I can think of no better illustration in this moment than this quote by one bard of Evolution the great Richard Dawkins (2009).
“There is a risk that epigenesis will be confused with epigenetics, a modish buzz-word now enjoying its fifteen minutes of fame in the biological community. Whatever epigenetics might mean (and its enthusiasts cannot seem to agree even with themselves, let alone with each other), all I intend to say about it here is that it’s not the same thing as epigenesis”
Here I am 15 years later an epidemiologist becoming a computational evolutionary microbiologist and I am being dunked on by epigeneticists and I still haven’t found a satisfactory explanation for epigenetic causality.
The problem of course is fame. There is no place in science for buzz-words unless you are specifically talking about flying insects.
Bottom-up or Top-down the only predictions that matter to me are the ones that are accurate. This is why I write science on a blog and in papers.
Science writing on a blog isn’t science, it’s about science.
In science only papers count.
There is problems with this too, because most scientific papers are rotten on the inside. They overreach and then there is marketing.
Perceptions about scientific theories then propagate by the where the who wrote them is paid and then there is the jargon.
Don’t get me wrong at least in science, like we see with this Dawkins quote, there is the paper trail to support succession of theories, unlike politics or theatre were only performative arts matter.
Of course I couldn’t ponder any of this in a scientific paper, therefore the scientists blog too.
These days what saddens me most is when people mix everything up. We see scientists become politicians and then use their performance to betray their science.
Now things change. Information improves. This is not really our problem though. When I was younger I thought I could avoid the problem of needing scientific papers and blog by being a clinician or climber.
Now it seems there is no way out. All of us need our work and a blog. Then we need a goal. Thankfully my goal has never changed.
Go up into the mountains and be helpful. Use science along the way and blog about the struggle.
The TEH way.