"Democracy is Teetering"

^ The context here has nothing to do with "sciences" per se, methinks; or at least the pivotal aspect is not that.

I already said this in my "first" post (that you quoted and initiated this dialogue): 

Archisorcerus wrote: I'm a bit off-topic, though. Sorry.

I say let's move on from this (off-)topic.

^ "Think like we do." doesn't necessarily mean that, "We are 100% percent sure about the truth of our theories."

They want all the people to believe in a cartoon-like world where even the craziest things can be possible.

I don't buy them. I'm a solid materialist.

^ I didn't say that all the conspiracy theorists "invite" others to question things. But, when one does that, s/he means what I said.

To clarify: Previously I drew a distinction between proper science and improper science. Proper science relies on experimentation, while improper science does not. It is in that context that I said that with proper science, it is "extremely easy to know the truth", by which I meant the result of experiments. The experiments might be quite complex and difficult to perform of course, and in that respect science is hard. But with a proper scientific theory it is really easy to think of an experiment that would falsify it, and if that experiment is done but fails (to falsify the theory), we gain confidence in the theory. On the other hand, in improper science there are no experiments we could do to gain that confidence, so it is extremely hard to know anything with any degree of certainty. I was going to post the Ioannidis paper, but someone beat me to it. I'm not sure why they posted it, but the point I am making is essentially that most research conducted today is improper science, which is fundamentally why there is such a high risk of it turning out to be wrong and, in effect, leading to the now common impression among laypeople that "science is always changing".

SteveG wrote: The most wonderful thing about living in a democracy is the right to state your opinions without being censored. You can't yell fire in a movie theater but you can say almost anything else. There are also civil law procedures for those engaging in public misinformation. See Rudy Giuliani. A wonderful check against these koo-koos.

MikeEnRegalia wrote: Lewian wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ In proper science it is extremely easy to know the truth: You form a hypothesis, the hypothesis makes a certain prediction, you and many other scientists perform experiments to (in-)validate the hypothesis. Chances are you are not a scientist, otherwise I'd be very surprised by what you just wrote. This is a very naive view that is clearly not in line with how modern science works. Thanks for educating me. By "validating" I did indeed mean (failing to) falsify a hypothesis. Scientific theories are never "proven to be correct", they just have never been shown to be incorrect. Which is, as others have pointed out, why proper scientists never speak in absolute terms.

omphaloskepsis wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ In proper science it is extremely easy to know the truth: You form a hypothesis, the hypothesis makes a certain prediction, you and many other scientists perform experiments to (in-)validate the hypothesis. Unfortunately nowadays many things masquerade as science, and the way to recognise these improper hypotheses is that you cannot design any experiment to (in-)validate them.  Perhaps you are not a scientist as someone suggested.  However, your shorthand description of the "scientific method" was valid.  The experiment must be also be repeatable so that the scientific community can perform the same experiment.     Afterward, you apply a stat test on the experimental outcome. A t-test* is an example of such a statistical test. There are many stat tests you can perform, depending on the setup of your experiment.  There are protocols for writing up the results and presenting your results to the scientific community.  You did an excellent job of describing the basics of the scientific method so that a non-scientist can understand!   Scientists often report results as a correlation.  Even if the correlation is above 98%, scientists use the word "suggests" instead of stating the hypothesis as fact.  It's difficult to upgrade a hypothesis to a scientific theory.  For a hypothesis to become a theory it may take thousands of experiments.  And not one of those experiments can be shown to disprove the hypothesis.  You can imagine what it takes to upgrade a theory to a law.  Millions of experiments have been performed on the basics of The Theory of Evolution. Not one experiment disproved Evolution, yet Evolution is still a Theory.  * A t-test is a statistical test that is used to compare the means of two groups. It is often used in hypothesis testing to determine whether a process or treatment actually has an effect on the population of interest, or whether two groups are different from one another.

omphaloskepsis wrote:   Perhaps you are not a scientist as someone suggested.  However, your shorthand description of the "scientific method" was valid.  The experiment must be also be repeatable so that the scientific community can perform the same experiment.     Afterward, you apply a stat test on the experimental outcome. A t-test* is an example of such a statistical test. There are many stat tests you can perform, depending on the setup of your experiment.  There are protocols for writing up the results and presenting your results to the scientific community.

Edited by Lewian - April 08 2024 at 15:19

progaardvark wrote: Sorry to be a nitpicker, but scientific hypotheses, theories, and laws are not upgraded from one to the other. Please see: https://www.livescience.com/21457-what-is-a-law-in-science-definition-of-scientific-law.html

Edited by omphaloskepsis - April 08 2024 at 13:26

MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ In proper science it is extremely easy to know the truth: You form a hypothesis, the hypothesis makes a certain prediction, you and many other scientists perform experiments to (in-)validate the hypothesis. Unfortunately nowadays many things masquerade as science, and the way to recognise these improper hypotheses is that you cannot design any experiment to (in-)validate them.

Edited by omphaloskepsis - April 08 2024 at 11:57