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Nah dude. That’s exactly what I am saying. Your “faith” in science is not misplaced, and it is not absent evidence of working. If science didn’t work, you could

by wredue 3y ago

Nah dude. That’s exactly what I am saying. Your “faith” in science is not misplaced, and it is not absent evidence of working. If science didn’t work, you couldn’t have written that comment. You also have evidence that a small minority of people exploit that trust for personal gain, but this is a fixable thing. This is an entirely different definition of faith.

tombert 3y ago
Sure, I would say that it's not an article of faith to say that, I don't know, transistors work as expected, because obviously I can very clearly demonstrate that by sending this very message. But "science" isn't a monolith. Most science is stuff I don't really understand with any kind of intimate detail. Pretty much anything involving chemistry, biology, health, or physics is over my head; I'll try and read the abstract of a paper in those subjects and I feel like I generally understand it well enough, but I don't know enough to actually criticize anything. If we take the Jan Hendrik Schon scandal from about 22 years ago, I know I would have read the papers and just taken on faith that the paper writer wasn't lying. I'm not equipped enough in physics or chemistry to call bullshit on anything being said in there and I probably would have trusted it. I also would have been wrong. Now the Jan Hendrik Schon case isn't a great example, because of course he was caught, and it's tempting to say "see! Science is self-correcting!" and I think it broadly is, but at the same we really have no way of knowing how prevalent these cases of fraud actually are. Maybe other scientists are just better at covering up their tracks. Of course this is getting into the bigger "replication crisis" in science, but I generally believe a vast majority of scientists are honest with their results, and I generally believe the results of their papers are at least truthful, but at some level that's an article of "faith", or maybe just an article of "intellectual laziness" on my end. I guess I might argue that there's not much of a difference between the two.

by wredue 3y ago

tombert 3y ago

Sure, I would say that it's not an article of faith to say that, I don't know, transistors work as expected, because obviously I can very clearly demonstrate that by sending this very message. But "science" isn't a monolith. Most science is stuff I don't really understand with any kind of intimate detail. Pretty much anything involving chemistry, biology, health, or physics is over my head; I'll try and read the abstract of a paper in those subjects and I feel like I generally understand it well enough, but I don't know enough to actually criticize anything. If we take the Jan Hendrik Schon scandal from about 22 years ago, I know I would have read the papers and just taken on faith that the paper writer wasn't lying. I'm not equipped enough in physics or chemistry to call bullshit on anything being said in there and I probably would have trusted it. I also would have been wrong. Now the Jan Hendrik Schon case isn't a great example, because of course he was caught, and it's tempting to say "see! Science is self-correcting!" and I think it broadly is, but at the same we really have no way of knowing how prevalent these cases of fraud actually are. Maybe other scientists are just better at covering up their tracks. Of course this is getting into the bigger "replication crisis" in science, but I generally believe a vast majority of scientists are honest with their results, and I generally believe the results of their papers are at least truthful, but at some level that's an article of "faith", or maybe just an article of "intellectual laziness" on my end. I guess I might argue that there's not much of a difference between the two.