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> 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.

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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"?

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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