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> In the absence of the ability to make them, science's job is to attempt to give us a best guess at what the most likely answer to a question is. I think it's
by wallace_f 10y ago
> In the absence of the ability to make them, science's job is to attempt to give us a best guess at what the most likely answer to a question is.
I think it's a pretty important concept for people to keep in mind that if you're not verifying your guesses with experimentation, you're fundamentally not doing science.
- mistermann 10y agoUnless the general public is doing it for you. People vastly underestimate how thorough some enthusiast communities are.
- didibus 10y agoI disagree. Doing science involves a mix of observation and experimentation. A lot of diet recommendations often do both. They've observed eating habits of healthy people over less healthy people, and then they've experimented by having a bunch of people try the diet, and after some years, they've observed again what was the effects. Some diets don't do that. They're sometimes based on a type of "that makes sense" intuition, like, our ancestors used to eat mostly meat, so we should eat like them. Or, this substance is known to absorb toxins, so obviously eating it will clear your bloodstream of them. These I admit aren't scientific. Though often those intuitive catch phrases are thrown on top of scientific dietary ideas as a way to convince people to it and sell a bunch of books and products.