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Almost all of our current scientific knowledge has come from challenging the consensus of the times. Scientific skepticism is always healthy and should be welco
by everdev 8y ago
Almost all of our current scientific knowledge has come from challenging the consensus of the times. Scientific skepticism is always healthy and should be welcomed. Even if the original theory is correct, that doubt will simply help science better explain and prove the current understanding. I'd actually be more worried if everyone agreed about something. Even gravity we thought was fully solved until Einstein doubted that we understood it fully. Let's be careful of putting anything in the category of "beyond doubt", especially theories that haven't been tested or confirmed directly.
- krapp 8y agoI'm not asking anyone to put the consensus on dark matter beyond doubt, only for people to realize that the consensus exists for a reason. Even the Wikipedia page for dark matter mentions alternatives, so it's not even an absolute consensus, and scientists have considered possibilities like "gravity is just different at large scales." The problem is, none of those alternatives can yet explain the data as well as the dark matter hypothesis. But unless we apply the principle of charity to fields that may lie outside our areas of expertise, then discussion won't move beyond the typical middlebrow dismissals HN seems to be fond of.
- gbrown 8y agoThat's precisely why we should be open to new theories and novel experiments... something which happens all the time in the scientific community. It's not a case for wild and uninformed speculation (as is happening all over this thread).
- fumbrella 8y agoI think this is true, but I would add that the challenge usually came from someone who was thoroughly familiar with the consensus of the time. I think it's important to distinguish between healthy scientific scepticism from well informed observers/participants and a general out of hand dismissiveness, an extreme example being climate change. It's very difficult to critically evaluate the claims in many fields without having a good handle on the literature. (To be clear I'm not saying this requires having a PhD in the subject.)
- nabla9 8y ago>Scientific skepticism is always healthy and should be welcomed. I strongly disagree. Principled scientific skepticism from practicing scientist and expert is welcome and can contribute. Layman scientific skepticism in hard sciences like physics is worthless and even harmful. No matter how skeptical a layman who reads popular science magazines is, they don't contribute. Only thing we can do is to learn. Our judgment and opinion is worthless. People want to understand, contribute and discuss, but even if we have the education to understand the issues, we don't have the time or interest really think it trough. Everything valuable flows top down from experts to the layman. Generic examples taken from the history like "Even gravity we thought was fully solved until Einstein doubted that we understood it fully" are just using different words to express tautologies. They don't provide information to the issues at hand.
- GeekyBear 8y agoScience is about repeatable experimental outcomes that are predicted In advance by theory. Demanding that people believe in a theory that so far has not been supported by the experimental data is more like religion than science.
- gpderetta 8y agoWhich theory is not supported by experimental data? GR? There is hardly any theory with more experimental support.
- SubiculumCode 8y agoActually, most scientific progress has come from building on earlier scientific work..that is incremental science.
- Avshalom 8y agoDark Matter IS the scientific knowledge that came from challenging the consensus.
- everdev 8y agoScientific progress has no end as far as we can tell. Just because we've found a theory that explains more than the previous one doesn't mean that we're done.