative to we have? At the end of the day, we need to have some notion of what is &quot;true&quot;. We could go with taking the dominate ideology as being &quot;true&quot;, but this is literally political correctness. We could go back to using religion to tell us what is true [0]. Or we could realize that science is the best method we have invented to find truth.<p>The question then becomes how much we trust our current scientific institutions. I will agree that the general public tends to put too much trust in any given finding (and often misunderstands the finding itself), but, in general, our scientific institutions are still doing some of the best science in our society. They are certainly doing better science than our political institutions are. [1]<p>So what do we do when our scientific institutions findings do not align with our political findings? One option is to ignore the science entirely; but without the science, we will proceed along with an ideology that becomes increasingly divorced from reality.<p>In the case of the Google memo, we have a disagreement about facts [2]. The question here is how to resolve this disagreement. I have seen two proposals: 1) Science and 2) Ideology and mob rule.<p>Both sides can play in the science debate. There is a lot of science to support the &quot;pro (gender) diversity&quot; side, and we can have a discussion where both sides try to use science to arrive closer to the truth. In fact, if we look at the two sides of the broader diversity debate, the pro diversity side is far more represented in our scientific institutions [3].<p>[0] Although it is worth noting that, even if we accept religion as the correct arbiter of truth, our religious <i>institutions</i> also have a record of reaching a truth that supports the biases of the time.<p>[1] Which is not a criticism of our political institutions; their job is not to do science. It is, however, a criticism of deferring to our political institutions for factual judgements.<p>[2] Actually, in my opinion, most of the disagreement is about words; specifically one side not understanding what the other side is trying to say moreso than disagreeing with it. However, for the sake of arguement, I will assume that both sides understand what the other is saying and have a factual disagreement.<p>[3] Again, talking about populations, not individuals.