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Four examples of bad science? I see a trend in these comments that people here are pretty anti-science. I would like to remind us all to just take a peek around

Four examples of bad science? I see a trend in these comments that people here are pretty anti-science. I would like to remind us all to just take a peek around us, and look at what was not even possible, not even imaginable, a mere fifty to one hundred years ago. We are speaking to one another using faradays laws and discoveries, teslas fascination with wireless and countless physicists and engineers that build practically everything you see. Computers, the internet, wireless... does anyone here remember polio, or how the flu used to kill far more than today (with the exception of the COVID)? I find it fascinating how easily we beat down on science and academic scientists in general. Are there bad scientists? Sure. Are there bad people? Sure, but the narrative I find myself reading more and more is all scientists are bad, and all research should be stopped, as it is somehow costing everyone else money or the money is being used wrongly. I think the percentage of that is incredibly small. I only hope we are still educating our children enough in the future to realize the tiny bad percentage of people we hear about (be it in science or the general population) is not representative of all.

AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
How many examples would be enough? Five? Fifty five? Quite a lot of people here (including yours truly) have scientific background. All I'm saying is: let's be careful and let's be skeptical - as real scientists are.
marcosdumay 6y ago
Were all of them bad science? (The first two were clearly so, but I'm not sure about the last ones.) Because if so, it's easy to look a bit more and find completely wrong conclusions taken from good science too. But anyway, all of those were mainstream at some time. The point is that yielding to experts is anti-science. The fact that your experts work in a research lab instead of a church makes little difference here. Scientific decision making requires that at a minimum you verify your experts results, and be ready to notice when they are wrong. This article is as anti-science as the policies it is trying to fight, and this is a bad thing that can only create mistrust from the public.
- patagurbon 6y ago
  Is it possible for non-experts to verify science in most fields? It's possible and important for other experts to verify, but research is very hard to contextualize and verify without being or becoming an expert.
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    > Is it possible for non-experts to verify science in most fields? If they don't know a thing about statistics and science methodology, no it's not. If they do know those, settled research with real impact is not that hard to verify (that's why it's settled), verifying science without impact is not important, and unsettled science shouldn't get a lot of trust anyway. That would be a good subject for an article with that same title. But for the current article, the question is not really relevant.

AlexTWithBeard 6y ago

How many examples would be enough? Five? Fifty five? Quite a lot of people here (including yours truly) have scientific background. All I'm saying is: let's be careful and let's be skeptical - as real scientists are.

marcosdumay 6y ago

Were all of them bad science? (The first two were clearly so, but I'm not sure about the last ones.) Because if so, it's easy to look a bit more and find completely wrong conclusions taken from good science too. But anyway, all of those were mainstream at some time. The point is that yielding to experts is anti-science. The fact that your experts work in a research lab instead of a church makes little difference here. Scientific decision making requires that at a minimum you verify your experts results, and be ready to notice when they are wrong. This article is as anti-science as the policies it is trying to fight, and this is a bad thing that can only create mistrust from the public.

patagurbon 6y ago
Is it possible for non-experts to verify science in most fields? It's possible and important for other experts to verify, but research is very hard to contextualize and verify without being or becoming an expert.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  > Is it possible for non-experts to verify science in most fields? If they don't know a thing about statistics and science methodology, no it's not. If they do know those, settled research with real impact is not that hard to verify (that's why it's settled), verifying science without impact is not important, and unsettled science shouldn't get a lot of trust anyway. That would be a good subject for an article with that same title. But for the current article, the question is not really relevant.