[HN Gopher] Why "Trusting the Science" Is Complicated
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Why "Trusting the Science" Is Complicated
Author : pseudolus
Score : 39 points
Date : 2021-02-13 10:25 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (lareviewofbooks.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (lareviewofbooks.org)
| cloogshicer wrote:
| Interesting related fact:
|
| Meteorites (as in: Rocks falling from the Sky) were not
| acknowledged as real until 1803. Only then did a large meteorite
| shower in France give enough evidence for the general public to
| acknowledge their existence.
|
| Of course meteorites had fallen before and were even in people's
| homes (who just picked them up). But they were dismissed as
| conspiracy theories/hoax.
|
| However, please don't misunderstand this comment as me saying you
| should believe in flat-earth theories and similar nonsense.
| ufmace wrote:
| It feels to me like "science" has become something of a religion
| unto itself. We started out with the well and good ability of
| science and engineering to understand some things and produce
| revolutionary useful goods. Now it seems like other fields where
| such principles aren't really applicable have attempted to borrow
| the trappings of science in order to co-opt the trust that people
| have given it. The only time a phrase like "trust the science"
| starts to seem necessary is when this scheme has been found out,
| and somebody is trying to preserve it.
|
| Many of the big society-level issues that we grapple with are
| more properly questions of economics than science. It's more
| about how we choose to value various courses of action and
| potential consequences against each other, and there's rarely a
| clear, obvious, or simple answer. "Science" can only give us an
| estimate of what the results of a particular course of action
| might be, it cannot compare once against another and tell us with
| certainty which one is better.
|
| "Trust the science" is usually a rhetorical weapon used by a side
| that is attempting to show one particular potential outcome as
| the worst thing imaginable that must be avoided at all costs, but
| in reality there are rarely things that bad. I'd like to have a
| world where we can look at the actual science and economic costs
| of all choices and rationally debate exactly which road to take,
| but it sure feels like we're only moving further away from that
| world.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| If someone is saying "the science is settled", I immediately
| dismiss them. That's how how science works, and when you use that
| phrase you are making a religious statement not a scientific one.
| ncallaway wrote:
| I think you're making a bit much over a phrase.
|
| True, no matter how long something has settled in science, it
| can be overturned by more evidence (hence Newtonian gravity,
| once quite well settled eventually be doubted then disrupted by
| GR). But, even given that, it's still true that science on a
| topic may be presently settled.
|
| So, it seems to me, more import than dismissing every use of
| the phrase is to judge the context of how it's being used. If
| it's being used to dismiss the presentation of evidence or
| anomalies ("hey, it seems odd the Mecury's orbit doesn't quite
| fit the prediction") then the phrase is absolutely being
| abused.
|
| But if instead it's being used to dismiss a claim that lacks
| any evidence ("the apple falls because the earth is flat and
| accelerating upward due to the giant turtles it rests on"),
| then the phrase is better applied.
| pushrax wrote:
| There's also a difference between statements directly
| describing an observation vs theoretical statements.
|
| For example, "various lithium compounds can be used to store
| electrical potential" or "when you heat a tank of steam the
| pressure on the walls goes up" or "the apple falls when I
| drop it" describe observations. On the other hand "the
| highest energy density rechargeable batteries must be made
| from lithium" or "PV=nRT" or "F=Gm_1m_2/r^2" are theoretical
| and can/have been overturned.
|
| There's always more to uncover, and deeper levels of
| abstraction to inspect, but within a level of abstraction
| there are some observations that we collectively believe are
| repeatable and settled.
| [deleted]
| Nursie wrote:
| Is that never context dependent? What about in a rebuttal to
| flat-earth "Theory"?
| iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote:
| If you get drawn into a debate about whether the earth is
| flat, you're the sucker and are being made fun of by the
| person "debating" you. And retorting that "the science is
| settled" would be a ridiculous response.
|
| In serious debate, "the science is settled" is the
| intellectual equivalent of "because I said so". But I don't
| believe it comes up often in serious debate, it's more likely
| to happen when two parties that don't really understand
| science are having an ideological debate that they pretend
| had to do with science as a rhetorical device to gain
| legitimacy.
| fatsdomino001 wrote:
| It's better to use different language, like saying how we're
| exceedingly confident that the earth is round, rather than it
| being an absolute. Sort of like our confidence asymptotically
| approaches absolute but never actually reaches it.
|
| This is similar to Hume's argument for our belief that the
| sun will rise tomorrow. Obviously, we all believe (even flat-
| earthers) that the sun will rise tomorrow and we have much
| science to indicate this will continue to be the case for a
| long time. Still, that doesn't mean we can be 100% confident
| this is the case. It's frankly just exceedingly difficult to
| be 100% absolutely sure about anything, unless it's first
| order mathematics.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| In that conversation, nobody flat out says "the science is
| settled" because it is easy to explain the science behind the
| earth being round. No, "the science is settled" is only ever
| used as a way to end a discussion without explaining the
| details of one's position. Not that they're necessarily
| wrong, but just that they don't know the answers. It is
| always an attempt to end a conversation on an authoritative
| basis.
| notafraudster wrote:
| I think sometimes it's out of recognition that the amount
| of effort required to convince someone -- who probably
| isn't even arguing in good faith -- of something sometimes
| exceeds the amount of effort required to dismiss them.
| Which is really sort of the main issue with ongoing
| discussions about settled topics (creationism, flat earth,
| young earth, anti-vax, etc.)... it's just miserable from a
| signal-to-noise POV
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| No it's never context dependant. In regard to flat earth, the
| scientific response is simply that the evidence seems to
| contradict that theory. If some people think it's still a
| valid line of inquiry, then there perfectly entitle to pursue
| it. Science doesn't dictate what is and is not a waste of
| time. If some people wish to assert that flat earth theories
| are definitely true, then that's fine too. It's not
| scientific, because science doesn't have any mechanism for
| determining something to be definitely true. If some people
| want to claim that flat earth is likely true, that's also not
| a very defensible scientific conclusion either, because the
| scientific evidence weighs heavily against that conclusion.
| But saying that something is definitely not true is equally
| anti-science, because science doesn't have a mechanism for
| determining something to be definitely not true either.
|
| The problem that people have with this tends to be that when
| they notice somebody being "wrong" about something, they want
| to be able to conclusively prove that the other person is
| wrong, and that they are right. Especially if it's in regards
| to an issue they consider important. If you think that the
| scientific evidence supports your position in a situation
| like this, the temptation to claim that science unequivocally
| proves you are correct is very obvious. It is however, an
| outright abuse of the scientific method.
|
| This sort of situation has become very common place. When
| science communicators are faced with anti-scientific
| assertions of absolute truth, they're not inclined to
| acknowledge scientific uncertainty, and the limits of their
| own understanding. Sadly this has created a culture of anti-
| scientific science worship.
| konjin wrote:
| The Earth might not be flat, but it isn't round either. That
| one is a lot more wrong than the other matters little if
| you're trying to land a spaceship.
| feralimal wrote:
| Absolutely. Trust, faith in scientists, in journals, opinions,
| consensus opinion, etc should be irrelevant. The
| studies/observations/experiments should stand for themselves.
| cortesoft wrote:
| This sounds good in theory, but how does it work in practice?
| 99% of people aren't going to be able to read a scientific
| paper and judge the scientific merits of the conclusion, at
| least for anything that is not a complete farce. If I read a
| paper about some aspect of the event horizon of a black hole,
| how am I going to judge the veracity without spending a
| career studying the field?
|
| Even if every person could understand every scientific paper,
| no one has the time to read them all.
|
| How should some practically interpret the truth of a
| scientific claim? I really find it unlikely that the answer
| doesn't at some point hinge on "I trust the judgment of this
| other person"
| marcodiego wrote:
| Science is something you should use, learn, study but not trust
| or believe. If you're looking for something to believe, maybe
| religion is possibility, science should continually be tested.
|
| Science is important because you know it can be wrong. It evolves
| when mistakes or errors are found, not when it is confirmed.
| pella wrote:
| different paradigms -> different results
|
| see: "Will COVID-19 be evidence-based medicine's nemesis?" (June
| 30, 2020)
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
|
| _" Once defined in rhetorical but ultimately meaningless terms
| as "the conscientious, judicious and explicit use of current best
| evidence in making decisions about the care of individual
| patients" [1], evidence-based medicine rests on certain
| philosophical assumptions: a singular truth, ascertainable
| through empirical enquiry; a linear logic of causality in which
| interventions have particular effect sizes; rigour defined
| primarily in methodological terms (especially, a hierarchy of
| preferred study designs and tools for detecting bias); and a
| deconstructive approach to problem-solving (the evidence base is
| built by answering focused questions, typically framed as 'PICO'
| --population-intervention-comparison-outcome) [2].
|
| The trouble with pandemics is that these assumptions rarely hold.
| A pandemic-sized problem can be framed and contested in multiple
| ways. Some research questions around COVID-19, most notably
| relating to drugs and vaccines, are amenable to randomised
| controlled trials (and where such trials were possible, they were
| established with impressive speed and efficiency [3, 4]). But
| many knowledge gaps are broader and cannot be reduced to PICO-
| style questions. Were care home deaths avoidable [5]? Why did the
| global supply chain for personal protective equipment break down
| [6]? What role does health system resilience play in controlling
| the pandemic [7]? And so on."_
|
| ...
|
| _" It is surely time to turn to a more fit-for-purpose
| scientific paradigm. Complex adaptive systems theory proposes
| that precise quantification of particular cause-effect
| relationships is both impossible (because such relationships are
| not constant and cannot be meaningfully isolated) and unnecessary
| (because what matters is what emerges in a particular real-world
| situation). This paradigm proposes that where multiple factors
| are interacting in dynamic and unpredictable ways, naturalistic
| methods and rapid-cycle evaluation are the preferred study
| design. The 20th-century logic of evidence-based medicine, in
| which scientists pursued the goals of certainty, predictability
| and linear causality, remains useful in some circumstances (for
| example, the drug and vaccine trials referred to above). But at a
| population and system level, we need to embrace 21st-century
| epistemology and methods to study how best to cope with
| uncertainty, unpredictability and non-linear causality"_
|
| _" In a complex system, the question driving scientific inquiry
| is not "what is the effect size and is it statistically
| significant once other variables have been controlled for?" but
| "does this intervention contribute, along with other factors, to
| a desirable outcome?". Multiple interventions might each
| contribute to an overall beneficial effect through heterogeneous
| effects on disparate causal pathways, even though none would have
| a statistically significant impact on any predefined variable
| [11]. To illuminate such influences, we need to apply research
| designs that foreground dynamic interactions and emergence. These
| include in-depth, mixed-method case studies (primary research)
| and narrative reviews (secondary research) that tease out
| interconnections and highlight generative causality across the
| system [16, 17]."_
|
| ....
|
| " _In the current fast-moving pandemic, where the cost of
| inaction is counted in the grim mortality figures announced
| daily, implementing new policy interventions in the absence of
| randomized trial evidence has become both a scientific and moral
| imperative. Whilst it is hard to predict anything in real time,
| history will one day tell us whether adherence to "evidence-based
| practice" helped or hindered the public health response to
| Covid-19--or whether an apparent slackening of standards to
| accommodate "practice-based evidence" was ultimately a more
| effective strategy. "_
| zarkov99 wrote:
| Trust science, but, unfortunately, not scientists, many of who
| have shown to be just as capable of letting their biases override
| their reason as the rest of the unwashed masses.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| I think about this all the time because of recent revelations
| about the micro biome. It was right under our noses but we
| assumed the clues were all in the human body's own cellular
| machinery.
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| Even if we trust the science, the results of those experiments
| don't necessarily correspond to a political policy in a
| straightforward or 1-to-1 fashion.
|
| I think a lot of the science today is not easily reproducible,
| which makes it hard to trust.
| [deleted]
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I feel like the author of this article is simplifying
| "falsifiability". Yes, it's not easy to identify, but getting
| unexpected results from an experiment, I don't think, has ever
| been the line.
|
| You have to _understand_ those results as well, before you can
| interpret them, and while "understanding" is surely fuzzy, it's
| completely missing in his commentary, as if Popper suggested at
| any point that the moment something unexpected happens, the whole
| house of cards comes tumbling down.
|
| "Wobbly philosophy would become part of legal doctrine."
|
| It's only wobbly if you leave out large parts of it, as the
| author has...
|
| The title of the article suggested nuance, but I don't see much
| of it in the article itself. It seems as if the author attempted
| to take down a basic tenant of science, and feeling satisfied
| that he had, moved on to draw further conclusions that result. I
| don't think he succeeded in that set up, however, which makes the
| second half of the book review (the part about the actual book)
| less interesting or compelling.
| imperio59 wrote:
| Prediction of phenomena in a repeatable fashion is the hallmark
| of all good science.
|
| Very few of what pass for sciences today in our world, save for
| the sciences of chemistry and large parts of physics, have
| achieved such precision of prediction in the laws they have been
| able to come up with to describe the universe.
|
| Parts of Medicine largely fit the bill but other parts aren't yet
| that far along.
|
| Psychology and psychiatry are at best a crap shoot and do not
| have solutions that work for all, in a repeatable fashion.
|
| Economics and social "sciences" are at best a set of theories
| with varying degrees of merit or applicability but are mostly a
| set of opinions and authorities who like to argue with each other
| about their own pet theory.
|
| It's amazing how far humanity has come thanks to the advance of
| true science but it's important to not forget we have a long ways
| to go still.
| esotericn wrote:
| The scientific method does not give us a sort of monolithic,
| hierarchical entity, into which everyone collaborates and then an
| answer pops out from the top of the pyramid.
|
| That's the role that politics serves. To take into account all of
| the data we're given, think about outcomes across all scientific
| fields, take into account the opinion of the population and
| execute on it.
|
| I think that for the most part, snappy soundbites like "follow
| the science" are a result of social media and reactionaries
| breaking our normal, carefully considered methods of discourse.
|
| Physics tells us that the Universe has enough space for an
| unfathomable number of humans.
|
| Biology tells us that the conditions aren't there.
|
| Psychology tells us that even if they were, people wouldn't be
| happy plugged into capsules.
|
| Behavioural science tells us that, regardless of the other three,
| we might just have to work out a solution anyway, because we're
| gonna breed.
|
| Politicians... well, from what I can tell usually they just sort
| of do whatever they want and manipulate the population into
| wanting it. :)
| dba7dba wrote:
| "Science is essentially what a few large donors or institutions
| or interest groups want to fund."
|
| Quote from a disillusioned researcher.
| Proziam wrote:
| I am not fond of the way people refer to science.
|
| It's common to see people say 'believe the science' _as if
| science is a person_ making one specific claim. The scientific
| method is a process practiced by humans. Humans are prone to
| error and dishonesty depending on the circumstances. They are
| also able, on occasion, to make brilliant discoveries.
|
| I find the framing of conversations about science to be dishonest
| and intended to make one party in the discussion look like a
| fool.
| redisman wrote:
| Trust the scientific method.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Exactly this. The method should be highlighted and discussed.
| Statements like "we believe in science in this household" are
| weak. I wish we talked more about hypotheses and measurements
| than numbers of scientists in things like e.g. climate change.
|
| Then again as Alvin Weinberg wrote in the 1970s, there are
| questions that can be posed scientifically but whose definitive
| answers are beyond the normal scientific method to answer. He
| called this "trans-science"
| cloogshicer wrote:
| If I may add:
|
| And understand its limits.
|
| I think most people don't, and that's why it gets more and more
| religious. I think that's actually why conspiracy theories are
| on the rise, because both 'sides' are becoming more dogmatic.
|
| If someone reading this is curious and wants to learn more, I
| recommend getting books on theory of science.
| jennyyang wrote:
| Sometimes, the "science" is wrong. Everything from low-fat diets,
| to high sodium diets, to DDT, to MSG. Many of the things that we
| have literally been indoctrinated with have been fully wrong.
|
| Most recently, when the government, most especially the Surgeon
| General and even Fauci, told people that masks don't work. That
| infuriated me and they instantly lost credibility with me. And it
| caused a split in Americans where too many believed that masks
| didn't work, even after they changed their tune. It was
| absolutely unnecessary to lie and it killed people.
|
| So read the science. Listen to the science. But read up further,
| and make educated decisions. Don't just listen to "experts"
| blindly.
| redisman wrote:
| Science is always wrong to begin with and it gets close to a
| correct answer with iteration. It's actually not at all a
| solved problem how to communicate "science" to the public. Your
| comment is a perfect example of one of these annoying fallacies
| I see around covid messaging. Don't you think they "changed
| their tune" because they got better data that showed that masks
| are helpful? You seem mad that they couldn't conjure clinical
| data in early 2020 that showed that masks cut the transmission
| by X%
| OrangeMonkey wrote:
| In general, I think you are right. In this case, the person
| involved admitted in an interview with "The Street" 6/12/2020
| that it was to keep the supply for healthcare workers.
|
| > "Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the
| public health community, and many people were saying this,
| were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective
| equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks,
| were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that
| the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave
| enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of
| people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and
| the danger of them getting infected."
| wl wrote:
| Evidence is nice, but sometimes it makes sense to reason from
| known principles. SARS-CoV-2 was known to spread through
| respiratory droplets almost from the beginning. Particulate
| respirators are known to protect people against respiratory
| droplets. Surgical masks are routinely used for source
| control of respiratory droplets in surgical settings. A mask
| recommendation made a lot of sense, even before there was
| data suggesting they were specifically helpful against SARS-
| CoV-2.
| ahepp wrote:
| To go one level deeper, I feel your comment exhibits a
| fallacy as well.
|
| Sure, science progresses over time. It's fallacious to say
| that science is wrong because we used to think the sun
| revolved around the earth. Evidence evolved, ideas changed.
|
| But dismissing all instances of scientists changing their
| mind, when they really just lied, as "oh, evidence evolved"
| is the kind of thing that (I feel) erodes trust in science.
|
| I think the evidence is strong that advice against masks was
| a lie meant to prevent panic, not honestly communicated "best
| we could do at the time" science. A lie with good intent for
| overall public health, but dishonest nonetheless.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > But read up further, and make educated decisions. Don't just
| listen to "experts" blindly.
|
| I don't see that being very practical. The average person
| simply isn't qualified to read scientific literature and draw
| their own conclusions. I doubt I'd be able to make much sense
| of a research paper on virology or epidemiology, despite that I
| consider myself scientifically literate in the general sense.
|
| The answer is to have credible communicators of science. The
| best way to do that is with credible institutions. If the
| assumption is that this is impossible, the game is already
| lost.
|
| > the Surgeon General and even Fauci, told people that masks
| don't work. That infuriated me and they instantly lost
| credibility with me. And it caused a split in Americans where
| too many believed that masks didn't work, even after they
| changed their tune. It was absolutely unnecessary to lie and it
| killed people.
|
| Broadly agree, although I think anti-mask sentiments are due to
| mindless partisanship rather than listening to Fauci's early
| lie.
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