[–] oedipusaurus_rex 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago (edited ago)
Anytime that you are dealing with any 'real' thing you are taking it on faith that the 'real' world is in fact real. At the end of the day no one can prove that the world we live in is real. All of human knowledge (except for certain branches of philosophy that question reality) is based on the assumption that the waking world is real, other people are actually other people, and the world is more than just the figment of someone's imagination.
Your final paragraph is a very good point. I'm trying to break my way into a career in the geosciences and it is very heavily politicized on both sides. There is money to be had from either a government that is pushing very hard for green technology as well as money to be had from large corporations that are trying to get rights to "rape and pillage". Usually neither side is right and the truth is very nuanced.
For an undergraduate college course I don't have any problem with this. Most students don't start doing hard core research until their senior (and sometimes junior) year. Scientific research figures much more heavily in a masters or PhD program. In the meantime, almost all students have to get a baseline understanding of their field (and the consensus works really well for this) before they can have any success at poking holes in other professional's research.
At the graduate level science is self correcting. At the undergraduate level consensus is there to provide a baseline understanding. At least that's how it is in STEM fields. If someone is majoring in debate or a similar field then I would expect a class to cover both sides of the "controversy".
Edit: formatting
[–] repoman 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Would that the discourse on campus were as civil and open-minded as this. In any case, the responsibility falls upon each thinker to separate faith from fact, but this doesn't help dispel concerns that campuses are increasingly becoming co-opted by special interests interested more in slanting minds than expanding them.
[–] oedipusaurus_rex 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
The politicization of college campuses is becoming a huge problem, but we're starting to swing the other way on that. Ultimately, employers drive college education. Employers don't want to hire people they need to babysit, and they want to hire people who can do the job. It's incumbent on universities to create those people in order to keep money coming in. At this point they can either change, or they can fail.