Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Science’s Biggest Fail

blog.dilbert.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 260 posts

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#191

Post by Shivetya »

TTPrograms wrote: post #15
api wrote: post #11

"I think science has earned its lack of credibility with the public. If you kick me in the balls for 20-years, how do you expect me to close my eyes and trust you?" I'm really happy to see that someone else sees this. I've been harping on this for a long time -- that the reason people believe things like anti-vaxx propaganda is not because they are idiots but because scientific authorities, the media, and the medical…

The blame is misplaced here, though. There's no real avenue for science to interact with the public currently (except for /r/AskScience, which is a terrific development). A vast majority of the misleading described is perpetuated by news headlines ending in question marks and "doctors" with mail order degrees trying to sell books. If there's any blame to be placed on scientific institutions it's not that they are bad…

Its simple really, within a generation its just as likely they will flip on what is certain and what is uncertain so why is it not safe to wait?

There are a few things we are pretty much past the flip stage on, vaccines are one, smoking is another, but get much beyond that and its up in the air. Welcome to Woody Allen's Sleeper; hell he got it right on the phone company.

Then throw in, who watches the watchers, as in who polices those who claim to know. When you see government and education malfeasance everyday these institutions become even less likely to earn or hold the trust of the public

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#192

Post by TeMPOraL »

I do see a kind of anti-induction thing going on, similar to what happens on stock markets. In the case of science, when people trust research, we have all kind of assholes[0] flocking to it and using it to push their agenda, up until people don't trust science anymore. Come to think of it, this applies to all kinds of things people trust.

The problem seems to be, people don't care about being lied to. Politicians spew bullshit all the time, there's hardly a true fact you can find in a newspaper, and yet everyone just goes "meh". There should be back-pressure. Journalists should lose their jobs over lying to people, and that includes all that nonsense science reporting that is killing trust in life-saving research. But no one seems to care.

[0] - I honestly believe abusing people's trust in something is one of the most dickish move you can pull.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#193

Post by snowwrestler »

mcphage wrote: post #16

Doing science is a lot like making sausages. There's a lot of conjecture, hypothesizing, testing, making observations, generating theories, testing those theories, throwing out the ones that don't hold up to repeatable studies. I don't think nutrition is unique in that matter. Where it differs from other sciences are: 1. The general public is very interested in the results, and so there's a lot of motivation for peop…

I would also argue that the general public often wants easy fixes and shortcuts.

The basics of nutrition and health are well-known and easy to understand. You can see them in action on The Biggest Loser in prime time on ABC. It's this: eat the basic food groups in moderation, and get enough exercise and sleep. That's it. Every contestant on that show improves their health markedly by following that simple formula.

So I would argue that a lot of people don't want just good nutrition; they want nutrition so good that it can make up for failings in other areas of health. That's a MUCH taller order, and no surprise when it fails.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#194

Post by clem »

batbomb wrote: post #41
api wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I think medical science and the health care industry are so broken that they should just be rebooted from scratch.

What does that even mean?

It means doctors no longer have to wash their hands prior to a trepanning.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#195

Post by dap »

mcphage wrote: post #16

Doing science is a lot like making sausages. There's a lot of conjecture, hypothesizing, testing, making observations, generating theories, testing those theories, throwing out the ones that don't hold up to repeatable studies. I don't think nutrition is unique in that matter. Where it differs from other sciences are: 1. The general public is very interested in the results, and so there's a lot of motivation for peop…

> And yet the needle moves forward, slowly.

The problem is that it takes giant leaps backwards, too. See the discussion in other comments about margarine, saturated fats, and the links to heart disease. The scientific recommendations that were made promoted the very problem they were trying to address. As others have pointed out, this problem may largely be attributed to misinterpretation and miscommunication (rather than bad science). But since the vast, vast majority of people get their scientific information from schools or media rather than reading papers directly (which isn't a bad thing, since scientific papers are not written for interpretation by non-scientists), that's not a helpful distinction.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#196

Post by TeMPOraL »

api wrote: post #11

"I think science has earned its lack of credibility with the public. If you kick me in the balls for 20-years, how do you expect me to close my eyes and trust you?" I'm really happy to see that someone else sees this. I've been harping on this for a long time -- that the reason people believe things like anti-vaxx propaganda is not because they are idiots but because scientific authorities, the media, and the medical…

I agree, but I wouldn't put that much of blame on scientist themselves - what I think did most of the damage is science reporting, which is yet another case of audacious journalist lies. Most people do not learn "what science says" from research papers, they read about it in lifestyle magazines, on news sites, and now on Facebook. It is there where "coffee possibly linked to cancer (p I don't get why people have such tolerance for being lied to. People should be fired from their jobs for spewing such nonsense and misrepresenting facts. Of course news sites and marketers have zero incentive to say the truth, but I hoped that at least the recipients would care. Apparently, most of them don't.

As a side note:

> "Fine then... if you're going to cancel visionary projects so we can have more war and tax breaks for the financial industry, then I'm going to deny that you ever did it in the first place to spite you."

Well, I recently learned that US Congress basically got fed up with all those "visionary projects" and preemptively shut down the space race. From [0]:

"Wernher von Braun also proposed a manned Mars mission using NERVA and a spinning donut-shaped spacecraft to simulate gravity. Many of the NASA plans for Mars in the 1960s and early 1970s used the NERVA rocket specifically, see list of manned Mars mission plans in the 20th century.

The Mars mission became NERVA's downfall. Members of Congress in both political parties judged that a manned mission to Mars would be a tacit commitment for the United States to decades more of the expensive Space Race. Manned Mars missions were enabled by nuclear rockets; therefore, if NERVA could be discontinued the Space Race might wind down and the budget would be saved."

[0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#197

Post by Yaa101 »

There is nothing wrong with science persé, the problem is the people working in science, a lot of them are corrupt. Not often by birth are they corrupt but mostly due to pressure by the ones handing science money, and it does not matter if the donaters are government or private parties. Most donaters give money to serve their goal and not to get neutral answers about how things work. In other words, we the people should look into the mirror closly to get the answer about why science is so corrupt.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#199

Post by pvaldes »

People don't need to trust science, they need to understand science. If you did never have time for educate yourself and develop a real critical sense, don't blame the other guys.

Re: Science’s Biggest Fail

#200

Post by WillNotDownvote »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #76

I found out recently that Scott Adams doesn't believe in evolution, which rather colours my response to this headline. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Adams

Reading his actual post on the topic, it seems that he misunderstood (-stands) what evolution is. But he does so in ways that many, many people do, including many people who consider themselves scientifically literate on the topic.

What he's saying shows evolution is wrong is actually...evolution. It's more of a misunderstanding than a disbelief.

Evolution might be the science topic with the most people wrong in believing they understand it.

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/03/foss...

Post reply on HN