It’s interesting seeing this point, which has been around the internet for at least a decade now, start to get printed in what are otherwise mainstream publications these days. I don’t know that I buy it, but I certainly understand and see the merit of the argument.
Vox and others stealth-editing articles, people yelling at you if you don't blindly believe the CDC/WHO, etc.
Science by its very nature is heretical, questioning, skeptical. "Belief" in science is exactly what we should not be doing, yet is pushed by the academic elites.
I’m slightly surprised to see this line of thinking in HN. The so-called “Belief” in science is not driven by blind faith that what people are saying are true. It’s that you understand that before something is believed it goes through a rigorous system of fact checking / experimental confirmation. So if something is considered by people from different fields as true, then it likely is. But as you said, it’s questioning and skeptical so if new data is put forward then it can adjust. Science isn’t just about being right, it’s a system of truth finding and understanding.
>> The so-called “Belief” in science is not driven by blind faith that what people are saying are true. It’s that you understand that before something is believed it goes through a rigorous system of fact checking / experimental confirmation.
Right. None of which happened with the proclamations by the CDC/WHO who also had potential perverse incentives. Globally appointed scientists are not the arbiters of science. That is my biggest issue with the "believe science" movement.
> So if something is considered by people from different fields as true, then it likely is.
This is actually very unscientific, a good chunk of what we currently hold to be true within science disproved previous science. A good example of really strong, good and useful science that was later replaced is Newtonian mechanics.
In reality, science is never finished, but the prevailing view throughout time is "we have most of it figured out" and time and time again this is proven false. Hopefully it continues to be.
And it might not be comforting to confront, but yes, the vast majority of people's belief in science is not analytical or rational, it is dogmatic. It doesn't mean the particular scientific things people believe are wrong, but most people, even scientists themselves, hold a lot of beliefs dogmatically and the idea that it is rational is protection of the ego and comparable to belief in divine wisdom.
You only highlighted one sentence of what I said but left out the part where I said:
> if new data is put forward then it can adjust.
Which is essentially the same as the ideas you put forward.
Also, coming from a Physics background, I would argue that to say that Newtonian mechanics has been completely replaced is false. There are more accurate models of the universe especially as we go to a quantum level or levels approaching the speed of light, but for most models it still works. As the saying goes, “all models are wrong, but some models are more useful than others”. Newtonian mechanics still works, but it doesn’t work all the time.
But main thing is, we are in agreement that Science is not finished; there is a balance between being open to knowing that there might be a better model compared to what we know now, but until it disproves what we know now (or explains things out current models can’t and can be verified experimentally), there is no reason to not trust our currently accepted and verified ones.
> It’s that you understand that before something is believed it goes through a rigorous system of fact checking / experimental confirmation
To be honest, the way you’ve phrased this makes it sound like you’ve totally bought in to state secular scientismic dogma.
The entire concept of “fact checking” (outsourcing your rational facilities to journalists and e-celebs) is diametrically opposed to actual scientific thought.
It’s also completely false that before “something is believed” (by which I think you mean is ensconced as scientismic dogma by the cathedral) it is subject to actual “experimental confirmation” (under any reasonable interpretation of that term). How many times has the FDA changed the official “nutrition science” dietary recommendations over the last 50 years? The entire time, they’ve claimed their approach has been evidence-based, which may be true in some narrow sense, but the predictive confidence of their claims are so bad and noisy that they keep changing the official “scientific” beliefs.
This is not unique to nutrition. Many politically relevant fields have very strong-sounding dogmatic claims made from on high with what is actually extremely weak evidence.
I don't really buy it, it seems to suggest that scientific discoveries are not questioned and changed constantly, when they absolutely are. It's not accurate to always refer to them as "beliefs."
scientism isn't typically practiced by scientists themselves, but atheist types who love pop-science and "science communicators" and the like. There's a ton of tropes associated with this belief system that have nothing to do with the actual process of scientific discovery. The Big Bang Theory as a show panders to this type, with physics techno-babble and guest appearances by Stephen Hawking (RIP) and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
You seem to be describing a stereotype and not an actual person, and also that seems to be conflating it with an actual view on religious beliefs (atheism). So I can't say I know what you mean.
There's no conflating. Scientism-types being atheist (or anti-theist) seems to be a pretty universal pattern in my experience. If I called someone a bible-basher, it wouldn't be conflating to say they're a Christian - it's a prerequisite. It's also a stereotype, but if I were to call somebody a bible-basher you'd (presumably) know the kinds of character traits I was implying (sanctimonious, primarily).
But this feels like describing the colour blue - if you don't already know what it is, being on Hacker News, I don't think I can help you. Familiarising yourself with the philosophy of science (like Karl Popper's ideas for a start) and then looking at the way that many redditors and HNers talk about science (especially pop-science in astronomy and physics) or treat whitepapers, "new study finds" journalism etc would make you notice the difference.
I'm still not really sure what that's supposed to mean or why it's not conflation, many Christians that I've met have wildly varying views on the bible. I also don't see what the difference here is supposed to be -- in general, there is not a lot of fact checking happening on public social media, and if there is, it also has a lot of its own bias. I don't see that as being specific to comments on scientific articles or evidence of any kind of "scientism," it's just the usual confirmation bias.
I mean, I agree with you, it's not accurate to refer to "science" as "[a set of] beliefs" but that's sort of besides the point. The point others are making is that "believe the science" is not the mantra of a society that actually "does science" but one that "Practices The Science^(tm)".
I think it expresses doubt in ability of a layperson to make a rational judgement on merits of a particular scientific research or process rather than on science itself.
I don't understand what this is supposed to mean. There is nothing in the context of "science itself" besides that particular scientific research or process. That's what it's defined as. Did you mean something like: a layperson might be inclined to place higher value on scientific research performed by a personal friend or colleague? That's probably true in some cases, but it's not "scientism."
You sure are doing a lot of not understanding in here. Let me break it down for you: the vast majority of people who say things like "trust the science" don't have the first clue about what the science actually says. It's a dogmatically held belief to them.
That isn't to say that the problem does not occur in other types, or that they're wrong about what they believe just because they don't understand it.
>You sure are doing a lot of not understanding in here.
I mean, yes? I don't pretend to know everything about everyone.
>the vast majority of people who say things like "trust the science" don't have the first clue about what the science actually says. It's a dogmatically held belief to them.
I can't agree with this, if they would change their mind about it, it's not a dogmatic belief. You seem to be generalizing about a large number of people, have you asked all of them if they would be open to changing their mind, given new evidence?
Every christian that turned atheist held a dogmatic belief, changing your mind later doesn't change that it is dogmatic. And in my experience, most people need more than rational opposing viewpoint to change their minds about most things.
There's a difference between speculation and practicing belief, and what I see non-religous Americans practice is secular belief--that is--scientism. "Belief" in science. It's not speculation, because if it was, you might see people saying "I don't know, we'll wait and see" more often. Instead, I watch and read about people in America who are convinced of certain outcomes without any thought as to whether or not what they posit is true.
