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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 18, 2025

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This was a really great comment and I think highlights to me why it is so frustrating that science has backed itself into this particular failure mode. Science is supposed to be this system that helps you actually discover truth, and although it doesn't always do so in the most direct fashion (see Kuhn) the truth usually wins out. Scientists with the proper training should be able to apply this epistemic openness to their lives outside of the laboratory, but it seems like the opposite actually occurs. But instead I find many scientists to be incredibly dogmatic and close-minded. Which is what I suppose the system rewards.

Planck's Principle -- that "Science progresses one funeral at a time" -- has reigned for a long time.

I fear that in certain fields, the opposite might even be the case - that the science regresses one funeral at a time. It's not that the older scientists have no biases whatsoever, but it really isn't rare that younger academics (can't really call them scientists in good conscience, tbf) are much more strictly dogmatic and don't even pretend to be interested in the pursuit of truth if it goes against their beliefs.