How Science Lost its Way - by Rafe Champion

It is generally accepted that science is in a bad way, as Richard Horton wrote in his capacity as editor in chief of The Lancet. “Science has taken a turn towards darkness”, he lamented, citing small sample sizes, invalid analyses, conflicts of interest and obsession with fashionable trends. A revival of Karl Popper’s ideas would help. Chris Uhlman pointed out in The Weekend Australian June 1 that Popper changed the game of science to demand rigorous testing, rather than accumulating data and building models to support your position.

Popper’s ideas did not get far in the academic community. While rivals who fled from Europe to the US to escape Hitler occupied prestigious chairs, he languished far off in Christchurch , where he wrote the 700-page The Open Society and Its Enemies while sixteen of his relatives went up in smoke back home.

The philosophical diaspora in the US converted the philosophy of science into a wasteland of conceptual analysis and sterile probability theory instead of an introduction to the kind of imaginative and critical thinking that drives science at its best. I think of them as “Hitler’s revenge”. Leading scientists including the Nobel Laureates Einstein, Medawar, Eccle and Monod saluted Popper’s ideas but the academic philosophers did not.

His book on political philosophy did not fare any better because he antagonized conservatives with criticism of Plato and he was put on the banned list by the Left because, as an equal opportunity offender, he also did a number on Marx.

https://yueliusd.substack.com/p/the-darkest-hour-in-scientific-history

https://yueliusd.substack.com/p/which-was-the-darkest-moment-in-the