Why We Don't Believe in Science

Hypatian wrote:

In any case, this does not throw "science" into doubt. It just says "when you do science, DO SCIENCE".

No, it doesn't. But what passes for science these days isn't always the real thing, and it's very important to understand the difference. There are many fields of science whose theories and results are not easily verifiable or testable. Climatology, sociology, and economics are just a few examples where that's true. It doesn't mean those fields are useless (far from it) but it's important not to trust them in the same way as, say, a well-known chemical reaction.

Economics isn't even science.

Malor wrote:

Economics isn't even science.

It is repeatedly referred to as science and defined as a social science. Indeed, that is largely my point - to implement economic theories, politicians and others will state their economic ideas as scientific facts, trading on the reputation of real science in order to gain moral authority.

I think it's much more likely that people's resistance to acknowledging things like evolution has much more to do with other people's attempts to subvert moral authority rather than with the actual facts of the matter. It's a very human reaction to a common human problem, and it occurs across the spectrum of human ideas - for example, nuclear power, animal testing, or biotech crops. Indeed, it's a reaction that helped produce the scientific method in the first place.

Oh FFS, climatology? That's physics; it's a world away from sociology or the "soft sciences". Give me a break. You're buying into the propaganda here, Aetius.

Robear wrote:

Oh FFS, climatology? That's physics; it's a world away from sociology or the "soft sciences". Give me a break. You're buying into the propaganda here, Aetius.

It's hard to have reproducible tests outside of computer models, though. Which means your ability to go "Do this, it does this. QED, Female Doggoes." is limited.

Robear wrote:

Oh FFS, climatology? That's physics; it's a world away from sociology or the "soft sciences". Give me a break. You're buying into the propaganda here, Aetius.

Actually, I think you just proved his point.

Actually, I don't, Rosenhane. There's a concerted propaganda effort to denigrate climate science, but the basics have been in place and functioning since the 19th century. Climate science uses techniques and physical principles that are shared in common with many other fields, and have been shown to be quantifiably accurate - accurate to within a well-understood degree - in those fields as well. The fact that there are uncertainties in modeling is well-acknowledged, and does not make climate science any softer for that understanding.

Note that I'm not suggesting that we take the word of scientists uncritically, but to cite climate science as if it's purpose is to push an agenda is just wrong. It's science, and it's mostly physics.

It's hard to have reproducible tests outside of computer models, though. Which means your ability to go "Do this, it does this. QED, Female Doggoes." is limited.

Nope. We've had replication of the basic principles for over a hundred years, experimentally. Sure, it's hard to do an experiment on the world's climate, but it's easier to *measure* it. We have loads of real-world calibrations available for the various models, which use the same modeling techniques used successfully in many unrelated fields. And since we can back-predict, as well as observe, we can not only add to the data and enhance the models, but by looking at their performance against past data, we can evaluate which parts of them are more accurate than others.

The important thing with modeling is not perfection; it's understanding the degree of accuracy involved. For what they do, climate models are among the most tested models out there, and they benefit from that.

You know, several "chemical reaction" papers that claimed to solve the issues surrounding easy water splitting or hydrogen storage spring to mind..... Of course, those papers were very light on details purely because their institutions or financial backers required NDAs and whatnot which restricted the flow of *real* science.*

I can also cite instances for other heterogeneous catalytic reactions that were heavily censored but the results reported - not to mention biological processes around genetic and resistance-based phenomena...

The end result is that, if you insist on this method of "science", you divest it from all censored commercial interests and instead have it controlled and funded primarily and exclusively by government departments that are sworn to 100% public access.....

* I should point out that the authors of those papers quite readily admitted, face-to-face (and after publication) that their processes were anything but efficient.

I'd be interested to know if the initial reaction to learning a "new fact / theory" is affected by conditioning the part of the brain that suppresses the "naive" instincts. In other words, if I learn a lot of facts and my "naive" instinct suppressor gets a good workout, am I going to start suppressing and doubting any facts that come my way?

I almost always drag any new concept over the "does this make sense based on my base understanding of science" processing and if it doesn't, I put it into the "not going to believe straight out" category.

I wonder if this is a biological effect or just a personality development.

Another question,

I wonder if teaching science as a set of theories rather than a set of facts has any effect on that brain development. I'm not too up on the subject, but my understanding is that a lot of evolution teaching is presented as, "here are several theories, you must choose the correct one". That seems very different to me than "what you thought was correct is wrong, here is the right answer". I would imagine it takes very different brain functions to perform the different functions and perhaps having children learn to discredit their beliefs is required before they can start to understand science even though science is much more about analyzing a range of plausible beliefs rather than blindly accepting one as fact.

PandaEskimo wrote:

I wonder if teaching science as a set of theories rather than a set of facts has any effect on that brain development. I'm not too up on the subject, but my understanding is that a lot of evolution teaching is presented as, "here are several theories, you must choose the correct one". That seems very different to me than "what you thought was correct is wrong, here is the right answer". I would imagine it takes very different brain functions to perform the different functions and perhaps having children learn to discredit their beliefs is required before they can start to understand science even though science is much more about analyzing a range of plausible beliefs rather than blindly accepting one as fact.

I don't know how it is in the US but in the UK "evolution" is a science-based theory. Therefore, there is no "choice" any more than there is when being taught Newtonian physics. Neither may be 100% correct, but then neither were ever presented as such in my recollection.

perhaps having children learn to discredit their beliefs is required before they can start to understand science even though science is much more about analyzing a range of plausible beliefs rather than blindly accepting one as fact

Having been in and studied science for a long period of my life i would stress that this is not what science is - any more than mathematics is personally rediscovering every "proof" of theory or whatever.

There is an inherent trust that you must allow in the teaching of any subject and, while you and any student may freely question that, to do otherwise would provide no structure or learning to a degree or undergraduate pastime.

Not every student can individually come to Newton's conclusions... however, given that base knowledge, given under trust and some object persuasion, they may build on it themselves.

I think what is meant is that (in the US) evolution is sometimes taught in conjunction with theories that preceded it and competed with it. The student is supposed to learn more about the process of science by looking at how the evidence changed the theories over time.

Robear wrote:

I think what is meant is that (in the US) evolution is sometimes taught in conjunction with theories that preceded it and competed with it. The student is supposed to learn more about the process of science by looking at how the evidence changed the theories over time.

I disagree. In the US evolution is taught alongside other theories that proceeded it and others that have no basis in science, and the intention is not to foster wonder and love for the beauty of science but rather to show how stupid science is because it isn't 100% right 100% of the time.

Edit: and like all things involving education, it is entirely dependent on where you live and what teacher you get. Mine was excellent and presented evolution in the same way he did any other topic, which is why I was amazed to later find out people didn't believe it was real. It would be like getting to high school and meeting people who believed in a geocentric universe.

kaostheory wrote:

Edit: and like all things involving education, it is entirely dependent on where you live and what teacher you get. Mine was excellent and presented evolution in the same way he did any other topic, which is why I was amazed to later find out people didn't believe it was real. It would be like getting to high school and meeting people who believed in a geocentric universe.

I hope you're kidding about the last bit. At any rate, same experience here. I live in the freaking bible belt, and Evolution was taught as fact. Past theories and how we got there were also discussed, like they were with atoms, cells, and astronomy.

To be clear, I'm stating 2 things.

1: Scientific discovery and the scientific method focuses on being skeptical of things. Someone states a hypothesis and then tries really hard to disprove it.

2: In places where people don't believe in evolution, I'm assuming they are "taught" it along side other "theories". They are not taught any of the theories as facts.

Taking these two together, teaching evolution alongside other "theories" seems to fit more with the scientific method than just teaching a bunch of things as facts.

Of course, you can't expect everyone to test everything when they are learning and I'm not saying that, but I think that learning in school is more so about learning how to learn than learning facts. I would rather a child come away a skeptic and someone who tries to poke holes at suspect "truths" than someone who knows physics or the details of evolution. Let them learn stats later on and with their broader life experiences begin to judge when we can be "reasonably sure" something is true.

You can learn facts. It's much more difficult to learn to be an independent learner and someone who can contribute critically to a project.

kaostheory wrote:

Edit: and like all things involving education, it is entirely dependent on where you live and what teacher you get. Mine was excellent and presented evolution in the same way he did any other topic, which is why I was amazed to later find out people didn't believe it was real. It would be like getting to high school and meeting people who believed in a geocentric universe.

There's a person at the company I work for that refused to accept that 51% of an item was "most" of it. He said "most" could only be used when you have 70% or more.

Stengah wrote:
kaostheory wrote:

Edit: and like all things involving education, it is entirely dependent on where you live and what teacher you get. Mine was excellent and presented evolution in the same way he did any other topic, which is why I was amazed to later find out people didn't believe it was real. It would be like getting to high school and meeting people who believed in a geocentric universe.

There's a person at the company I work for that refused to accept that 51% of an item was "most" of it. He said "most" could only be used when you have 70% or more.

At the risk of taking this off track, I think this is interesting. I would actually agree with your co worker; "most" needs more than 51% to be accurate. Or in other words, there's a quantitative difference between "over half" and "most." Also "several" is more than "a few" which is more than "a couple."

edit: also, as I pointed out above - many people *do* operate as though it were a geocentric universe. I polled several people - both friends and strangers - and all of them had to mentally squash the idea that the sun doesn't literally rise and set before admitting it was true.

Seth wrote:
Stengah wrote:
kaostheory wrote:

Edit: and like all things involving education, it is entirely dependent on where you live and what teacher you get. Mine was excellent and presented evolution in the same way he did any other topic, which is why I was amazed to later find out people didn't believe it was real. It would be like getting to high school and meeting people who believed in a geocentric universe.

There's a person at the company I work for that refused to accept that 51% of an item was "most" of it. He said "most" could only be used when you have 70% or more.

At the risk of taking this off track, I think this is interesting. I would actually agree with your co worker; "most" needs more than 51% to be accurate. Or in other words, there's a quantitative difference between "over half" and "most." Also "several" is more than "a few" which is more than "a couple."

No, there isn't.

No. There's a qualitative difference, in as much as it's somewhat disingenuous to use the word "most" to refer to the 51% side of a 51-49 split, but it's still technically correct. There's better words to use, there's even more accurate words to use, but it's not incorrect.

It's even technically accurate to say "most people (in this population sample) have brown eyes" when the percentage of people with brown eyes is only 40%. So long as brown eyes are the largest group you're using the word correctly.

"Qualitative" is the word I meant. ITT we learn Seth has trouble with switching those two words. Whoops.

I tested 2 of the questions of this article on my 9 year old daughter. Without hesitation she got the answers correct.

The earth revolves around the sun.
If dropped at the same place, a big object and a small object will hit the ground at the same time.

Education is key.

Stengah wrote:

There's a person at the company I work for that refused to accept that 51% of an item was "most" of it. He said "most" could only be used when you have 70% or more.

I wonder where this usage comes from, because I've come to use the word in written material with about the same percentage in mind. I agree it's wrong, but it's just one of those usages I must have internalized at some point without realizing it.

What's odder about the brain is that if you told me, "John won the election by having the most votes," I wouldn't think that he had gotten over 70% of the vote.

goman wrote:

If dropped at the same place, a big object and a small object will hit the ground at the same time.

This one can be confusing too because air resistance makes this untrue in the majority of real world scenarios. Almost every single thing I'm looking at - paperwork, keyboard, wires, sunglasses, my clothing, etc, will land well after a cannonball in this test.

Seth wrote:
goman wrote:

If dropped at the same place, a big object and a small object will hit the ground at the same time.

This one can be confusing too because air resistance makes this untrue in the majority of real world scenarios. Almost every single thing I'm looking at - paperwork, keyboard, wires, sunglasses, my clothing, etc, will land well after a cannonball in this test.

Well air resistance only really factors when things that are very, very non-aerodynamic. So the paperwork and clothing will likely take longer but a keyboard or sunglasses will likely fall at the same rate (or a rate not sufficiently distinguishable). Anyway isn't the formal expression of the test usually couched in terms of it happening in a vacuum?

Funkenpants wrote:

if you told me, "John won the election by having the most votes," I wouldn't think that he had gotten over 70% of the vote.

"most of" is different from "the most".

And this all is why when you're doing anything other than researching how people think about things, you're better off using quantitative measurements. (Including when reporting informally about research. "John won the election by having most of the votes (66.91%)" vs "John won the election by having the most votes (66.91%)" and now there's no confusion.)

DanB wrote:
Seth wrote:
goman wrote:

If dropped at the same place, a big object and a small object will hit the ground at the same time.

This one can be confusing too because air resistance makes this untrue in the majority of real world scenarios. Almost every single thing I'm looking at - paperwork, keyboard, wires, sunglasses, my clothing, etc, will land well after a cannonball in this test.

Well air resistance only really factors when things that are very, very non-aerodynamic. So the paperwork and clothing will likely take longer but a keyboard or sunglasses will likely fall at the same rate (or a rate not sufficiently distinguishable). Anyway isn't the formal expression of the test usually couched in terms of it happening in a vacuum?

Yes. I believe we are all familiar with that thanks to the Growing Pains season five episode "Mike, the Teacher." Oh Mike, if only you'd read the full sentence before conducting the experiment!

If dropped at the same place, a big object and a small object will hit the ground at the same time.

Very dense objects will typically hit first, and we intuitively understand this. We just don't understand why -- that air resistance makes less and less difference the denser an object is. (density = high mass, low surface area = less air friction).

Yes, sunglasses and keys won't be much different, but dropped from a high place, a cannonball will hit well before sunglasses will.

Things don't drop faster because they're heavy, they drop faster because they're dense, and only in atmosphere. But the intuition becomes that heavy objects fall faster.

But I think the shock value is still there to prove a point: that changes in mass do not change the rate at which the objects accelerate towards the ground.

I think the intuitive perception is that the bowling ball will hit the ground much sooner if not twice as quickly as a pair of sunglasses. When in reality, the bowling ball will hit maybe half a foot sooner if dropped from 3 stories up.

The results are enough to kill the preconception and lend credence to the physics.

What is heavier? a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers?

goman wrote:

What is heavier? a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers?

I was actually planning on posting this for comparison. Even when you intellectually know the answer, there is a subtle, instinctive pull at the back of your mind.