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There's a lot of middle ground between blindly trusting all 'science' and blatantly disregarding everything that rubs you the wrong way. It's possible to both

There's a lot of middle ground between blindly trusting all 'science' and blatantly disregarding everything that rubs you the wrong way. It's possible to both have a generally high amount of faith in 'the science' while still remaining critical of its flaws, or rather, the flaws of the system in which its conducted.

themitigating 4y ago
How? If I'm critical of something what do I do? If there's a vaccine and the majority of people in that field say it's safe but you want me to be critical what do I do?
Test0129 4y ago
I don't think this is the case. The point of science as one commenter pointed out is a lack of trust (or faith). Hence the need for pages and pages of sources, concerted efforts on reproducibility, etc. In certain fields reproducibility is extremely important and a single scientific article should be taken with extreme skepticism until it's reproduced several times. I think this is the thing that's often skipped. A single article being published in a journal is not a sign of changing times. If there's no attempts to reproduce it we have an idea of something, but no idea if it works (really). Often times this lack of reproducibility is associated with so-called corporate "science" (Phillip Morris, from another example I posted). I hesitate to use the word faith at all, even when describing the scientific process itself. Having faith in the process leads to (for lack of a better phrase) a failure to trust, but verify. IMO, it is one thing to approach scientific literature with a trusting demeanor and still walk through the proper processes to verify the results, and another thing entirely to literally take the author's word. Often times especially when big names are attached we aren't trusting-and-verifying we are simply taking their word. That's a problem that weakens the credibility of science. I don't want to come off as someone who disregards everything he doesn't like. However, I do approach science with great pessimism and have since graduate school. Not because I hate it, or something is wrong with the scientific method, but because approaching it pessimistically allowed me to write better work by forcing me to actually perform the method instead of p-hacking my way to a result.
- themitigating 4y ago
  I want to disagree with a small part of this. Faith is the belief in something that you can't prove. That is, even if you became an expert in a field, read all the papers, etc you couldn't prove the existence of god, hence faith.
- CodeSgt 4y ago
  Trusting the outcomes produced by science is inherently faith for most people who aren't an expert in that particular field of research, and since no one is an expert in every field everyone has to take certain scientific outcomes on faith.

themitigating 4y ago

How? If I'm critical of something what do I do? If there's a vaccine and the majority of people in that field say it's safe but you want me to be critical what do I do?

Test0129 4y ago

I don't think this is the case. The point of science as one commenter pointed out is a lack of trust (or faith). Hence the need for pages and pages of sources, concerted efforts on reproducibility, etc. In certain fields reproducibility is extremely important and a single scientific article should be taken with extreme skepticism until it's reproduced several times. I think this is the thing that's often skipped. A single article being published in a journal is not a sign of changing times. If there's no attempts to reproduce it we have an idea of something, but no idea if it works (really). Often times this lack of reproducibility is associated with so-called corporate "science" (Phillip Morris, from another example I posted). I hesitate to use the word faith at all, even when describing the scientific process itself. Having faith in the process leads to (for lack of a better phrase) a failure to trust, but verify. IMO, it is one thing to approach scientific literature with a trusting demeanor and still walk through the proper processes to verify the results, and another thing entirely to literally take the author's word. Often times especially when big names are attached we aren't trusting-and-verifying we are simply taking their word. That's a problem that weakens the credibility of science. I don't want to come off as someone who disregards everything he doesn't like. However, I do approach science with great pessimism and have since graduate school. Not because I hate it, or something is wrong with the scientific method, but because approaching it pessimistically allowed me to write better work by forcing me to actually perform the method instead of p-hacking my way to a result.

themitigating 4y ago
I want to disagree with a small part of this. Faith is the belief in something that you can't prove. That is, even if you became an expert in a field, read all the papers, etc you couldn't prove the existence of god, hence faith.
CodeSgt 4y ago
Trusting the outcomes produced by science is inherently faith for most people who aren't an expert in that particular field of research, and since no one is an expert in every field everyone has to take certain scientific outcomes on faith.