The idea that the process of science is largely about producing a lot of wrong answers in the process of sifting for the right ones is not novel. But it is some

The idea that the process of science is largely about producing a lot of wrong answers in the process of sifting for the right ones is not novel. But it is somehow the nature of this age for people to trumpet every study that makes it into the public eye as True and Wondrous. So patient advocates get stuck with the additional duty of having to explain that a good half of what you read is wrong, and evaluating science for the layman is not simple. Possible, and not hard, but requires some work: http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/05/how-to-read-the-output-of-the-scientific-method.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/05/how-to-read-the-o... "The scientific method is the greatest of inventions: when used to organize and analyze the flawed output of we flawed humans, it leads to truth and discovery. It is how we sift the gems of progress from the rubble of short-sighted human nature, magical thinking, willful ignorance, and other self-sabotaging but entirely natural behaviors. "The scientific community doesn't produce an output of nice, neat tablets of truth, pronouncements come down from the mountain, however. It produces theories that are then backed by varying weights of evidence: a theory with a lot of support stands until deposed by new results. But it's not that neat in practice either. The array of theories presently in the making is a vastly complex and shifting edifice of debate, contradictory research results, and opinion. You might compare the output of the scientific community in this sense with the output of a financial market: a staggeringly varied torrent of data that is confusing and overwhelming to the layperson, but which - when considered in aggregate - more clearly shows the way to someone who has learned to read the ticker tape."