Science of the Weird

A couple of stupid comments realating to "science" have crossed my path recently. The first was from an article in the computer trade rag InfoWorld where the columnist complimented a company called Savvysoft for adding interesting features to the Excel spreadsheet program:

My briefing with Savvysoft went about the same way, and just before we ended the call, I told then, "Good Science".

The term science has just been diluted to a new low, that of hacking bureaucratic productivity devices.

The second case involves the calm dispassionate Judeo-Christian religious wingnut radio host Dennis Prager, who thought either Sigmund Freud or Adolph Hitler would have been a better choice for Time magazine's Man of the Century than Albert Einstein. He concluded by saying the staff of Time goes overboard in their worship of science. Classic framing technique, denigrate something you don't like by projecting the opposition's blasphemous use of a word; in this case "worship", while being dumb enough not to know that Freud was actually also a scientist.