Who cares?

Modern science is just a tool for bludgeoning ideological opponents. Studies! Metastudies! Consensus! Experts agree!

By the way, coffee makes you live longer. I read a study. I’ll e-mail you the link. Or maybe it was shorter. Actually, I think you live longer but you get cancer.

“UPI reports, ‘Eighty percent of scientific data are lost within two decades, disappearing into old email addresses and obsolete storage devices, a Canadian study (abstract, article paywalled) indicated. The finding comes from a study tracking the accessibility of scientific data over time, conducted at the University of British Columbia. Researchers attempted to collect original research data from a random set of 516 studies published between 1991 and 2011. While all data sets were available two years after publication, the odds of obtaining the underlying data dropped by 17 per cent per year after that, they reported. “Publicly funded science generates an extraordinary amount of data each year,” UBC visiting scholar Tim Vines said. “Much of these data are unique to a time and place, and is thus irreplaceable, and many other data sets are expensive to regenerate.’

Scientific Data Disappears At Alarming Rate, 80% Lost In Two Decades
Slashdot summary submitted by cold fjord

Who really cares? Sure, I can show off my ideological piety by wailing over lost SCIENCE, I just won’t. (And never mind that most of those studies can’t be reproduced. Around 80%, if I remember correctly.)

At least I have the comfort of knowing that publicly funded science will die the horrible death it deserves, rather than waiting for God’s judgment like most evils. After Christianity comes the pagan darkness, which has no use for reason and loves creative torments and death. It’s already beginning, you just have to look closely enough.