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I dont really see your problem - and would counter with "we cant understand the world without data, but we also cant understand the world with data alone"[1]. W

I dont really see your problem - and would counter with "we cant understand the world without data, but we also cant understand the world with data alone"[1]. With your firstly and secondly you are basically just making the normative-positive statement distinction: Sure, you cant prove normative statements, that's the point! But you can learn more about them with positive statements, which you can falsify, verify etc. People not accepting evidence is kind of not really a problem of science, but of science communication. But yeah, its also becoming an increasingly severe problem with examples such as climate change denial and anit-vaxxers on the rise [1] hans rosling - factfullness

beat 8y ago
I think Rosling would argue it differently. It's not a problem of "science communication", because there is no way to spin plain facts, hypotheses, and theory refinement in a way to make it automatically palatable to someone who doesn't want to believe it. (fwiw, I think Factfulness is the most valuable and important book I've read in at least a decade, and I recommend it to everyone.) Rosling points out that smart, well-educated, well-meaning people who believe in science also see the world incorrectly - so incorrectly that they perform worse than random chance on multiple-choice questions. That's fascinating, and it suggests the problem is far more fundamental than "science communication". When facts are at odds with our instincts or cultural biases, we tend to choose the instincts and biases.