From the NYT:
But pursuers of this “theory of everything” have wandered into fantasy realms of higher dimensions with little or no empirical connection to our reality. In his new book “Hiding in the Mirror: The Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions, from Plato to String Theory and Beyond,” the physicist Lawrence Krauss frets that his colleagues’ belief in hyperspace theories in spite of the lack of evidence will encourage the insidious notion that science “is merely another kind of religion.”
If followers of scientism would stop attempting to pass off their mummery as genuine science – string theorists, geologists, evolutionists, psychologists and IDists alike – then skeptics like myself would likely have more respect and regard for science. But it doesn’t take a PhD to see when the same people who are insisting on rigid adherence to the scientific method of testability and falsibility in one matter are completeley ignoring it in others.
Now, I’m hardly going to get worked up about the notion of teaching string theory, intelligent design or macroevolution in schools that can’t manage to teach reading, history and math. But it’s clear to me that the believers in scientism regularly make claims for the purity of science and and scientists that are every bit as hard to swallow as the concept of a virgin birth.