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The most scary damage is that universities have been training young people in how to do science. The replication crisis, while bad in itself, also shows that the universities have actually been training young people in how to do science wrong. How does that damage get undone?
The replication crisis (e.g., in psychology) is very good for the field and for humanity: it more accurately reflects the true state of the field, compared to what we thought. The theory of replication is why psychology bills itself a science; the root problem was that replication wasn't done in practice. If every new result required two replications before being tentatively accepted as possibly describing something real, then psychology wouldn't have a replication crisis, it would just have replication, as a science should.
(On the contrary, beware any field that claims the status of science and either doesn't have the practice of replication baked in, or isn't having a replication crisis. I am looking at you, Sociology. Away to the humanities with you.)
The statistic to I like to keep in mind is: 6%. That's the proportion of all proposed medical treatments that start the FDA stage-I trials that successfully make it past stage-III to FDA approval. It takes serious financial backing to start stage-I (which is when one tests the treatment on a handful of healthy adults to check for adverse effects), so only the most promising treatments that have solid theory for why they should work, and which have been extensively tested in the lab and (if appropriate) on animals, even start the FDA medical approval process.
So I recon that the strongest academic theories in psychology are maybe epistemologically on par with the pre-FDA-stage-I medical theories. If someone were to actually put serious money in backing as rigorous a test for an application of such a theory as the one required by the FDA, then I expect that only 6% would make it.
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It's bad but those people are doing science and are subject to review so we are least have some idea when they stray. In theory.
How many people pick up "truthy" ideas from these courses and then just disappear from the perspective of the academy when they graduate and carry those ideas into daily life? How do you count those people or subject their views to some sort of objective discipline?
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The really scary part is we only know about "replication crisis" because there are still old-timers left around who remember how science should have been done. Once they retire, the academia - at least the western one, I have no idea what is happening in China or India - will have bullshitters occupy all the levels and there would be nobody to teach any other way or to object to what is going on. And the public will be under the impression this is how it's done, there's no other way, you have to just trust the experts and if they are wrong sometimes (like almost all the times) it's just how the life is. And even if you feel like something wrong is going on, you won't have any means to express it or formulate it as a consistent critique, unless you go back 150 years and start recovering the science from there (provided the pre-woke sources won't be destroyed or bowdlerized to avoid offense by then).
I don’t think this is true. When I was in academia, most of the replication crisis conversations were being had by the new PhDs. Partly because they had a vested interest in demolishing their elders’ work, yes, but also because they had chosen to become scientists and didn’t like the possibility of being pseudo-scientists instead, whereas their elders were largely comfortable with the status quo.
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Ever heard the expression that an empire can only last 300 years?
Enlightenment thought is an empire. Western scientific rational modes of thinking. It only became dominant at some point in the 1700’s and it’s starting to fade.
Deferring to elders who are very knowledgeable in things that got made up at some point is the historical norm. That’s how ‘western medicine’ used to work. That’s how Chinese examinations used to work. Etc, etc.
An empire only lasts for 300 years.
300 years seems to be too low. Romans need to be given at least 500 if we don't count the republican times, and if we do, then we need to add another 100-150 years. And that's not counting Eastern Roman empire which survived till the Renaissance times.
Rome was 3 empires. Principate, dominate, and middle republic, with a christianized late Roman Empire inheriting decline from the dominate. And Byzantium was a continuation of the late (Christian)Roman empire only for the first few centuries; medieval Byzantium called itself Roman but was essentially a new empire(or rather, succession of empires).
The same thing happened in China, with a succession of empires from the same civilization which are clearly more different from each other than mere dynastic differences.
I think it's hair-splitting. Yes, the empires evolved, but they always evolve. USA of 1776 is not the same as USA of 2024, and USA in 100 years will probably be different still (if it survives). But late empire Romans considered themselves the continuation of the tradition and culture and the nation of the early Romans (even though their politics was probably very different than one 500 years ago). I would grant Byzantium it probably different empire from Rome (even though it kinda spinned off it) but I think splitting the Roman or Bizantine history further does not make too much sense when we talk about "how long the empire survives before it falls". Sure, moving from democracy to the emperors' monarchy was a fall of democracy in Rome - but I don't think it was a fall of Rome as the empire. Otherwise we'd have to say things like "Rome fell and became Rome" which IMHO is just weird.
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Rome and Byzantium both lasted more than 300 years.
And the Assyrians. And the HRH. And the Ethiopian empire. And the Carthaginian empire. And...
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