To be fair, not all claims are subject to laboratory experiments and statistical tests. Many historical and inferential sciences require nuanced analyses of data and a convergence of evidence from multiple lines of inquiry that point to an unmistakable conclusion. Just as detectives employ the convergence of evidence technique to deduce who most likely committed a crime, scientists employ the method to determine the likeliest explanation for a particular phenomenon.
Cosmologists reconstruct the history of the universe by integrating data from cosmology, astronomy, astrophysics, spectroscopy, general relativity and quantum mechanics. Geologists reconstruct the history of Earth through a convergence of evidence from geology, geophysics and geochemistry.
Archaeologists piece together the history of a civilization from pollen grains, kitchen middens, potshards, tools, works of art, written sources and other site-specific artifacts. Climate scientists prove anthropogenic global warming from the environmental sciences, planetary geology, geophysics, glaciology, meteorology, chemistry, biology, ecology, among other disciplines.
Evolutionary biologists uncover the history of life on Earth from geology, paleontology, botany, zoology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, genetics, and so on.
Once an inferential or historical science is well established through the accumulation of positive evidence, however, it is just as sound as a laboratory or experimental science.
For creationists to disprove evolution, for example, they need to unravel all these independent lines of evidence as well as construct a rival theory that can explain them better than the theory of evolution. The principle of positive evidence applies to all claims. Skeptics are from Missouri, the Show-Me state. Show me a Sasquatch body. Show me the archaeological artifacts from Atlantis. Show me a Ouija board that spells words with securely blindfolded participants.
Show me the evidence that alternative medicines work better than placebos. Show me an ET or take me to the Mothership. Show me the Intelligent Designer. Show me God. Most people scientists included treat the God question separate from all these other claims. They are right to do so as long as the particular claim in question cannot—even in principle—be examined by science. But what might that include? Most religious claims are testable, such as prayer positively influencing healing.
In this case, controlled experiments to date show no difference between prayed-for and not-prayed-for patients. And beyond such controlled research, why does God only seem to heal illnesses that often go away on their own?
What would compel me to believe would be something unequivocal, such as if an amputee grew a new limb. Amphibians can do it. Surely an omnipotent deity could do it. Many Iraqi War vets eagerly await divine action. There is one mystery I will concede that science may not be able to answer, and that is the question of what existed before our universe began. One answer is the multiverse. According to the theory, multiple universes each had their own genesis, and some of these universes gave birth perhaps through collapsing black holes to baby universes, one of which was ours.
There is no positive evidence for this conjecture, but neither is there positive evidence for the traditional answer to the question—God. And in both cases, we are left with the reductio ad absurdum question of what came before the multiverse or God. Which is not intrinsically bad, but is something to cause concern, nonetheless.
When bad science becomes a dogma within a particular discipline, it can cause serious damage to our institutions. For instance, eugenics programs implemented bad science across all of America. Especially because we knew very little about genetics at the time. We did not know at the time that the genes for schizophrenia were also important for the immune system , yet a eugenicist would have certainly encouraged the sterilization of those who had schizophrenia in the family; we did not know about recessive traits , recessive traits which would have been deemed desirable by eugenicists, if only they were readily visible to the human eye; and we certainly still do not know even today what traits make for a healthy population versus a healthy individual, and what trade-offs have to be made between those two.
But eugenics is not the only form of bad science which harms our political and social institutions. Bad climate science harms our political initiatives toward climate protection; terrible understandings of evolutionary theory lead to bad social policies: i.
So, unless we are skeptical about science, we are going to be exposed to the errors made by scientists. In some cases, the error is minor, like some inflation in our currency; however, in other cases, like forced sterilization, the error is massive! To no surprise, when scientists develop in their career, they gain more authority and acceptance, usually. And as much holds true for their ideas, usually. Which seems great, because that then creates a sort of meritocracy, in theory.
As scientists become more experienced and grasp their subjects better, they are considered to be more legitimate. However, for every yard gained by a scientist is another yard a new idea must go. No one can doubt their theories or the validity of their experiments. A few consequences can come from this, but one important consequence is the lack of new ideas and therefore new innovations. If we only value well established theories and place no significance into doubting those well established theories, then we will never have anything but well established and old theories.
Which has pros and cons. Horses were a magnificent thing to have, they allowed you to travel to far off places in shorter amounts of time, but automobiles were better. A horse is a good thing, but a car is a better thing. And in order to get a car, we needed to encumber risk — the con — for better modes of travel. New theories are less tested and so more risky, not only to our research funds but even to our health: i.
So, some skepticism seems reasonably important for science, because a science without skepticism has neither new ideas nor new innovations to better the quality of human life. Who conducted it? Since these are only simulations, there are bound to be factors that exist in the real world that are not taken into consideration in the study, and vice-versa — unavoidable errors that exist purely because of simulation. Science denial, says Dennis W. Denialism in science obviously leads to more harm than good.
He thinks it is just a few thousand years old. Charlie cannot prove any collusion or coverups. Thus, Charlie rejects evidence provided by actual experts and supplements it with his own, private conclusions. In short: Healthy skepticism demands evidence. Denialism rejects sound evidence when it is provided. To this end, in general, we should favor the result with more evidence and choose the answer that has been intensively and repeatedly verified by many.
At the same time, scientists and researchers should not favor provocative results over standard and far more likely ones.
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