Scepticism towards science

[Deleted]

Who is "they" again?

You haven't heard of "them"?

"they" are very dangerous and don't like progress, "they" poison your cereal!

[thoruga]

Then they are doing it wrong. Science is based on skepticism and trying to disprove a theory. Scientists who are in it for the money and not for the pursuit of human knowledge are not on the right track. Of course scientists can be corrupted by greed and money, but pure science isn't suppose to work that way. It is true that human nature gets in the way of science, of course, I'm not arguing that.

I think you got your quote wrong. Even if we assume that there are scientists as you describe that do it for the sole purpose of finding knowledge, they still need money. Science is not cheap. Now with particle physics and all they need insane amounts of money. And you need to ask governments and corporations for that money. Even if a scientist doesn't care about money he needs to beg those government/corporate people who care only about money. So in the end scientists cannot always choose to research what they want to research.

[Melt]

2 Things guys...

1. I am not religious. Please stop taking the easy way of discrediting everything I say by turning me into a religious loonatic. I don't want you to believe into god, I want you to stop believing into Wikipedia.

2. This is not a god good or god bad discussion. It's about how simple it is to just go out and show random graphs to people. As long as they have a "proven by science" stamp on it. People will keep believing the graph.

[Eviscero]

Address my response, Melt, science encourages skepticism.

[Deleted]

2 Things guys...

1. I am not religious. Please stop taking the easy way of discrediting everything I say by turning me into a religious loonatic. I don't want you to believe into god, I want you to stop believing into Wikipedia.

2. This is not a god good or god bad discussion. It's about how simple it is to just go out and show random graphs to people. As long as they have a "proven by science" stamp on it. People will keep believing the graph.

You know why they believe it (if from reputable source)? BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN PROVEN!

Science isn't just a randomly drawn graph, anyone who does that and claims it is science is an idiot. Science is about the methodology and process used to create that graph, that is the science, not the graph.

[Veyne]

This came up again after I saw the stupid ending of Bioshock: Infinite. Instead of making something reasonable out of it, they go the good old "multidimension-timetravel" nonsense route. And people seem to love it?! How can people seriously believe in timetravel nonsense and infinite dimensions, but when they hear somebody mention Alaa or God or any other religion they instantly go "nope, can't be".

You're confusing science fiction and science fact. Real science requires testable, replicable, measurable, quantifiable proof before saying something is true. But there are also plenty of things we haven't proven or can't prove given current technology (or perhaps even never be able to prove it), and that's where theoretical physics comes into play.

Pure skeptics are just as bad as people who'll believe anything, however. Lack of evidence doesn't mean something isn't true. But it also means there's no way to prove that it is true. In my opinion, a true intellectual is open to the possibility of the improbable, but wouldn't put blind faith into anything that can't be proven. You'd look pretty silly if you went all your life saying, for example, "ghosts aren't real, there is no afterlife, anyone who believes in such is a fool," and one day, science discovered irrefutable proof that there is an afterlife. It's a hypothetical scenario, but still.

For me, to say something 100% is untrue or not real, there'd have to be testable, replicable, measurable, quantifiable proof that it isn't true.

I'll live my life according to logic, science and rational thought, but I'll remain open to the possibility that the fantastical might one day become the mundane.

[anyaka21]

Then they are doing it wrong. Science is based on skepticism and trying to disprove a theory. Scientists who are in it for the money and not for the pursuit of human knowledge are not on the right track. Of course scientists can be corrupted by greed and money, but pure science isn't suppose to work that way. It is true that human nature gets in the way of science, of course, I'm not arguing that.

And I agree, again, the problem is that, for the most part, that's how's it's done these days.

Example, I go to Exxon to get money for my theory about making renwable energy from a mariijuana plant. (I know, stupid insane theory, but it's there to make a point). I'm not going to Exxon to get money to disprove scientist C about making a renewable energy. I'm going to companies, universities, governements, etc... with a THEORY that will make them money. Disproving something, sadly, doesn't make anyone money.

I know it's the wrong way to do things, but that's how it's done. Just as going to BIOTECH INC with a theory on a cure for cancer that will make them millions will get you hired, but going to them and with the notion that what they are working on is complete bolux won't get you hired.

[Kujako]

You know why they believe it (if from reputable source)? BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN PROVEN!

No, it's because it has been demonstrated or explains observable events. Science does not deal in proof. It is hard to impossible to prove anything, and far easier to disprove things. For example, to prove that gravity exists we would have to test it under every condition in every location across all of time and space. An infinity number of tests. To disprove it we just have to find one example where it doesn't work. However, since it explains what we can observe we assume that gravity works.

[Adam Jensen]

The Earth is a sphere because of gravity. If you want to know the exact details go to a library (since you hate wikipedia so much) and look it up in a book. It's not a matter of faith, it's a matter of what we've observed in space, mathematics and what we know about gravity, nebulae and planetary formation. If you are still skeptical about how planets form, become an astrophysicist and prove them wrong. You'll win a Nobel Prize if you do.

Einstein and Newton are quoted because they've been proven time and time again to be correct in their particular fields of study. Newton's laws are STILL relevant today because we know they work on a macroscopic level and we even modified his laws because we KNOW they DON'T work at a subatomic level. We've tested Newton's and Einstein's theories extensively and so far they continue to be accurate (except, again, Newton's Laws were modified because they don't work at subatomic levels)

[darkwarrior42]

2 Things guys...

1. I am not religious. Please stop taking the easy way of discrediting everything I say by turning me into a religious loonatic. I don't want you to believe into god, I want you to stop believing into Wikipedia.

2. This is not a god good or god bad discussion. It's about how simple it is to just go out and show random graphs to people. As long as they have a "proven by science" stamp on it. People will keep believing the graph.

That means the people are stupid, not the science.

Anyways, I encourage people to be skeptical of most things, including scientists, if the evidence is dubious... but not of science itself. Any particular theory can easily be argued, but pure science is a method of approaching problems and the world, of using evidence and experiments to find explanations instead of relying on myth or assumption.

The other problem, of course, is the media. Science can be very complicated and subtle at times, but that's not what makes headlines. So if, for instance, scientists found that in a small percentage of the population, under very rare conditions, playing WoW could cause lung cancer, you wouldn't see that headline. The headline would be "WoW causes lung cancer!" with details on the rarity of that happening buried deeper in the article where they're unlikely to be read. (In short, the graphs rarely tell the whole story, and people are stupid.)

[Melt]

Address my response, Melt, science encourages skepticism.

Science does. But people stopped doing science. They started believing in science as if it were a religion.

Btw, have you tried Kant? "Critique of pure reasoning". Yes, he criticises pure reasoning. Trust me when I say natural sciences are far away from being able to give us answers.

[Kujako]

Einstein and Newton are quoted because they've been proven time and time again to be correct in their particular fields of study.

Put another way, if Einstein was wrong about relativity GPS would not work in the same way as it does. The satellites that make GPS possible are traveling fast enough that time flows differently for them. Not enough for us to detect without expensive gadgets, but enough to throw the GPS system off track if they did not adjust for it.

[MerinPally]

As a student of a science subject (proper science not social) nothing makes a scientist happier than something that disproves what they are/were doing - because it means you can come up with more theories and do it all again.

Also, whilst multidimensional travel won't happen, seeing into others is a future possibility, there's about 10 I think but we live in 4. Also, "time travel" has already happened due to relativistic effects. Granted it's a tiny amount of a second but time dilation is a real thing. We can only go forwards though, not back.

And with wikipedia, whilst it's shit for some stuff, for basically the entirety of what I'd call real science (this is not an exhaustive list) by which I mean Chemistry/Physics/Maths/Engineering/Biology - that stuff is all correct. It's all correct because the only people who read and understand those pages are those with an interest, and they aren't going to get it wrong. Schoolkids bored won't edit it because they're not doing a class project on it, ergo they won't taint it.

[Adam Jensen]

You haven't heard of "them"?

"they" are very dangerous and don't like progress, "they" poison your cereal!

Children's ice cream, Mandrake! Children's ice cream!

[Deleted]

No, it's because it has been demonstrated or explains observable events. Science does not deal in proof. It is hard to impossible to prove anything where as it is easy to disprove. For example, to prove that gravity exists we would have to test it under every condition in every location across all of time and space. An infinity number of tests. To disprove it we just have to find one example where it doesn't work. However, since it explains what we can observe we assume that gravity works.

I'm not talking about whether X has been proven (X being a scientific theory based on being proven) i'm talking about the initial hypothesis of X being dis-proven so "Does X function according to our knowledge of X in situation Y".

What you said in the "demonstrated or explains observable events" was what i was trying to get across with the use of "proof", you just did it better.

[Kraenen]

2 Things guys...

1. I am not religious. Please stop taking the easy way of discrediting everything I say by turning me into a religious loonatic. I don't want you to believe into god, I want you to stop believing into Wikipedia.

2. This is not a god good or god bad discussion. It's about how simple it is to just go out and show random graphs to people. As long as they have a "proven by science" stamp on it. People will keep believing the graph.

So why is the main focus on science and not human gullibility?

[Deleted]

Science isn't a philosophy, it's an investigative process. The whole basis of the scientific method is that unless there is substantial evidence for something (and evidence gathered can be used, in test conditions, to predict future occurrences, thereby vindicating a hypothesis, making it a theory) it can not be assumed to be true. Only through observation can things be proven.

To be sceptical of scepticism is a non sequitur.

[Garnier Fructis]

I think you have just inwittingly brought out the crux of the matter. Science can and is wrong a lot of the time. Too many theories are bandied around as proven facts and 5 years later no absolute proofs are there, still just theories waiting to be proven facts, even though they are taught as fact.

Theories do not wait to be proven, because they can't be proven. That is the whole point. No theory can ever achieve absolute proof. So why, you may ask, do scientists go around proclaiming theories as facts and promise that irrefutable evidence will soon be discovered? The answer is they don't say that. It's a straw man concocted by people who don't understand science as a way to refute it.

The "science can and is wrong a lot of the time" is a red herring, plain and simple. That's the whole point of the endeavor. It's an argument used to dismiss the validity of theories without refuting the evidence or the arguments backing the theory.

[Adam Jensen]

Put another way, if Einstein was wrong about relativity GPS would not work in the same way as it does. The satellites that make GPS possible are traveling fast enough that time flows differently for them. Not enough for us to detect without expensive gadgets, but enough to throw the GPS system off track if they did not adjust for it.

Indeed, if I remember correctly, without special relativity, GPS satellites would be off by several meters, by a degree high enough to be too inaccurate for use in air traffic control and other fields that require accurate measurements.

[Melt]

You're confusing science fiction and science fact. Real science requires testable, replicable, measurable, quantifiable proof before saying something is true. But there are also plenty of things we haven't proven or can't prove given current technology (or perhaps even never be able to prove it), and that's where theoretical physics comes into play.

Pure skeptics are just as bad as people who'll believe anything, however. Lack of evidence doesn't mean something isn't true. But it also means there's no way to prove that it is true. In my opinion, a true intellectual is open to the possibility of the improbable, but wouldn't put blind faith into anything that can't be proven. You'd look pretty silly if you went all your life saying, for example, "ghosts aren't real, there is no afterlife, anyone who believes in such is a fool," and one day, science discovered irrefutable proof that there is an afterlife. It's a hypothetical scenario, but still.

For me, to say something 100% is untrue or not real, there'd have to be testable, replicable, measurable, quantifiable proof that it isn't true.

I'll live my life according to logic, science and rational thought, but I'll remain open to the possibility that the fantastical might one day become the mundane.

<3. It all comes down to "I know that I know nothing". And yes to me "saying something is 100% untrue" is just as stupid as "saying something is 100% true". It's about perspective, since knowledge is depending on perspective.