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Most people think the scientific consensus is right, say, 90% of the time. This is reasonable. They then go ahead and pick 10% of issues to disagree with the sc

Most people think the scientific consensus is right, say, 90% of the time. This is reasonable. They then go ahead and pick 10% of issues to disagree with the scientific consensus on. This is NOT reasonable. People fall into the same trap in many other situations. If you give someone a guessing game where a red card is shown 80% of the time, and a black card is shown 20% of the time, they'll usually start guessing red 80% and black 20%. They'll still do this even if they're given money for correct guesses. They'll even do this if they're told the game is totally random, and that red occurs more often! You of course maximise your correct predictions by always guessing the majority class, unless you're more accurate than the prior distribution. So if you can't guess the next card >80% accurately, you should always pick red. Likewise, if you can't know _when_ the scientists are wrong with >90% accuracy, you should just shut up and trust the scientists _always_. But, of course, this is not what people do.

CapitalistCartr 15y ago
The real World is not a card game. When there is a lot at stake questioning the scientists, wanting more, is the best course of action. Trust is fine for most things, but as the stakes get higher, the trust should, and does, drop.
- syllogism 15y ago
  As the stakes get higher it's ever more important to pursue the rational course of action. It also gets more difficult. Beating the baseline of always trusting the scientists is basically impossible for the lay-person to do. All they're going to do is look more closely at whatever claims perk up their ears based on their current biases, and then look just closely enough to spot some "flaw" which would get swatted aside in minutes by a serious researcher. If you couldn't write a paper that had a good chance of being accepted by a journal (modulo bias) then you have no business doubting the conclusion. If you go about doing that, then your beliefs will on average be less accurate. And that's a bad thing, as the stakes are quite high.
  - tel 15y ago
    To tie in something bluekeybox mentioned, while this is strictly true, people are often exposed to underdeveloped scientific arguments. High energy physics at CERN is the same as Climatology is the same as people who interpreted those reverse-causality ESP results as something other than a statistical anomaly. Of course, some skepticism can be used to separate these three classes even for the layperson. The wiser layperson looks for articles on journal websites that they don't want to buy, looks for credentials from known universities, looks for something that sounds sciencey instead of new agey. These policies definitely can improve your capacity to learn from digested scientific material. But if you interpret this power as roughly knowing how to interpret and trust scientists, which is probably a fair description of the actors in a lot of lay science argumentation (or politics in general), then you can quickly get out of your depth without others or even yourself noticing. --- I think the article does a good job conveying the idea of scientific doubt. I also love the idea of stressing science history in an effort to both demonstrate the uncertainty of scientific knowledge and the sheer volume of work that's gone behind a lot of it. The real message, I believe, should be one of reverence toward the problem. When scientific knowledge is passed on to an increasingly lay audience, it should be known that this is the best guess a room full of really smart, dedicated people could get at. This guess may be good or bad, but unless you're willing to tackle the question they were asking at a similar level of rigor (like your "could you get a paper accepted" criterion) then you are pretty unlikely to understand and appreciate the less good options.
Alex3917 15y ago
"Likewise, if you can't know _when_ the scientists are wrong with >90% accuracy, you should just shut up and trust the scientists _always_. But, of course, this is not what people do." The problem is that it's trivially easy to find MAJOR errors in the methodology or interpretation of many or even most journal articles, and whatever passes for the scientific consensus is usually based directly off a very shallow reading of the abstracts and conclusions of these articles without taking any of their flaws into account, let alone questioning the epistemology behind them. There are probably fields where this isn't true, but they're definitely the minority. When the scientific consensus changes it's rarely because of brilliant new research, but rather because the flaws in old research gradually get publicized and so the old conclusions get replaced by the conclusions of new research that's also flawed, but where the flaws aren't yet widely known. But there's no reason why you can't actually figure out what these flaws are, it's not difficult at all, it's just that most people (including scientists) are too lazy to read the actual papers and think critically about them. The point is that people who buy into scientific consensus wholesale aren't actually the rational skeptics they market themselves as being, but rather are just as dumb and ignorant as the worst of the religious fundamentalists.
- syllogism 15y ago
  That's true of a lot of the "science" that makes its way into the media spotlight. Much of that is actually just PR: "Hershey's scientists find chocolate is better than sex!", etc. I don't think you'll find that true at all of serious, impactful papers that actually have an influence on consensus in a field. If that were true, then the figure for scientific consensus being true would be much lower than 90%. But I don't believe that. I'd have to wonder what these scientists were doing, that I could just waltz in and blow them away with my wits and reason. I mean, what are the other scientists in this hypothetical field _doing_? Are they that incompetent or corrupt, that I can just blow a hole in their field based on casual observation? Why can't they see the same things I can? This brings me back to that journal benchmark. Do you think you could write a summary paper discounting a substantial body of research for exhibiting various flaws? If so, do you think it would be accepted? I suggest there are few fields where it's really that easy.

CapitalistCartr 15y ago

The real World is not a card game. When there is a lot at stake questioning the scientists, wanting more, is the best course of action. Trust is fine for most things, but as the stakes get higher, the trust should, and does, drop.

syllogism 15y ago
As the stakes get higher it's ever more important to pursue the rational course of action. It also gets more difficult. Beating the baseline of always trusting the scientists is basically impossible for the lay-person to do. All they're going to do is look more closely at whatever claims perk up their ears based on their current biases, and then look just closely enough to spot some "flaw" which would get swatted aside in minutes by a serious researcher. If you couldn't write a paper that had a good chance of being accepted by a journal (modulo bias) then you have no business doubting the conclusion. If you go about doing that, then your beliefs will on average be less accurate. And that's a bad thing, as the stakes are quite high.
- tel 15y ago
  To tie in something bluekeybox mentioned, while this is strictly true, people are often exposed to underdeveloped scientific arguments. High energy physics at CERN is the same as Climatology is the same as people who interpreted those reverse-causality ESP results as something other than a statistical anomaly. Of course, some skepticism can be used to separate these three classes even for the layperson. The wiser layperson looks for articles on journal websites that they don't want to buy, looks for credentials from known universities, looks for something that sounds sciencey instead of new agey. These policies definitely can improve your capacity to learn from digested scientific material. But if you interpret this power as roughly knowing how to interpret and trust scientists, which is probably a fair description of the actors in a lot of lay science argumentation (or politics in general), then you can quickly get out of your depth without others or even yourself noticing. --- I think the article does a good job conveying the idea of scientific doubt. I also love the idea of stressing science history in an effort to both demonstrate the uncertainty of scientific knowledge and the sheer volume of work that's gone behind a lot of it. The real message, I believe, should be one of reverence toward the problem. When scientific knowledge is passed on to an increasingly lay audience, it should be known that this is the best guess a room full of really smart, dedicated people could get at. This guess may be good or bad, but unless you're willing to tackle the question they were asking at a similar level of rigor (like your "could you get a paper accepted" criterion) then you are pretty unlikely to understand and appreciate the less good options.

Alex3917 15y ago

"Likewise, if you can't know _when_ the scientists are wrong with >90% accuracy, you should just shut up and trust the scientists _always_. But, of course, this is not what people do." The problem is that it's trivially easy to find MAJOR errors in the methodology or interpretation of many or even most journal articles, and whatever passes for the scientific consensus is usually based directly off a very shallow reading of the abstracts and conclusions of these articles without taking any of their flaws into account, let alone questioning the epistemology behind them. There are probably fields where this isn't true, but they're definitely the minority. When the scientific consensus changes it's rarely because of brilliant new research, but rather because the flaws in old research gradually get publicized and so the old conclusions get replaced by the conclusions of new research that's also flawed, but where the flaws aren't yet widely known. But there's no reason why you can't actually figure out what these flaws are, it's not difficult at all, it's just that most people (including scientists) are too lazy to read the actual papers and think critically about them. The point is that people who buy into scientific consensus wholesale aren't actually the rational skeptics they market themselves as being, but rather are just as dumb and ignorant as the worst of the religious fundamentalists.

syllogism 15y ago
That's true of a lot of the "science" that makes its way into the media spotlight. Much of that is actually just PR: "Hershey's scientists find chocolate is better than sex!", etc. I don't think you'll find that true at all of serious, impactful papers that actually have an influence on consensus in a field. If that were true, then the figure for scientific consensus being true would be much lower than 90%. But I don't believe that. I'd have to wonder what these scientists were doing, that I could just waltz in and blow them away with my wits and reason. I mean, what are the other scientists in this hypothetical field _doing_? Are they that incompetent or corrupt, that I can just blow a hole in their field based on casual observation? Why can't they see the same things I can? This brings me back to that journal benchmark. Do you think you could write a summary paper discounting a substantial body of research for exhibiting various flaws? If so, do you think it would be accepted? I suggest there are few fields where it's really that easy.