Scientists were perceived as more credible than government officials, but were not more credible than businesspeople or issue advocates.Scientists were viewed as more credible when discussing technological issues than when discussing non-technological social issues such as health, education and employment.Three forms of distrust – concerns abo...
I want to scratch the surface and look slightly deeper at this. I think we all agree on the one hand “Science, duh.” and this kind of headline is of course dispiriting.
It sparked an interesting thought for me though. What role does “trust” actually play in science? Scientists certainly don’t operate on trust with one another. The entire practice is based on peer-critique and no one’s results are trusted until someone has repeated them.
Yet somehow we think there is a boundary on this, a sort of outer membrane past which everyone who is outside any scientific field is just supposed to “trust science,” when science itself is a huge, distributed, diverse, and not always especially accountable or even identifiable conglomeration of different people. Not all science is carried out with the same rigor, the same sample size, and there is membership card. A corporation can conduct science. A private individual can conduct science. Exactly who and where is this “Science” we are meant to even trust?
Every study I’ve ever seen shared on Lemmy is looked at critically. There’s no “trust” about it.
So not to trust science honestly sounds like the most scientific thing for a smart person to do. Science also doesn’t require trust. It operates on proof, openness, repeatable experiments and data. Science never asks for “trust.”
We should expect the results that scientists have tried to debunk and failed to be trusted. You know, the repeated results after the initial claim. Unfortunately most of the people at least in the US don’t understand any part of the way science works to come to a conclusion that’s accepted by most scientists.
I want to scratch the surface and look slightly deeper at this. I think we all agree on the one hand “Science, duh.” and this kind of headline is of course dispiriting.
It sparked an interesting thought for me though. What role does “trust” actually play in science? Scientists certainly don’t operate on trust with one another. The entire practice is based on peer-critique and no one’s results are trusted until someone has repeated them.
Yet somehow we think there is a boundary on this, a sort of outer membrane past which everyone who is outside any scientific field is just supposed to “trust science,” when science itself is a huge, distributed, diverse, and not always especially accountable or even identifiable conglomeration of different people. Not all science is carried out with the same rigor, the same sample size, and there is membership card. A corporation can conduct science. A private individual can conduct science. Exactly who and where is this “Science” we are meant to even trust?
Every study I’ve ever seen shared on Lemmy is looked at critically. There’s no “trust” about it.
So not to trust science honestly sounds like the most scientific thing for a smart person to do. Science also doesn’t require trust. It operates on proof, openness, repeatable experiments and data. Science never asks for “trust.”
We should expect the results that scientists have tried to debunk and failed to be trusted. You know, the repeated results after the initial claim. Unfortunately most of the people at least in the US don’t understand any part of the way science works to come to a conclusion that’s accepted by most scientists.