Another good podcast episode: neurosurgeon Theodore Schwartz talking to Tyler Cowen. Dr Schwartz is a bigger believer in science than yours truly:
COWEN: Do you think there are areas of science, though, where the institutions are so screwed up that you don’t actually trust the product of what is coming out, and there’s some systematic bias in the ideas being generated?
SCHWARTZ: I think, yes, there’s always going to be politics involved, and we always come to any problem from a unique single perspective, and institutions are going to have their biases. Yes, that is true, but in the long run, the scientific method will figure it out, and there will be one right answer. That institution — whatever their bias is — will be proven wrong in the long run. Now, those people might be dead and won’t be able to apologize at that point.
The problem, of course, is even when the scientific method does figure something out, people still keep doing things the old way, and no, generational change does not help. Witness homeopathy, kyphoplasty, vitamin C for colds, and — more relevant to Tyler’s question — the amyloid plaque hypothesis of Alzheimer’s disease. Abandoning lobotomies was an aberration, zombie medicine is the rule.