To think that people have a weird attitude to science?

[malificent7]

Either completely fearful and mistrustful of it such as anti vaxxers, luddites etc or a complete slavish devotion to it....so when some post articles in order to prove a point without critically evaluating it.
Science has done so much and given us modern medicine, electricity etc but has also contributed to global warming via the combustion engine, chernobyl and thalidomide.
I am currently studying for a vocational nhs course which has loads of science and whilst it is very interesting and I am passionate about my career, I am an artist at heart and sorely miss my painting. Trouble is, most money is being poured into stem subjects at the expense of the arts.
Additionally, although I like to think that I am rational i don't think science can explain everything. For example , i believe in the soul and many sciency people at work including myself, think our hospital is haunted.
So not entirely sure what my aibu is but want to initiate an interesting discussion.
Should we trust science completely or is it a new religion that should be questioned....and quite rightly?
I guess my take is that science is a human concept and that humans are imperfect so therefore science must be but it helps us try to categoriseand control our world.

Meh. Science is bought and sold. Studies need to be financed. Uncomfortable research is discredited. And junk science is worse than religion. Gender science for example.

YANBU OP
A lot of what was called science 100 or 200 years ago seems laughable now, some of it is still valid.
It’s crazy to imagine everything we think of as scientific fact now will turn out to be correct. It doesn’t mean we can’t trust any scientific consensus though.

A lot of what was called science 100 or 200 years ago seems laughable now, some of it is still valid.

Well, a lot of theories which achieved traction in popular culture seem laughable now. That doesn't mean that they were accepted as proven by the scientific consensus.

As the scientific method took hold there were lots of things which had long been assumed which were eventually challenged but I can't actually think of a good example of something which was largely accepted as proven fact by science but then got completely reversed.

We knew of evolution long before Darwin showed it could cause speciation and demonstrated the mechanism. His ideas have been massively refined since.

The planets still exist, even if we got the way they move wrong at first.

Our conception of an atom has completely changed, but the atomic model of a century ago still explains most of Chemistry very well.

Stuff like Phlogiston, Aether, Race Theory or Lamarkian Evolution were never accepted fact. There were scientists researching those ideas but they took on a life of their own long after being disproven.

I think (as PPs have said) the problem comes in the application of Science. In medicine, for example; lobotomies, electro-shock therapy and chemical/surgical gender reassignment all became popularised long before the evidence was strong enough to support their widespread use. There was good evidence of the danger of smoking for decades before it was widely accpeted.

In all those cases it benefited someone financially to represent slim evidence as certainty (or the opposite for smoking).

YANBU OP. As PP have said, there is a lot of misunderstanding of science and it seems that too many people use it as a gotcha in internet discussions with people they disagree with. Even when the discussion is not about scientific matters. This has contributed to the divisions that you talk about and people digging their heels in.

The weoponisation of science to win internet arguments has damaged people's perception, trust and analysis of it.

Yes. So woo followers on the one side, and on the other I think about some of the skeptic groups, which seem to have an extremely naive view of science. Scientism is rife.

FWIW, I think the two sides tend to feed off each other somewhat.

The problem I think is there is generally crappy education about the philosophical underpinnings of science. My husband is a scientist, but also studied some philosophy, and he found it notable that in his science degree there was very little about that topic. It's not something you see much of in mainstream education at all. And a lot of the popular public scientists - Neil deGrasse Tyson comes to mind - also are dismissive of it and make it clear when they open their mouths they know nothing about it. (Though as an aside, Bill Nye gained a lot of credibility in my view after having made a dumb comment about the topic, and then when someone wrote him and suggested he needed to look into it more, he did and really made an effort and came out and said he had been mistaken.)

The weoponisation of science to win internet arguments has damaged people's perception, trust and analysis of it.

Nonsense. The people that are being argued with in these 'internet arguments' are the kind of woo-peddlers who can't see a feather in the garden without imagining it's a spirit communication, or grasp that well-researched phenomena like hypnogogic hallucinations are rather more likely than a hostile supernatural presence in your bedroom.

They have little ability to sift through their own experiences for rational explanations, even widely-understood obvious ones. I don't think it's the 'weaponisation' of science that's at issue here.

Absolutely it has, @Sapiophile

Over the last few months I have come to the conclusion that the overwhelming majority of people are utter dimwits who wouldn't recognise scientific proof if they fell over it.

You have conflated beliefs with science there @Sapiophile. One of those beliefs is about the supernatural, the other is your belief that people who for a myriad of reasons believe in such things, are stupid.

Neither of these beliefs has a scientific basis.

@DioneTheDiabolist

You have conflated beliefs with science there *@Sapiophile*. One of those beliefs is about the supernatural, the other is your belief that people who for a myriad of reasons believe in such things, are stupid.

Neither of these beliefs has a scientific basis.

No. Numerous well-attested scientific studies do not merely 'believe' in the existence of hypnogogic hallucinations, they have studied them in the conditions of sleep clinics as verifiable neurological disorders.

The people who nonetheless think that there is a supernatural being radiating spite from the corner of their bedroom are doing the 'believing', usually in culturally-specific ways.

Neither of these are 'beliefs'.

What you might think of the intelligence of someone who has been alerted to the existence of hypnogogic/hypnopompic hallucinations, but continues to believe in the supernatural explanation is a matter of opinion.

To be a scientist, you essentially have to assume you are going to be wrong about most things and when you are right it because you are only right about something RIGHT NOW. You essentially have to be rather childlike and not be afraid to say I don't know.

Most people see doubt and not being afraid to be wrong about things as a weakness, not strengths. Consider the amount of scrutiny any scientist is expected to recieve and to give at any part of their career, compared to a politician for instance.

Now, politicians succeed because they SOUND right or you want them to be right - you only have to look at AIBU to see that anyone who admits to not knowing something in politics isn't fit for the job. However, politics would benefit greatly by having politicians admitting the limits of their knowledge and when they don't know something.

After all, stupid people are the ones with all the answers and the certainty.

Bumping this thread as its quite important.

I agree that this is a very important issue @JohnMcCainsDeathStare and am surprised that this thread has not attracted more replies. Perhaps that is because "the adults in the room" avoid such discussions knowing how they are liable to turn out.🤔

Just an observation on science and the arts. My closest group of friends all met at university doing various science degrees or medicine but met through music groups rather than our degrees. A not insignificant proportion of players in amateur music groups I've ever played with have had science backgrounds. It was the suggestion that there should be some form of arts literacy assessment by a PP which prompted this!

I'm aware of that but then if we don't have these discussions then we won't reach people. I don't think we should write people off even if they are entrenched in their ideas - it could also be that people around them literally never talk about these topics. You cannot reach everyone, not everyone will think about things but putting this out here and trying to reach people where they are is not futile.
I don't think public discourse is getting worse - it mostly seems that way since we can see and access a lot more information much easier than in the past. However, the quality of such information is also variable and it is very seductive to grab onto the sources that fuel your own biases.

it could also be that people around them literally never talk about these topics.
Or talk about them in such narrow terms that beliefs and opinions (these are two very different things btw) become entrenched. Add that to the vast amount of information available on the net to confirm any bias and it gets difficult to the point that many knowledgable people can't be bothered to enter the discussion.

There is also the concern that most people are not curious as adults - this is very harmful to children as it can conflate curiosity = childishness - killing curiousity. There is the fact that most people want simple answers to complex problems. Even when solutions appear simple, it is seldom such when evaluated further.

I struggled greatly at school since most of my peers were so incurious but now I can see it as a general problem not just specific to my school and local demographic.

Also to get back to the OPs point, science also suffers if there is insufficient money going into the arts. You have to be able to think independently, think imaginatively and also have at least a working knowledge of philosophy. The Socratic method and Cynicism in general has been critical to my sucess, but learning about ethics and empathy also lead to being able from the basic viewpoint of risk assessments in the workplace through to evaluating the impact of my research on a broader societal context.
Not to mention as a highly visual person, being able to storyboard a paper/report/presentation is a valuble skill in disemminating information. Also, knowledge of colour theory is critical in interpreting diagrams and ensuring accessibility for peope who are colourblind or viewing in black and white.

So undermining arts funding also undermines science - hardly surprising since the current government has an uneasy relationship with science, facts or independant thinking in general.

I would recommend the Youtube Richard Feymann video on scientific method to anyone, it summarises science perfectly.

I think the reputation of science has been damaged because either the scientists themselves or the journalists reporting it conceal the uncertainities and mix poltics with science.

You often hear in the news:
Dr X says we need a sugar tax to reduce obesity;
Professor Y says more action need on climate change; or today
SAGE scientists call for short lockdown

None of those are scientific statements, they are all expressing poltical views.

It also doesn't help that scientists are being given a public profile so the government can hide behind "we followed the science". Science can inform policy but it can't tell the government what it should do.