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How trust undermines science

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Re: How trust undermines science

#101

Post by kwhitefoot »

krapp wrote: post #69
gumby wrote: post #51

Part of the problem is how people learn what science is. Science, despite the name, is really all about doubt. Unfortunately in school it’s taught as certainty. In school you do “experiments” and if the answer doesn’t match what is in the book you are marked down. Often you have to memorize a bunch of assertions or even simply names, without any epistemic context. Then in the real world you discover that scientists c…

>In school you do “experiments” and if the answer doesn’t match what is in the book you are marked down. Often you have to memorize a bunch of assertions or even simply names, without any epistemic context. I don't know what school you went to, but this doesn't match my experience.

It seems to depend very much on when and where you went to school.

I did Nuffield chemistry for A-Level, '72-'74. It was very much about learning experimental methods and how to analyse the results. Physics was similar with great emphasis on analysis. But in conversations with others at university afterward (Exeter uni, Physics) I discovered that many of my fellow students had endured exactly the situation that your quote mentions.

Re: How trust undermines science

#102

Post by js8 »

lonecom wrote: post #100
js8 wrote: post #94

Trust is a shortcut. You could verify everything diligently, but it takes time, so you rely on others, hence trust. Scientists' job is to verify as much as possible (not to take the shortcut). Laymen can take the shortcut and trust the scientists. If a layman wants not to trust the scientists, which is OK, then they should understand that trust is a BIG timesaver, and they have to put lot of effort into educating the…

> they should understand that trust is a BIG timesaver As well as a BIG risk!

In any decent society, not really. This risk can be greatly mitigated by regulations, occasional independent review and transparency.

For example, I can rely that I won't get food poisoning in a restaurant. This is because we have rules of how to handle food (designed by expert consensus), and the restaurants are inspected from time to time if they follow these practices.

Re: How trust undermines science

#103

Post by mannschott »

gumby wrote: post #51

Part of the problem is how people learn what science is. Science, despite the name, is really all about doubt. Unfortunately in school it’s taught as certainty. In school you do “experiments” and if the answer doesn’t match what is in the book you are marked down. Often you have to memorize a bunch of assertions or even simply names, without any epistemic context. Then in the real world you discover that scientists c…

> In school you do “experiments” and if the answer doesn’t match what is in the book you are marked down.

This is unsurprising and probably obvious. The purpose of the exercise is learning how to do experiments reliably so that at some later point when doing experiments to test a hypothesis you can have some confidence that the results you produce are actual data and not just noise.

When doing science class "experiments" of this sort perhaps it would illuminate things to students better by going up one level: the hypothesis under test is "student can perform experiment reliably". The putative subject of the "experiment" isn't the actual subject in inquiry: you are. On the other hand maybe this would just confuse students. (I've observed wildly varying capacity for abstraction and meta-cognition among the people I work with as a software developer so I suppose this is something that varies among individuals generally.)

Re: How trust undermines science

#105

Post by fuzzfactor »

amelius wrote: post #14
jimsimmons wrote: post #2

We should respect people questioning science as long as they are doing it in good faith and are showing willingness to learn. We should even respect flat earthers and climate change deniers. They improve rigour and identify blindspots.

I would respect flat earthers if they published in peer-reviewed journals.

>I would respect flat earthers if they published in peer-reviewed journals.

Except their peers would reinforce the anti-scientific superstitions rather than reject them.

Not altogether differently than the way some recognized journals publish less-scientifically-sound output due to the credentials of the contributors rather than any conclusive results to report.

Or more commonly than ever, complete non-progress being wildly exaggerated as if it was an actual finding.

Even though there's more PhDs each year, you have to be more careful than ever what you want to regard as a science any more.

Re: How trust undermines science

#106

Post by lonecom »

js8 wrote: post #102
lonecom wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they should understand that trust is a BIG timesaver As well as a BIG risk!

In any decent society, not really. This risk can be greatly mitigated by regulations, occasional independent review and transparency. For example, I can rely that I won't get food poisoning in a restaurant. This is because we have rules of how to handle food (designed by expert consensus), and the restaurants are inspected from time to time if they follow these practices.

> decent society

We don't live in one.

Re: How trust undermines science

#107

Post by fuzzfactor »

js8 wrote: post #94

Trust is a shortcut. You could verify everything diligently, but it takes time, so you rely on others, hence trust. Scientists' job is to verify as much as possible (not to take the shortcut). Laymen can take the shortcut and trust the scientists. If a layman wants not to trust the scientists, which is OK, then they should understand that trust is a BIG timesaver, and they have to put lot of effort into educating the…

Trust, but verify.

Re: How trust undermines science

#108

Post by r_hoods_ghost »

aaron695 wrote: post #36

We've just had a far reaching tsunami from the Hunga Tonga eruption and no one will explain why. That is a trust issue. Do they know how volcanos work or not? Can they get that knowledge to the public or not? The mathematics is high school level in many cases to disprove possible causes of the tsunami. The reality is people do know how volcanoes work but the field is so full of charlatans that info can't get out. Thi…

I don't understand what you mean by "We've just had a far reaching tsunami from the Hunga Tonga eruption and no one will explain why." Surely the answer is there was a huge eruption of the Hunga Tonga volcano that destroyed 1/3 of the island? What more do you want?

Re: How trust undermines science

#110

Post by woolion »

nitwit005 wrote: post #41
jimsimmons wrote: post #2

We should respect people questioning science as long as they are doing it in good faith and are showing willingness to learn. We should even respect flat earthers and climate change deniers. They improve rigour and identify blindspots.

The problem with the flat earthers, and the more conspiratorial portion of the climate deniers, is it's not clear even the people making the claims believe it. They don't seem to mind ideas that contradict theirs, so long as the central belief that there is some sort of vast conspiracy is upheld. You can't really engage with people who aren't all that interested in what's actually true.

>it's not clear even the people making the claims believe it. They don't seem to mind ideas that contradict theirs, so long as the central belief that there is some sort of vast conspiracy is upheld.

That seems like a truly bizarre statement, how would that make sense? Some people would embrace ideas they would not believe in, to further the public's perception that there is an ongoing conspiracy? That seems perfectly lunatic. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to try to tie in that the conspiracy peddlers are incentivized to push completely insane theories in order to cover for other, true, conspiracy theories (e.g. the NSA's surveillance pre-Snowden leak).

Some have mental issues, that is a given, but that is not generally seen as a valid way to discredit or validate a theory (e.g. cleaning OCD is not seen as proof that hygiene is bad).

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