Do you believe the scientific community in 2020?

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.

Even if that’s true, it doesn’t invalidate the science. Humans behaving as humans do doesn’t suddenly become worse or better if they also happen to be scientists.

Also, it can be incredibly frustrating to deal with hard-headed ingnorance to which the response can sometimes be ridicule, other times, streamrolling, etc. Scientists come in all flavors of personality, political, economic, religious, dietary, …. preferences and inclinations. But again, none of this has any effect on the validity or reliability of the science.

Philosophy broadly means thinking about things. Science/math etc are simply subsets of philosophy in that they deal with a narrower set of “things”. Math deals with logic that can be expressed by a certain language. Physics deals with virtually everything in the universe. Chemistry and everything else is stamp collecting. :wink: But seriously, chemistry is a more qualitative offshoot of quantum physics because the calculations get too complicated. Biology is sort of a subset of specific kinds of chemistry. And so on… plus lots of links between the different domains. But all relate to thinking about and understanding their domains. So, while I get that philosophy can have some mumbo-jumbo, the common derision towards it is largely undeserved.

As for why to expect the future to be like the past, it’s an interesting question. First I assume you mean the future vs past functional behavior of the universe. The short answer is we don’t know for certain, but we do with a high probability and confidence. The fact is everyone including you makes this assumption on a daily and ongoing basis, consciously or not. Science formalizes it a bit. Some points on why it’s a reasonable assumption:

  • consistent observations in support: we keep observing the same patterns of behavior
  • lack of observations to the contrary: we have never managed to find the behaviors changing in place or time without some other cause
  • utility: if the future is like the past and we learn past patterns, we have some useful knowledge going into the future, otherwise we remain ignorant. If the future is unlike the past, we wasted our time, but also, we have bigger problems!
  • currently the most sensible position to hold: why should we expect the future to be different from the past?

So, the answer is because it works and has demonstrated benefits.

It’s common for people to be uncomfortable with uncertainty. But accuracy usually requires it. You can have certainty… if you don’t mind being wrong.

We don’t know for certain if the physics of the universe will remain consistent. But it’s also pointless not to assume it.

I haven’t yet figured out what your point is. I don’t see how the definition of uniformitarianism makes it.

If your point is that shit happens, this is true. Pick a short enough time span and there will always be some unprecedented event happening during it.

Your criticism applies to some scientists, maybe, but not to science. The whole idea behind science is to reduce bias as much as possible. All the criticism of science in this thread is criticism of people tainting the scientific method with bias due to various motives other than seeking the truth. The fact that people corrupt science to their own ends doesn’t make the scientific method any less effective at eliminating bias and illuminating reality - if it is not corrupted and is done properly.

The same smear campaigns are often directed at scientists by those who are pushing agendas based on non-scientific methods of defining reality. This has been going on for centuries- so the arrogance can go both ways. In our government in the USA now the government scientists are often forbidden from even using certain words and phrases that come from science in their reports.

As for it being a “monumental flaw” of science that it does not accept something as true unless it can be verified through the scientific method: that is not a flaw, it is the essence of the usefulness and value of science. Sure, things that aren’t capable of being tested through the scientific method can be real, such as your real psychological feeling about a person or object. But can you argue that the gravitational constant or the speed of light is real, or that you’ve calculated them accurately, without testing using science? No, you can’t. You’re talking about different types of reality, which require different types of evidence for us to believe in them. When it comes to defining and proving what is real in the natural world and what is not, science has no peer.

Thanks! :+1:

I don’t think you’ll find any of these organized consensus statements amount to “bullying”

Nothing about this Earth is constant or consistent or repeating unless you are talking about very short time frames. The scientific consensus is that all of the continents on this Earth where at one time one massive land mass. Nobody believes we’re going back to that point. There seems to be consensus that at various times magnetic North and South Poles have flipped. I don’t believe there is any consensus as to how often that has happened or what has caused it . All of that molten material in the center is a likely cause. So the bottom line is that Earth and everything on it is constantly evolving. Asteroids, volcanoes, plus many other “natural” phenomena can not be predicted. So different people are thinking about different time frames when talking about repeatability and what the “future” will look like. And these variables cannot fully be accounted for in the earth’s past.

That is a pile of assertions contradicted by the very existence of entire disciplines.

Astrophysics deals with very large time frames, asteroids, planet formation etc.

Geology and the relatively recent breakthrough of tectonic plate theory explain and predict continental drift, volcanoes, earthquakes and many other phenomena.

Seems like you’re arguing that, if a scientific theory can’t predict all change forever, it has no value. That denies several realities, not the least of which are: 1) that many scientific theories incorporate predictions of change in one or more variables over time; and 2) a theory can be useful even if it can’t be 100% accurate and can’t predict everything.

Please be aware that nobody claims to predict the weather years in advance. Climate and weather are related but distinct concepts.

Consider a grossly simplified analogy: if you have a good random number generator, you can not predict what any single output may be, although you can learn trends like the maximum and minimum range it operates within, and you can observe the average result.

If you modify the code by adding what for the sake of similar terms I will call a “forcing factor,” which multiplies the random number by a non-random number, the effect is predictable even though specific numbers still are not. The minimum, maximum, and average will all be affected proportionate to that forcing factor.

When talking about climate research, the forcing factor is not easy to determine, but it does relate to several fairly well known physical effects that we can attempt to quantify. There is uncertainty, so the research concludes there is range of possible results, not a single fixed prediction, but the overall range indicates positive, non-zero forcing.

The end of life as we know it is actually is not a predicted effect for what you’re getting at, although politicians often make such a claim, and journalists sometimes do.

The distinction between what scientists predict and what others say is a source of sometimes serious trouble for researchers. A meteorologist in my area recently had his job threatened, partially as a result. One of his colleagues was previously kicked off a state government advisory board after proceeding to publish research showing one of the board’s talking points was over-stated. Note, in both these cases, the researchers concurred with others about the reality of the effect they were discussing, but the magnitude was different between their data showed and what others expected.