Politics and Science: Can they coexist?

[Zlejedi]

 

Zucas said:

SciFiBoy said:
the problem isnt that they cant "co-exist" its that both are corruptable as in both you can have conflicting ideas and theories.

Well of course that is possible... with well anything except for cold hard facts.  Not really asking along those lines but more along the lines that science obviously does play a part in politics but doesn't seem to get much credibility at all... at least not publicly.  More or less trying to ask that their are big political issues that have to deal with science but a lot of these discussions turn to be more about other things than science.  So question is why is the science being taken out of politics.

When I asked the question I'm not saying that there is a possibility of coexistence (they have too) but more of question of what is causing them not and whether or not that is justified.

The problem with cold hard facts is that they need to be interpreted correctly. And with multiple conflicting agendas behind different scientists it's hard to judge who is right and who is wrong for non-experts in the field. Also even if we assume every scientist is as objective as possible this still will result in different theories that may or may not have common points.

Now with global warning at the moment it's more or less pure speculation- becouse we have reliable temprature data for 200 years ? Considering that following ice ages and glacials have taken tens of thousand of years our evidence is nothing.

With such lacking data can we really tell that increasing temperature is result of pollution and fossil fuels usage or maybe it is just natural cycle that happens every 10-20 thousand years.

When you consider that huge parts of population are ignorant to the point where they belive in astronomy it's no suprise that science will be used as political tool when it's convienient for people with power.