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> Skepticism requires an unlimited amount of work for verifying a chain of evidence, if one piece is wrong then the whole body of data could be unless. Not easy
by munchbunny 7y ago
> Skepticism requires an unlimited amount of work for verifying a chain of evidence, if one piece is wrong then the whole body of data could be unless. Not easy for a data journalist to standup and get a new set of data when there's a time constraint.
In theory, perhaps, but not in practice. In practice, the bar is usually at two standards:
1. at least two uncorrelated/independent sources of truth say the same thing (replication)
2. peer review turns up no clear flaws in methodology
Then your conclusions are good enough for most people. You will not be able to completely rule out the possibility of an incomplete understanding or a theory that is mostly right and a little wrong, but the vast majority of untrustworthy science in the news fails at basic diligence, not at "it looks right to the best of our knowledge but turned out wrong."
- super_k_ro 7y ago> "the vast majority of untrustworthy science in the news fails at basic diligence" I totally agree. I think it's due to our times, because many people just replace religious certainties (which seem to make a come-back this days btw) by scientific certitudes. Yet it's not how science works... > "it looks right to the best of our knowledge but turned out wrong." It's the underlying of scientific process and it needs to be repeated until integrated :) With that in mind, you can hold opinions (because it's useful in life ^^) while managing to change your own mind if a better explanation appears (even if no one is immune to confirmation bias but we can try, can we ?)