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.
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.
"The Earth is flat. The science is settled." "No, it's actually round." "Okay, it's round. The science is settled." "Actually, it's an oblate spheroid."
And that last one matters for GPS.
Beyond that, there is always a new question. Sure, the COVID vaccine works with small enough side effects. Cool. What about medium-term side effects? What about long-term side effects?
Also, "science" is the process, not the body of Knowledge or the consensus. See https://gavinhoward.com/2019/11/what-science-is/ .
For as long as we've had anything resembling science, we've known the earth was round.
But none of that addresses my point. I'm not saying that nothing in science is overturned (in fact, I pointed out exactly that).
In saying the phrase can be reasonably used in some contexts.
It can _never_ be reasonably used to dismiss evidence or anomalies.
It can _sometimes_ be reasonably used to dismiss completely unsupported and unfounded claims. If someone claims the earth is flat, I will happily tell them that it is not, and the science on the matter is settled.
Again, to rule out evidence or anomalies, no. But to rule out unsupported claims, I'm still going to use it.
If you think that wrong, you should probably be ignoring me.
However, in my experience, that phrase more often comes from someone who claims to be a scientist, which is why it puts me off.
If you don't claim to be a scientist, then I can respect that.
The times I use this phrase are typically when having political arguments where what we know is correct is pitted against monied interests that aren’t seeking truth but working hard to obscure it (“is smoking cigarettes harmful?”, “is climate change real?”, “is the earth round?”, etc).
Hmm, be careful ridiculing all of this, because under GR the earth is accelerating upward toward the apple; it has to in order to remain in the same spot in curved spacetime.
But, insofar as there was a broadly accepted pre-GR scientific explanation, it was not “The earth doesn’t accelerate upward, the apple accelerates downardThe second half, yes, but not the first.
Since gravity wells are generally spherical in practice, up is always going to point radially outward, so there's no distinction to make.
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.
Not to a flat earther. There is a mountain of garbage you need to wade through. You can sit there and talk about observing the curvature across bodies of water or with satellites or whatever and they will just sit and say "nuh uh". At that point "the science is settled" is way easier than wasting your time with them.
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.
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 is to claim that science unequivocally proves you are correct. 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.
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”
The government and media should be rebuilding trust and making amends because if we can't trust what our leaders say, civil society simply can not do anything but crumble. That's not an easy thing to accomplish, but it could be done if approached in a genuine and humble manner. Unfortunately, there's no sign of that happening anywhere.
The problem is that there that the rational position is that there should be no trust in science. 70% of papers cannot be replicated (see the replication crisis).
There is also the issue of funding - you get what you pay for. There are really only 3 funding sources of science - government, military and corporations. (To me, these are actually just one source 3 facets of the same beast, but not everyone agrees with me that we live in a fascist state.) But those funding interests don't make for 'free' science.
No one will research good diet - confusion reigns on the best diet for people. They will research expensive drugs and treatments. No one researches how climate change isn't happening, only that it is. Etc. The upshot is, that with enough funding you can fairly quickly have reams of papers and documents in support of whatever case you want to promote. The broader scientific 'truth' is left at the wayside.