
“Thinking about science leads individuals to endorse more stringent moral norms” - polskibus
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/23/does_studying_science_make_you_a_better_person_partner/
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droithomme
This study is nonsense. They ask nonsensical questions such as "Do you
_believe_ in science?". They are also using this fad protocol where they have
someone (nearly always an 18-21 yr old white college student) read an article
then test their opinions on things before and after, and then make grandiose
claims regarding what that implies. This is not science, this is pop-
psychology.

~~~
spindritf
> They ask nonsensical questions such as "Do you believe in science?"

Why is it nonsensical? Scientific method is a human invention, you can either
believe in it, or not. The notion that a theory producing verifiable
predictions is "true" is pure fiat. And then there's the whole idea that
scientific discoveries, like laws of physics, are universal. Plenty of things
to believe in.

~~~
Alex3917
Science doesn't mean scientific method, and even if you were talking about the
scientific method, what exactly does it mean to believe in it? Absolutely
nothing. It's like asking "What do hindus believe?" and expecting to get an
answer that isn't dumb.

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grepherder
_On the surface, these results seems counterintuitive; science, after all, is
— in the strictest sense — amoral._

Either this is just another insincere sentence thrown in to fill the article,
or the author's intuition is terrible. Something along these lines: "They are
engaged with something amoral, therefore they must be amoral!", genious. A
farm or the act of farming is also amoral, so I guess you expect farmers to be
pretty indecent. Really, it's been so many years and why do journalists still
think these filler sentences help their article?

~~~
javert
Actually, doing science is moral, and so is farming. Both are helping you to
live a better life, which is the essence of morality.

So I agree with you that the author is totally wrong, just for different
reasons.

~~~
dolphenstein
Plenty of science exists with questionable morals. E.g. military science

~~~
javert
If I had said, "Cars are used for transportation," would you say, "I know a
guy whose car doesn't have a motor, but he sleeps in it"?

Or if I had said, "Tables are flat surfaces," would you say, "I saw a table in
the museum of modern art that had a curving surface"?

So, yes, you are completely right, and I don't dispute what you're saying, but
it does not invalidate the generalization. Analogously to the example cases I
just gave.

There is probably some philosophical name for and explanation of this
phenomenon, but I don't know what it is.

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A1kmm
> were recruited and received course credit for participation

I think it is ironic that a research into morality was conducting by coercing
student participants into the research. In academic courses, it is common for
students and lecturers to benchmark students (and award final grades) based
the rank of students ordered by marks, and so giving students marks for
something is also punishing students who don't get the marks.

Getting research participation by threatening a punishment such as a loss of
rank in the class for those who don't participate is coercive, and it casts
both the researchers and UCSD (and its human ethics committee) in bad light.

Coercive research is also less likely to be accurate - in this case, it brings
up the alternative explanation that the science words prompted students to
think about their courses, which might be the sole reason they are
participating in the study, putting them into exam mentality so they give the
answers they think they are 'supposed' to give.

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auctiontheory
They classified the undergraduate psychology major as a "science"?

~~~
tedks
Yes, they did: see this sentence in the article:

>But science majors (including those studying biology, chemistry and
psychology) judged him more harshly than non-science majors.

If you think psychology is ascientific, then you're living in the psychology
of about a century ago. Psychology has been incredibly rigorous since the
1920s, and by virtually any metric it's as hard a hard science as any other
hard science.

~~~
lutusp
> If you think psychology is ascientific, then you're living in the psychology
> of about a century ago.

On the contrary, psychology is today widely recognized as scientific in name
only:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/the-
myth-o...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/the-myth-of-self-
correcting-science/266228/)

But beyond the many psychology scandals presently being discussed, it's
important to say that descriptions, regardless of how detailed they are, don't
constitute science. For science, one must risk a testable explanation, a
_theory_. The absence of theories, testable and tested, and on which different
psychologists can agree, is what separates psychology from mainstream science.

In the crafting of the new DSM-V (about to be published), psychologists added
mental conditions, and removed conditions, based on -- evidence? -- no, on
votes, and secret votes at that. This is not science.

The unscientific state of psychology has led the present director of the NIMH
to take note of the gradual eclipsing of psychology by neuroscience:

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faulty-
circ...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faulty-circuits)

A quote: "In most areas of medicine, doctors have historically tried to glean
something about the underlying cause of a patient’s illness before figuring
out a treatment that addresses the source of the problem. When it came to
mental or behavioral disorders in the past, however, no physical cause was
detectable so the problem was long assumed by doctors to be solely “mental,”
and psychological therapies followed suit.

Today _scientific approaches based on modern biology, neuroscience and
genomics are replacing nearly a century of purely psychological theories_ ,
yielding new approaches to the treatment of mental illnesses."

> Psychology has been incredibly rigorous since the 1920s, and by virtually
> any metric it's as hard a hard science as any other hard science.

Quite false. Few psychologists agree with each other on anything, and fewer
still are willing to put forth a testable, falsifiable theory about the
workings of the human mind. This is why spectacular frauds like Stapel and
Hauser can play the field like a badly tuned violin -- few practitioners are
qualified to recognize that it's not science.

~~~
tedks
You appear to be living in the psychology of about a century ago.

I'd recommend Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow as a good layperson's
introduction to cognitive psychology in the fields of decision-making and
estimation.

I also suggest you see
<http://mres.gmu.edu/pmwiki/uploads/Main/Hedges1987.pdf> for a review of the
degree of consistency within psychology and physics.

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Xcelerate
"Do you believe in science?"

What kind of question is that? Nature follows its laws whether we have an
opinion about it or not. Science is just the study of these laws. The question
itself makes no sense.

~~~
Wintamute
Do you honestly read that question as asking if you believe in science in the
same way as, for example, you can believe in reincarnation or God? A sentence
can have more than one reading and generally a good approach is to discern the
meaning as intended by the author rather than picking one that doesn't make
any sense. Obviously It's asking whether you believe in science as a
fundamentally important part of modern society, whether you believe in the
worth of the scientific method and rationalism etc.

~~~
Xcelerate
> Obviously it's asking whether you believe in science as a fundamentally
> important part of modern society

Well, the answer to that is indeed so obvious that if that's what the author
was intending, I can hardly believe he's asking it.

~~~
Wintamute
Its obvious to me too, but I'm pretty sure there are some fairly deep layers
of anti-science sentiment in some demographics. Also I think its possible to
be extremely in favour of science and its mode of thought, and conversely
perhaps more wary.

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bcoates
From the description of the study, you could also argue thinking about science
makes you more likely to take texts at face value (a willingness to make the
mental leap from reading a _story_ about John to judging John's _actions_ )
and encourages Manichean black-and-white thinking (moving closer to the 100 of
absolute condemnation)

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jostmey
Hell yes it does! Reason, logic, and observation all the way baby!

~~~
seivan
Agree.

I wonder where most of them stand on terms like church/religion and state and
marriage equality.

I've notice software engineers in general tend to be more open minded on those
areas.

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eksith
How does an observed, measured, calculated and critically considered process
of understanding everything around you considered "belief"? That's like
saying, I believe in wine making. No, it's a process of making wine. Science
is the process of understanding the universe.

One of the pet peeves when people say "believe in science".

Aside from that, are we sure that it's "causing" people to become more moral
or is it that science itself encourages reflection and critical thinking that
can develop into a moral compass? You're less likely to be rash, disorganized
or deleterious to people around you if you also have to be a good scientist,
which by definition involves a fair amount of observation and self-dicipline.

It's harder to be an ass when you perceive yourself to be one. Unless you're
sociopathic to begin with.

~~~
bostonpete
> One of the pet peeves when people say "believe in science".

The phrase "believe in" can also mean "have faith in".

The majority of scientific discoveries are not something that most people can
observe, measure, calculate, etc -- either because they don't have the ability
or the time to do so. In order to trust scientific finding, people have to
have faith in the science that's been performed by others.

~~~
eksith
So they trust the wine makers that their label is as good as they say it is
when they taste it. I guess that makes sense.

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trotsky
Exactly how convinced are we that college students that report that they don't
really "believe in science" are being honest?

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jaytaylor
Correlation is not causation.

C'mon people..

~~~
Wintamute
Care to point out exactly where and how you think these post doctorate
researchers have got correlation and causation confused? Because at the moment
your comment is looking fairly absurd.

