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Comment by fourthark | Hacker News Reader

What a dogmatic article.

Science is a process, not a set of truths.

It’s good that more educated people are more skeptical.

I totally agree that Science is a process and skepticism is essential, but is maintaining skepticism in the face of overwhelming evidence part of the scientific process or is it just being dogmatic/contrarian?

There is sort of a 2-faced nature here. Scienitsts themselves should be maintaining intense skepticism over even the most fundamental beleifs of their field. Here is the "science as a process" that is constantly changing.

However, science also plays a role in public life, where it might make a lot more sense to appeal to the authority and the track record of science. Here is the "science as a set of truths".

Separating the two is difficult though. Some scientists will inevitably become dogmatic about theories in their own field, whereas some in the public will take advantage of internal scientific debates to cast doubt on the whole thing.

I agree. To restate or extend: Communication by Scientists in the popular media is challenging. For example, scientists always qualify conclusions, they are trained to avoid using "all", "always", "never", or using concepts like "theory" with mean different thing to scientists vs public--All of which is leveraged by those not in the art to imply "weak" or "uncertain" concepts or conclusions.

Appeal to what authority, though? "Science" isn't an institution with a clear hierarchy, and the public institutions and individuals who lead them tend to be bureaucrats, not actually great scientists, because they've risen to the top of a bureaucracy.

Just as an example, look at "attacks on me are actually attacks on science" Fauci, who is obviously more politician than scientist, openly and admittedly willing to lie about "the science," if he feels like it's for the little peoples' own good, but leans on his status as a Scientist and as "The Good Doctor," as one cover story called him, to prop up his authority.

This isn't how a rational, objective, truth-based tradition like science is done, this is using science as the religion of the State, for the purposes and goals of the Regime, whatever those are.

Science is not a religion and should never be believed on faith alone. Since we, as individuals, cannot duplicate every experiment we need to take all studies with a grain of salt and look out for, errors, bias, influence etc. Most hard science answers are not very controversial as those have actual overwhelming evidence. The scientific results that are controversial, generally do not have overwhelming evidence, which is why they are controversial. In this case, extra skepticism is required so we don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. That is if science stands behind all scientific claims that are controversial, and lack strong evidence, then belief in all science will decline. This is the danger of science on faith, and is evidenced by the current replication crisis.

> "overwhelming evidence"

Unless you're going through _all_ the source material yourself, and making educated judgements on the quality and implications of the data, I don't think you can ever claim there's "overwhelming evidence" for any side, especially if the topic is controversial. If you're consuming information through secondary sources, basically every source will look at subsets of the data, will misinterpret data, and will have a bias, either intentionally or unintentionally.

I have yet to meet the person who takes that position consistently, and only believes that which he has personally verified. Anyone who only adopts this view in response to selected issues is motte-and-baileying those issues.

Note that my response here does not rule out being skeptical over particular claims for definite reasons, only the blanket use of "Unless you're going through _all_ the source material yourself..." (your emphasis on 'all'.)

And why stop at source material? We know there is a replication crisis in science (the open discussion of which has, somewhat ironically, encouraged a wave of blanket dismissal of science), so surely this level of skepticism can only be assuaged by personally verifying all the original sources?

I agree with your points, which is why I think people should almost never be sure of one side or another. Necessarily, they should have some self doubt, just because it would be impossible to do all of the above. The only stance I think is indefensible is to think that one side is definitely correct (outside of extremely well defined problems).

I guess I agree from an academic point of view where absolute truth is nearly hypothetical and overwhelming evidence is rare. From a logistical point of view, I guess its risk/benefit balanced by evidence. For instance, Wearing a mask, very likely helps reduce indoor SARS-COV-2 transmission. The cost or hassle to me is minimal. That is in that risk benefit balance, I found the evidence for mask to be overwhelming. And yes, Skepticism is always healthy and the core of scientific thinking.

I would agree. To be pedantic, I still wouldn't say that the evidence for mask wearing was overwhelming, but rather, the cost benefit analysis clearly put mask wearing ahead, regardless of how clear the evidence was, just because the cost was so low.

I think your comment aligns with the article’s findings :). It seems the author has the idea in their heads that #{insert_topic} is settled. And, they’re shocked that in there is ongoing debate among the scientifically literate.

You saw this a ton during covid with things like masks, lockdowns, etc. People who knew the actual science were called all sorts of names when they pointed out actual data didn’t support policy - particularly with masks which had been heavily studied and shown ineffective for stopping viral spread.

“Science” has become somewhat religious among those who don’t understand it.

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