Do you believe the scientific community in 2020?

Only the un-manipulated ones.

How crazy is this

You’re giving examples of how it’s been in the past. So, if you’re saying that because it always has been, aren’t you really begging the question? So I ask again why should we expect the FUTURE to be like the past?

Three years ago, this thread/question wouldn’t have been asked - and, incidentally, wasn’t - but now that so much of the population lives a reality based upon “alternative facts,” silliness such as this exists.

What a shame.

Can I come and live in the dimension where all science is performed to the utmost best of honest human endeavour no matter the results, where it is always completely transparent, the data procured and findings released in a manner that is never skewed, hidden or adjusted, without any agenda, bias or pre-determined goal set.
Where governments, politicians, organisations, corporations and companies have absolute integrity and put the truth before all else, even profits and personal goals?
It sounds really nice there and I promise I will be good too :innocent:

:smiley: let me in too!

hank

I think you’re making my point.

I’m not asking about the present, but the future. It’s not really a scientific question, or is it?

Because I don’t expect that in the future the interaction of a switch or the effects of the earths rotation will change. Certainly given enough time the future may indeed be different. However, even though at some point in the future the earth may indeed stop turning, the past does indeed tell us that it is very much likely, and indeed reasonable, to expect it to remain rotating for the foreseeable future. What possible reasoning would inform one to believe otherwise?

In science one can test theories to determine if it can be proven or validated as fact. Philosophy uses arguments of principles rather than testing to explain things. Scientific fact can and will change as our body of knowledge/techniques expands (physics is a good example) but that’s a good thing rather than holding onto false ideas and beliefs. In philosophy it’s just a matter of opinion and not subject to testing or experimentation so it’s not worth much in my opinion.

I don’t understand the distrust of peer review. While clearly research and experimentation can be falsified peer review is the mechanism for determining if a study was falsified or incorrectly done. So what’s bad about that?

The comment that we should expect to the future to be like the past I think referred to “I expect that it will get dark later tonight like it did last night.”. I doubt that anybody would expect things to be different with regards to that.

The earth is flat, isn’t it?

I read it on the internet; must be true.

Why indeed. The level of scientific illiteracy exhibited in this thread is disheartening and alarming.

But there is little point in berating ignorance. Some of the frustrating questions may be asked earnestly, and those might be well-served by answers. Maybe that would deserve its own thread, though even this thread might already be in the BLF Rules grey zone.

Agreed. It is an example of the application of “soft” sciences (sociology psychology) applied to a population to achieve a result — in this case the distrust of science in order to promote a different set of interests.

Newton and gravity are taught and largely understood. Whitaker and Baxter ought to be.

Even Aristotle knew that the earth wasn’t flat. It truly amazes and depresses me that some people today believe that the earth is flat. :person_facepalming:

Not only that, but apparently that belief is increasing lately. One can only hope that finding is due to an unrepresentative sample.

The beauty and strength of science is that none of those points matter. After all if they did, it would suggest that money, power, biases, agenda could somehow alter truth and reality.

Did “Nazi science” during WW2 with its clear agenda change the underlying reality of say eugenics, biology, rocket science, etc?

Lies and illusions are hard to maintain. Science is a self-regulating process of discovering what is true, i.e. consistent with reality. Frankly we don’t know of any other way of reliably understanding reality.

We can hope that but my impression is that education in the US is being increasing dumb’ed down and politicized with the goal of educating students no longer the primary consideration :frowning:

Now I’m going to be depressed all day.

Many people don't wholly trust science because it has one monumental flaw. If it can't explain, document and verify something, more often than not, that thing does not exist in their minds and then they ridicule people and even perform well documented smear campaigns against those who have experienced something that cannot be easily verified. It's a fatal blow that continues to turn many away. They can be quite arrogant at times too, not accepting that not everything has to be explained by science to be real.

First, that’s patently untrue. Science exists because we don’t know things, otherwise there would be no point.

The fundamental question is about “ways of knowing”. Science is the only reliable way we have found because it is based on logic, rigour, and repeatability. Other methods typically use assertions and logical fallacies, to which humans are very prone. The scientific method tries to get away from those problems. And the “proof” is in the pudding of the descriptive and predictive power of the models produced.

I am truly sorry about that.

I was referring as to how the scientific community at large can and do act at times like schoolyard bullies when it suites them.

To prove your point and make your conjecture possibly valid, you should have followed your statement about “scientific bullies” with something like this…

“As an example….”

Otherwise, this is just another example of the many posts in this thread throwing words out that are honestly, upon even a cursory examination, just bunk.