<story><title>Why “Trusting the Science” Is Complicated</title><url>https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/why-trusting-the-science-is-complicated/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>marginalia_nu</author><text>Skepticism is the driving engine behind science. It works well so long as people keep asking questions until they get satisfactory answers. Science is anti-fragile. The harder you attack it, the sturdier it becomes. So this is fine.&lt;p&gt;The only time it really stops working is if people start treating it as doctrine, and demanding that you accept it on faith, and take any questions as evidence that you are an enemy of science. If anything destroys science, it is this line of reasoning.&lt;p&gt;Skepticism does not require a degree or a license from the government. The only intellectually honest thing is to admit to yourself that you do not know until you are convinced otherwise. Whether other people say they are convinced is honestly quite irrelevant.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cronix</author><text>&amp;gt; The only time it really stops working is if people start treating it as doctrine, and demanding that you accept it on faith, and take any questions as evidence that you are an enemy of science. If anything destroys science, it is this line of reasoning.&lt;p&gt;I wonder where we&amp;#x27;d be today in science&amp;#x2F;physics if the Catholic Church (&lt;i&gt;the&lt;/i&gt; authority of the day) was successful in stopping Galileo Galilei, in 1615, from &amp;quot;spreading misinformation&amp;#x2F;disinformation&amp;quot; that the Earth circled the sun, and pushing back against the prevailing &amp;quot;science&amp;quot; of the day.&lt;p&gt;If he were alive in 2021 and pushing something that went against &amp;quot;current wisdom,&amp;quot; of that magnitude, he would be banned from media, ridiculed, and cancelled.&lt;p&gt;It was a lesson I had thought the West had learned. It appears not. Censor and treat science as a religion at your (our) own peril.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why “Trusting the Science” Is Complicated</title><url>https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/why-trusting-the-science-is-complicated/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>marginalia_nu</author><text>Skepticism is the driving engine behind science. It works well so long as people keep asking questions until they get satisfactory answers. Science is anti-fragile. The harder you attack it, the sturdier it becomes. So this is fine.&lt;p&gt;The only time it really stops working is if people start treating it as doctrine, and demanding that you accept it on faith, and take any questions as evidence that you are an enemy of science. If anything destroys science, it is this line of reasoning.&lt;p&gt;Skepticism does not require a degree or a license from the government. The only intellectually honest thing is to admit to yourself that you do not know until you are convinced otherwise. Whether other people say they are convinced is honestly quite irrelevant.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ethbr0</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Science is anti-fragile. The harder you attack it, the sturdier it becomes.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is true for the subset of &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;scientific professionals, devoting significant amounts of time to their field&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;. That&amp;#x27;s not all of the public. That&amp;#x27;s not even all of most scientific disciplines.&lt;p&gt;The scientific &lt;i&gt;method&lt;/i&gt; is perfect.&lt;p&gt;The scientific method &lt;i&gt;as practiced by fallible and irrational humans&lt;/i&gt; is subject to starts and stops, groupthink and cargo culting, and politics ad nauseam.&lt;p&gt;The even more common case of &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;laypeople, with limited technical background knowledge, devoting limited amounts of time to understanding issues, who want to appear informed and intelligent about issues&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt; is significantly more fraught with danger. And the source of most ineffective outcomes.</text></comment>