It appears that intellectual problems that are prevalent in issues such as the environment and organic foods have found their way into the autism debate. Namely, people are taking rhetorical reasoning that is effective in the liberal arts and applying it to scientific principles. I’m a liberal artist myself (BA PoliSci, Law Degree), but I recognize that the deductive reasoning and statistical conjecture that is a valuable part of my discipline only takes you so far in the hard sciences. What you can infer is of no importance in the hard sciences, only what you can observe. In the liberal arts it is impossible to observe many conclusions (e.g. How will a new welfare law effect crime rates) so inferences have an increased significance. Science also has a way of proving logical inferences wrong. (The example I like to use is that rolling down the windows in you vehicle is actually less fuel efficient than using the horsepower-sucking air conditioner.) It’s an uphill battle, but science almost always wins out in the end, observable measurements have a way of doing that.
I have experience. I'm the last person that I know that accepted the face that global warming was being caused by carbon-belching human activity, but the observable evidence and the work of actual scientists (not Al Gore, natch) won me over.
Dr. Rangel, MD
NeuroLogica Blog
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Wednesday, June 17, 2009
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