14 Comments
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prescott's avatar

I particularly like the Steak-ummm misspelling of "misteaks"

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Harry's avatar

Excellent. I'm a baby-boomer. In early school we had a course called "Science." As I remembr it should have been called biology. Perhaps that's where science = truth started. I think NDT may not be as smart as you think. Someone should send him this fine explaination of what science really is.

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Ed's avatar

school science is history, feeding back words with little concern for truth. schools that fail to teach questioning are the norm. Always ask "why" or "how come".

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Cheryl Palen's avatar

As things like this keep happening I really never want to hear the terms "expert", "science" and "truth" ever mentioned in the same sentences again! From what I can remember about classes in science, it all starts with something called a "hypothesis" which in fact is an "educated guess" about something...amIright?

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Ed's avatar

epistemology is one of my favorite words: from the Greek: seek truth and have it accepted. what sceptics desire? philosophy of science.

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Wordsnail's avatar

"Space Jam: A New Sciency" “Eh, what’s up, doc?”

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Brandon G's avatar

It is funny how dogma and science are becoming one.

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Chris Boyle's avatar

Not “true” true ... “true” as in “I’ve got a Disney+ deal” true

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David Bell's avatar

Science is what old men of around 80 tell you. It's an evolving process because they frequently change what they are saying, perhaps even their minds, and may occasionally launch a process of enquiry towards those who are paying them. So it's epistemological in that believing everything they say, whatever it happens to be at that moment, is a totally rational thing to do. So... both sides of the above argument are correct. I think.

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Melisa Idelson's avatar

We used to be taught not only what “science” is, but about the scientific method, how to read and dissect a study and concepts such as validity and reliability in research. These days the phrase “believe the science” has taken on the flavor of religion—unquestionable and unknowable by the average person; to be taken on faith from “experts”.

Also...NDT is almost as much of a fraud as Fauci.

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DB's avatar

Serious question: how would you go about the question of whom to consider evidence from? You hear anecdotes about physics professors inundated with emails sharing someone's new design for a supposed perpetual motion device, and it seems reasonable to me that they don't spend much time pouring through reviewing those claims. But the motivating factor for dismissing that is some intertwined mix of deference to the consensus views of Newtonian mechanics and strong priors (though I think the latter is over stated --- you don't personally rerun or review research every fundamental experiment in a science education; you take the basics for granted out of the textbook, with perhaps some color in a brief experimental description). In the most charitable terms, it's in this sense that "science is true" -- the results are so strong and the consensus so wide that our priors become high enough to take the established theory as fact.

But in the (albeit much lower sigma) field of epidemiology here, is the same distinction of established theory relevant? Of course, this has to set aside the particulars of the COVID case where, as you've shown, the orthodoxy is to summarily discard the previous consensus findings and systematically ignore contrary data. But backing away from that, is there still a sense in which established scientific results are essentially truths that carves out a legitimate dismissal of perpetual motion quackery without deep analysis of the raw data, while still considering work on the scientific edge as a truth finding methodology?

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el gato malo's avatar

odd as it sounds, i have found that if one uses twitter well and carefully, it's astonishingly good in this regard. it's easy to find and issue, see what the various camps are saying, and watch them tear into one another's data.

it's FAR better than peer review. look how many peer reviewed studies from surgisphere to CDC masking to remdesivir to HCO to covid spread got absolutely gutted in 2 days on twitter and had to be retracted just this year.

peer review has become a cozy, clubby back slapping session. one should not be reviewed by one's pals but by those who seek to disprove them and the power of the expert takes social media can bring to bear is astonishing.

no one can read or replicate every study, experiment and data. so you need to trust someone sometime (and hold your priors loosely until you gain real data) but one can learn A LOT from the debate, including who to trust.

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cmpalmer75's avatar

I understand your point, but there's a difference between scientific assumption based on a body of knowledge that has withstood investigation and interrogation and "truth".

Science is the study of the natural world. It's always changing and being refined. Sometimes it's completely debunked. "Trust the science" or "the science is settled" or "science is truth" are arguments meant to shut down dissent and silence questions. As such, saying that science is truth is unscientific. It's dogmatic and quasi-religious.

All one has to do is to look at the history of scientific "truths" that turned out not to be true. The world isn't flat. Bad air doesn't cause disease. Bleeding sick people isn't curative. First, we heard about the Big Bang. But, that necessitated a beginning to the universe somewhat reminiscent of the Creation Story, thus the multiverse. At one point, we were told that the universe was going to snapback and collapse in on itself. Now, we're told that the universe is expanding at an accelerated pace. Whether in science or in medicine, the list of debunked "truths" is long...and people have died for challenging those "truths".

No self-respecting scientist would ever claim that science is truth or settled. NDT is a pompous blowhard who is more concerned with being hip and cool than actually informing. He and Bill Nye (the non-science, non-practicing mechanical engineer) guy should be put on the trash heap of charlatans and frauds.

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SimulationCommander's avatar

My rule has worked out pretty well: Find the primary sources and assess the data yourself.

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