| ▲ | senderista 7 days ago |
| "Trust the science" is the very antithesis of the scientific spirit. The essence of science is to distrust authority and received wisdom. If you treat scientists as some sort of infallible priesthood then you've missed the whole point of science. |
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| ▲ | elashri 7 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > The essence of science is to distrust authority and received wisdom The essence of science is the use of scientific method which have specific meaning and way of doing things. It relies on evidence based knowledge not on any distrust. It does not have to do with authority but you would question if your tools you are using is good (calibrated and not interfering with measurements in an unaccounted way ..etc) or if your methodology is flawed. |
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| ▲ | cryptonector 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Unfortunately science is full of academic authorities with vested interests (grants, acclaim, stature), conflicts of interest, narcissism, and other problems. To do real science you need to be able to distrust the authorities of the day. | |
| ▲ | KK7NIL 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | So when someone says "trust the science!" they mean "define your null hypothesis, design an experiment to test it, run said experiment, analyze the data for statistical significance and submit for peer review"? Or do they really mean "trust the scientists"? | | |
| ▲ | elashri 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I think when someone say something you are confused or have doubts about what they mean, then you ask them what they mean. This sentence can be used to mean many things (including mocking up scientists ot trolling). So please next time you see or hear someone says that please ask them that. If I would use it personally I will probably use it to mean trust the evidence based knowledge that the scientific community is using. | | |
| ▲ | KK7NIL 7 days ago | parent [-] | | > If I would use it personally I will probably use it to mean trust the evidence based knowledge that the scientific community is using. Where can one find this knowledge? Are you suggesting regular folk go out and review the literature themselves (most of which is paywalled)?
And even if they did and were able to understand the contents, they'd still lack the required context to weigh contradicting results, dismiss old studies now known to be wrong, etc etc. And that's why "trust the science" ends up being an appeal to authority. I'm not saying I have a better alternative than the scientific method, I'm just pointing out that the "scientific consensus" isn't some magical spark that is immediately obvious when one reads the literature, it's something that evolves over many decades of research, conferences, etc.
And that's assuming there is a consensus for a given topic at a given time.
And I'm not even going to get into why reasonably questioning the scientific consensus is a good thing (otherwise it stops being science). |
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| ▲ | mrguyorama 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I have never once in my life heard the phrase "Trust the science" from anyone other than someone fighting a strawman |
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| ▲ | itishappy 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Somewhat disagree. Science requires trust. In fact, it's the process for building that trust up from nothing. Are you friend or foe? I'm going to assume one but watch you closely until I have enough evidence to trust you. Hurray, that's science! I totally agree that the phrase is often misused to mean "trust my favorite authority figure" or "trust the status quo," which is distinctly unscientific. Good news though, if we're willing to actually do the work (the hard part) trust in science is what allows us to change the status quo! |
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| ▲ | UncleMeat 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The process involves collecting data or performing analysis. Simply saying "ugh, why should we listen to received wisdom" and declaring that the experts are idiots is not the scientific spirit. |
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| ▲ | twixfel 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Science is built on trust because in reality it’s not practical to check every single result in a paper. Often it’s literally impossible (e.g the result from a one of a kind, billion dollar machine). |
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| ▲ | anigbrowl 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If someone hand-waves away the conclusions of scientists without doing any science of their own I feel no obligation to take them seriously. |
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| ▲ | immibis 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Is science authority? If science is not authority, then distrusting authority and trusting science are not in opposition. |
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| ▲ | yks 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > The essence of science is to distrust authority and received wisdom. This is not "the essence of science" by any means. |
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| ▲ | dekhn 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The motto of the Royal Society: "The Royal Society's motto 'Nullius in verba' was adopted in its First Charter in 1662. is taken to mean 'take nobody's word for it'. It is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment." It's highly consistent with the statement above and in many ways is consistent with science as it is practiced. | | |
| ▲ | davorak 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The motto here does not align with how I read it compared to: > The essence of science is to distrust authority and received wisdom "take nobody's word for it" -> anyone can say anything, that is just a claim, things other than that matter like data, replication, etc. That is different and superior than a simple, broad, statement to 'distrust'. | |
| ▲ | itishappy 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | ... source? (sorry, couldn't resist) https://royalsociety.org/about-us/who-we-are/history |
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| ▲ | elevatedastalt 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The Scientific process does not have any authority except observed natural phenomena. | | |
| ▲ | yks 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, therefore trusting or distrusting authorities is irrelevant. One can distrust authorities and do bad science, one can trust authorities and do good science, and other combinations. | |
| ▲ | cryptonector 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The scientific method has no authorities, but science does. | | |
| ▲ | mrguyorama 7 days ago | parent [-] | | It literally doesn't. Even Nobel Prize winners do not get a free pass to make baseless claims. There's an entire realm of people who did great science, won a Nobel prize, and then went on to make absurd unfounded claims about shit they do not know. | | |
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| ▲ | marcus_holmes 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | "Science advances one funeral at a time" [0] The Scientific Principle (hypothesis -> experiment -> conclusion and all that) does not pay any heed to authority and received wisdom. And it should not; the experiment results are all that matter. Academia, the set of very human organisations that have grown to manage our implementation of the Scientfic Principle, are a long way from perfect and are heavily influenced by authority and received wisdom. So yeah, I don't think it's the essence of science, but distrusting authority and received wisdom definitely required to practice good science. [0] https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/science-really-does-adva... | | |
| ▲ | yks 7 days ago | parent [-] | | One funeral at a time is true but “standing on the shoulders of giants” is also true and there is absolutely good science done without redoing all experiments since Newton, like there is a bad science standing on the sand hill of the other bad science. Having distrust by itself will not make one a good scientist and so it can’t be “the essence of science”. | | |
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| ▲ | atmavatar 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| No, the antithesis of the scientific spirit is to believe anything joe nobody posts on facebook or twitter that fits your worldview, regardless of (or perhaps especially due to) the presence of contradictory facts. The essence of science, and what is meant by "trust the science", is to accept theories that fit the existing data until such time as new data contradicts them, while encouraging people to ruthlessly search for just such data which would falsify them. Sadly, there are a lot of people whose only standard of proof for conspiracy theories is that it contradicts what experts claim. |
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| ▲ | refurb 7 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Maybe you saw “trust the science” used in different ways, but the way I saw it used was: - to shut down any debate as the science was “settled” - to argue for censorship as any discussion that went outside the approved borders of “settled science” was by default false and dangerous to expose people to - to argue that the “flavor of the month” study was the final word no matter how rigorous the research study was | |
| ▲ | OCASMv2 7 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Just like there's people whose only standard of proof is the word of "experts", regardless of (or perhaps especially due to) the presence of contradictory facts. |
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