"Science is an amazing thing. But it has a credibility issue that it earned. Should we fix the credibility situation by brainwashing skeptical citizens to believe in science despite its spotty track record, or is society’s current level of skepticism healthier than it looks? Maybe science is what needs to improve, not the citizens."
- #ScottAddams
https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/02/02/sciences-biggest-fail/
#HatTip to #DavidChapman for the link, found in this typically insightful piece:
https://meaningness.com/nutrition
@strypey I didn't like this article.
The author puts in the word "science" a whole lot of things: the scientific method, the governmental choices based on scientific research, the opinions of some scientists, the media portrait of it... those are different players in the game.
Saying "science was pretty damned cocky about being right" doesn't really make sense. Who was cocky? The journalists? The scientist?
Science in itself is just a method. The results from scientists are usually packed with "maybe" and "further research is needed". What the author says, "we are totally sure the answer is X", that is bad science, and seldom seen.
If you want to make a public policy or a diet based on it feel free, but I wouldn't blame the method.
The last paragraph looks like really just rhetoric.
@arteteco he means the "science" people are referring to when they say "science says ...". The aggregate of all the people qualified to call themselves scientists and present their research results as scientific. I think the author makes it quite clear that the failure mode he identifies is theirs, and separate from the follow-on failures by governments, media.etc.
Sure, it sucks that top nutrition counseling might not be enough to fix the top diseases in the west, but then we already knew that considering the ubiquity of literature on the topic for a long time.
Not to mention that the results of interventional studies which show a high rate of success discerning the mechanisms of serum HDL, dietary Saturated fat, and oxidative stress markers as it pertains to certain foods - when laid atop that of these less intensive methods - certainly point to a particular trend. If we're talking about science in aggregate I'd say its fair to weight results according to their rigour, which is what other replies in this thread are nodding towards when they mention institutions or other secondary bodies.
Sample size, budget, and peer review ain't everything, and its science that tells us that in any case.
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@seasharp
> that failure mode itself is an application of the scientific method
This kind of apologetics is exactly what Scott is critizing. People qualified to speak for Science told us to avoid dietary fat at all costs, even if that meant replacing it with sugar and exessive carbs. People died. Science fucked up bad. People's trust in it is eroded. You can say that's how science is supposed to work, but I don't think so, and besides, claiming that won't fix the problem.
@arteteco
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I hope I'm getting the point here
You that the science "fucked up".
Science didn't fucked up. It guesses wrong and corrects itself with time. That is the scientific method in action. It's not like Newton fucked up because Einstein disprove it, you need Newton to have Einstein, it's a neverending process.
And in that process, on a medical level, we got so many huge, awesome stuff that they are hard to count. And yes, many mistakes too along the way, and surely many present at the moment. So what?
Something which has a high consensus it's still your best bet.
the author says:
science has earned its lack of credibility with the public
Really? With the scientific method we know stuff like the evolution, we grow our food, we fly, we write at this very moment...
I don't even think this trust is really eroded. People take planes, take medicines, undergoes surgeries, and so on, all without too many doubts.
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@arteteco you are making a common mistake of fudging science and technology together. These are related, obviously but they're not the same thing. The problem we're discussing is not about material tooling, like planes, it's about epistemology. What do we know, how do we know it, and what are the limits of each kind of knowledge quest. Science probably can't tell us what a healthy diet is at all, let alone for each person. The fuckup was claiming that it can and had.
@seasharp
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I'm not sure if I'm making that mistake. If you take a plane you trust the technology and by proxy the research and the knowledge (and the statistics) that confirms that it is "safe".
If you don't trust the method you don't trust the results of the method neither, so I don't see why you can't make an epistemological argument by starting from a tool.
It's like, if I do not believe in those saying homeopathy works I do not take those water-pills. If I did take them, I'd recognize that I trust the research and its methods.
