>But it adds to this a pinch of glib frivolity and a dash of unembarrassed ignorance. Its rhetorical tics include a forced enthusiasm (a search on Twitter for the hashtag “#sciencedancing” speaks volumes) and a penchant for profanity. Here in Silicon Valley, one can scarcely go a day without seeing a t-shirt reading “Science: It works, b—es!” The hero of the recent popular movie The Martian boasts that he will “science the sh— out of” a situation. One of the largest groups on Facebook is titled “I f—ing love Science!” (a name which, combined with the group’s penchant for posting scarcely any actual scientific material but a lot of pictures of natural phenomena, has prompted more than one actual scientist of my acquaintance to mutter under her breath, “What you truly love is pictures”). Some of the Cult’s leaders like to play dress-up as scientists—Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson are two particularly prominent examples— but hardly any of them have contributed any research results of note. Rather, Cult leadership trends heavily in the direction of educators, popularizers, and journalists.
As much as I think the essay is great, this paragraph is a terrible ad-hominem argument for the existence of a "cult of science" or why it is dangerous. It doesn't matter if people wear xkcd shirts, Matt Damon uses profanity with "science", or if people like a facebook page. Laypeople having fun with "science" does not make a cult. A better argument would be to show how people cargo-cult science, and why it causes problems with science. The author fails to do both.
IFL is dangerous not because it is only pictures of scientific phenomena, but that bullshit is constantly posted on the page to be consumed by laypeople. The cult of science is dangerous because it has failed to teach people how to properly evaluate claims, and believe anything with the word "study" in it. Woo-pushers have appropriated the vocabulary of science indistinguishable to a layperson. Andrew Wakefield resurrected long dead pandemics by falsely publishing in the Lancet. This is what makes the cult of science dangerous, not the word "bitches".
As much as I think the essay is great, this paragraph is a terrible ad-hominem argument for the existence of a "cult of science" or why it is dangerous. It doesn't matter if people wear xkcd shirts, Matt Damon uses profanity with "science", or if people like a facebook page. Laypeople having fun with "science" does not make a cult. A better argument would be to show how people cargo-cult science, and why it causes problems with science. The author fails to do both.
IFL is dangerous not because it is only pictures of scientific phenomena, but that bullshit is constantly posted on the page to be consumed by laypeople. The cult of science is dangerous because it has failed to teach people how to properly evaluate claims, and believe anything with the word "study" in it. Woo-pushers have appropriated the vocabulary of science indistinguishable to a layperson. Andrew Wakefield resurrected long dead pandemics by falsely publishing in the Lancet. This is what makes the cult of science dangerous, not the word "bitches".