6 ms·

"Why do people say that they trust scientists in general but part company with them on specific issues?" Because, for once, they aren't being mindless sheeple?

"Why do people say that they trust scientists in general but part company with them on specific issues?" Because, for once, they aren't being mindless sheeple? Presented with something that can be proven or disproven, they actually want that to happen, unlike other subjects which don't have any hard lines that can be drawn, and they simply follow. The essence of the scientific method is to trust nothing that hasn't been proven, with evidence, and peer reviewed. Then scientists go to the public and expect people to take their word for it. They really can't see why that doesn't work? People are going to trust their experiences and pre-conceptions before the word of a stranger, no matter how many letters are after his name. If that stranger happens to line up with their existing knowledge, they believe him without question ONLY because their existing knowledge says the same thing. They don't believe the scientist, they believe in themselves. That's how most people work, anyhow. There's a few who go beyond that and challenge even things they have always believed to be true.

JoachimSchipper 16y ago
It seems rather optimistic to think that climate change can be (dis-)proven without going beyond the knowledge of the average person. And even where an average person could learn enough to check the data (e.g. in the whole autism-vaccines mess), people rarely do so.
- bugsy 16y ago
  Many have become skeptics after personally checking the data and protocol. Often this is not provided in enough detail to replicate the study. All such studies should be discarded. Those that provide their data and exact protocol can be reviewed. Journal articles are not an assertion of truth. They are an alleged reporting of results, which should be provided in enough detail to get the same results. This is necessary because historically only a minority of peer reviewed journal published results have reported things that ended up being true.
karamazov 16y ago
It's great to be suspicious of results in a field in which you're an expert, but physicists and biochemists hardly ask their doctor for peer-reviewed proof that his advice is correct. At any rate, people who are so inclined can look up actual research done; but most people won't have the expertise to understand it anyway, which is completely normal outside of your own field. To constantly question everything, or to go with one's preconceived notions irrespective of how much evidence there is against them, is both dangerous and stupid - professional scientists might be wrong about some things, but if the vast majority of them agree on something that you're not qualified to discuss, you can and should assume that they're probably right. A good litmus test for this is asking what evidence you would need to be convinced that you're wrong; if you don't know or if the answer is there is no evidence, you don't know what you're talking about.
- realitygrill 16y ago
  Maybe they should ask their doctor, given the recent spate of articles on ineffectiveness of medical treatment: http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/294/2/218.abstract http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/294/2/218.abstract http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/the-ideology-of-health-care/ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/the-ideology-of-hea... (If someone could find a British metastudy containing a nice graph indicating ~50% of current standard medical treatments has no evidence of effectiveness, I would appreciate it - have had much trouble locating it.) But of course, doctors are not scientists.
  - Alex3917 16y ago
    "If someone could find a British metastudy containing a nice graph indicating ~50% of current standard medical treatments has no evidence of effectiveness, I would appreciate it - have had much trouble locating it." I haven't seen that study, but if you look up any given common medical condition, for many of them there are studies about what percentage of those diagnosed are being treated in accordance with best practices. And for most conditions it's usually not more than a third. Doctors usually just prescribe whatever is advertised the most regardless of whether or not it's even remotely effective or safe, e.g. http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/99/15/2055 http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/99/15/2055
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
tel 16y ago
Mathematicians want you to distrust everything. Scientists want you to believe whatever the data says. If you know someone is a highly accurate person and they say something, then you should trust what they said to be correct. If someone is widely regarded as being highly accurate, it's likely that they are. If someone is scientifically decorated, it's likely they are widely regarded as being highly accurate. In other words while there are a lot of links in the chain you can attack, if you want to succeed at being accurate yourself, you should consider the words of scientists as pretty strong evidence. Now there are much stronger, more direct links that you can follow to achieve strong belief in something. You can study its actual behaviors and how they fit into well-regarded patterns of reality (which you can derive yourself from observing it, if you like) and then extrapolate these to a tentative conclusion about the world. You can also then go and publish your conclusion and begin to collect scientific accolade. --- In short, science in no way suggests that you shouldn't trust something until you can take it all the way apart. Nobody does that (except mathematicians, sort of). It has been shown however that you can trace scientific accolade back to being highly accurate back to actually following and discovering all of those steps. It's also been shown that nearly the only way to become highly accurate yourself is to pare down to them. This is closer to the actual promise of rational study.

JoachimSchipper 16y ago

It seems rather optimistic to think that climate change can be (dis-)proven without going beyond the knowledge of the average person. And even where an average person could learn enough to check the data (e.g. in the whole autism-vaccines mess), people rarely do so.

bugsy 16y ago
Many have become skeptics after personally checking the data and protocol. Often this is not provided in enough detail to replicate the study. All such studies should be discarded. Those that provide their data and exact protocol can be reviewed. Journal articles are not an assertion of truth. They are an alleged reporting of results, which should be provided in enough detail to get the same results. This is necessary because historically only a minority of peer reviewed journal published results have reported things that ended up being true.

karamazov 16y ago

It's great to be suspicious of results in a field in which you're an expert, but physicists and biochemists hardly ask their doctor for peer-reviewed proof that his advice is correct. At any rate, people who are so inclined can look up actual research done; but most people won't have the expertise to understand it anyway, which is completely normal outside of your own field. To constantly question everything, or to go with one's preconceived notions irrespective of how much evidence there is against them, is both dangerous and stupid - professional scientists might be wrong about some things, but if the vast majority of them agree on something that you're not qualified to discuss, you can and should assume that they're probably right. A good litmus test for this is asking what evidence you would need to be convinced that you're wrong; if you don't know or if the answer is there is no evidence, you don't know what you're talking about.

realitygrill 16y ago
Maybe they should ask their doctor, given the recent spate of articles on ineffectiveness of medical treatment: http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/294/2/218.abstract http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/294/2/218.abstract http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/the-ideology-of-health-care/ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/the-ideology-of-hea... (If someone could find a British metastudy containing a nice graph indicating ~50% of current standard medical treatments has no evidence of effectiveness, I would appreciate it - have had much trouble locating it.) But of course, doctors are not scientists.
- Alex3917 16y ago
  "If someone could find a British metastudy containing a nice graph indicating ~50% of current standard medical treatments has no evidence of effectiveness, I would appreciate it - have had much trouble locating it." I haven't seen that study, but if you look up any given common medical condition, for many of them there are studies about what percentage of those diagnosed are being treated in accordance with best practices. And for most conditions it's usually not more than a third. Doctors usually just prescribe whatever is advertised the most regardless of whether or not it's even remotely effective or safe, e.g. http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/99/15/2055 http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/99/15/2055

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

tel 16y ago

Mathematicians want you to distrust everything. Scientists want you to believe whatever the data says. If you know someone is a highly accurate person and they say something, then you should trust what they said to be correct. If someone is widely regarded as being highly accurate, it's likely that they are. If someone is scientifically decorated, it's likely they are widely regarded as being highly accurate. In other words while there are a lot of links in the chain you can attack, if you want to succeed at being accurate yourself, you should consider the words of scientists as pretty strong evidence. Now there are much stronger, more direct links that you can follow to achieve strong belief in something. You can study its actual behaviors and how they fit into well-regarded patterns of reality (which you can derive yourself from observing it, if you like) and then extrapolate these to a tentative conclusion about the world. You can also then go and publish your conclusion and begin to collect scientific accolade. --- In short, science in no way suggests that you shouldn't trust something until you can take it all the way apart. Nobody does that (except mathematicians, sort of). It has been shown however that you can trace scientific accolade back to being highly accurate back to actually following and discovering all of those steps. It's also been shown that nearly the only way to become highly accurate yourself is to pare down to them. This is closer to the actual promise of rational study.