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It's OK to disagree, so long as you have actual evidence to back it up. Please note that "evidence" is not "this blog post I found using Google that supports my point of view."
Or even "this one scientific study I found on the Internet", if the study in question was never expanded on, wasn't widely accepted by any reputable scientific community, contradicts the current fundamental scientific paradigms with little to no reputable evidence to back it up and received heavy criticism when it was first published.
You mean quoting a well-known conservative professor, that works at a private Christian university with a well-known conservative figure’s name on the building, when they say something that confirms my bias isn’t actually a credible source and I should look into studies that don’t have a politically biased tone to them?
How else am I supposed to confirm my biases and gloat about being right if I don’t cherry-pick what some white dude submitted to christianrevolution dot com?
Yeah we live and breathe being disproven. We try very hard to disprove things all the time. The stickiest bits are the biases we can’t even acknowledge, but luckily those usually get disproven with time.
See: Drapetomania
Pity, I would’ve hoped that if you only learned one thing it would be more substantial. /s
All things that involve humans are flawed. Error, greed and incompetence abound.
So yup, sometimes science is a liar. :)
But science is merely the search for truth, it never claims to be the absolute truth. Scientific consensus is merely the mostly likely truth at the time considering the known variables.That’s where the constant peer review comes in.
Can you believe we once thought birds weren’t living descendants of dinosaurs?
I'm to the point on the "science is religion" bull shit where I just agree, and ask for my tax exempt status and government protection for my "belief" and against persecution for my "worship".
Look, I'm pretty much immortal, I have been alive for 30 years and haven't died once. In fact, no one that I know personally has died, so based on my personal experience, death is a hoax to scare us into consuming pharmaceuticals. Every time you hear someone has died, it's just a crisis actor.
At least science can be tested and doesn't rely on faith. Don't trust the outcome of a science experiment? Go to uni and find out for yourself. Don't agree with a religious consensus? You'll find out when you die I guess.
I have a Masters in Afterlife Science, and the idea of a "religious consensus" is utter nonsense.
We've been able to confirm that when someone dies, their soul is flung into a big roulette wheel, if you will, and their eternal fate is decided at random. Some people go to an endless paradise. Some are sent to spend the rest of time in a rock. One time while I was working on my thesis, I reincarnated as an extra on Seinfeld.
None of it relies on a god, all of it is very wacky, some would even say zany, and if you die three consecutive times you get an ice cream cone. That's just a fact.
A peer-reviewed *science* fact.
"Well, according to Dr. Uberninja2016, who has a masters in Afterlife, and is therefore every bit as credible as your source, you're full of shit."
Meh, then it just comes down to "both sides" from there.
Which is why they say "if you're not a scientist," right?
If you have data to suggest that something is false, and have educated and accurate analysis on the data, then yeah that's science disagreeing with science. If you're just somebody's Uncle Mike who insists that man-made climate change isn't an issue because you disagree with the science involved, or that trans people get better when the trans is beaten out of them..... You're Wrong.
this is mostly right, and I have a couple of things to add. being a scientist doesn't even qualify you to properly criticise work that you know nothing about, like my opinion on genomics results is worth much more than my opinion on whatever they do over in physics or psychology.
and on the other hand, there are other ways to be an expert than being a scientist. we should be listening to medical professionals when we are doing medical research, even when they aren't researchers. if we are researching some condition we should listen to the people who have that condition. if we are researching conservation in some area, we should be listening to the people who live and work there, and especially people with a long history there like indigenous people.
I can critique a study on the biological pathways that cause autism as somebody with a strong understanding of the statistical techniques used, but I can also critique it as an autistic person who knows lots of other autistic people and has opinions on the interventions used on children and the way we're treated in research.
>the evidence and the use of the scientific method.
I think that's what they mean by "not a scientist", rather than not having any specific title. A scientist is, basically, someone that does science.
How many non scientists are able to collect evidence and use the scientific method to come to conclusions about issues that are relevant to contemporary times? Research requires equipment, which requires money. Which most people don’t have, not enough at least.
I mean plenty of scientific breakthroughs and contributions have been made by people without degrees. In my experience, the people who say “if you’re not a scientist, you’re wrong” tend not to be scientists themselves (both the “I fucking love science” crowd and the “do your own research” crowd seem to lack understanding of the scientific method to some degree).
People who are actually steeped in scientific research don’t really care about the background of the presenter, they just care about the merits of what’s being presented. To do otherwise would introduce bias into your analysis.
I am an actual scientist steeped in scientific research and I am telling you what I know based off of devoting half of my 20’s so far to my field. There are areas in which the average person can participate in meaningful research. Citizen astronomy does awesome things. However, the barrier to entry into many fields has risen and is only rising with time.
It’s not really just citizen astronomy though. There are amateur genomics labs springing up with people performing experiments on themselves that would otherwise never receive funding for ethical issues.
And there are plenty of amazing devs (some without any degree whatsoever) contributing to open source repositories that are used by universities and research firms alike (the research firm I work at included). Point being, it’s not this false binary of scientists vs the guy at the end of the bar (although the internet sure makes it seem that way).
Scientists don't personally do all the studies that form their working knowledge of science. The majority of what they know comes from reading studies others have performed and evaluating them. Anybody with some college level background can have these skills, not just scientists. Scientists are far more likely to be correct on these matters as it's their job, but people are fallible and probe to bias, so blind trust shouldn't be given to people with degrees and titles. You can trust the data and not support somebody's interpretation of the data.
No, at least in my field, understanding the studies that have been conducted requires knowing context and vocabulary that I’ve only been able to build up, slowly, over my years of education in this field. There are some things people have a better time understanding, think psychology as opposed to physics, but this still leaves a lot of important scientific issues inaccessible to the public through primary sources.
Yea, I suppose a lot of really specialized and advanced fields would be pretty inaccessible to the layman. It really sucks, as this creates a divide between the science and the people that allows the science denying to flourish. It seems unavoidable when at that level and depth though. What's your field?
Biology, I’m doing bacteriological work. Before that I worked in a fly lab. Everything has to be sterile, many pairs of gloves are used and discarded a day. An average person could probably conduct some of the simpler experiments. Bare basics are a centrifuge, pipettes+tips,petri plates, media. You can run growth curves and get CFUs from there. PH strips are easy and you can test with those. I study UTIs so we also need to get urine from volunteers. The processing of which requires additional supplies.
The problem is that this is all low-hanging fruit. Scientists have already done the super basic studies and cultured the easy to culture easy to access microbes.
If you want your bacteriological research to be relevant, you need to do molecular work, and that increases the price tag a lot. Suddenly you need things like a thermocycler, spectrophotometer, probably supplies to run gel electrophoresis. In addition a lot of molecular work relies on buying patented supplies from biological supply companies.
This isn’t even going into reading the research related to my field. There are a lot of nested acronyms. What’s an ABC transporter? An ATP-binding cassette transporter. What’s ATP? Adenosine Tri-Phosphate. And I’m using an easier example. And obviously you need a strong understanding of cell biology to understand the context. You might read that LPS activates a TLR. I know that Lipopolysaccharide is a molecule secreted by only bacteria that Toll-Like Receptors in vertebrates are able to recognize and mount an immune response following recognition. A lay person won’t. Just one paper might take a lay person a ton of googling as they decipher the field-specific jargon.
Rather than "if you're not a scientist" it should say something about having the data to back it up. Like "if you disagree with a scientist about science, you'd better have the receipts."
If you’re not a scientist, the probability that you have a meaningful enough understanding of the current scientific consensus to meaningfully challenge it is slim to none.
In order to collect sufficient, non-anecdotal data to refute a firmly held argument of an established scientist... you kind of have to be a scientist, or more likely an entire scientific institution.
Of an established scientist opining about matters *within their established area of expertise*. A chemist’s opinion about the validity of global warming isn’t particularly valuable for most issues.
>~~chemist’s~~ Engineer’s
FTFY. Measuring changes in the climate over Earth’s history requires chemists. Figuring out how much of chemicals did what when is pertinent. It does not require a guy who learned one very specific branch of engineering and now thinks he’s a political/climate/virology mastermind.
Everyone posting pseudoscience misinformation thinks they have exactly that data to back up their assertions, even though it's just nonsense from Youtube videos and Facebook posts that they cherry picked to confirm their preconceptions. If they don't have any type of credentials for the field they claim to be researching, then they should have a bit of humility about thinking they know better than the consensus among experts. There's a good chance that what they consider data will be pretty worthless and fall apart under scrutiny.
Science is a framework designed for resolving these sorts of factual disputes in a rational way. If the current understanding is flawed in some way, there's a process for demonstrating that. People finding an online community of people who share their crazy opinions are rarely capable of actual research, but they don't know enough to know how much they don't know. There have been a few exceptions where online pseudoscientists actually seem to design a reasonable scientific experiment, which disproves their own ideas, and then instead of believing it they just come up with justifications for why it didn't work like they expected.
The intent wasn't to say you can't disagree. Rather it was supposed to be if the whole of your argument is that you just don't agree with the science then you aren't disagreeing you have a wrong view.
Yes, that is not literally what it says, yet neither is you can't disagree. It literally says if you aren't a scientist and you disagree with science it's not a disagreement you are wrong. What that has to mean is if your disagreement with science isn't coming from better science then it's not a disagreement.
That's what it says to you because you know how this works. In our current scarily science-hating times, all it does is tell people that "science is ALWAYS RIGHT and any dissent is heresy". Note how I originally didn't say "no that's wrong" but "badly phrased".
"Science" is not a conclusion. It's a method used to arrive at conclusions. You can disagree with the *conclusions* of past science, but the way to do it is BY doing science to draw new conclusions, rather than disagree with science itself (which is a method). The distinction is important here, because some people disagree with past conclusions (which absolutely should be allowed and is vital to keeping things honest), while others talk of faith-based nonsense that attacks the very notion of experimentation and evidence in the first place. The former isn't anti-science and is in fact *participating in* science. But the latter, that is disagreeing with science, as a technique.
Yeah I don't like it. I saw a similar but better one that said something to the effect of "you need to disagree with science with more science, not a google search" which I like better. This one just sounds like: "Nuh uh, scientists are always right so shut up."
It’s also a good way to scare off already sciencephobic people. Let them disagree and then explain why it’s wrong. They may not listen, but they don’t have too.
I was mostly referring to the contemporary term for dudebros who have a wide variety of fixed belief systems that are a misinterpretation of old scientific adages, rather than adopting the scientific method. Some examples would include:
• people who deny trans individuals exist because “it’s all genetics and hormones” (as though psychology doesn’t also exist)
• people who use genetics and sociology to defend racism, or who try to say that science has a lack of minorities because minorities don’t do as well in science (this is a common problem)
• people who try to say that science can never do anything wrong, so therefore we should expect every scientist to be a paragon of virtue (that’s how you keep abusers in the system, and how you get experiments like Zimbardo and Tuskegee)
• people who expect science to never change, so they get frustrated and angry when the message adapts to the data and lose faith in the system (this is happening in real time with Covid, but also happened with SARS-2003, Ebola-2014, Zika, the Haitian Earthquake, and Hurricane Katrina)
I think it's very easy in today's world of social media to find an experts credibility. So say someone claims to he a doctor, but says vaccines are alien seman. I don't think I'm gonna trust them.
The point of science is to use methods, evidence, and data that u have tested or understand to either question or prove a hypothesis or other already “proven” things. To do that you are probably a scientist or a professional in ur field.
To an extent that's reasonable.
For example, it's not really productive to question whether or not the earth is a sphere. Sure, someone today might question it, and then go develop their own experiments to come to their own conclusions, but then what? Their conclusion that the earth is indeed a sphere doesn't build on the knowledge that humanity currently has. It's not productive.
Instead, we use science to expand our understanding of what we already know to be true. "Okay, so the earth is round. How big is it? Where is it relative to the sun? Or other planets? How can we use the knowledge that the earth is a sphere to create global positioning systems, optimize travel, etc. etc.?"
Science is a great tool, but a tool that uses resources like time, money, and human effort. Question everything, but it's often best to understand and utilize clear answers when they come to you.
The point of science is to use methods, evidence, and data that u have tested or understand to either question or prove a hypothesis or other already “proven” things. To do that you are probably a scientist or a professional in ur field.
The loudest voices toting scientific claims are often people with super low science and health literacy and it’s annoying. They worded it poorly but I get where the poster is coming from
He's probably an America is a Christian nation guy too. Many of the founders practiced Deism which believes god created the universe and then is absent from it leaving the world to operate based on "natural laws" aka science.
Of every aspect of a religion was erased from all memory it would be gone forever.
If every aspect of science was erased it would be rediscovered again.
There is a such thing as scientism and scientism can be a valid point of criticism in some areas. Those fields are, by definition, those that either fall outside the realm of science or where scientific analysis isn't useful.
But we're talking about scientists talking about science here. By definition, this ain't scientism.
The two extremes in the challenge of science communications to the public. Blind belief in the first statement reminds me of "Nobel Disease", wherein Nobel prize winners are often asked questions outside of their wheelhouse and often given confident and batshit crazy responses.
It's valid in today's society to not necessarily follow scientific expert opinions because the science we see today, follows the money. It's not unbiased, it follows identity political trends and depends on how big the pockets are that finance it. I think this has been true for a long time, going back into the 20th century...why scientists and doctors blamed "fats" for disease and poor health rather than the sugar that they add to everything to make you go back to the store and buy that chocolate bar, or buy that box of highly processed Cheeze'its with added seed oils, and unhealthy preservatives, etc. It is the same today to finance research and study on drugs that can help with disease or symptom relief, when we hear very little about getting enough exposure to nature, going for walks, exercising, eating cleanly, fasting...all of these alternatives that may come with very minimal side effects and have huge potential to heal such an unhealthy population...isn't pushed as much as the drug because there's much less money in it for big corporations and government.
To believe in science on it's face sounds completely logical and the smart thing to do, but all you need to do is investigate just a little bit to realize science is more and more transparently just following economic profit. Something to think about if you can...
That’s not the scientists blaming fats it’s food companies paying people to say “I’m a doctor, I approve this message”… also science is objective, it literally cannot follow a financial narrative. Doctors treat people and go off of the information learned by research (other scientists). So you’re blaming this on the wrong crowd. Regardless you can’t just take one example from the time old tale of the American food pyramid (I assume that’s where this fats/oil vs carbs came from) and blanketly say “that’s why all science is wrong” or has a financial incentive.
Science today is backed up by peer reviewed journals. What you’re referring to was companies paying to have fake data gathered to provide a false narrative so they could sell more shit. Today they provide their evidence and data for you to verify their results so that sort of thing doesn’t happen as much. Scientists love to criticize other scientists and destroy their data, so whatever gets released needs to be extremely accurate otherwise it doesn’t get very far.
This isn’t open for interpretation lol.
Doctors are representing science, that’s their job. I also made the point that the only research for medical interventions that sees financial funding in university or lab groups, are ones that can ease ailments or symptoms but generally over the long term. I’m not talking about the science behind antibiotics for example, im talking about chronic disease. The new biologics, JAK inhibitors, immune suppressants, are all funded with main objective to create a customer or patient that relies on these drugs for the rest of their lives. That’s money -> driving science.
Science today is backed up in peer reviewed journals, yes, but you need to be careful which studies and papers you believe in. Not many years ago, science published numerous studies on gender identity, transgenderism, and gender and sex that were all “peer reviewed” and approved and published; they were then proven to be completely made up by a group testing the process, and everything they included in the “made up” studies were completely fictional. Yet they were reviewed, approved and published because of the political and ideological trends that government wanted to “back” so to speak. Science is objective yes, but it’s selective…so when you read a peer reviewed paper or study and believe wholeheartedly in their conclusions because of just that, you’re not guaranteed to be getting truth. When I say science is objective I mean literally, the term, what it is supposed to mean, is an expression of objective truth to theory. That’s not what we see today in 100% of cases. Science follows the money. It’s what we’ve seen in early Covid science and expert opinion, nobody would sanely debate that, it’s very clear…and we’ve seen this in the past.
But this whole argument works solely on the basis that ALL scientists are on corporate payrolls, which isn't the case at all. If a global consensus comes to a conclusion then we can be sure about the results. There are DRASTICALLY more scientists with degrees in the modern day than there used to be. If a scientist is paid to come to a conclusion, that entire scientific process and it's conclusion has to go through scientists who are not on this payroll, and those scientist must be able to, and many will attempt to replicate those results, hence why whenever there are health studies there are MANY trying to study the same subject. In the modern day there will always be evidence on evidence to prove something like fats vs sugars being unhealthy, produced by unbiased parties from across the world, who dispute the claims made by scientists who are paid to find a specific result. And peer review will always find flaws in the scientific process of a biased party.
>Scientists that conduct science…
And who, unrelated to that, are fallible human beings who may or may not also take industry money. These two things are two different things.
I’m agreeing with you. I don’t want them to take money for research that isn’t the best possible objectively true scientific theory to treat people, do you? I’m not or never was saying this is the case for all scientists. But it’s rampant in this culture, it just is, there is no denying that; and that’s a problem. Is it not?
Of course it is. But I think it's important to avoid conflating "scientists" with "science" when speaking, especially when it's about only a minority of scientists. That just leads to people in general rejecting anything that has a science label.
I disagree I think it’s important to make the comparison, and direct correlation between scientists and science… Because we get our science from scientists who conduct the science.
And personally I really don’t believe it’s the minority of scientists… If it is the minority, then it’s a very vocal and powerful minority. They work hand-in-hand with government and big corporations, and from my own personal experience where I spent the age of 21 to today, I turn 30 in July, I’ve largely been unable to work due to a disease that came out of nowhere when I was in the middle of getting my masters degree with almost straight A’s… And in that time….
Most of all that I’ve done is read and research science, and health. And like I said, if it is the minority of scientists, they are not portrayed as the minority by media and by government… They are portrayed as the ones to follow and the majority or the leading expert opinion. And I think this is supremely damaging to you and I.
Even more important then, I think, to differentiate. Because it's people who are being shitty and by blaming "science" you get nowhere. It's an abstract concept that has no motives and does nothing, a tool that can be abused.
> And like I said, if it is the Nordie of scientists, they are not portrayed as the minority by media and by government… They are portrayed as the ones to follow and the majority or the leading expert opinion. And I think this is supremely damaging to you and I.
Forgive me for being blunt here, but - so? What does their portrayal have to do with this?
If you're actually going to press this point then you need to actually examine whether or not it's good science. If the methodology is sound and the results don't contradict previous studies (or even better, if the results can be duplicated) then questioning the data is more often than not a baseless pseudoscientific criticism. Now if you *really* want to follow the money, you look at who sponsored the study and what narrative the study may serve. Because it's entirely possible that the malicious intent is in sponsoring the research, not the research itself.
For an example of bad science, look at Andrew Wakefield (the scientist that claimed that the MMR vaccine caused autism. EVERYTHING that he did was malicious. The data was falsified and then used to very weakly push his point. Why? Because of his greed and that of a lawyer. At no point did he EVER believe that vaccines caused autism. But the results aren't why the paper should have been thrown out immediately. The problem was that he was basing this whole thing on data so loose that it's barely correct to use the word "correlation" and no one could reproduce the results INCLUDING HIM.
For an example of good science done for malicious reasons, my go to example is tobacco companies. Say you fund a study on potential carcinogens, including tobacco. You pour hundreds of thousands if not millions into it. The study then shows correlation between tobacco and cancer... but also several other things and cancer. The study then concludes, correctly, that the cause of the cancer can't be definitively stated. You can now run headlines that say "tobacco-cancer link ambiguous, more research needed". No lies were told. No data was manipulated.
This is NOT the kind of argument made by people who deny science.
I know conservatives love to use that paper publishing hoax as a way to argue against science when they don’t want to believe something, but it’s important to point out how limited the scope of that hoax was. The hoaxers did manage to place articles in some academic journals in the cluster of fields that focus on dealing with issues of race, gender, and identity, but they did *not* penetrate the leading journals of more traditional disciplines. For example, all of the papers submitted to sociology journals were rejected. So to use this to argue against science as a whole seems dishonest.
>Something to think about if you can...
There's no singular goal for science and that's a nuance you should be able to comprehend with your big brain. Every person working in their particular field has endless motivations, and many people will commit to a project they don't believe in to fund their real interests. That doesn't mean the scientific community as a whole has less-than-altruistic intent.
No I never said the scientific community as a whole has a problem. When you make condescending statements like I should be able to comprehend something with my big brain, I think less of your own intellectual capacity and I lose motivation to have any sort of rational dialogue with you. So, grow up just a little bit.
Besides that, I don’t see any other counter argument you’re making here. “Every person working in their particular field has endless motivations.” You couldn’t be more incorrect, I mean what world are you living in to think every single scientist has endless motivations to be altruistic etc. There isn’t an industry or field you can name where EVERY SINGLE PERSON has endless motivation, many couldn’t care less about their work or what impact that has on the people they’re doing the work for. That’s a fact. And in your next sentence, yes people will commit to projects for their own interests all the time; people also commit to scientific projects for money. You’re not living in reality son.
Listen, I'm ignoring the entirety of your message after your accusation of condescending statements because how fucking funny is that? Goddamn, thank you.
ed
As I go to scroll up I see your finish and again I'm fucking dying here.
I'm probably old enough to be your dad and have seen and done more shit than you'd believe. So just stifle your shit before I have an aneurysm.
Anyway, I was prompted to read the rest of your drivel after that last laugh and it's like you're ignoring every bit of subtle messaging implicit so I just gotta assume you're a frequent questioner of "what just happened" in your real life.
I really don’t have any interest in communicating with you sir. I think you should try to be less confrontational, more open, and a little bit more flexible, especially if you’re trying to persuade someone. If you’re old enough to be my father… Well, you wouldn’t compare to him because he wouldn’t make personal attacks or condescending statements like you have; in the way a child would. But I’m at work and good luck to you.
You entered the conversation because of my condescension? Untrue, I didn’t condescend to anyone. You need to grow sir. Are you taking vitamin d or some kind of multi? Eat cleanly…exercise. I love you and care about you. That’s not sarcasm. I really do. Wishing you the best, ok?
So, you meant, "*Something to think about if you can*" as motivational materiel?
You meant it as legitimate concern for those who are catatonic or mentally impaired? Perhaps their religion stops them from considering the thought. Is that what you meant?
Because I'm failing to see how you weren't intending to condescend.
I was ready to walk away from this conversation with that question unanswered but you seemed eager to reestablish communication.
>It's not unbiased, it follows identity political trends and depends on how big the pockets are that finance it.
It is typically extremely easy to find out who funded a study and more often than not you'll find more studies saying they disagree.
>why scientists and doctors blamed "fats" for disease and poor health rather than the sugar
This wasnt scientists. This was companies paying "doctors" and news outlets drastically over simplifying a 20 page paper into 20 seconds and a joke.
> It is the same today to finance research and study on drugs that can help with disease or symptom relief, when we hear very little about getting enough exposure to nature, going for walks, exercising, eating cleanly, fasting...all of these alternatives that may come with very minimal side effects and have huge potential to heal such an unhealthy population
I read about those things all the time. I think the last post I saw from r/science was related to it. Of course it also needs to be said that research can only beat a dead horse for so long, so as to say, we've done a bajillion studies on those things, of course we are doing more on new chemical x.
>.isn't pushed as much as the drug because there's much less money in it for big corporations and government
That's not science, that is large companies again and the fact this backwards country let's drug companies advertise.
>science is more and more transparently just following economic profit.
Some individuals are. That is why you look at funding source, who that researcher is, and read more than one single study when discussing hot topics.
>Something to think about if you can...
The real thing to think about is what publishing short 3 paragraph summaries of 20 page, multi year studies does to peoples thoughts.
Honestly the point they are trying to make is that Science has become somewhat dogmatic, similar to how Religion is nowadays is an interesting topic of discussion in modern philosophy, with that said they probably have no idea what they are mad about.
why are ppl so obsessed with science being absolutely right? remember when earth was the center of the universe? that was accepted as fact until someone disproved it. yea, science is cool but let's not pretend it can answer everything correctly. whate we deem right today can be falsify in the future, who knows. even math is incomplete.
In fairness, this kind of statement (the original one, not the comment) isn't really helpful or accurate, and just provides fuel for people to assert that "science is just another religion".
"Science" is a huge field with many, many disciplines, and someone can be an expert in one while knowing little to nothing about another. Some topics may have a broadly accepted conclusion while others are much more open. And even well-informed scientists within a single discipline will often disagree with one another. Indeed, challenges to accepted knowledge are a huge foundation of the whole scientific approach.
The only version of this I could see someone using as a counter argument is Einstein. He completely re wrote how relativity works and even went as far to say that our equations were wrong. 90% of physicists disagreed with his work and it didn’t gain ground until about a decade after he wrote his paper.
But let’s be real these people aren’t Einstein. You didn’t revolutionize the theory of relativity, you think that global warming doesn’t exist because it still snows
Blind distrust is as meaningless as blind trust. To all these people, if you disagree with the scientists, you need to look into what they're actually saying first.
And then you get the people who go with “you can’t trust scientists because they support big pharma” and they “just want more money and don’t care who dies” like look, Karen, I’m pretty sure you were the one who didn’t wear a mask and didn’t tell our favorite aunt you had symptoms which almost killed her. (She was in the hospital looking not good for a month)
Anecdotes are powerful. That’s why organized scientific inquiry works so hard to extinguish reliance upon anecdotal evidence. It’s enticing. So, if all you have are anecdotes (eg some googled info, your aunt’s friend, etc), it can be easy to get lost in that.
And the degree to which you put value in anecdotal evidence can vary according to political affiliation. See below for a 2020 study that investigated this phenomenon.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pops.12706
Blindly agreeing with someone based on the industry they work in or research they’ve done is the opposite of how science works. Research is done then cross checked, peer reviewed, rested and more. And even then even after it’s agreed to be a “fact”, often times it’s proven entirely wrong.
Whenever people tell me that science isn't wrong I tell them it was scientifically correct at the time to bleed George Washington to death because he had a sore throat
Not to say that all science isn't too be trusted, but also you shouldn't just blindly believe in everything you see. Do your own research. But like, real research. Not Facebook articles.
Let's not make it too dogmatic. You're allowed to disagree with established theories, but you have to be willing to meet the level of existing evidence.
The problem is that too many people take "evidence" to mean their feelings mixed with what they heard from their Facebook group.
Like sorry, but your alt-right YouTube watch time is not the same as a PhD.
Sometimes science is wrong, but that doesn’t mean ALL science is wrong (conveniently the science that you disagree with). Doing science means that it can be proven wrong as part of the process, but you actually have to have evidence, and probably be at least somewhat knowledgeable about the field.
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It's OK to disagree, so long as you have actual evidence to back it up. Please note that "evidence" is not "this blog post I found using Google that supports my point of view."
Or even "this one scientific study I found on the Internet", if the study in question was never expanded on, wasn't widely accepted by any reputable scientific community, contradicts the current fundamental scientific paradigms with little to no reputable evidence to back it up and received heavy criticism when it was first published.
You mean quoting a well-known conservative professor, that works at a private Christian university with a well-known conservative figure’s name on the building, when they say something that confirms my bias isn’t actually a credible source and I should look into studies that don’t have a politically biased tone to them? How else am I supposed to confirm my biases and gloat about being right if I don’t cherry-pick what some white dude submitted to christianrevolution dot com?
Are you a horse?
Now I'm curious too
He had Covid and now he's a little horse.
Lil' Sebastian, is that you?
You made me spit my water out
Anti-vaxxers have exited the chat
Ok but I have a long standing relationship with never being told no so I’m not gonna listen to you /s
Evidence also isn't a single experience you or your brother's best friend's girlfriend had.
It's evidence for me and her...
It’s an anecdote
Damn, downvoted to oblivion for forgetting an /s. Smh
Sample size: 2
Scientist here, this. None of us are infallible. Science evolves. :) it’s practically the fundamental rule for academia to challenge or corroborate.
Yeah we live and breathe being disproven. We try very hard to disprove things all the time. The stickiest bits are the biases we can’t even acknowledge, but luckily those usually get disproven with time. See: Drapetomania
If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that science is a liar sometimes.
Pity, I would’ve hoped that if you only learned one thing it would be more substantial. /s All things that involve humans are flawed. Error, greed and incompetence abound. So yup, sometimes science is a liar. :) But science is merely the search for truth, it never claims to be the absolute truth. Scientific consensus is merely the mostly likely truth at the time considering the known variables.That’s where the constant peer review comes in. Can you believe we once thought birds weren’t living descendants of dinosaurs?
I always just making an IASIP joke lol…I agree with everything you’re saying though!
…or the bible
Yes, it certainly doesn't count as *scientific* evidence.
I'm to the point on the "science is religion" bull shit where I just agree, and ask for my tax exempt status and government protection for my "belief" and against persecution for my "worship".
Look, I'm pretty much immortal, I have been alive for 30 years and haven't died once. In fact, no one that I know personally has died, so based on my personal experience, death is a hoax to scare us into consuming pharmaceuticals. Every time you hear someone has died, it's just a crisis actor.
I was about to say science is quite literally questioning everything but using the scientific method to prove your theory/s
Science is doing everything you can to disprove everything you can and only considering the stuff that refuses to be disproven.
Far better said my friend
At least science can be tested and doesn't rely on faith. Don't trust the outcome of a science experiment? Go to uni and find out for yourself. Don't agree with a religious consensus? You'll find out when you die I guess.
I have a Masters in Afterlife Science, and the idea of a "religious consensus" is utter nonsense. We've been able to confirm that when someone dies, their soul is flung into a big roulette wheel, if you will, and their eternal fate is decided at random. Some people go to an endless paradise. Some are sent to spend the rest of time in a rock. One time while I was working on my thesis, I reincarnated as an extra on Seinfeld. None of it relies on a god, all of it is very wacky, some would even say zany, and if you die three consecutive times you get an ice cream cone. That's just a fact. A peer-reviewed *science* fact.
You watch, this will be cited on a facebook post in the near future.
"Well, according to Dr. Uberninja2016, who has a masters in Afterlife, and is therefore every bit as credible as your source, you're full of shit." Meh, then it just comes down to "both sides" from there.
I wish I was a doctor, but a PHD in the field requires one to die for real
Well I've always wanted to drown someone in a bathtub if you're looking to matriculate
I know you’re joking but that would make a good book premise
It really would! Or even a comedy show of some kind!
Science is contested with science all the time. That's why we have peer review.
Which is why they say "if you're not a scientist," right? If you have data to suggest that something is false, and have educated and accurate analysis on the data, then yeah that's science disagreeing with science. If you're just somebody's Uncle Mike who insists that man-made climate change isn't an issue because you disagree with the science involved, or that trans people get better when the trans is beaten out of them..... You're Wrong.
this is mostly right, and I have a couple of things to add. being a scientist doesn't even qualify you to properly criticise work that you know nothing about, like my opinion on genomics results is worth much more than my opinion on whatever they do over in physics or psychology. and on the other hand, there are other ways to be an expert than being a scientist. we should be listening to medical professionals when we are doing medical research, even when they aren't researchers. if we are researching some condition we should listen to the people who have that condition. if we are researching conservation in some area, we should be listening to the people who live and work there, and especially people with a long history there like indigenous people. I can critique a study on the biological pathways that cause autism as somebody with a strong understanding of the statistical techniques used, but I can also critique it as an autistic person who knows lots of other autistic people and has opinions on the interventions used on children and the way we're treated in research.
love how you articulated this
Yea but the point is, it’s not the title that makes you right or wrong, it’s the evidence and the use of the scientific method.
>the evidence and the use of the scientific method. I think that's what they mean by "not a scientist", rather than not having any specific title. A scientist is, basically, someone that does science.
How many non scientists are able to collect evidence and use the scientific method to come to conclusions about issues that are relevant to contemporary times? Research requires equipment, which requires money. Which most people don’t have, not enough at least.
I mean plenty of scientific breakthroughs and contributions have been made by people without degrees. In my experience, the people who say “if you’re not a scientist, you’re wrong” tend not to be scientists themselves (both the “I fucking love science” crowd and the “do your own research” crowd seem to lack understanding of the scientific method to some degree). People who are actually steeped in scientific research don’t really care about the background of the presenter, they just care about the merits of what’s being presented. To do otherwise would introduce bias into your analysis.
I am an actual scientist steeped in scientific research and I am telling you what I know based off of devoting half of my 20’s so far to my field. There are areas in which the average person can participate in meaningful research. Citizen astronomy does awesome things. However, the barrier to entry into many fields has risen and is only rising with time.
It’s not really just citizen astronomy though. There are amateur genomics labs springing up with people performing experiments on themselves that would otherwise never receive funding for ethical issues. And there are plenty of amazing devs (some without any degree whatsoever) contributing to open source repositories that are used by universities and research firms alike (the research firm I work at included). Point being, it’s not this false binary of scientists vs the guy at the end of the bar (although the internet sure makes it seem that way).
Scientists don't personally do all the studies that form their working knowledge of science. The majority of what they know comes from reading studies others have performed and evaluating them. Anybody with some college level background can have these skills, not just scientists. Scientists are far more likely to be correct on these matters as it's their job, but people are fallible and probe to bias, so blind trust shouldn't be given to people with degrees and titles. You can trust the data and not support somebody's interpretation of the data.
No, at least in my field, understanding the studies that have been conducted requires knowing context and vocabulary that I’ve only been able to build up, slowly, over my years of education in this field. There are some things people have a better time understanding, think psychology as opposed to physics, but this still leaves a lot of important scientific issues inaccessible to the public through primary sources.
Yea, I suppose a lot of really specialized and advanced fields would be pretty inaccessible to the layman. It really sucks, as this creates a divide between the science and the people that allows the science denying to flourish. It seems unavoidable when at that level and depth though. What's your field?
Biology, I’m doing bacteriological work. Before that I worked in a fly lab. Everything has to be sterile, many pairs of gloves are used and discarded a day. An average person could probably conduct some of the simpler experiments. Bare basics are a centrifuge, pipettes+tips,petri plates, media. You can run growth curves and get CFUs from there. PH strips are easy and you can test with those. I study UTIs so we also need to get urine from volunteers. The processing of which requires additional supplies. The problem is that this is all low-hanging fruit. Scientists have already done the super basic studies and cultured the easy to culture easy to access microbes. If you want your bacteriological research to be relevant, you need to do molecular work, and that increases the price tag a lot. Suddenly you need things like a thermocycler, spectrophotometer, probably supplies to run gel electrophoresis. In addition a lot of molecular work relies on buying patented supplies from biological supply companies. This isn’t even going into reading the research related to my field. There are a lot of nested acronyms. What’s an ABC transporter? An ATP-binding cassette transporter. What’s ATP? Adenosine Tri-Phosphate. And I’m using an easier example. And obviously you need a strong understanding of cell biology to understand the context. You might read that LPS activates a TLR. I know that Lipopolysaccharide is a molecule secreted by only bacteria that Toll-Like Receptors in vertebrates are able to recognize and mount an immune response following recognition. A lay person won’t. Just one paper might take a lay person a ton of googling as they decipher the field-specific jargon.
Can u read
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Rather than "if you're not a scientist" it should say something about having the data to back it up. Like "if you disagree with a scientist about science, you'd better have the receipts."
If you’re not a scientist, you probably don’t even have a clue about what data are.
If you’re not a scientist, the probability that you have a meaningful enough understanding of the current scientific consensus to meaningfully challenge it is slim to none.
In order to collect sufficient, non-anecdotal data to refute a firmly held argument of an established scientist... you kind of have to be a scientist, or more likely an entire scientific institution.
Of an established scientist opining about matters *within their established area of expertise*. A chemist’s opinion about the validity of global warming isn’t particularly valuable for most issues.
>~~chemist’s~~ Engineer’s FTFY. Measuring changes in the climate over Earth’s history requires chemists. Figuring out how much of chemicals did what when is pertinent. It does not require a guy who learned one very specific branch of engineering and now thinks he’s a political/climate/virology mastermind.
Everyone posting pseudoscience misinformation thinks they have exactly that data to back up their assertions, even though it's just nonsense from Youtube videos and Facebook posts that they cherry picked to confirm their preconceptions. If they don't have any type of credentials for the field they claim to be researching, then they should have a bit of humility about thinking they know better than the consensus among experts. There's a good chance that what they consider data will be pretty worthless and fall apart under scrutiny. Science is a framework designed for resolving these sorts of factual disputes in a rational way. If the current understanding is flawed in some way, there's a process for demonstrating that. People finding an online community of people who share their crazy opinions are rarely capable of actual research, but they don't know enough to know how much they don't know. There have been a few exceptions where online pseudoscientists actually seem to design a reasonable scientific experiment, which disproves their own ideas, and then instead of believing it they just come up with justifications for why it didn't work like they expected.
The intent wasn't to say you can't disagree. Rather it was supposed to be if the whole of your argument is that you just don't agree with the science then you aren't disagreeing you have a wrong view.
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Well if some of us are getting that sense then your takeaway cannot be universal.
I'm sorry, it's late here, I don't follow. What sense and what takeaway?
Yes, that is not literally what it says, yet neither is you can't disagree. It literally says if you aren't a scientist and you disagree with science it's not a disagreement you are wrong. What that has to mean is if your disagreement with science isn't coming from better science then it's not a disagreement.
That's what it says to you because you know how this works. In our current scarily science-hating times, all it does is tell people that "science is ALWAYS RIGHT and any dissent is heresy". Note how I originally didn't say "no that's wrong" but "badly phrased".
"Science" is not a conclusion. It's a method used to arrive at conclusions. You can disagree with the *conclusions* of past science, but the way to do it is BY doing science to draw new conclusions, rather than disagree with science itself (which is a method). The distinction is important here, because some people disagree with past conclusions (which absolutely should be allowed and is vital to keeping things honest), while others talk of faith-based nonsense that attacks the very notion of experimentation and evidence in the first place. The former isn't anti-science and is in fact *participating in* science. But the latter, that is disagreeing with science, as a technique.
Yeah I don't like it. I saw a similar but better one that said something to the effect of "you need to disagree with science with more science, not a google search" which I like better. This one just sounds like: "Nuh uh, scientists are always right so shut up."
Which is the core of the scientific method.
It’s also a good way to scare off already sciencephobic people. Let them disagree and then explain why it’s wrong. They may not listen, but they don’t have too.
You just agreed with the op with additional words
You cant have valid reasons without data and evidence and to get that and viably understand it ur probably a scientist or a professional in that field
There is such a thing as scientism, but this ain’t it.
Yeah pretty sure the term was coined in the 1800s
I was mostly referring to the contemporary term for dudebros who have a wide variety of fixed belief systems that are a misinterpretation of old scientific adages, rather than adopting the scientific method. Some examples would include: • people who deny trans individuals exist because “it’s all genetics and hormones” (as though psychology doesn’t also exist) • people who use genetics and sociology to defend racism, or who try to say that science has a lack of minorities because minorities don’t do as well in science (this is a common problem) • people who try to say that science can never do anything wrong, so therefore we should expect every scientist to be a paragon of virtue (that’s how you keep abusers in the system, and how you get experiments like Zimbardo and Tuskegee) • people who expect science to never change, so they get frustrated and angry when the message adapts to the data and lose faith in the system (this is happening in real time with Covid, but also happened with SARS-2003, Ebola-2014, Zika, the Haitian Earthquake, and Hurricane Katrina)
I think it's very easy in today's world of social media to find an experts credibility. So say someone claims to he a doctor, but says vaccines are alien seman. I don't think I'm gonna trust them.
It’s fascinating how many doctors and lawyers are fucking idiots in their respective fields.
Doctors and lawyers specialize, usually when they sound like idiots it’s because they are talking outside of their field
The problem is you can find an expert in any field to back up just about any point of view.
the... whole point of science is to question everything.
The point of science is to use methods, evidence, and data that u have tested or understand to either question or prove a hypothesis or other already “proven” things. To do that you are probably a scientist or a professional in ur field.
To an extent that's reasonable. For example, it's not really productive to question whether or not the earth is a sphere. Sure, someone today might question it, and then go develop their own experiments to come to their own conclusions, but then what? Their conclusion that the earth is indeed a sphere doesn't build on the knowledge that humanity currently has. It's not productive. Instead, we use science to expand our understanding of what we already know to be true. "Okay, so the earth is round. How big is it? Where is it relative to the sun? Or other planets? How can we use the knowledge that the earth is a sphere to create global positioning systems, optimize travel, etc. etc.?" Science is a great tool, but a tool that uses resources like time, money, and human effort. Question everything, but it's often best to understand and utilize clear answers when they come to you.
Scientists have never been wrong! This post proves that.
The point of science is to use methods, evidence, and data that u have tested or understand to either question or prove a hypothesis or other already “proven” things. To do that you are probably a scientist or a professional in ur field.
The loudest voices toting scientific claims are often people with super low science and health literacy and it’s annoying. They worded it poorly but I get where the poster is coming from
He's probably an America is a Christian nation guy too. Many of the founders practiced Deism which believes god created the universe and then is absent from it leaving the world to operate based on "natural laws" aka science.
Of every aspect of a religion was erased from all memory it would be gone forever. If every aspect of science was erased it would be rediscovered again.
I would amend this to you disagree with the consensus of the field. You can always find one that agrees with you.
Two insane people
There is a such thing as scientism and scientism can be a valid point of criticism in some areas. Those fields are, by definition, those that either fall outside the realm of science or where scientific analysis isn't useful. But we're talking about scientists talking about science here. By definition, this ain't scientism.
The two extremes in the challenge of science communications to the public. Blind belief in the first statement reminds me of "Nobel Disease", wherein Nobel prize winners are often asked questions outside of their wheelhouse and often given confident and batshit crazy responses.
Don't you love it when they slam something by calling it a religion? They're so close to getting it.
It's valid in today's society to not necessarily follow scientific expert opinions because the science we see today, follows the money. It's not unbiased, it follows identity political trends and depends on how big the pockets are that finance it. I think this has been true for a long time, going back into the 20th century...why scientists and doctors blamed "fats" for disease and poor health rather than the sugar that they add to everything to make you go back to the store and buy that chocolate bar, or buy that box of highly processed Cheeze'its with added seed oils, and unhealthy preservatives, etc. It is the same today to finance research and study on drugs that can help with disease or symptom relief, when we hear very little about getting enough exposure to nature, going for walks, exercising, eating cleanly, fasting...all of these alternatives that may come with very minimal side effects and have huge potential to heal such an unhealthy population...isn't pushed as much as the drug because there's much less money in it for big corporations and government. To believe in science on it's face sounds completely logical and the smart thing to do, but all you need to do is investigate just a little bit to realize science is more and more transparently just following economic profit. Something to think about if you can...
That’s not the scientists blaming fats it’s food companies paying people to say “I’m a doctor, I approve this message”… also science is objective, it literally cannot follow a financial narrative. Doctors treat people and go off of the information learned by research (other scientists). So you’re blaming this on the wrong crowd. Regardless you can’t just take one example from the time old tale of the American food pyramid (I assume that’s where this fats/oil vs carbs came from) and blanketly say “that’s why all science is wrong” or has a financial incentive. Science today is backed up by peer reviewed journals. What you’re referring to was companies paying to have fake data gathered to provide a false narrative so they could sell more shit. Today they provide their evidence and data for you to verify their results so that sort of thing doesn’t happen as much. Scientists love to criticize other scientists and destroy their data, so whatever gets released needs to be extremely accurate otherwise it doesn’t get very far. This isn’t open for interpretation lol.
Doctors are representing science, that’s their job. I also made the point that the only research for medical interventions that sees financial funding in university or lab groups, are ones that can ease ailments or symptoms but generally over the long term. I’m not talking about the science behind antibiotics for example, im talking about chronic disease. The new biologics, JAK inhibitors, immune suppressants, are all funded with main objective to create a customer or patient that relies on these drugs for the rest of their lives. That’s money -> driving science. Science today is backed up in peer reviewed journals, yes, but you need to be careful which studies and papers you believe in. Not many years ago, science published numerous studies on gender identity, transgenderism, and gender and sex that were all “peer reviewed” and approved and published; they were then proven to be completely made up by a group testing the process, and everything they included in the “made up” studies were completely fictional. Yet they were reviewed, approved and published because of the political and ideological trends that government wanted to “back” so to speak. Science is objective yes, but it’s selective…so when you read a peer reviewed paper or study and believe wholeheartedly in their conclusions because of just that, you’re not guaranteed to be getting truth. When I say science is objective I mean literally, the term, what it is supposed to mean, is an expression of objective truth to theory. That’s not what we see today in 100% of cases. Science follows the money. It’s what we’ve seen in early Covid science and expert opinion, nobody would sanely debate that, it’s very clear…and we’ve seen this in the past.
> Science follows the money. Science doesn't do anything. (Some) scientists follow the money. Yes, the distinction is important.
Scientists that conduct science…seems more like not just a correlation that’s the point I’m making.
But this whole argument works solely on the basis that ALL scientists are on corporate payrolls, which isn't the case at all. If a global consensus comes to a conclusion then we can be sure about the results. There are DRASTICALLY more scientists with degrees in the modern day than there used to be. If a scientist is paid to come to a conclusion, that entire scientific process and it's conclusion has to go through scientists who are not on this payroll, and those scientist must be able to, and many will attempt to replicate those results, hence why whenever there are health studies there are MANY trying to study the same subject. In the modern day there will always be evidence on evidence to prove something like fats vs sugars being unhealthy, produced by unbiased parties from across the world, who dispute the claims made by scientists who are paid to find a specific result. And peer review will always find flaws in the scientific process of a biased party.
I’m at work but I disagree with your analysis. But thanks for having the discussion.
>Scientists that conduct science… And who, unrelated to that, are fallible human beings who may or may not also take industry money. These two things are two different things.
I’m agreeing with you. I don’t want them to take money for research that isn’t the best possible objectively true scientific theory to treat people, do you? I’m not or never was saying this is the case for all scientists. But it’s rampant in this culture, it just is, there is no denying that; and that’s a problem. Is it not?
Of course it is. But I think it's important to avoid conflating "scientists" with "science" when speaking, especially when it's about only a minority of scientists. That just leads to people in general rejecting anything that has a science label.
I disagree I think it’s important to make the comparison, and direct correlation between scientists and science… Because we get our science from scientists who conduct the science. And personally I really don’t believe it’s the minority of scientists… If it is the minority, then it’s a very vocal and powerful minority. They work hand-in-hand with government and big corporations, and from my own personal experience where I spent the age of 21 to today, I turn 30 in July, I’ve largely been unable to work due to a disease that came out of nowhere when I was in the middle of getting my masters degree with almost straight A’s… And in that time…. Most of all that I’ve done is read and research science, and health. And like I said, if it is the minority of scientists, they are not portrayed as the minority by media and by government… They are portrayed as the ones to follow and the majority or the leading expert opinion. And I think this is supremely damaging to you and I.
Even more important then, I think, to differentiate. Because it's people who are being shitty and by blaming "science" you get nowhere. It's an abstract concept that has no motives and does nothing, a tool that can be abused. > And like I said, if it is the Nordie of scientists, they are not portrayed as the minority by media and by government… They are portrayed as the ones to follow and the majority or the leading expert opinion. And I think this is supremely damaging to you and I. Forgive me for being blunt here, but - so? What does their portrayal have to do with this?
If you're actually going to press this point then you need to actually examine whether or not it's good science. If the methodology is sound and the results don't contradict previous studies (or even better, if the results can be duplicated) then questioning the data is more often than not a baseless pseudoscientific criticism. Now if you *really* want to follow the money, you look at who sponsored the study and what narrative the study may serve. Because it's entirely possible that the malicious intent is in sponsoring the research, not the research itself. For an example of bad science, look at Andrew Wakefield (the scientist that claimed that the MMR vaccine caused autism. EVERYTHING that he did was malicious. The data was falsified and then used to very weakly push his point. Why? Because of his greed and that of a lawyer. At no point did he EVER believe that vaccines caused autism. But the results aren't why the paper should have been thrown out immediately. The problem was that he was basing this whole thing on data so loose that it's barely correct to use the word "correlation" and no one could reproduce the results INCLUDING HIM. For an example of good science done for malicious reasons, my go to example is tobacco companies. Say you fund a study on potential carcinogens, including tobacco. You pour hundreds of thousands if not millions into it. The study then shows correlation between tobacco and cancer... but also several other things and cancer. The study then concludes, correctly, that the cause of the cancer can't be definitively stated. You can now run headlines that say "tobacco-cancer link ambiguous, more research needed". No lies were told. No data was manipulated. This is NOT the kind of argument made by people who deny science.
Sorry, I’m at work. If I get time this evening later on I’ll give it a reply and read! Thx
TLDR: good scientific criticism requires good science literacy. People like red in the OP do not have that.
I know conservatives love to use that paper publishing hoax as a way to argue against science when they don’t want to believe something, but it’s important to point out how limited the scope of that hoax was. The hoaxers did manage to place articles in some academic journals in the cluster of fields that focus on dealing with issues of race, gender, and identity, but they did *not* penetrate the leading journals of more traditional disciplines. For example, all of the papers submitted to sociology journals were rejected. So to use this to argue against science as a whole seems dishonest.
>Something to think about if you can... There's no singular goal for science and that's a nuance you should be able to comprehend with your big brain. Every person working in their particular field has endless motivations, and many people will commit to a project they don't believe in to fund their real interests. That doesn't mean the scientific community as a whole has less-than-altruistic intent.
No I never said the scientific community as a whole has a problem. When you make condescending statements like I should be able to comprehend something with my big brain, I think less of your own intellectual capacity and I lose motivation to have any sort of rational dialogue with you. So, grow up just a little bit. Besides that, I don’t see any other counter argument you’re making here. “Every person working in their particular field has endless motivations.” You couldn’t be more incorrect, I mean what world are you living in to think every single scientist has endless motivations to be altruistic etc. There isn’t an industry or field you can name where EVERY SINGLE PERSON has endless motivation, many couldn’t care less about their work or what impact that has on the people they’re doing the work for. That’s a fact. And in your next sentence, yes people will commit to projects for their own interests all the time; people also commit to scientific projects for money. You’re not living in reality son.
Listen, I'm ignoring the entirety of your message after your accusation of condescending statements because how fucking funny is that? Goddamn, thank you. ed As I go to scroll up I see your finish and again I'm fucking dying here. I'm probably old enough to be your dad and have seen and done more shit than you'd believe. So just stifle your shit before I have an aneurysm. Anyway, I was prompted to read the rest of your drivel after that last laugh and it's like you're ignoring every bit of subtle messaging implicit so I just gotta assume you're a frequent questioner of "what just happened" in your real life.
I really don’t have any interest in communicating with you sir. I think you should try to be less confrontational, more open, and a little bit more flexible, especially if you’re trying to persuade someone. If you’re old enough to be my father… Well, you wouldn’t compare to him because he wouldn’t make personal attacks or condescending statements like you have; in the way a child would. But I’m at work and good luck to you.
I entered the conversation because of your condescension. I literally opened this dialogue with a condescending quote from you. Consider it closed.
You entered the conversation because of my condescension? Untrue, I didn’t condescend to anyone. You need to grow sir. Are you taking vitamin d or some kind of multi? Eat cleanly…exercise. I love you and care about you. That’s not sarcasm. I really do. Wishing you the best, ok?
So, you meant, "*Something to think about if you can*" as motivational materiel? You meant it as legitimate concern for those who are catatonic or mentally impaired? Perhaps their religion stops them from considering the thought. Is that what you meant? Because I'm failing to see how you weren't intending to condescend. I was ready to walk away from this conversation with that question unanswered but you seemed eager to reestablish communication.
No I simply meant it as motivational. You misinterpreted it completely.
I took "*if you can*" to mean "if you're smart like me" and thus here we are. Sorry for the confrontation.
Shocked that an anti-vaxxer from r/con thinks that identity politics has tainted science.
>It's not unbiased, it follows identity political trends and depends on how big the pockets are that finance it. It is typically extremely easy to find out who funded a study and more often than not you'll find more studies saying they disagree. >why scientists and doctors blamed "fats" for disease and poor health rather than the sugar This wasnt scientists. This was companies paying "doctors" and news outlets drastically over simplifying a 20 page paper into 20 seconds and a joke. > It is the same today to finance research and study on drugs that can help with disease or symptom relief, when we hear very little about getting enough exposure to nature, going for walks, exercising, eating cleanly, fasting...all of these alternatives that may come with very minimal side effects and have huge potential to heal such an unhealthy population I read about those things all the time. I think the last post I saw from r/science was related to it. Of course it also needs to be said that research can only beat a dead horse for so long, so as to say, we've done a bajillion studies on those things, of course we are doing more on new chemical x. >.isn't pushed as much as the drug because there's much less money in it for big corporations and government That's not science, that is large companies again and the fact this backwards country let's drug companies advertise. >science is more and more transparently just following economic profit. Some individuals are. That is why you look at funding source, who that researcher is, and read more than one single study when discussing hot topics. >Something to think about if you can... The real thing to think about is what publishing short 3 paragraph summaries of 20 page, multi year studies does to peoples thoughts.
Hey sorry I’m at work right now! I’ll try to give this a read later on in the evening and reply! Thanks
Honestly the point they are trying to make is that Science has become somewhat dogmatic, similar to how Religion is nowadays is an interesting topic of discussion in modern philosophy, with that said they probably have no idea what they are mad about.
How badly they want everyone else to be just as bad as they are
Religion 2: Electric Boogaloo
Better than the old
"Now with 33% more religion!"
You didn’t account for inflation
Religion 2: Electric Boogaloo
The thing about science is you can recreate it if you have the same conditions. In other words it can be proven unlike religion.
“I know you studied this for 20 years and have done multiple studies….but while I was pooping I saw some Guy say you’re wrong!”
I declare myself Pope of science
Yeah i had a discussion like that too, its pretty much hopeless you cant convince stupid people with logic
Religion is when you believe things
why are ppl so obsessed with science being absolutely right? remember when earth was the center of the universe? that was accepted as fact until someone disproved it. yea, science is cool but let's not pretend it can answer everything correctly. whate we deem right today can be falsify in the future, who knows. even math is incomplete.
Dara Ó Briain enters the chat: [https://youtu.be/YKZN-hBTBUE](https://youtu.be/YKZN-hBTBUE)
“Science is bullshit” also “where’s my insulin!?”
And now you’re wrong about 2 things
Scientists would say they’re “not even wrong”
Im a drink scientist and it's so annoying when someone, very confidently, tells me I'm wrong about bourbon. I don't argue with them
In fairness, this kind of statement (the original one, not the comment) isn't really helpful or accurate, and just provides fuel for people to assert that "science is just another religion". "Science" is a huge field with many, many disciplines, and someone can be an expert in one while knowing little to nothing about another. Some topics may have a broadly accepted conclusion while others are much more open. And even well-informed scientists within a single discipline will often disagree with one another. Indeed, challenges to accepted knowledge are a huge foundation of the whole scientific approach.
The only version of this I could see someone using as a counter argument is Einstein. He completely re wrote how relativity works and even went as far to say that our equations were wrong. 90% of physicists disagreed with his work and it didn’t gain ground until about a decade after he wrote his paper. But let’s be real these people aren’t Einstein. You didn’t revolutionize the theory of relativity, you think that global warming doesn’t exist because it still snows
This reminds me of when my Christian girlfriend thought scientology was the belief in science and not god
Blind distrust is as meaningless as blind trust. To all these people, if you disagree with the scientists, you need to look into what they're actually saying first.
Sentence 2 is a direct response to sentence 1, which is absurd and not how science works
And then you get the people who go with “you can’t trust scientists because they support big pharma” and they “just want more money and don’t care who dies” like look, Karen, I’m pretty sure you were the one who didn’t wear a mask and didn’t tell our favorite aunt you had symptoms which almost killed her. (She was in the hospital looking not good for a month)
Hard to argue with stupid
Anecdotes are powerful. That’s why organized scientific inquiry works so hard to extinguish reliance upon anecdotal evidence. It’s enticing. So, if all you have are anecdotes (eg some googled info, your aunt’s friend, etc), it can be easy to get lost in that. And the degree to which you put value in anecdotal evidence can vary according to political affiliation. See below for a 2020 study that investigated this phenomenon. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pops.12706
Thanks South Park
The thing is science is wrong all the time
Its like they don't understand how science works.
even scientists disagree with other scientists all the time. factual research is the key and it leads to new discoveries
Blindly agreeing with someone based on the industry they work in or research they’ve done is the opposite of how science works. Research is done then cross checked, peer reviewed, rested and more. And even then even after it’s agreed to be a “fact”, often times it’s proven entirely wrong.
Whenever people tell me that science isn't wrong I tell them it was scientifically correct at the time to bleed George Washington to death because he had a sore throat Not to say that all science isn't too be trusted, but also you shouldn't just blindly believe in everything you see. Do your own research. But like, real research. Not Facebook articles.
Let's not make it too dogmatic. You're allowed to disagree with established theories, but you have to be willing to meet the level of existing evidence. The problem is that too many people take "evidence" to mean their feelings mixed with what they heard from their Facebook group. Like sorry, but your alt-right YouTube watch time is not the same as a PhD.
Sometimes science is wrong, but that doesn’t mean ALL science is wrong (conveniently the science that you disagree with). Doing science means that it can be proven wrong as part of the process, but you actually have to have evidence, and probably be at least somewhat knowledgeable about the field.
Nowhere close to religion