Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?

The actual practice of science is fallible, like many other things.

First, science is mostly done as paid for governments and corporations, both entities that are know to lie, distort the truth, and make up stuff for their gain.

Second, science is mostly made by normal people, a lot of which can lie about their results to get grant money, a promotion, be published, or other personal interests.

Third, scientists are also people with ideologies, prejudices and prevonceived notions, and as much as the scientific method is about keeping those in check, they come through a hell of a lot more times.

Fourth, the scientific community at large seems to feel prey to the prevalent ideas and ideologies of its time every time. In 19th century, few scientists would consider black people equally capable as white people, for example, or being gay OK. Similarly tons of stuff ingrained by culture into scientists comes up as "truth" and is actively seek out against other views, even today. (In fact the belief that "today is different" in that regard, is probably the biggest myth of all).

Fifth, we bundle as "science" a lot of stuff that it's 90% ideology, things like economics, sociology, psychology, etc.

"So you have the direct problem of science collectively steering my entire generation toward obesity, diabetes, and coronary problems. But the indirect problem might be worse: It is hard to trust science. ... I think science has earned its lack of credibility with the public. If you kick me in the balls for 20-years, how do you expect me to close my eyes and trust you?

If a person doesn’t believe climate change is real, despite all the evidence to the contrary, is that a case of a dumb human or a science that has not earned credibility? We humans operate on pattern recognition. The pattern science serves up, thanks to its winged monkeys in the media, is something like this:

Step One: We are totally sure the answer is X.

Step Two: Oops. X is wrong. But Y is totally right. Trust us this time."

I really enjoy leading students through a discussion of evolution in the context of bacteria. They all get that populations of bacteria develop a resistance to antibiotics over time, in a manner that we can watch play out. We name that 'evolution'. Then we look at the changes in a population of flies, which we can still watch. Then we step out to longer and longer timeframes, and recognize the same process taking place. By the time we get to evolution on the timeframe of millions of years, most students get it.

However, science is often done at the behest of the governement...

- govts, which lie every day.

- when not lieing, they are often wrong, incompetant, and biased by special interests.

- media does not report findings accurrately.

- due to poor education, people dont have the tools/time to do their own research.

Given this environment, a healthy skeptisism is quite "reasonable."

One of the examples, flouride. We know water is safe. A known party, a frequent liar, occasional incompetant, makes claims about adding a chemical to it for our benefit. Similar things have been said about drugs given to expectant mothers, about margerine, and high carb diets that later turned out to be false, just to name a few examples.

The barrier of proof is and should continue to be high.