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It’s all too easy to confuse skepticism with science denialism. It’s important to be skeptical of scientific claims. This is essentially the core engine of scie

• ajmurmann 4y ago
  > It’s important to be skeptical of scientific claims. This is essentially the core engine of scientific progress. This often gets abused. Laymen frequently will doubt scientific results and then make exactly this argument. That's a totally different breast than someone dedicating years of studies to understand the state of the art in a scientific field and THEN doubting results. Otherwise we can never move past agreeing even on fundamentals Edit: to add an example, in college I had a friend who didn't believe black holes were really a singularity and that something else might be going on. He wasn't able to explain beyond "feels wrong". When I called out that if he doesn't even have a coherent explanation why he maybe should shut up and trust experts everyone got angry because "scepticism is fundamental to scientific process". Sure, you doubt it. Fine! Hey a PhD in physics and proof your point!
  • ufmace 4y ago
    It does get abused, but IMO the abuse of perceived scientific authority is far more important. At the end of the day, who really cares if some random college friend doesn't believe in the scientific consensus on black holes? His opinion has zero impact on anything at all. On the other hand, when bad science gets elevated to near-religious status, we get horrific outcomes. I'm 1000x more afraid of the regime that can persuade some random college friend to mouth the mainstream opinion on black hole structure than I am that this guy wants to believe something that might not be true, especially in a field that will never have any impact on any of our daily lives.
    • atoav 4y ago
      The point is that critical thinking doesn't mean "question everything and assume everybody except yourself is incompetent or evil". It means that you understand you can replicate someone's results if you doubt them. You can look at the methods they used and find why they were adequate or inadequate. You can reason if the conclusions they drew from their findings are accurate. But all of this will not come out of "I have a strange feeling on that topic". Unless you are really an expert on the matter, many topics will produce strange feelings in people, because chances are they lack some fundamental understanding that would be needed to even understand the findings. I am not saying you need to either do all the work and check yourself OR blindly trust science and awallow everything that looks "sciency". What we need to do is to educate people on how to check studies and papers for themselves all while admiting which parts they don't know.
      • TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
        I don't think we should. The problem isn't science, the problem is that fake "sciencey" presentations of opinions that are known to be wrong have been used to devalue real science. Climate change is the perfect example. The fossil barons knew that a move to renewables would destroy their political influence and financial power, so they literally ran a decades-long campaign to discredit the established science and individual scientists. There is far more need to educate the public about toxic PR technologies, media manipulations, FUD, cut-out think tanks all funded by the same sources and pushing the same disinformation, social media bot farms, and all the other industrial fake news techniques than there is about basic science. It doesn't matter if individuals don't understand what a mass spectrometer does. But it's hugely damaging to democracy if individuals believe they have an informed personal opinion when in fact they've been manipulated into a distorted and provably unrealistic world view without even being aware of it.
        • atoav 4y ago
          I think your assertion is spot on: One of the biggest issues of today is that people think they know everything. And they want to know everything because they learned not having an answer is bad in school. At the same time they have an ever-present answer machine in their pockets. Just type a question and you will find the answer. That the question might already imply a certain answer is either ignored or willfully accepted. I am not sure how we come (back?) to a culture where people who don't know anything about an issue stop pretending they do, but I think this is not unimportant these days.
  • ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
    Science is not a perfect, pure, infallible process. It's messy, political, and often wrong. In our modern world where science impacts every aspect of our lives and informs policy, laymen are the ones who need to be concerned with science and its results. A PhD cannot be a prerequisite to discuss these issues in a democracy, by definition.
    • TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
      Organised attacks on science are also not a pure, infallible process. They're messy, political, corrupt, and even more likely to be wrong.
    • willis936 4y ago
      A PhD isn't a prerequisite to legitimately weighing in on things. Working knowledge is. A PhD in a given field is a good predictor of working knowledge. There is a pandemic of people thinking they should talk about shit they know nothing about.
    • TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
      > Science is not a perfect, pure, infallible process. But every single day, studies are reported as infallible, final words on whatever subject is at hand. Then, a few years later, more "science" happens, and that study gets modified heavily, and the NEW results are ALSO reported as the last word on the subject. Hence, a big part of the overarching confusion and befuddlement being discussed up and down this thread. A lot of people say "good 'science'" is a continual process, and that's certainly true, but the layman's view of the situation is presented as discrete, objective, unchangeable and unchallengeable fact.
      • fastaguy88 4y ago
        It seems unfair to blame science and scientists for how their work is reported. Scientists are skeptics, and are fully aware that the latest press release is not the “last” word. Reporters are not teachers - their job is to tell stories that sell ads, not wallow in subtlety. If you want to learn about new science, stay away from the popular press.
  • hutzlibu 4y ago
    "someone dedicating years of studies to understand the state of the art in a scientific field and THEN doubting results." That very same argument was and is done on the theological level, too. You doubt god? You just haven't read the bible enough. How dare you criticize someone who spend 40 years studying it? Do the same and then you understand and maybe can start criticizing. (I was told this many times in various forms.) So critical questions are the core of science. Even if they are ignorant ones, then you can point them to the subject they are missing. And sure, not every ignorant answer deserves to be answered. Time and energy are limited. But appeal to authority is never a good scientific argument. I rather believe they erode the fundaments of it. There likely are many wrong models around and usually wrong models don't get challenged by the established institutions. (Max Planck: science progresses one funeral at a time) But of course, in your example, there was no critical question. So no science. Those people I tell to create a structured argument first, if they want to have a scientific debate.
  • mkr-hn 4y ago
    I wish people like that would write science fiction instead. We need more kooky sci-fi writers and fewer armchair skeptics.
• pengstrom 4y ago
  The first subject of skepticism must always be yourself. Science is the enterprise to stop fooling ourselves. Scepticism without it is meaningless.