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Sure, if you frame something as "Hero worship of scientists as a class as being the holders of truth" then it sounds really bad. In reality, it means stuff lik

Sure, if you frame something as "Hero worship of scientists as a class as being the holders of truth" then it sounds really bad. In reality, it means stuff like "You should not buy homeopathic cures because it's exactly the same as water." I'm OK with science being the arbiter of truth when it has evidences. Edit: Also, in my opinion, Hawking's A Brief History of Time is one of the best books that explained basic ideas of cosmology (and how it is worked on) in terms that laypeople can understand. If that makes him worthy of a special mention of criticism, I don't know what to say.

beaconstudios 6y ago
The bad part of scientism is when people immediately believe every headline that starts with "new study shows" without ever having heard of a meta analysis or having seen the study itself. A lot of bullshit gets pushed out under the umbrella of "science" because it passes by so uncritically. It was a "scientific fact" that smoking didn't cause lung cancer, for far too long. Both believing in homeopathy and believing junk science can be avoided with the application of critical thinking and some basic scientific literacy. Because in reality, science is a human endeavour and is as full (if not more) of shady dealings as any other human endeavour. The process gets us further from untruth (as opposed to closer to truth) as it is applied honestly and diligently, but plenty of conducted science is neither, and science reporting doubly so. But if people are encouraged to cargo-cult "believe scientists always", they're just as gullible as ever.