Comment by Maxion | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Maxion | Hacker News Reader

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Scientific consensus is built up around a body work. It is only really in modern times that laymen have started reading scientific articles, and usually only one here or one there.

There is no perfect scientific study, if you critique all of them to the point you critique this one, you will dismiss more-or-less all science.

Scientists who study the effects of various forever chemicals on health have read hundres of studies on the matter. And from those scientists I've talked to the overall consensus is definitely leaning towards these so-called forever chemicals having associations strong enough towards negative health outcomes that it's worthwhile to keep looking.

> Scientific consensus is built up around a body work

Yes, and that process is supposed to include judging the merit of the individual studies that make up the body of work. A hundred shoddy papers don't make a convincing body of work all of a sudden, they make a pile of inconclusive trash.

I'm not disagreeing with the consensus you point at, I wouldn't know, but you can't use "consensus arises from a body of work" to argue inclusion of anything in that body of work.

When confronted with a pile of shit, one should not conclude there's a pony in there somewhere.

> There is no perfect scientific study, if you critique all of them to the point you critique this one, you will dismiss more-or-less all science.

It doesn't have to be perfect, it has to convincingly (to some degree) reject the null hypothesis, as per GP's own words. And that doesn't dismiss more-or-less all science, it more or less sets the lower bar for what constitutes science in the first place.

If I shit in a box and give it to you saying "here's evidence of something you believe is likely true," the right response isn't "that's progress," it's "stop shitting in boxes and giving them to people."

But does this even get published if the results are neutral?

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