Do you believe the scientific community in 2020?

40 years ago scientists/experts were predicting large increases in human population. That turned out to be true. At that time they were predicted that we would run out of crude oil in about 20 or so years, as in 20 years ago. That turned out to be a very bad prediction. If that prediction had not been so wrong it’s possible that other scientists would have been predicting global warming long before they started to. It was clear to me that massive population growth would cause pollution of streams, rivers oceans and certainly air, and also consume large quantities of many of the Earth’s natural resources. I value science/scientists and believe that most scientists are working in good faith. I’m simply pointing out that some variables are always going to be wrong in predicting the future. Always. I’m not suggesting that they should stop trying because of that.

This is quite good, if you read it all the way through and understand the charts at the end.

TL/dr: the weather forecast will help plan a camping trip; the climate model will help plan a garden (or choose which trees to plant, I’d add)

:+1: The forum could use a “like” button.

And? For some reason this is a surprise to those who don’t understand that knowledge is incremental and asymptotic. Or those who expect certainty.

More importantly, we need to be clear on what is meant by wrong, and have a sense of proportionality. Wrong in what way and by how much? A great saying is “”All models are wrong, but some are useful.“:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong”

The only absolutely correct model for a dataset is the dataset itself, i.e. a model that has as many variables as data points in the dataset. But at that point why bother modeling? Trying to describe a tendency with fewer variables means some approximations are made. That’s not an “error”, it’s a practical strategy for making a problem tractable. It makes it possible to get a useful answer instead of no answer or a simple but useless answer. Incrementally improving a model could be seen as admitting that all previous models were “wrong”, but that’s misleading.

PV=nRT is wrong. F=ma is wrong. It does not detract from their usefulness.

Why Didn't the First Earth Day's Predictions Come True? It's Complicated | Science| Smithsonian Magazine this story explains failed predictions from scientists around the time of the first Earth day It’s complicated.

“”I wasn’t trying to predict the future”:To prevent the future Bradbury told John Miller in a 2003 Wall Street Journal interview, “I was trying to prevent it.”

I think “if this goes on” was the key consideration that first Earth Day of 1970. A question basic to most science fiction.

And now? ” Almost half the songbirds”:| Nature of Things are gone. Who knew?

Where’s the failure?

Clickbait/misleading title. Unfortunately no links to actual papers/models.

For the most part, the models “failed” for the best possible reason: people reacted and changed behavior: increasing agricultural output (GMOs!), banning certain pesticides and chemicals, regulating pollution, developing new techniques for exploiting resources previously not feasible, etc.

It would be best to see the actual papers, which almost surely have phrasing like “if the present rate of X continues… then Y”. Since the condition fortunately became false, it’s not that the predictions were wrong, they served their purpose!

The other example is just terrible:

That is not a prediction from science, but a personal opinion/bet!

This former science journalist does a good job of presenting what the science (papers) actually says, and clearing up misleading cr@p from clickbait articles, politicians, and “personalities” on all sides of debates:

If you read my post again, you’ll see that I didn’t assert that hypothesis testing accepts claims as true or not true. And I understand confidence intervals and probability, which are beyond the scope of the post I was addressing with my comments.

I can offer you my opinion on that. I have a PhD and worked in academic research for years. I participated on many research project, including medical/clinical research. My PhD is in technical field.

I dont know what people mean when they say “scientific community”. Wast majority of scientists are very narrowly specialised. We all have areas where we are considered “expersts” and unimginably more areas where our knowledge is either superficial or equal to common knowledge. If you ask my opinion on some geological or sociological phenomenon, you likely wont get better answer than if you asked random person.

Now if a comunity of specialists, for example molecular biologist agree on somenthing, it doesnt mean its true. Their idea of what it really is will very likely be much more probable than someones who is not specialist, but it will not necessarily be true.

But wait, there is more. It gets even more complicated when it gets beyond numbers and raw data. As soon as you make a theory, you will definately find other scientists who can have a different explaination that will make as much sense and maybe even more. Doesnt mean any of you is right. I never met a fellow scientist (specialist in my field) with whom I would agree 100% on everything we researched.

So I would be very carefull about putting words like “scientific”, “community” and “consensus” together.

I do believe in research, discovering new things, finding new explanation for old things. I believe in publishing results and data, in reproducibility of results. I believe in truthful and honest diacussion. And I believe in mistakes. Because I sure as hell have made many.

Congratulations guys on some interesting reading. And you didn’t get the thread locked. :+1:

I’m going have to simplify some information as I’m too lazy to write long paragraph

The science revolution occur around 400 years.

Way before Science exist, we used to believe in obsolete medical theory called the Miasma theory
which most people believed that infections were caused by foul odors. Centurys later, the scientific theory called ’Germ theory of disease became

During the Miasama Era, Hand washing washing wasn’t the norm until the 19th century which is the effective way of prevents the spread of many diseases. ”

The guy who discover hand washing effectiveness Ignaz Semmelweis

“Despite various publications of results where hand washing reduced mortality to below 1%, Semmelweis’s observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and mocked him for it. In 1865, the increasingly outspoken Semmelweis supposedly suffered a nervous breakdown and was treacherously committed to an asylum by his colleague. He died a mere 14 days later, at the age of 47, after being beaten by the guards, from a gangrenous wound on his right hand which might have been caused by the beating. Semmelweis’s practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory, and Joseph Lister, acting on the French microbiologist’s research, practised and operated using hygienic methods, with great success.”

Galileo Galilei “father of modern science”

Here here!!

:+1:

@Dr.Phillip:

You don't like this sentence:

"If the scientific community (in 2020) come to a consensus on a subject, I generally believe them."

That's fine.

I'm not a scientist.

How would you better phrase it?

I thought the science was in on some subjects, like the earth being round instead of flat, and vaccines not causing autism, that sort of thing.

Observable, measurable, reproducible results. Yes absolutely.

What I’m getting from all this is that science points us in a direction and over time it is refined.

I think a lot of the difficulty accepting scientific consensus statements is that they offend ’ibertarians by recommending cooperative management of resources rather than market-based freedom to take whatever you can get.

E.g.: https://www.compassscicomm.org/ebm-consensus-statement-download

Disclaimer: following is only my opinion and depends strongly on my experience.

First of all, I get the idea. I think I understand where it is comming from. If you are planing on doing something you dont understand, you will likely consult experts. If you ask 5 plumbers what to do about your problems with plumbing and they all give you the same answer, your best bet would be following that answear.

Secondly, I dont believe there is such a thing as “scientific community” in a way thats represented publicly. You have thousands of scientists working all over the world trying to find a solution to something a theory that explains something or just purely analyzing something as objectively as possible without injecting any opinions into data. Many of these people are working to prove the exactly oposite thing. The information they may be working with may wary and concusions they reach using different methods may wary also as well. Some may just analyze a theory to find if its right of wrong and reach opposite conclusions. There have to be houndreds of thousands contradictory papers published all over the world and so many of them are likely wrong by todays knowledge.

Now there are trends in science, just like there are trends in any profession. Some opinions are held by many scientist and certain approaches to solving problems are popular during certain time periods. A few years ago a large porion of scientists may have believed the HIV may be cured using cerian proceses trigered by some type of medication and few years later most have abandoned it. Many people are looking at what others are doingto come up with ideas for their problems.

Now that I have expressed what I believe the “scientific community” is, how would you define what their “consensus” is. Are we going to study all the different conclusion specific groups reached on a certain topic? You’ll find a lot of contradictory stuff.

I believe that a lot of what people consider “scientific community” is a very small group of “celebrity” scientists who get all the media attention. Dont get my wrong, some of them are experts and did a lot to earn the status they have. Anf yes, many of them have reached consensus on many matters, but thats just a few people. You would find that a lot of scientists dont agree with them at all. Or they dont agree with their methodology, or their conclusions. And there will be a large part that will admire them, agree with everything and dream of such a status. Now add selective media/political filter to the small group and you get your “scientific community consensus”.

This might help:

Anyone in science understands what you mean — that scientists are no less human than anyone else, i.e. they have opinions which vary just like anyone else. I doubt that there exists any two people agree who on everything. But that’s besides the point.

Plus, a scientist’s credibility does not transfer to a domain where they lack knowledge.

But for those less familiar with science it’s important to realize it’s not just a collection of arbitrary opinions. Not all opinions have the same weight. Scientific consensus does exist in sufficiently established domains and is like an averaging and stabilizing effect, much like the law of large numbers.

It does not mean that each data point is the same value or on the same side of the average. It does mean that taken collectively, the “community” achieves something more useful than the individual components: a consensus that tends to be more correct and more stable than without it.

The averaging effect also explains why new ideas face resistance. Some might decry it, with the benefit of hindsight, but don’t forget survivorship bias: we note the good ideas that took time to become accepted, but there are also plenty of bad ideas that got kept out of the body of knowledge by the same virtue. It also emphasizes that science does not and should not rely too strongly on any single data point or scientist. In other words this is a feature, not a bug.

So far I think we are in agreement, we both “assume” or “believe” it will.

That just begs the question.

Again we agree that there is order in the universe.

That’s not an answer, that’s really a different way of asking the same question.

But, it’s not science. It begs the question.

Trusting science that has been observed is one thing, but, the scientific community making accurate claims and or predictions for the future is another. Everyone has biases based on their own individual beliefs.

Science is a method by which we seek to reduce as much as possible the biases we have in testing a hypothesis - whether those biases are based on our preconceived beliefs, past traditions and methodologies, or any other type of bias that can be introduced into a test of a hypothesis. It isn’t science to “trust” in past results to be replicated indefinitely, under all possible conditions.

In science, when we discover that some of our past conclusions are not correct, or sometimes not correct, that is not a failure of science - it is a success. That knowledge leads to refinement of the hypothesis, and further testing. Science is a method - not a conclusion or set of conclusions that is assumed to remain inviolable forever and across all changes in the variables we are trying to predict.

Very well said. I should have changed my "monumental flaw" post to reference mostly those within the celebrity group that more often than not post utter nonsense claiming to be facts.