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When I hear people say "trust the science" the speaker is often a non-scientist who is selectively picking what science fits their agenda and ignoring the rest.

It's the same thing when somebody says "trust me, I'm a XXXXX", it's time to be very skeptical.

Especially when it's only a single study with a surprising result.

Those go viral easily, but are usually wrong.

The replication crisis has been a long standing problem in social sciences and medicine. The former's darkest stain is its collective need to prove their preconceived world view. The latter's seems to be motivated by profit.

I'm sure nobody is surprised that zealotry and greed have made some of science as reliable as psychic readings.

A more charitable interpretation of the tendency of error in both is that humans and the world are more complex than expected. Sure, there are examples of fraud, etc but my general intuition is that people are generally well intentioned and interested in honesty and that those qualities are not immunity from error. So, malice, incompetence or a world that defies our finite minds?

> The latter's seems to be motivated by profit.

The same problem persists in communist countries that don't allow profit.

I think you can replace profit with "power". Publish or perish is true in most academic circles, regardless of government.

Bingo.

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the Experts"

The problem is, not all opinions are equal. And the internet, including forums like this, have no notion of status, authority, or stature — so it puts all opinions, no matter how informed they are, on the same page. And while status and authority doesn’t mean one is right, it is important than on average our information sources are more informed than the average person who has no training, no relevant knowledge, no domain expertise, and little ability to disambiguate between contradictory or even harmful information. This tendency has spilled over into the nearly infinite sources of media and information that now exist, with accelerants that didn’t previously exist for bad information to travel wide, far, and fast.

So when people say trust the science, what they’re saying is a bunch of people who do this all day every day are collectively hive minding some opinion on how things work. If it’s wrong, it will be wrong for likely non-obvious reasons. And thus that’s the best we as humans can hope for at any point in time. As a race we are continually learning and updating our understanding of the world; just because it’s not perfect at any one time doesn’t mean everyone should just throw away all that they know and assume everything is wrong and up for grabs.

> When I’ve heard people say “trust the science” it is always directed to people who have demonstrated that they do not understand the scientific method and the meaning of the word “healthy skepticism”.

I've virtually never heard it from somebody who is a scientist or even an educated layman. Those people are usually talking about specific studies or papers. The people who say "trust the science" in my experience might as well be saying "trust the television" for all they understand of the science.

And I agree they certainly are saying it "to replace a person in a robe, or a person in a uniform with a person in a lab coat." But I don't think that's a positive thing. They aren't scientists, they're NPR listeners regurgitating something they've heard.

"Certainly it would be better to have an informed and well educated citizenry. "

Of course it would, but there's no way for people to 'stay informed' on the multitude of various things.

The system we live in is fundamentally based on legitimate authority. We have no reasonable way to try to debate with our doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers. It's literally why they exist - to understand, internalize and work with the inherent truth in a system.

We trust them, that's the way it works.

So how does a system that is inherently grey, be 'wrong a lot of time' but 'right in others' in a manner that is consequential (i.e. vaccines, climate change).

That's a tough social problem.

I say “follow the science” about Covid and Global Warming, for instance. Yes, that is a political statement. It’s also rational and reasonable.

I am a tester. Science is never complete, just as testing is never complete. But stupid people think they can ignore bad bugs and get away with it; and stupid people spin fantasies that maybe all those experts are completely wrong about Ivermectin or vaccines.

Trust science is just a way of saying “hey fella, there are people who have devoted their careers to knowing this. Let’s hear from them and take them seriously.”

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

> When I’ve heard people say “trust the science” it is always directed to people who have demonstrated that they do not understand the scientific method

I think "always" is too strong. With regards to COVID vaccines I have heard that line thrown at people who say "this conclusion is too new, it has not stood the test of time" and now lo and behold we are seeing that the early "95% effective" rates are not holding up.

In fact I would say that many of the people who say "trust the science" (politicians, etc) have no scientific background themselves and are not people we would otherwise look to for scientific opinions on anything.

What evidence do you see that the effectiveness reducing hospitalization risk has decreased?

The 95% effectiveness was based on the version of COVID that was circulating at the time. No one said it would be 95% effective against every possible mutation. Claiming the results of those studies are wrong instead of a result of a changing environment is itself a misunderstanding of science.

The media didn’t say “Vaccines are 95% effective, except for mutations”. The media said “Vaccines are 95% effective.”

The media is all lies and propaganda. Stop paying attention.

Claiming that the vaccines were necessary to "end the pandemic" without factoring in the possibility of variants for which the vaccines were not as effective was not scientific thinking.

Maybe they expected 99%+ to get vaccinated before a vaccine-avoiding variant got out.

They expected 7 billion+ people to get vaccinated?

Vaccines are still necessary, they just aren't sufficient.