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Why science is so hard to believe

59 points by frostmatthew 12y ago

Retric 12y ago
I think the real issue is people are given the results not the background experiments. Talk to an 10 year old about air resistance vs gravity and there probably going to take what you say on faith. Show them a video of a brick and a feather dropped in a vacuum and you words become more meaningful.
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  There is an interesting journal called JOVE, journal of visualized experiments, which does this. It has peer reviewed videos of experiments. But this has the same problem that many other journals do, it is behind a big pay wall.
known 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias
vxxzy 12y ago
Can Anyone shed some light to debunk this: http://fluoridealert.org/articles/50-reasons/ http://fluoridealert.org/articles/50-reasons/ The argument is compelling, but I am not one who knows either way. What studies show Fluoridated water's benefit?
- keslag 12y ago
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC27492/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC27492/ Just like with creationism, vaccinations, the environment, and fluoride; if you polish the bullshit enough, people will follow.
  - gwern 12y ago
    I think my main take-away from the forest plots in that paper (and the discussion of the specific studies) is that the evidence for even the dental benefits is really wretched. Not a single randomized trial, and the heterogeneity is insanely high. (Can you imagine proposing fluoridation of everyone's drinking water these days based on evidence like that? If fluoride were being proposed to the FDA as a drug, it wouldn't even make it to Phase III trials...)
    - gwern 12y ago
      > the heterogeneity is insanely high. To expand on this: the heterogeneity is so high that they don't (as meta-analysis guidelines say you should) report the figures. This is why in the figures, you see tight confidence intervals around zero, but also equally-tight confidence intervals many effect-size units away. That's an alarm bell for trying to draw any sort of meaningful conclusion: it means there are so many variables at play that you have no idea whether the net should be zero or big. (Also a concern given the observation that many countries have seen dental problems fall considerably as they developed, which is a big confound.)
- Symmetry 12y ago
  If you're curious about a topic Wikipedia is usually a good starting point and will link to some good references. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation
  - innguest 12y ago
    Wikipedia is not a good source for controversial topics as it tends to pick one side (the mainstream side) for its readers.
- vixen99 12y ago
  Is anyone unaware of a single advantage aside from the fact that fluoride does indeed swap with calcium in the tooth enamel apatite and thereby increase the latter's resistance to acid attack? Given the prevalence of fluoride in toothpaste, why mass 'medicate'? The experts consulted are one with those folk who think that stuffing mercury amalgam into a permanent location a few centimeters from the brain is a good idea. Given the biochemistry of Hg, it's not and an increasing number of dental professionals are understanding that.
  - alayne 12y ago
    That's crackpot talk. Both fluoride and mercury amalgam are considered safe by current scientific understanding. You need to build up actual science to disprove that rather than make ridiculous claims based on proximity of fillings to the brain.
jostmey 12y ago
The word science gets overused, diluting what truly is science. This quote from the article says it best: "Science is not a body of facts," ... “Science is a method for deciding whether what we choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not.”
- calinet6 12y ago
  The concept of science is a bit complex, and therefore not easily understood in a sound bite. It is one of those things that requires a level of education beyond a certain level (and by this I don't mean grade level, but a level of ability and understanding and especially respect). Two curves are meeting: one, indicating the level of scientific understanding necessary to function highly in the new world we live in, increasing rapidly over time—and the other, showing true scientific literacy, the comfort with doubt and the flexibility of the mind to new information, rapidly declining. We are at a crossroads, and the solution is a renewal of a holistic liberal arts and science education—to instill not only a complete understanding of and respect for science, but also the humanity necessary to wield the complexity of the world.
- arethuza 12y ago
  It seems odd to me to even claim that science is just a "body of facts" as the usual definition of a "fact" is a piece of empirical evidence rather than the hypothesis or theories that science builds to explain these facts.
pdonis 12y ago
A major factor missing from the article is that scientists, when they translate their work into layperson's terms, often don't take care to distinguish between different levels of confidence in their conclusions. Scientific theories that are nailed down by massive experimental data and a track record of predictions accurate to many decimal places are talked about the same way, by scientists, as theories that are still being developed and refined and don't have anywhere near the same level of confidence. Even in a single field (e.g., physics), scientists often aren't careful to distinguish the solid base from speculative models at the frontiers (e.g., the Standard Model of particle physics vs. string theory, or the standard hot Big Bang model of cosmology from inflation and various speculations about what came before inflation). This means that, once a lay person sees that any scientific conclusion turned out to be wrong, which is going to happen because science is not perfect, they think it means Science is wrong, period--because the scientists themselves painted the picture that way.
- goalieca 12y ago
  When you're discussing the edge of theory in physics, you can make some pretty neat TV shows and maybe get some kids interested in science. I loved watching those crazy speculative documentaries about the universe and all that. However, when you're discussing the edge of science in a health or socio-economic field, people "hear about studies" all the time in the news. Many are conflicting. Some things go on and live their own lives. Some things lend themselves to a certain ideological thinking and despite being proven wrong later on, go on to live in very awful ways. Eg: vaccines scares.
  - jghn 12y ago
    The real problem with "hear about studies" is that by the time things filter down to the average person the stories are completely watered down and spun to make some sensational headline. Even without the simple headline grabbing, all nuance is lost, which is the cause of a lot of the "XYZ is good!" ... "No, XYZ is bad!" confusion - the reality is that "XYZ is good under these experimental conditions, for some definition of good" and vice versa.
renox 12y ago
Well there is also that: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109880240641/sciences-biggest-fail http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109880240641/sciences-biggest-f...
protomyth 12y ago
I thought the problem was asbestos, crappy study reporting, and hypocrites or appearance of hypocrisy. Asbestos was good and now is very, very bad (well, in uncontrolled places). I cannot help but think this lead a fair number of people to question what is really safe. It seemed quite a lot of truths suddenly became dangerous at about the same time. That is just learning, but it felt like a turing point. Heck, a lot of people learned that mistakes cost a fair amount of cash to fix. If you want a science version look at the original polio vaccine. It did give quite a few people polio, but it has had an amazing record since. Flu shots are extremely effective when they guess correctly and a pain (37% this year) when they don't, but they still save lives for a very low risk. Look at eggs. Are they good for you or bad for you? Red wine? People have been conditioned to think studies are about as reliable as midnight infomercials, and neither of these questions fit in the sound bite length answer that is generally given to science on news programs. Hypocrisy is painful. The average person knows when someone has a "better than them" attitude, and if you are condescending they will ignore you. As an example, if you're flying around on a G5 and telling the general public they will have to downgrade their lifestyle, then the general public won't listen to you. Its an interesting cycle and really nothing new. I wish the media would quit blaming the "common people" and start looking at how it presents things. People loose trust in authority when authority starts acting like charlatans. They spend every news cast scaring the hell out of people when the statistics say they shouldn't. That bleeds into government and now we arrest people of letting 12 year olds walk home from school. Why would people believe anything? tldr: if you are constantly told everything is broken and dangerous, expect people to not care anymore or be afraid of everything.
- calinet6 12y ago
  This is how it's perceived, but it's an extremely narrow view of science. It is the layman's understanding, however. You're right. This requires a new level of education to understand. I'm glad we're having the discussion, but science is not to blame—we are.
  - protomyth 12y ago
    I didn't say science was to blame, I believe journalism is.
MaastrichtTreat 12y ago
Another problem is no storytelling. Podcasts like Radiolab do well communicating science to the public because they have mastered telling a slow & engaging story and discussing the implications while not jumping to them.
calinet6 12y ago
It's quite simple: people don't understand science, and science doesn't understand people. Several generations of highly specialized education tend to do that. We need more poets who are scientists, more scientists who are poets. We need a level of breadth that has not yet been seen except in a few diamonds in the rough. These ties between our humanity and our world are more important than we realize. In practice, this means a better and more widespread liberal arts education—a program that you may not realize is valuable until ten years after graduation, and therefore must be a wisdom passed down to our children and embraced as a society. It needs to be a program that teaches the incredible depth of science, and the humanity to deal with the complex consequences, which are necessarily bigger than our perspective. Until this shift occurs, we will continue to encounter this divergence of understanding. It's a long bet, but we need it more than ever.
- vinbreau 12y ago
  After reading Leonard Shlain's Art & Physics, I agree with you. In the past it was the artists, poets and popular writers who helped the general public consume often difficult to grasp ideas. We do seem to be in a lull where the creatives are either beholden to the mass culture of capitalism or to detached from the world of science to communicate it. Those that do are on the fringe and only noticed by small cliques. Art is blooming everywhere right now, but very little of it is civically minded. This is an era of image over substance.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >In practice, this means a better and more widespread liberal arts education Or, instead of making the science majors spend more of our very scarce time on humanities courses, couldn't you just make the humanities majors spend more of their less-scarce time on science and math courses? Why is it that scientists are continually called on to "remain in touch" with "humanity" (as if we scientists are not human!) and "liberal arts" (as if anyone in our work-or-die society is free in the old Greco-Roman sense!), but nobody taking their education outside the sciences is called upon to display the kind of basic scientific literacy shown by passing intro-level courses in calculus, statistics, and research methods?
Alex3917 12y ago
There are surveys showing that atheists often know more about the beliefs of various religions than the actual adherents of these religions. No doubt this is true for science as well... It's hard for me to believe that anyone who doesn't doubt science actually knows all that much about science, its history, its epistemology, its current issues, etc. I think it's funny that science evangelists complain about all the anti-science folks in society, and they're completely unable to produce intellectually honest defenses of actual praxis. All these sorts of articles ever do is point to the same set of success stories or examples of irrationality among 'non-believers', as if that's some sort of intellectually coherent argument. It's ridiculous that these folks won't do an actual cost-benefit analysis of science in practice, presumably because they know the results won't be favorable them, but then browbeat people for not 'converting' based on their theory of science as it would be practiced in some sort of utopia. It's like creationism, but even more stupid. Don't get me wrong, I spend an enormous amount of time reading scientific research and my knowledge of that is probably my greatest secret weapon as a founder, but at the same time the sort of pro-science evangelism I see on the Internet makes me weep for the future of society.
kingkawn 12y ago
I don't think it is fair to judge people's disbelief of science as a standalone position. Most people (in the United States at least) receive a poor education across all subjects, and the experience of that learning is more akin to imprisonment than exploration. They know many authorities, from police to teachers and bosses, who are flawed people exercising their powers poorly. In that context how is it possible to convince someone that science is not also as corrupt as every other institution they've encountered. If my entire experience of education is that it is unfair and run by sadists, then the only people who will succeed in it are those who are willing to subject themselves to what they are told. Their perspective is built into their environment. These skeptics and deniers can't be convinced, but not because they are stupid. The entirety of their lives lead to the subjectively rational conclusion that everything they are told to do will keep them miserable so they believe and do none of it.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Exactly. When you know enough science (which will likely require you to be biased towards it, as otherwise the education system will make sure you don't learn any of it) things start to increasingly fall into place. You'll see that the whole body of things you know is internally consistent. It has to be, because the reality itself is. So as you learn more and more facts and see how interwoven they are you're able to evaluate further information without having to base on trust alone. If, say, vaccines were harmful or synthetically produced compounds were somewhat "toxic" compared to the same compounds found in normal food, you'd have to literally throw half of your scientific knowledge away. So you can easily determine that those claims are bullshit. But that requires knowing relatively lot of stuff, which majority of people do not. They have to rely on trusting authorities - which keep lying all the time. So no surprise here that people just don't believe science or government and are drawn towards various pseudoscientific nonsense that is presented as contrarian and promoted by charismatic individuals.
  - kingkawn 12y ago
    What I meant to say then is that the problem is not pseudoscientific nonsense but the nonsense done by authority figures in general.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
I believe the common and most important reason behind all recent anti-science movements is something that is also behind many other social and political sentiments as well as conspiracy theories - namely, degradation of public's trust in authorities. People don't trust their government, they don't trust corporations, and they don't trust scientist. And I increasingly believe they have perfectly good reasons for that. You see, governments lie and cheat all the time. Companies at every scale - from startups to mom and pop shops to LLCs to corporations keep abusing the social contract for their own short-term gains. Newspapers report science in ridiculous ways, journalist keep inventing their own lies to spice up the story. It's hard to know who to trust anymore. And so people revert to trusting plausible sounding narratives and charismatic individuals. This problem is going to hit us hard in the nearby future. I fear this is an existential threat for western civilization. That's also the reason why lying to people is one of the biggest sins in my book. As the quote goes, "Promoting less than maximally accurate beliefs is an act of sabotage. Don't do it to anyone unless you'd also slash their tires." I think it's actually underrepresenting the damage lies cause to society. People nowdays see the failure of trust and strive to design systems that don't depend on trusting its actors at all. I'm not sure it's a good direction. As we increasingly don't expect trustworthiness from other people, we're digging ourselves deeper into the hole. So yes, anti-vaxxers, anti-GMOs, anti-nuclear, et al. are wrong. Stupidly wrong. But it's hard for me to blame them. They've been lied to so many times that it's hard for them to trust authorities anymore. EDIT: to clarify, in the last paragraph I meant that those people simply arrived to wrong (or dangerously wrong) conclusions, not that they themselves are stupid.
- kirse 12y ago
  Why is it a surprise that people are having a crisis of trust when they are inculcated by science and Rational Thinkers™ that nothing is to be trusted? It seems to me that the worldview based on science alone (which is highly prevalent among today's self-described Rational Thinkers™) has reaped what it has sown, which is broad skepticism of everything, including itself.
  - collyw 12y ago
    What I always find interesting reading the comments sections in newspapers, is that certain groups of people deny and dismiss the hard science of climate change, yet the same people seem to believe the very poor science of economics as if it is some kind of proper science.
abruzzi 12y ago
One offhand sentence in the article articulates my biggest fear: specifically about scientists getting involved in advocacy. I fear this would create a dynamic where the science is written off because it is too associated with a cause of the left or right. That has already happened with some issues like AGW. My pet theory why the right is so dead set against believing scientific consensus on AGW? Because the first most people heard about AGW was from Al Gore, so the battle lines were drawn at that moment. Now there is an association that the climate scientists are fighting for the left, making them easier to dismiss by partisans on the right. I know staying out of the political battles is not going to solve all the problems, but when science has an agenda, it becomes much easier to doubt the results.
beefman 12y ago
Science is a process, not a substance. It is the process by which it is possible to believe things. So if you're having trouble believing something, it's probably because you're not doing science. Everything else is just politics (and probably wrong).
- blowski 12y ago
  Isn't that tautology? You should only believe in good science. How do I know what's good science? It's easy to believe in it. It's far more troubling to believe the Earth goes round the Sun when my daily experience of life suggests otherwise.
Futurebot 12y ago
There are many well-known reasons for (US-based) anti-elitism/anti-intellectualism: religious/religion-influenced cultural beliefs, poor education, mass media failures, insular cultural groups that invent alternate explanations for things, and plain old ignorance. There's also Agnotology - "culturally induced ignorance", which is important to understand (and deal with) in the context of this topic. There is, however, another reason, which may be less obvious than the above. It applies to people who do, in fact, know better, but maintain laughable/ignorant/ridiculous positions about issues regardless. Let's call them "Future Policy Fearers." There was a brilliant comment on Less Wrong (http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ph/youre_entitled_to_arguments_but_not_that/1mdz http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ph/youre_entitled_to_arguments_but_...) that sums this view up perfectly (this particular example uses climate change/AGW, but it could be about Creationism/Evolution or a hundred other things): "It becomes a signaling game, in which each choice of belief will be understood as exactly how you would communicate a particular choice of political move, and the costs of making the wrong political move feel very high. So the belief decisions and the political actions become tangled up. Roughly, people have no way of saying: 'I believe that in terms of pure decision theory, the predicted AGW damage and costs of further investigation and costs of delay are high enough that mitigation attempts should start now. But I don't want to give up my {economic privileges / substantive national sovereignty / chance to get the standard of living of past carbon-emitting nations} without a fight, because I don't want groups in the future like {scientists / profit-hating hippie tree-huggers / freedom-hating U.N. environmental bureaucrats / greedy unfair first-world hypocrites} to think I'll just roll over when they try to impose concessions on me, in the name of premises that will feel psychologically as though they might just as well have been made up. In that future situation, it will be important for me to be able to credibly threaten outrage at being forced into such concessions. But as long as nobody else is going to take me for their fool, the sacrifices needed to prevent AGW are fine with me; we could start today.' So instead, they say: 'I believe that the case for AGW isn't strong enough. I demand clearer proof.' If it were possible to negotiate separately about AGW action and about precedents of policy concessions to e.g. scientists' claims, then you might see less decision-theoretic insanity around the AGW action question itself." This group is just as important when dealing with perceived ignorance as those who are victims of Agnotology. Their actions and positions act as a proxy for a future power struggle, and should be understood as such.
pera 12y ago
It's not my intention to be pedantic here but you shouldn't "believe" in science in the first place: science is not a religion that proclaims what is true, at most you can "believe" that some scientific study have enough proofs to demonstrate a theory, at some level. And even then, in my opinion, people should be always open to analyze new hypothesis. Also, imo this idea of a "consensus" in the "scientific community" is a bit dangerous and could be easily misinterpreted by people who have no affinity to science.
rl3 12y ago
The recent flood of generic science-cheerleading pieces such as this one strike me as intellectually lazy. Science is a good thing? No shit. Of course it is. The level of polarization being applied in recent discourse on some of these topics is disturbing. This article in particular is a prime example. Several topics are listed, each cast as black and white, and subsequently lumped together under the same banner. If you have any reservations regarding any of the topics listed, no matter how nuanced, you clearly must be anti-science. Moreover, this intolerance doesn't seem to discourage the ignorant from continuing to argue their uninformed opinions. On the contrary, it only inflames them. The few people who do have nuanced, well-researched opinions on these hot-button topics are then shouted down and discouraged from participating. Why risk career suicide or otherwise waste time arguing something when it's completely fruitless anyways. If I had to ascribe a dynamic to the phenomenon, it might look something like this: 1. Hot-button issue arises wherein the majority of the science agrees with one position, but very specific legitimate issues persist. 2. The uninformed latch on to the issue as a whole, and completely fail argue in any sort of reasonable, nuanced manner. 3. The media, usually spurred on by robust corporate messaging strategies, decide to utterly destroy these people (rightfully so). 4. The general public joins in to fight on behalf of Science™, because the Neil deGrasse Tyson memes on Facebook really spoke to them at some basal level. 5. The uninformed become even more inflamed, and the crazies start coming out of the woodwork. 6. Any semblance of civil or reasoned discourse is completely gone at this point. All that's left is a self-perpetuating cycle that fosters an environment completely hostile to anyone wanting to raise legitimate concerns, but it at least generates heaps of ad revenue. A cynic might say the last point is by design, though I prefer to think it's simply a dynamic inherent to modern, public forms of communication.
- stolio 12y ago
  > 1. Hot-button issue arises wherein the majority of the science agrees with one position, but very specific legitimate issues persist. Yep. I suppose I'm "anti-GMO" in the sense that I view interspecies and intra-species gene transfer (sometimes called horizontal gene transfer) to be different animals. It's been a real let down when I've brought these things up and I'm treated like I just insulted a recently deceased person. Then I have to "pull my nerd card" to be treated like a human being again and I'm left wondering why we treat people this way. A great part of science is we get to use evidence and leave emotions out of it. If I'm speaking to somebody with a biology background I'm happy to listen, question my beliefs and learn, but dealing with the anti-anti-GMO crowd only makes me feel combative. I can only imagine how people without a science background feel when they try to join the discussion.
tokenadult 12y ago
Perhaps one reason that science is not believed by more people in the general public is that some public figures make a living by spreading misinformation about science. The public is not just in a state of tabula rasa neutrality before scientists begin communicating with the public, but rather the public has already been stuffed full of misconceptions by people who have something to sell to buyers who are ignorant of science. http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-food-babes-war-on-chemicals-heats-up-again/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-food-babes-war-on-ch...
kaue 12y ago
kkk
kaue 12y ago
"doubters have declared war on the consensus of experts" – this is an argument of authority ("experts"), which in turn is a fallacy, moreover, since when science is a democracy ("consensus"). "In this bewildering world we have to decide what to believe and how to act on that. In principle, that’s what science is for. “Science is not a body of facts,” says geophysicist Marcia McNutt, who once headed the U.S. Geological Survey and is now editor of Science, the prestigious journal. “Science is a method for deciding whether what we choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not.”" – I do not even know from where to start. I could write a book on the bullshit of this paragraph alone! Science is not a belief. "Facts" are required as evidence. And Science is actually the human translation of the laws of Nature, which could be right or wrong, but is done in a way using arguments constructed within rationality. The way the paragraph is written it is like it is describing a cult! "Science, the prestigious journal": again, argument of authority. "The students, even those who correctly marked “true,” were slower to answer those questions" – of course they were!!! They were thinking!!! Which seems nowadays is a rarity!!! And that is called conducting!!! The study and the paragraph are being used to lead to what the author of the article wants!!! The link with apes is self-evident because it seems we certainly have returned to that stage! Statistics: really one wants to lie on statistics – there is a planet, on this planet lives two persons, they also have two chickens. One of them eats both of the chickens, but the MEDIUM between them is still one chicken for each person on that planet; nonetheless one of them is still HUNGRY! Nothing against statistics, but we have to be careful in its use. Give any statistics and tell me what you want that it is possible to make it "statistically" happen. "Of course, just because two things happened together doesn’t mean one caused the other, and just because events are clustered doesn’t mean they’re not random. Yet we have trouble digesting randomness; our brains crave pattern and meaning." – At least some wisdom a time, who's to say randomness cannot happen? Oh here we go, "climate-change"! Oh, is this for real? I suppose it is because it is the same bullshit over and over again. I cannot believe I even have to say that: if one has a point to prove, prove it, instead of try to deconstruct what is already a deconstruction. If they are so right and the argument is so strong they just focus on it and not on those saying they cannot sustain their point (which they can't). Consensus: again, maybe 200% of scientists or all living and the non-living entities on Earth may also agree that gravity doesn't exist, so, since Nature works by "consensus", we would have a gravity-free day and we could all go happily floating around… so not happening! Now the golden part: "The planet’s surface temperature has risen by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 130 years, and human actions, including the burning of fossil fuels, are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause since the mid-20th century." Firstly, planet average temperature is a useless statistics; it's like saying no one is hungry in my statistical example above. An increase of 1.5ºF = 0.83ºC. That in the MEAN temperature of the Earth, which is to say absolutely nothing! Temperatures on the planet go easily from -50ºC/-58ºF/223K to 50ºC/122ºF/323K or more. Lowest natural temperature ever recorded on the surface of Earth was -89ºC/-128ºF/184K in the Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica (21 July 1983), the highest being 57ºC/134ºF/330K at Greenland Ranch in the Death Valley in California (10 July 1913). Now the puff, out of the blue part: "and human actions, including the burning of fossil fuels, are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause since the mid-20th century." Based on what evidence exactly? Because the author has already warned about correlation and clustered events, so he cannot possibly be implying that, right? Moreover, there are plenty more plausible and reasonable explanations for the rise in temperature, the DETECTION of which could be due to human activities, but they are CERTAINLY not the cause on a global scale. Oh, it gets worse, of course it does! Really? I feel like in elementary school because again instead of advance their climate warming argument they are again trying to discredit those opposing it. More to the point, it does not matter from where it comes from as long as the argument is sound. The laws of Nature are what they are, regardless of who uncovers them. If the argument is not good, one refutes it with another argument not using ad hominen fallacies. Is it just me, or all I could grasp from his conclusions to the survey presented was that those with stronger opinions were exactly those with more knowledge of the subject? Well, obviously, isn't it? Oh, yeah, given his last survey example, people should not stop to think (of course, if we ever do, we won't swallow so much crap!) Science has no opposites ("antagonist tribes"); it either is or is not. In Science there is place for DEMONSTRATION and ARGUMENTATION, not BELIEVES. One can of course believes his arguments are correct but cannot hold to them once they are proved wrong, otherwise we scape the realm of science, at which point a discussion in no longer valid. People are free to believe whatever they want, but they are not free to spread unfounded "scientific" arguments, creating a state of "climate terrorism". "Science appeals to our rational brain, but our beliefs are motivated largely by emotion, and the biggest motivation is remaining tight with our peers." – Yes, that is exactly it, but it is the other way around. It seems to me that scientists are the ones who do not want to let go of the climate warming bandwagon and all the research money it entails (more than 100 billion dollars have been wasted in the past 20 years and has of course proved nothing!). "Convert": is that a word to be used in any scientific discussion?!!! I cannot even believe I waste my time!!! What? What? Really the world has gone mad!!! "Do you believe in them or me?" First of all she should be deserted. That is blackmail of the worst kind. I mean climate warming alarmists lack so much arguments that they have to retort to that low level kind of harassment?!!! Do I even need to go on this??? "We believe in scientific ideas not because we have truly evaluated all the evidence but because we feel an affinity for the scientific community." – That is true, until they usurped that affinity (trust!). “There aren't really two sides to all these issues. Climate change is happening.” – Absolutely true. Climate changes is not a noun, it is a sentence, climate (subject) changes (verb). It has been changing since Earth was formed and will continue to do so. What would generate cause for worry is if it actually stopped changing, that indeed would be not the norm (not normal). He is using the doubt of measles vaccine to advance his argument on climate warming, and that is a fallacy construction. Just because one was wrong does not means the other is. That is false and emotional leading, something used a lot, of course, since they lack any real arguments. "keep laws governing greenhouse gas emissions from being enacted." – Rightly so! Those laws won't help when changes in nature come. They would only make humanity worse, way, way, worse. "But the claim becomes more likely to be seen as plausible if scientists go beyond their professional expertise and begin advocating specific policies." – They can barely do science; they don't have to advocate policies, they have to prove with reasonable sound arguments and without fallacies their claims. "It's the way science tells us the truth rather than what we'd like the truth to be. Scientists can be as dogmatic as anyone else — but their dogma is always wilting in the hot glare of new research. In science it’s not a sin to change your mind when the evidence demands it." – Too bad they are not following this principle anymore.
collyw 12y ago
Scientists can be pretty damned arrogant (I work with them). Science is very good at explaining the physical world, but try and point out to them where that ends and you get a lot of dismissal (or down votes here on HN). Point out how little progress has been made by science into the non-physical world for example consciousness, and many of them are just as bad as religious people in holding onto their belief systems despite a lack of evidence. Its like politicians. Maybe if they admitted what they don't know, the average person would have a far greater respect for them.
- SAI_Peregrinus 12y ago
  It's not even required to believe that the physical world ends, merely that the complexity becomes intractable. There are many, many systems that exhibit chaotic behavior (the weather is the most famous example) and thus can't be well predicted by any science, despite being wholly physical. You don't need to invoke any (possibly controversial) idea of a non-physical world to show that science can't predict everything.

59 points by frostmatthew 12y ago

I think the real issue is people are given the results not the background experiments. Talk to an 10 year old about air resistance vs gravity and there probably going to take what you say on faith. Show them a video of a brick and a feather dropped in a vacuum and you words become more meaningful.

IndianAstronaut 12y ago
There is an interesting journal called JOVE, journal of visualized experiments, which does this. It has peer reviewed videos of experiments. But this has the same problem that many other journals do, it is behind a big pay wall.

known 12y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias

vxxzy 12y ago

Can Anyone shed some light to debunk this: http://fluoridealert.org/articles/50-reasons/ http://fluoridealert.org/articles/50-reasons/ The argument is compelling, but I am not one who knows either way. What studies show Fluoridated water's benefit?

keslag 12y ago
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC27492/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC27492/ Just like with creationism, vaccinations, the environment, and fluoride; if you polish the bullshit enough, people will follow.
- gwern 12y ago
  I think my main take-away from the forest plots in that paper (and the discussion of the specific studies) is that the evidence for even the dental benefits is really wretched. Not a single randomized trial, and the heterogeneity is insanely high. (Can you imagine proposing fluoridation of everyone's drinking water these days based on evidence like that? If fluoride were being proposed to the FDA as a drug, it wouldn't even make it to Phase III trials...)
  - gwern 12y ago
    > the heterogeneity is insanely high. To expand on this: the heterogeneity is so high that they don't (as meta-analysis guidelines say you should) report the figures. This is why in the figures, you see tight confidence intervals around zero, but also equally-tight confidence intervals many effect-size units away. That's an alarm bell for trying to draw any sort of meaningful conclusion: it means there are so many variables at play that you have no idea whether the net should be zero or big. (Also a concern given the observation that many countries have seen dental problems fall considerably as they developed, which is a big confound.)
Symmetry 12y ago
If you're curious about a topic Wikipedia is usually a good starting point and will link to some good references. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation
- innguest 12y ago
  Wikipedia is not a good source for controversial topics as it tends to pick one side (the mainstream side) for its readers.
vixen99 12y ago
Is anyone unaware of a single advantage aside from the fact that fluoride does indeed swap with calcium in the tooth enamel apatite and thereby increase the latter's resistance to acid attack? Given the prevalence of fluoride in toothpaste, why mass 'medicate'? The experts consulted are one with those folk who think that stuffing mercury amalgam into a permanent location a few centimeters from the brain is a good idea. Given the biochemistry of Hg, it's not and an increasing number of dental professionals are understanding that.
- alayne 12y ago
  That's crackpot talk. Both fluoride and mercury amalgam are considered safe by current scientific understanding. You need to build up actual science to disprove that rather than make ridiculous claims based on proximity of fillings to the brain.

jostmey 12y ago

The word science gets overused, diluting what truly is science. This quote from the article says it best: "Science is not a body of facts," ... “Science is a method for deciding whether what we choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not.”

calinet6 12y ago
The concept of science is a bit complex, and therefore not easily understood in a sound bite. It is one of those things that requires a level of education beyond a certain level (and by this I don't mean grade level, but a level of ability and understanding and especially respect). Two curves are meeting: one, indicating the level of scientific understanding necessary to function highly in the new world we live in, increasing rapidly over time—and the other, showing true scientific literacy, the comfort with doubt and the flexibility of the mind to new information, rapidly declining. We are at a crossroads, and the solution is a renewal of a holistic liberal arts and science education—to instill not only a complete understanding of and respect for science, but also the humanity necessary to wield the complexity of the world.
arethuza 12y ago
It seems odd to me to even claim that science is just a "body of facts" as the usual definition of a "fact" is a piece of empirical evidence rather than the hypothesis or theories that science builds to explain these facts.

pdonis 12y ago

A major factor missing from the article is that scientists, when they translate their work into layperson's terms, often don't take care to distinguish between different levels of confidence in their conclusions. Scientific theories that are nailed down by massive experimental data and a track record of predictions accurate to many decimal places are talked about the same way, by scientists, as theories that are still being developed and refined and don't have anywhere near the same level of confidence. Even in a single field (e.g., physics), scientists often aren't careful to distinguish the solid base from speculative models at the frontiers (e.g., the Standard Model of particle physics vs. string theory, or the standard hot Big Bang model of cosmology from inflation and various speculations about what came before inflation). This means that, once a lay person sees that any scientific conclusion turned out to be wrong, which is going to happen because science is not perfect, they think it means Science is wrong, period--because the scientists themselves painted the picture that way.

goalieca 12y ago
When you're discussing the edge of theory in physics, you can make some pretty neat TV shows and maybe get some kids interested in science. I loved watching those crazy speculative documentaries about the universe and all that. However, when you're discussing the edge of science in a health or socio-economic field, people "hear about studies" all the time in the news. Many are conflicting. Some things go on and live their own lives. Some things lend themselves to a certain ideological thinking and despite being proven wrong later on, go on to live in very awful ways. Eg: vaccines scares.
- jghn 12y ago
  The real problem with "hear about studies" is that by the time things filter down to the average person the stories are completely watered down and spun to make some sensational headline. Even without the simple headline grabbing, all nuance is lost, which is the cause of a lot of the "XYZ is good!" ... "No, XYZ is bad!" confusion - the reality is that "XYZ is good under these experimental conditions, for some definition of good" and vice versa.

renox 12y ago

Well there is also that: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109880240641/sciences-biggest-fail http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109880240641/sciences-biggest-f...

protomyth 12y ago

I thought the problem was asbestos, crappy study reporting, and hypocrites or appearance of hypocrisy. Asbestos was good and now is very, very bad (well, in uncontrolled places). I cannot help but think this lead a fair number of people to question what is really safe. It seemed quite a lot of truths suddenly became dangerous at about the same time. That is just learning, but it felt like a turing point. Heck, a lot of people learned that mistakes cost a fair amount of cash to fix. If you want a science version look at the original polio vaccine. It did give quite a few people polio, but it has had an amazing record since. Flu shots are extremely effective when they guess correctly and a pain (37% this year) when they don't, but they still save lives for a very low risk. Look at eggs. Are they good for you or bad for you? Red wine? People have been conditioned to think studies are about as reliable as midnight infomercials, and neither of these questions fit in the sound bite length answer that is generally given to science on news programs. Hypocrisy is painful. The average person knows when someone has a "better than them" attitude, and if you are condescending they will ignore you. As an example, if you're flying around on a G5 and telling the general public they will have to downgrade their lifestyle, then the general public won't listen to you. Its an interesting cycle and really nothing new. I wish the media would quit blaming the "common people" and start looking at how it presents things. People loose trust in authority when authority starts acting like charlatans. They spend every news cast scaring the hell out of people when the statistics say they shouldn't. That bleeds into government and now we arrest people of letting 12 year olds walk home from school. Why would people believe anything? tldr: if you are constantly told everything is broken and dangerous, expect people to not care anymore or be afraid of everything.

calinet6 12y ago
This is how it's perceived, but it's an extremely narrow view of science. It is the layman's understanding, however. You're right. This requires a new level of education to understand. I'm glad we're having the discussion, but science is not to blame—we are.
- protomyth 12y ago
  I didn't say science was to blame, I believe journalism is.

MaastrichtTreat 12y ago

Another problem is no storytelling. Podcasts like Radiolab do well communicating science to the public because they have mastered telling a slow & engaging story and discussing the implications while not jumping to them.

calinet6 12y ago

It's quite simple: people don't understand science, and science doesn't understand people. Several generations of highly specialized education tend to do that. We need more poets who are scientists, more scientists who are poets. We need a level of breadth that has not yet been seen except in a few diamonds in the rough. These ties between our humanity and our world are more important than we realize. In practice, this means a better and more widespread liberal arts education—a program that you may not realize is valuable until ten years after graduation, and therefore must be a wisdom passed down to our children and embraced as a society. It needs to be a program that teaches the incredible depth of science, and the humanity to deal with the complex consequences, which are necessarily bigger than our perspective. Until this shift occurs, we will continue to encounter this divergence of understanding. It's a long bet, but we need it more than ever.

vinbreau 12y ago
After reading Leonard Shlain's Art & Physics, I agree with you. In the past it was the artists, poets and popular writers who helped the general public consume often difficult to grasp ideas. We do seem to be in a lull where the creatives are either beholden to the mass culture of capitalism or to detached from the world of science to communicate it. Those that do are on the fringe and only noticed by small cliques. Art is blooming everywhere right now, but very little of it is civically minded. This is an era of image over substance.
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>In practice, this means a better and more widespread liberal arts education Or, instead of making the science majors spend more of our very scarce time on humanities courses, couldn't you just make the humanities majors spend more of their less-scarce time on science and math courses? Why is it that scientists are continually called on to "remain in touch" with "humanity" (as if we scientists are not human!) and "liberal arts" (as if anyone in our work-or-die society is free in the old Greco-Roman sense!), but nobody taking their education outside the sciences is called upon to display the kind of basic scientific literacy shown by passing intro-level courses in calculus, statistics, and research methods?

Alex3917 12y ago

There are surveys showing that atheists often know more about the beliefs of various religions than the actual adherents of these religions. No doubt this is true for science as well... It's hard for me to believe that anyone who doesn't doubt science actually knows all that much about science, its history, its epistemology, its current issues, etc. I think it's funny that science evangelists complain about all the anti-science folks in society, and they're completely unable to produce intellectually honest defenses of actual praxis. All these sorts of articles ever do is point to the same set of success stories or examples of irrationality among 'non-believers', as if that's some sort of intellectually coherent argument. It's ridiculous that these folks won't do an actual cost-benefit analysis of science in practice, presumably because they know the results won't be favorable them, but then browbeat people for not 'converting' based on their theory of science as it would be practiced in some sort of utopia. It's like creationism, but even more stupid. Don't get me wrong, I spend an enormous amount of time reading scientific research and my knowledge of that is probably my greatest secret weapon as a founder, but at the same time the sort of pro-science evangelism I see on the Internet makes me weep for the future of society.

kingkawn 12y ago

I don't think it is fair to judge people's disbelief of science as a standalone position. Most people (in the United States at least) receive a poor education across all subjects, and the experience of that learning is more akin to imprisonment than exploration. They know many authorities, from police to teachers and bosses, who are flawed people exercising their powers poorly. In that context how is it possible to convince someone that science is not also as corrupt as every other institution they've encountered. If my entire experience of education is that it is unfair and run by sadists, then the only people who will succeed in it are those who are willing to subject themselves to what they are told. Their perspective is built into their environment. These skeptics and deniers can't be convinced, but not because they are stupid. The entirety of their lives lead to the subjectively rational conclusion that everything they are told to do will keep them miserable so they believe and do none of it.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
Exactly. When you know enough science (which will likely require you to be biased towards it, as otherwise the education system will make sure you don't learn any of it) things start to increasingly fall into place. You'll see that the whole body of things you know is internally consistent. It has to be, because the reality itself is. So as you learn more and more facts and see how interwoven they are you're able to evaluate further information without having to base on trust alone. If, say, vaccines were harmful or synthetically produced compounds were somewhat "toxic" compared to the same compounds found in normal food, you'd have to literally throw half of your scientific knowledge away. So you can easily determine that those claims are bullshit. But that requires knowing relatively lot of stuff, which majority of people do not. They have to rely on trusting authorities - which keep lying all the time. So no surprise here that people just don't believe science or government and are drawn towards various pseudoscientific nonsense that is presented as contrarian and promoted by charismatic individuals.
- kingkawn 12y ago
  What I meant to say then is that the problem is not pseudoscientific nonsense but the nonsense done by authority figures in general.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

I believe the common and most important reason behind all recent anti-science movements is something that is also behind many other social and political sentiments as well as conspiracy theories - namely, degradation of public's trust in authorities. People don't trust their government, they don't trust corporations, and they don't trust scientist. And I increasingly believe they have perfectly good reasons for that. You see, governments lie and cheat all the time. Companies at every scale - from startups to mom and pop shops to LLCs to corporations keep abusing the social contract for their own short-term gains. Newspapers report science in ridiculous ways, journalist keep inventing their own lies to spice up the story. It's hard to know who to trust anymore. And so people revert to trusting plausible sounding narratives and charismatic individuals. This problem is going to hit us hard in the nearby future. I fear this is an existential threat for western civilization. That's also the reason why lying to people is one of the biggest sins in my book. As the quote goes, "Promoting less than maximally accurate beliefs is an act of sabotage. Don't do it to anyone unless you'd also slash their tires." I think it's actually underrepresenting the damage lies cause to society. People nowdays see the failure of trust and strive to design systems that don't depend on trusting its actors at all. I'm not sure it's a good direction. As we increasingly don't expect trustworthiness from other people, we're digging ourselves deeper into the hole. So yes, anti-vaxxers, anti-GMOs, anti-nuclear, et al. are wrong. Stupidly wrong. But it's hard for me to blame them. They've been lied to so many times that it's hard for them to trust authorities anymore. EDIT: to clarify, in the last paragraph I meant that those people simply arrived to wrong (or dangerously wrong) conclusions, not that they themselves are stupid.

kirse 12y ago
Why is it a surprise that people are having a crisis of trust when they are inculcated by science and Rational Thinkers™ that nothing is to be trusted? It seems to me that the worldview based on science alone (which is highly prevalent among today's self-described Rational Thinkers™) has reaped what it has sown, which is broad skepticism of everything, including itself.
- collyw 12y ago
  What I always find interesting reading the comments sections in newspapers, is that certain groups of people deny and dismiss the hard science of climate change, yet the same people seem to believe the very poor science of economics as if it is some kind of proper science.

abruzzi 12y ago

One offhand sentence in the article articulates my biggest fear: specifically about scientists getting involved in advocacy. I fear this would create a dynamic where the science is written off because it is too associated with a cause of the left or right. That has already happened with some issues like AGW. My pet theory why the right is so dead set against believing scientific consensus on AGW? Because the first most people heard about AGW was from Al Gore, so the battle lines were drawn at that moment. Now there is an association that the climate scientists are fighting for the left, making them easier to dismiss by partisans on the right. I know staying out of the political battles is not going to solve all the problems, but when science has an agenda, it becomes much easier to doubt the results.

beefman 12y ago

Science is a process, not a substance. It is the process by which it is possible to believe things. So if you're having trouble believing something, it's probably because you're not doing science. Everything else is just politics (and probably wrong).

blowski 12y ago
Isn't that tautology? You should only believe in good science. How do I know what's good science? It's easy to believe in it. It's far more troubling to believe the Earth goes round the Sun when my daily experience of life suggests otherwise.

Futurebot 12y ago

There are many well-known reasons for (US-based) anti-elitism/anti-intellectualism: religious/religion-influenced cultural beliefs, poor education, mass media failures, insular cultural groups that invent alternate explanations for things, and plain old ignorance. There's also Agnotology - "culturally induced ignorance", which is important to understand (and deal with) in the context of this topic. There is, however, another reason, which may be less obvious than the above. It applies to people who do, in fact, know better, but maintain laughable/ignorant/ridiculous positions about issues regardless. Let's call them "Future Policy Fearers." There was a brilliant comment on Less Wrong (http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ph/youre_entitled_to_arguments_but_not_that/1mdz http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ph/youre_entitled_to_arguments_but_...) that sums this view up perfectly (this particular example uses climate change/AGW, but it could be about Creationism/Evolution or a hundred other things): "It becomes a signaling game, in which each choice of belief will be understood as exactly how you would communicate a particular choice of political move, and the costs of making the wrong political move feel very high. So the belief decisions and the political actions become tangled up. Roughly, people have no way of saying: 'I believe that in terms of pure decision theory, the predicted AGW damage and costs of further investigation and costs of delay are high enough that mitigation attempts should start now. But I don't want to give up my {economic privileges / substantive national sovereignty / chance to get the standard of living of past carbon-emitting nations} without a fight, because I don't want groups in the future like {scientists / profit-hating hippie tree-huggers / freedom-hating U.N. environmental bureaucrats / greedy unfair first-world hypocrites} to think I'll just roll over when they try to impose concessions on me, in the name of premises that will feel psychologically as though they might just as well have been made up. In that future situation, it will be important for me to be able to credibly threaten outrage at being forced into such concessions. But as long as nobody else is going to take me for their fool, the sacrifices needed to prevent AGW are fine with me; we could start today.' So instead, they say: 'I believe that the case for AGW isn't strong enough. I demand clearer proof.' If it were possible to negotiate separately about AGW action and about precedents of policy concessions to e.g. scientists' claims, then you might see less decision-theoretic insanity around the AGW action question itself." This group is just as important when dealing with perceived ignorance as those who are victims of Agnotology. Their actions and positions act as a proxy for a future power struggle, and should be understood as such.

pera 12y ago

It's not my intention to be pedantic here but you shouldn't "believe" in science in the first place: science is not a religion that proclaims what is true, at most you can "believe" that some scientific study have enough proofs to demonstrate a theory, at some level. And even then, in my opinion, people should be always open to analyze new hypothesis. Also, imo this idea of a "consensus" in the "scientific community" is a bit dangerous and could be easily misinterpreted by people who have no affinity to science.

rl3 12y ago

The recent flood of generic science-cheerleading pieces such as this one strike me as intellectually lazy. Science is a good thing? No shit. Of course it is. The level of polarization being applied in recent discourse on some of these topics is disturbing. This article in particular is a prime example. Several topics are listed, each cast as black and white, and subsequently lumped together under the same banner. If you have any reservations regarding any of the topics listed, no matter how nuanced, you clearly must be anti-science. Moreover, this intolerance doesn't seem to discourage the ignorant from continuing to argue their uninformed opinions. On the contrary, it only inflames them. The few people who do have nuanced, well-researched opinions on these hot-button topics are then shouted down and discouraged from participating. Why risk career suicide or otherwise waste time arguing something when it's completely fruitless anyways. If I had to ascribe a dynamic to the phenomenon, it might look something like this: 1. Hot-button issue arises wherein the majority of the science agrees with one position, but very specific legitimate issues persist. 2. The uninformed latch on to the issue as a whole, and completely fail argue in any sort of reasonable, nuanced manner. 3. The media, usually spurred on by robust corporate messaging strategies, decide to utterly destroy these people (rightfully so). 4. The general public joins in to fight on behalf of Science™, because the Neil deGrasse Tyson memes on Facebook really spoke to them at some basal level. 5. The uninformed become even more inflamed, and the crazies start coming out of the woodwork. 6. Any semblance of civil or reasoned discourse is completely gone at this point. All that's left is a self-perpetuating cycle that fosters an environment completely hostile to anyone wanting to raise legitimate concerns, but it at least generates heaps of ad revenue. A cynic might say the last point is by design, though I prefer to think it's simply a dynamic inherent to modern, public forms of communication.

stolio 12y ago
> 1. Hot-button issue arises wherein the majority of the science agrees with one position, but very specific legitimate issues persist. Yep. I suppose I'm "anti-GMO" in the sense that I view interspecies and intra-species gene transfer (sometimes called horizontal gene transfer) to be different animals. It's been a real let down when I've brought these things up and I'm treated like I just insulted a recently deceased person. Then I have to "pull my nerd card" to be treated like a human being again and I'm left wondering why we treat people this way. A great part of science is we get to use evidence and leave emotions out of it. If I'm speaking to somebody with a biology background I'm happy to listen, question my beliefs and learn, but dealing with the anti-anti-GMO crowd only makes me feel combative. I can only imagine how people without a science background feel when they try to join the discussion.

tokenadult 12y ago

Perhaps one reason that science is not believed by more people in the general public is that some public figures make a living by spreading misinformation about science. The public is not just in a state of tabula rasa neutrality before scientists begin communicating with the public, but rather the public has already been stuffed full of misconceptions by people who have something to sell to buyers who are ignorant of science. http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-food-babes-war-on-chemicals-heats-up-again/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-food-babes-war-on-ch...

kaue 12y ago

kkk

kaue 12y ago

"doubters have declared war on the consensus of experts" – this is an argument of authority ("experts"), which in turn is a fallacy, moreover, since when science is a democracy ("consensus"). "In this bewildering world we have to decide what to believe and how to act on that. In principle, that’s what science is for. “Science is not a body of facts,” says geophysicist Marcia McNutt, who once headed the U.S. Geological Survey and is now editor of Science, the prestigious journal. “Science is a method for deciding whether what we choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not.”" – I do not even know from where to start. I could write a book on the bullshit of this paragraph alone! Science is not a belief. "Facts" are required as evidence. And Science is actually the human translation of the laws of Nature, which could be right or wrong, but is done in a way using arguments constructed within rationality. The way the paragraph is written it is like it is describing a cult! "Science, the prestigious journal": again, argument of authority. "The students, even those who correctly marked “true,” were slower to answer those questions" – of course they were!!! They were thinking!!! Which seems nowadays is a rarity!!! And that is called conducting!!! The study and the paragraph are being used to lead to what the author of the article wants!!! The link with apes is self-evident because it seems we certainly have returned to that stage! Statistics: really one wants to lie on statistics – there is a planet, on this planet lives two persons, they also have two chickens. One of them eats both of the chickens, but the MEDIUM between them is still one chicken for each person on that planet; nonetheless one of them is still HUNGRY! Nothing against statistics, but we have to be careful in its use. Give any statistics and tell me what you want that it is possible to make it "statistically" happen. "Of course, just because two things happened together doesn’t mean one caused the other, and just because events are clustered doesn’t mean they’re not random. Yet we have trouble digesting randomness; our brains crave pattern and meaning." – At least some wisdom a time, who's to say randomness cannot happen? Oh here we go, "climate-change"! Oh, is this for real? I suppose it is because it is the same bullshit over and over again. I cannot believe I even have to say that: if one has a point to prove, prove it, instead of try to deconstruct what is already a deconstruction. If they are so right and the argument is so strong they just focus on it and not on those saying they cannot sustain their point (which they can't). Consensus: again, maybe 200% of scientists or all living and the non-living entities on Earth may also agree that gravity doesn't exist, so, since Nature works by "consensus", we would have a gravity-free day and we could all go happily floating around… so not happening! Now the golden part: "The planet’s surface temperature has risen by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 130 years, and human actions, including the burning of fossil fuels, are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause since the mid-20th century." Firstly, planet average temperature is a useless statistics; it's like saying no one is hungry in my statistical example above. An increase of 1.5ºF = 0.83ºC. That in the MEAN temperature of the Earth, which is to say absolutely nothing! Temperatures on the planet go easily from -50ºC/-58ºF/223K to 50ºC/122ºF/323K or more. Lowest natural temperature ever recorded on the surface of Earth was -89ºC/-128ºF/184K in the Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica (21 July 1983), the highest being 57ºC/134ºF/330K at Greenland Ranch in the Death Valley in California (10 July 1913). Now the puff, out of the blue part: "and human actions, including the burning of fossil fuels, are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause since the mid-20th century." Based on what evidence exactly? Because the author has already warned about correlation and clustered events, so he cannot possibly be implying that, right? Moreover, there are plenty more plausible and reasonable explanations for the rise in temperature, the DETECTION of which could be due to human activities, but they are CERTAINLY not the cause on a global scale. Oh, it gets worse, of course it does! Really? I feel like in elementary school because again instead of advance their climate warming argument they are again trying to discredit those opposing it. More to the point, it does not matter from where it comes from as long as the argument is sound. The laws of Nature are what they are, regardless of who uncovers them. If the argument is not good, one refutes it with another argument not using ad hominen fallacies. Is it just me, or all I could grasp from his conclusions to the survey presented was that those with stronger opinions were exactly those with more knowledge of the subject? Well, obviously, isn't it? Oh, yeah, given his last survey example, people should not stop to think (of course, if we ever do, we won't swallow so much crap!) Science has no opposites ("antagonist tribes"); it either is or is not. In Science there is place for DEMONSTRATION and ARGUMENTATION, not BELIEVES. One can of course believes his arguments are correct but cannot hold to them once they are proved wrong, otherwise we scape the realm of science, at which point a discussion in no longer valid. People are free to believe whatever they want, but they are not free to spread unfounded "scientific" arguments, creating a state of "climate terrorism". "Science appeals to our rational brain, but our beliefs are motivated largely by emotion, and the biggest motivation is remaining tight with our peers." – Yes, that is exactly it, but it is the other way around. It seems to me that scientists are the ones who do not want to let go of the climate warming bandwagon and all the research money it entails (more than 100 billion dollars have been wasted in the past 20 years and has of course proved nothing!). "Convert": is that a word to be used in any scientific discussion?!!! I cannot even believe I waste my time!!! What? What? Really the world has gone mad!!! "Do you believe in them or me?" First of all she should be deserted. That is blackmail of the worst kind. I mean climate warming alarmists lack so much arguments that they have to retort to that low level kind of harassment?!!! Do I even need to go on this??? "We believe in scientific ideas not because we have truly evaluated all the evidence but because we feel an affinity for the scientific community." – That is true, until they usurped that affinity (trust!). “There aren't really two sides to all these issues. Climate change is happening.” – Absolutely true. Climate changes is not a noun, it is a sentence, climate (subject) changes (verb). It has been changing since Earth was formed and will continue to do so. What would generate cause for worry is if it actually stopped changing, that indeed would be not the norm (not normal). He is using the doubt of measles vaccine to advance his argument on climate warming, and that is a fallacy construction. Just because one was wrong does not means the other is. That is false and emotional leading, something used a lot, of course, since they lack any real arguments. "keep laws governing greenhouse gas emissions from being enacted." – Rightly so! Those laws won't help when changes in nature come. They would only make humanity worse, way, way, worse. "But the claim becomes more likely to be seen as plausible if scientists go beyond their professional expertise and begin advocating specific policies." – They can barely do science; they don't have to advocate policies, they have to prove with reasonable sound arguments and without fallacies their claims. "It's the way science tells us the truth rather than what we'd like the truth to be. Scientists can be as dogmatic as anyone else — but their dogma is always wilting in the hot glare of new research. In science it’s not a sin to change your mind when the evidence demands it." – Too bad they are not following this principle anymore.

collyw 12y ago

Scientists can be pretty damned arrogant (I work with them). Science is very good at explaining the physical world, but try and point out to them where that ends and you get a lot of dismissal (or down votes here on HN). Point out how little progress has been made by science into the non-physical world for example consciousness, and many of them are just as bad as religious people in holding onto their belief systems despite a lack of evidence. Its like politicians. Maybe if they admitted what they don't know, the average person would have a far greater respect for them.

SAI_Peregrinus 12y ago
It's not even required to believe that the physical world ends, merely that the complexity becomes intractable. There are many, many systems that exhibit chaotic behavior (the weather is the most famous example) and thus can't be well predicted by any science, despite being wholly physical. You don't need to invoke any (possibly controversial) idea of a non-physical world to show that science can't predict everything.