Brian Earp

“A focus on one method above all others is a kind of fetish. These cases suggest that some of the historical examples of “science gone awry” arose from what I designate methodological fetishism. These are situations where investigators privileged a particular method and ignored or discounted evidence obtained by other methods, which, if heeded, could have changed their minds.”
― Naomi Oreskes, Why Trust Science?

“Back there, before Jim Crow, before the invention of the Negro or the white man or the words and concepts to describe them, the Colonial population consisted largely of a great mass of white and black bondsmen, who occupied roughly the same economic category and were treated with equal contempt by the lords of the plantations and legislatures. Curiously unconcerned about their color, these people worked together and relaxed together.3 —Lerone Bennett Jr.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“statistics, like any tool, don’t work well in all cases and conditions and like any tool can be used well or badly”
― Naomi Oreskes, Why Trust Science?

“Every culture has its typical beliefs, norms and values, but these are in constant flux. The culture may transform itself in response to changes in its environment or through interaction with neighbouring cultures. But cultures also undergo transitions due to their own internal dynamics. Even a completely isolated culture existing in an ecologically stable environment cannot avoid change. Unlike the laws of physics, which are free of inconsistencies, every man-made order is packed with internal contradictions. Cultures are constantly trying to reconcile these contradictions, and this process fuels change.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind