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Scientific theories and predictions should be presented to the public with a confidence attached. When people group gravity, evolution, dark energy, global war
by haberman 9y ago
Scientific theories and predictions should be presented to the public with a confidence attached. When people group gravity, evolution, dark energy, global warming, economics, psychological theories, etc. under a single banner of "science", it obscures the fact that some of these things can be modeled with far greater certainty than others.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago> Scientific theories and predictions should be presented to the public with a confidence attached. Theoretically, that's what peer-review is all about. Is your theory published in Nature? High confidence. Is your theory a FoxNews piece on a 'recent study'? Low confidence.
- laingc 9y agoHaving any kind of confidence in the peer review system is, in my opinion, horribly misplaced. Particularly with regard to Nature, the following website might interest you: http://retractionwatch.com/category/by-journal/nature-retractions/ http://retractionwatch.com/category/by-journal/nature-retrac...
- Frogolocalypse 9y agoIt's all relative I guess.
- tpeo 9y agoI'm somewhat flattered that you think that the man on the street might count economics among the "sciences", because from my experience laymen are already pretty skeptic when it comes to economics. Psychology too, though to a lesser degree. In fact, it seems that so long as the subject in question isn't completely opaque to them, they might be tempted to generalize from limited experiences and will start holding strong opinions of their own despite whatever it is that experts say. Which I think can be fine, specially if the experts don't have a great track record (e.g. economics and psychology). But it can also get absurd pretty quickly, like when people point out some huge snowstorm in their town in response to "global warming", as if that proves anything.