[Document Still In Progress]
Let me start out by saying you can never be 100% sure about anything. That’s just not how science works. It’s true until it’s not true, and then you have to make adjustments to your beliefs according to the evidence. Let’s take for example the statement that the sun will rise tomorrow. It seems to have happened not only every day of our lives, but thanks to our study of astrophysics and geology it appears to have happened every day our planet has been in it’s current orbit. The possibility remains that it won’t rise tomorrow though. The Earth could stop spinning for some reason, a solar flare could obliterate the planet, we could encounter some unknown phenomena as it’s passing through our solar system…we could all be living in some sort of simulation where that particular functionality is turned off…as remote and ridiculous as these possibilities the chances are not zero….they are just very, very unlikely based on the information that we currently have, and that’s really the most you can say about anything…it is very highly likely the sun will rise tomorrow.
“You can’t trust science because it can be bought”
[Graphic: funding – scientific research – published results in scientific periodicals – interpretation articles by reporters ]
Modern science has many checks and balances to try and ensure trustworthy science. Publicly available data…peer review….periodical prestige…peer recognition amongst groups of similar scientists…scholastic recognition and institutional prestige. Watchdog agencies, accountability and article retraction…it’s not that bad science doesn’t happen…read Retraction Watch [retractionwatch.com], but in general bad science doesn’t last long. Retractionwatch.com is actually highly recommended reading as it touches on a lot of these points, with their stated intention being “Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process”.
The sentiment has some merit, after all in almost any situation it’s always a good idea to follow the money. Who is trying to tell you something and who’s paying them. The beauty of modern science is that bad science doesn’t last. Big Oil tried it…Big Tobacco too. Scientific research is paid for by companies, universities, and governments and published in scientific journals. The articles undergo peer review…after all who better to understand the intricacies of a particular subject then one’s peers and are generally published along with the supporting data. The scientific articles are read by reporters who report what they think are newsworthy findings.
Good science is good science. It doesn’t care where it comes from or who pays for it. That said, transparency, accountability, repeatability are all required for good science, but other strong indicators are successful publishing, academic accolades, submitter’s reputation amongst peers, etc. Most of us aren’t specialized scientists who can understand the data behind a particular scientific study and it’s conclusions, but we rely on the scientific process to vet the findings and treat them accordingly. If a particular article has been peer reviewed and published in a reputable magazine by scientists with laudatory reputations then it is a safe bet you can rely on the credibility of the findings. If the article is actually a Youtube posting by some rando without a degree or perhaps one in an unrelated field then you should be taking it with a healthy dose of skepticism.
[Case Study: Climate Change…formerly known as Global Warming]
[Case Study: Wearing Masks During Covid]
[Case study: Stanford Provost stepping down because of Bad Science]
Undigested Bits
{Science Journal Rankings works similarly to how Google used to rank pages. It’s all about citations, references, reputation and longevity. Peers reference or cite each other’s work which indicates a certain level of credibility and impact of the findings.}
{The transparency come from data the Open Science movement that encourages peer reviewed and published data of published articles}
{In science you propose an experiment, gather data, and publish the results….the more you publish, the more prestige and credibility you have.}
{There are lots of different ways to talk about science, in the general sense, and science in the professional sense are just two of them.}
{Science has a PR problem. Over the last few years there have been major issues…Covid, Climate Change, that are not in scientific dispute, but are as close to scientific facts as it gets, yet are sill doubted by some people.}
{Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but not every opinion should be weighted the same.}
{Money comes from some source to fund research that leads to published findings (transparency in published data) in some scientific journal that’s owned by somebody (transparency in source). That published finding is then typically picked up by a popular publication where they interpret the significance of the finding. See https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/fulltext/2009/11000/institutions__expectations_for_researchers_.19.aspx and https://tidsskriftet.no/en/2020/08/kronikk/money-behind-academic-publishing}
{Generally when people are referring to science they are referring to the body of science or the scientific method used to build up our body of science. The meme “Believe Science” actually refers to believing in this body of science, but also the efficacy of the scientific method that adds weight to a particular scientific claim. Trust the process because for the most part contemporary science has intrinsic transparency and accountability built into the process.}
{Believing in Science should be the same as any other belief, a matter of degrees, and if a scientific premise has been studied, the research conducted, analyzed, conclusions made and the research has cleared peer review before being presented to the public by reputable sources then it’s highly likely the conclusion has some validity.}
{Believing in Science is a matter of faith for most of us. We don’t have the expertise to analyze the data for a particular subject ourselves. We rely on the process of the scientific method and the built in mechanisms of transparency and accountability, repeatability, reputation and consensus to gauge how much belief we should invest in a particular conclusion.}
{The scientific method can generally be broken down into 7 steps:
- Ask a question
- Perform research
- Establish your hypothesis
- Test your hypothesis by conducting an experiment
- Analyze the results and draw a conclusion
- Present the findings – This step includes having your findings clear peer review and getting your findings published
}
{A healthy amount of skepticism is always a good place to start, but so far the scientific process as practiced in the modern age has so far has been proven very robust. That’s not to say there hasn’t been efforts skirt the process or the politicization of science. Money can determine what we study, it can help spin results, but in the end data stands on it’s own. We only have to look at the efforts of Big Tobacco and Big Oil to see how money can try and muddy the waters, but in the end science always wins. There was scientific consensus by the 1950’s[] that cigarettes caused an increased risk of cancer, with at least 7,100 articles written on the subject between 1940 and 1955[Google Scholar. (n.d.). Retrieved October 15, 2022, from https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=tobacco+cancer], but it took many, many years before there were any legal or financial ramifications.}
{Checks and balances within current scientific inquiry…watchdog agencies, peer awards, scientific reputation and published articles}
{Tobacco companies obstructed science, history professor says
https://news.stanford.edu/pr/2007/pr-proctor-021407.html
“Proctor claims that by the middle of the 1950s there was a scientific consensus that smoking caused lung cancer. But the tobacco industry fought that finding, both in the public eye and within the scientific community. Tobacco companies funded skeptics, started health reassurance campaigns, ran advertisements in medical journals and researched alternate explanations for lung cancer, such as pollution, asbestos and even the keeping of birds. Denying the case against tobacco was “closed,” they called for more research as a tactic to delay regulation.”}
{Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago
A new investigation shows the oil company understood the science before it became a public issue and spent millions to promote misinformation
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/
“One thing is certain: in June 1988, when NASA scientist James Hansen told a congressional hearing that the planet was already warming, Exxon remained publicly convinced that the science was still controversial. Furthermore, experts agree that Exxon became a leader in campaigns of confusion. By 1989 the company had helped create the Global Climate Coalition (disbanded in 2002) to question the scientific basis for concern about climate change. It also helped to prevent the U.S. from signing the international treaty on climate known as the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 to control greenhouse gases. Exxon’s tactic not only worked on the U.S. but also stopped other countries, such as China and India, from signing the treaty. At that point, “a lot of things unraveled,” Oreskes says.”}
Credibility Tools
https://scholar.google.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/
https://retractionwatch.com/
https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php