IDK who I am tho Posted October 25, 2019 Share Posted October 25, 2019 On 10/16/2019 at 9:27 PM, GhostGoesToWail said: ethical, repeatable and free of biases that skew the methodology or results to favor certain opinions or agendas. nope, not something obtainable. The act of measurement itself is a bias, and we can't even begin to understand what the results mean without introducing bias. Ethics is a matter of debate and subjective, and you can't even rely on things being repeatable, because who knows if there are factors that influence the study or experiment that you didn't even know about, and so didn't record in the instructions to repeat. However, that is the purpose of repeatability - to verify that the results are consistent given the known inputs. Link to post Share on other sites
DarkStormyKnight Posted November 1, 2019 Share Posted November 1, 2019 Hey so I'm a scientist and I really want to believe in science and my profession but you raise a number of interesting points. So many people have just a blind faith in science and think that just because a scientist said it that it's the absolute truth (and some swing in the complete other direction but they miss the point here). Science, just like anything else, can be a dogma and can blind you to other positions in the world. It for sure has its flaws, such as the people that carry it out and interpret it, and we can't be totally sure that we will catch all of our mistakes. I personally think that scientific evidence does exist somewhere, and we need to continually strive for that. But having said that, it'll take us a while to get there and in the meantime we should take the good parts of science and not totally abandon the good parts of other ways of looking at the world such as through art, religion, philosophy, whatever else you'd like. Link to post Share on other sites
Sally Posted November 2, 2019 Share Posted November 2, 2019 9 hours ago, DarkStormyKnight said: because a scientist said it that it's the absolute truth I don't think scientists ever say anything like that. Link to post Share on other sites
DarkStormyKnight Posted November 2, 2019 Share Posted November 2, 2019 12 hours ago, Sally said: I don't think scientists ever say anything like that. They don't but sometimes they get interpreted that way. Link to post Share on other sites
Knight of Cydonia Posted November 2, 2019 Share Posted November 2, 2019 4 hours ago, DarkStormyKnight said: They don't but sometimes they get interpreted that way. Is that a failure on behalf of the scientist or the interpretor, though? Ask any scientist and they (should) say that there is no such thing as absolute truth. All science strives to do is give the best explanation for a given phenomenon, using available evidence. This is how the scientific method works, after all. I think it's good that people look to scientists for answers, as it demonstrates a high level of trust. But I don't think it's the fault of scientists when people think the answers are absolute truth. Link to post Share on other sites
DarkStormyKnight Posted November 2, 2019 Share Posted November 2, 2019 1 hour ago, Knight of Cydonia said: Is that a failure on behalf of the scientist or the interpretor, though? Ask any scientist and they (should) say that there is no such thing as absolute truth. All science strives to do is give the best explanation for a given phenomenon, using available evidence. This is how the scientific method works, after all. I think it's good that people look to scientists for answers, as it demonstrates a high level of trust. But I don't think it's the fault of scientists when people think the answers are absolute truth. Yeah exactly, people shouldn't assume that scientists are always right. Link to post Share on other sites
lapat67 Posted November 9, 2019 Share Posted November 9, 2019 To paraphrase Churchill : 'Indeed it has been said that' science 'is the worst form' for finding the truth 'except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.' Link to post Share on other sites
uhtred Posted November 10, 2019 Share Posted November 10, 2019 On 11/2/2019 at 12:40 PM, DarkStormyKnight said: Yeah exactly, people shouldn't assume that scientists are always right. Scientists are very aware that that they can be wrong. The other side of that though is that they also have an idea of what sorts of things have been cross checked in a huge number of ways, as opposed to which ones are not all the certain yet. For example dark matter and dark energy likely exist, but the verification is limited and its still possible (though very unlikely) that there is another explanation. That is different from special relativity, or to some extent even general relativity which have been tested in a huge number of ways and are fantastically unlikely to be wrong (within the energy scales where they have been tested). Some topics like climate change have a different issue: definitions. Do humans cause climate change - certainly, to some extent. If you do anything at all it will cause changes that ripple outwards. So the real question has to be phrased much more carefully - what percentage of the change in the total energy content of the atmosphere, and oceans can be attributed to the difference between humans using, or not using fossil fuels. (but even that isn't precise enough, because are we assuming energy was generated some other way?. It rapidly gets difficult to even define the question Link to post Share on other sites
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