It needs to be “if you disagree without evidence.”

They can leave that whole “if you’re not a scientist” bit in the rubbish bin.

No, that’s the point. Disagreeing is already part of the scientific method. To disagree with science as a whole is to argue with the method, not the findings.

Imagine two explorers searching for a lost ancient ruins. They come to a path running north/south. One says to go north and the other says south. That’s a disagreement. They are both still explorers seeking discovery.

A third observer sees them arguing and says “Ah, you don’t know the way. We should not be seeking ruins because I already know what is there. I was told in a dream that the ruins were made by Bigfoot, and he made them invisible and impossible to see. Searching is futile, but I can draw you a map from what I already know is there.”

That’s not a third opinion of equal validity. It’s not even a disagreement. It’s just being wrong.

I feel it should say something like “science isn’t ‘unchanging truth’, written in stone, but rather the unending search for truth”.

Which is why my father will die alone and without love. You do not demand authority, you earn it, and you better recognize when you’re being an asshole to your adult children. Also, don’t molest my niece and lie to the cops.

There is a difference between informed skepticism and motivated skepticism or skepticism from ignorance. Informed skepticism is good. That’s what solid science is based on. Being skeptical because the conclusions don’t align with what you believe or because you don’t actually understand what is going on is bad.

My favorite example is Gregor Mendel. He wasn’t a scientist. He was a monk with no degrees of any kind. But he did science—legendary science—which means he actually was a scientist.

It’s always important to remember that something can be obvious to a layman, but be considered ridiculous by an expert, as the expert’s view is likely rigid and unlikely to deviate from their experience.

This does not mean experts are morons (They’re considered experts for a damn good reason). it simply means an outsider perspective can be valuable from time to time.

I am kind of a scientist myself.

All those studies being funded by mars to make chocolate seem healthy. it was on last week tonight

There absolutely is more money to be made in natural remedies, these days. People are selling chakra activating light emitting bracelets online citing studies that find no physical evidence of chakras. We live in a mad world.

Nobody? There are quite a few counter examples. Cigarette and fossil fuel companies have done this quite a lot.

There is no need to actually bribe researchers. IT is much more effective to find some that happen to already be in your favor and boost their signal.

Say that out of 100 scientists of the relevant field, 90 think your product is toxic, two think your product is perfectly safe, and the remaining eight think that the evidence is not strong and/or significant enough to determine the product’s danger. Because as much as we’ve wished science to be clear-cut and deterministic, and as much as the scientific method tries to root it out, human’s opinions and prejudices will always have some effect. Maybe after many decades science will reach a (near) 100% consensus - but your product is still new, so disagreement can still be found.

You can try to bribe these 98 scientists to say that your product is safe, but that’s a risky move because even if a handful of them has some conscious they can go public with it and you’ll have to deal with bad PR. So instead, you reach out to the two scientists that already think that it is safe. You fund their research, so that they can publish more papers. You send them to conferences all around the world, so that they can talk to other scientists and to journalists and spread their opinion on your product. You get your marketing/PR/social media teams to increase the reach of their publications.

These two scientists are not being “pressured” - they can still honestly claim that their belief in your product is not a result of the money you spend on them, and that will be true. The thing that is a result of the money you spend on them is their impact. These 90 scientists that warn against your product can’t conduct as many researches, because they need to find funding for these researches themselves. They can’t go to as many conferences, because they don’t have anyone working their connections to get them invited (and to pay for their flight tickets). They don’t have professional promoters advertising their findings.

So even though only two scientists support you while 90 oppose you, these two scientists have - thanks to your money - more impact on the public opinion than these 90.

All without any scientist having to utter a single lie.

Haha I love this

Science does sometimes lie.

Hm, imo, science doesn’t lie — scientists lie. It need not even be a lie — it could simply be a misinterpretation of data. As long as proper science was done, and documented, reproduction of the experiment will get to the bottom of its accuracy.

Question the proven truth all the time,cas long as you’re not fighting against observations and evidence

I completely agree, heck there’s also times when all the science is done perfectly but the result is incorrect because the people interpreting the data got Cause and Effect backwards… Or worse, when the data checks out, but violates the current paradigm so much that the academia of the time rejects it out of principle alone and refuses to acknowledge you. (This literally happened when we discovered germs, and the first person to pitch the idea of the Big Bang was mocked over how “religious” the idea sounded, so yes, there’s precedent for this shit.)

But at what level of “proven” is it actually “proven”? That’s where a disconnect lays.

I think it’s more about the spirit and legitimacy of the disagreement. “I checked the numbers and stuff seems fishy” is very different than “Facebook told me essential oils cure cancer and doctors are lizards harvesting our brains”. Discussion with people who are also seeking the truth helps. Denial of a point you don’t like because Infowars says otherwise doesn’t.

That just makes it sound like grad students are excellent targets for corporate influence.

I completely agree. A lot of the time “I believe in science” is usually used in reference to comparing it to feelings or faith, and in those cases it makes sense to say you trust science over someone’s gut feeling or their “own research”. If you are someone who just blindly goes around proclaiming “I believe in science” then you need to go back to school and take a critical thinking course.

Depends on your audience.

If your audience is stupid, tell them to stfu and listen to the science. They’re too dumb to think about why they believe anything, they just need to be told what to believe. So as a bulwark against religious superstition, you tell them to stfu and listen to science.

If your audience is intelligent, then there’s no risk of them being suckered in by religious superstition, then you can have a discussion about the merits and processes of current scientific methods and theories, differing viewpoints, and degrees of confidence in the scientific community.

This applies to a lot of topics.

Talking to a stupid independent voter? “Vote for Biden or Trump will destroy democracy.” Talking to a smart independent voter? “Biden is definitely wrong on several issues, we should try to push him in a better direction.”

Talking to a stupid computer user? “Don’t try to change any of these files.” Talking to a smart computer user? “Here’s what happens when you change these files.”

To a stupid person, about the economy: “listen to the data!”

To a smart person, about the economy: “The metrics which the CPI uses are flawed.”

Etc etc. There’s always a complex, nuanced, correct answer, and a simple, straightforward, wrong answer. Because reality is complicated. So for stupid people you give them a simple, straightforward, mostly true answer to combat the simple, straightforward false one vying for their pair of brain cells.

Though the first is abused to death, yes, I vehemently disagree with the second. I do believe in science. Just because here and there there are cheaters doesn’t mean that science is valid. Cheaters eventually get caught and science continues. Because of science you have that phone in your hand on which you write your post and read my comment, because of science you are alive. Science is trying to find out what is and why.

I believe in science and there is nothing scary about that.

Also: https://xkcd.com/882/

It doesn’t have to be corruption.

And studies are scientific, but are not science itself. A study can be intentionally misleading in bad faith, but that doesn’t mean every researcher in that field is acting in bad faith, just the author, publisher, and perhaps reviewing peers.

Anyone can right a paper. And if they right it on something obscure and bespoke enough, it can be difficult for someone to question their work. Doing so is the duty of peer reviewers, and sometimes these peers for whatever reason will fail to smell the bullshit or raise issue about smelling it. Then the honus is on the publisher to retract falsified papers.

This is why citations are like gold to postdocs. It’s what builds their credibility, and that credibility is one of the most important aspects of the academic and scientific world.

What is truth?

If you take a materialist philosophical view, maybe you can arrive at some kind of understanding of the universe through the scientific method.

If you have other views things get far more complicated.

I’m a materialist atheist btw but delving into philosophy makes me less certain we can ever arrive at ‘truth’.

On a bit of a tangent, but it’s all about positioning, you repeat and broadcast the positive outcomes that you can manufacture supporting data for as much as possible and don’t engage with the negative ones. So, we don’t even talk about cancer, we just show you how much weight you can lose, and weight loss is obviously good for you, something like this:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916523175897

It’s real easy to miss, but you’ll find a ‘Supported in part by the Nutrasweet Company’ in the foot notes on one of the pages. The study is not specifically ‘Aspartame is good for you and makes you run faster’ but… it’s pretty close and people are going to draw similar conclusions from it. They don’t have to lie, you just have to make sure the ‘right’ data is prevalent enough that it buries the ‘wrong’ data.

Yea but I’d like to think most people who are educated in 1 field to know to “stay in their lane” so to speak, and trust the experts in other fields.

It’s ironic that what most people think of as a highly intelligent person is a polymath aka somebody who is an expert in multiple topics.

Academia today is designed for extreme specialization of knowledge. So it actively selects against anyone that would be classified as a polymath.

It’s a pretty big disconnect between expectations and reality.

I think you’re right, and maybe add a modification. As a fellow engineer, I’ll suggest there’s a third option that’s more realistic when it comes to knowledgeable and lay people having a discussion:

• as mentioned in the meme, scientists can and do learn stuff that improves overall understanding.
• the quest for improved understanding is usually sparked by a strange or unique observation, sometimes by scientists, sometimes by the much larger population of regular folks
• Provided there is good intent and respect from both parties, I believe it’s critically important that people who have observed something unique be able to discuss it somehow with people who have particular skill related to that phenomena

What seems to be missing out of a lot of these misinformation tikTube fights is precisely that fundamental lack of respect. I’ve observed it’s very easy to destabilize a calm discussion with small amounts of inconsiderate speech by people within or outside the discussion. Sometimes it seems purposeful, but the result is a much slowed ability to communicate. That’s bad for us all.

Having qualifications doesn’t automatically make you right. Having data and logic makes you right. It is more likely that she is correct in any discussion about her subject of expertise, but having a degree doesn’t make her automatically correct and you automatically wrong. That attitude is the exact opposite of the principles of science.

Just because one doesn’t have equal post secondary education in one topic as another doesn’t mean that their arguments are unsound. That’s effectively an appeal to authority.

He has a degree in Human Papillomavirus? Did he get it from Florida State?

You’re going in the chokey for using an obscure abbreviation without saying what it means.