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I was about to post something similar. Before you act on the urge to go pontificating about how the scientists have clearly got it wrong for this reason or that

by dTal 8y ago

I was about to post something similar. Before you act on the urge to go pontificating about how the scientists have clearly got it wrong for this reason or that reason, ask yourself - do you really think they haven't thought of that? Don't you think that, if there is mileage in your idea, there would certainly be scientists pushing it? Addendum: Science (and more generally, specialization) requires that we trust that that the experts in the areas outside of our own chosen fields do in fact know what they are doing. It's become less fashionable to do so lately (one politician in the UK famously said a few years back that "the people of this country have had enough of experts"), but that is to our cost - the extreme end of this is flat-earth conspiracy.

maxxxxx 8y ago
I think the backlash against "experts" comes from the fact that way too many things get mixed into "science". When you look at fields like social sciences, nutrition and economics there are a lot of "scientists" that get publicity for results of very undisciplined work. They don't crosscheck their result for contradictions and often just seem to look for confirmation of their own biases. This contrasts to most physics I read about. Physicists seem to make a big effort to reconcile all their measurements and if they contradict they admit that and say "we don't know yet". So physics and other hard sciences suffer from being put together with a lot of other bad science in the public.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  There are also people - usually rich and/or corporate - deliberately muddying the water in fields such as climate change, pharma testing, and so on. The public doesn't understand science, but it understands corporate PR even less. The corporate PR industry has no plans to change this. One of the biggest and most destructive wins for corporate PR has been the steady erosion of scientific credibility with FUD and character assassination, combined with science-for-hire commercial shilling. This has done huge damage to the credibility of tentative research, and made it very hard to get away with saying "We just don't know yet. So we need to keep looking, because looking where we don't have answers yet is our job." But... not only does the public not understand how corporate PR operates. The scientific community often doesn't either. There's a presumption of good faith in scientific debate. No matter how personal the to-and-fro gets, there's an assumption that everyone is doing the same job for recognisably similar reasons. That presumption is wholly wrong in any situation with significant political and/or financial consequences outside of science.
fermienrico 8y ago
Contrary to your argument, there is also the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect Note that I am not saying it is the case here, but simply pointing out that the "experts" authority can also be challenged. Furthermore, this happens rarely, but notably that someone with no serious "expert" qualifications, they produce revolutionary work (Ramanujan, etc.)

by dTal 8y ago

maxxxxx 8y ago

I think the backlash against "experts" comes from the fact that way too many things get mixed into "science". When you look at fields like social sciences, nutrition and economics there are a lot of "scientists" that get publicity for results of very undisciplined work. They don't crosscheck their result for contradictions and often just seem to look for confirmation of their own biases. This contrasts to most physics I read about. Physicists seem to make a big effort to reconcile all their measurements and if they contradict they admit that and say "we don't know yet". So physics and other hard sciences suffer from being put together with a lot of other bad science in the public.

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
There are also people - usually rich and/or corporate - deliberately muddying the water in fields such as climate change, pharma testing, and so on. The public doesn't understand science, but it understands corporate PR even less. The corporate PR industry has no plans to change this. One of the biggest and most destructive wins for corporate PR has been the steady erosion of scientific credibility with FUD and character assassination, combined with science-for-hire commercial shilling. This has done huge damage to the credibility of tentative research, and made it very hard to get away with saying "We just don't know yet. So we need to keep looking, because looking where we don't have answers yet is our job." But... not only does the public not understand how corporate PR operates. The scientific community often doesn't either. There's a presumption of good faith in scientific debate. No matter how personal the to-and-fro gets, there's an assumption that everyone is doing the same job for recognisably similar reasons. That presumption is wholly wrong in any situation with significant political and/or financial consequences outside of science.

fermienrico 8y ago

Contrary to your argument, there is also the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect Note that I am not saying it is the case here, but simply pointing out that the "experts" authority can also be challenged. Furthermore, this happens rarely, but notably that someone with no serious "expert" qualifications, they produce revolutionary work (Ramanujan, etc.)