> Just sit around and nitpick? Honk honk

The alternative is just making things up because it makes you feel better, so I’ll take actual science.

That's the other extreme, not "the alternative." Science is knowing fewer things, but knowing them well (to a high degree of certainty). Making stuff up is "knowing" more things but being uncertain and/or wrong. In between the two, there's a whole spectrum. I'm willing to "know" a few more things, but know them less well. Like being pretty sure pesticide exposure is not decreasing my risk of cancer for example.

The other thing is, I would be willing to be presumptively wrong about something like this, for the sake of safety. If someone wants to add a chemical to "the environment" (a commons) then I think the burden of proving it's safe falls on them.

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timr 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> Making stuff up is "knowing" more things but being uncertain and/or wrong.

No, making stuff up is making stuff up. Uncertainty is what we get when we run an experiment and have some level of doubt about the outcome. What the OP proposes is to instead just do stuff to solve problems that haven’t been demonstrated, by doing things that haven’t been shown to have any effect. That’s not science - it’s religion.

Attempts to get around this by invoking the “precautionary principle”, or using broadly negative Bayesian priors, are basically just religion dressed in a lab coat. For example:

> Like being pretty sure pesticide exposure is not decreasing my risk of cancer

Completely made up. Even if you wanted to point to this paper (however bad), as evidence, it doesn't defend your specific claim.

	▲	rdiddly 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That's fine.
	▲	Madmallard 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		WHAAAAAAAAAT?

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Madmallard 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not really making anything up, it's just not high on the tier list of evidence.