Is science based on trust?

Science is supposedly based on evidence, but in reality, for most people, it is based on trust. Scientific evidence is mostly inaccessible. Scientific journals are difficult to obtain and their articles are written in a specialized language that is incomprehensible to all but a few experts in the field.

Why is doubt important to science?

Doubt-mongering also works because we think science is about facts—cold, hard, definite facts. Doubt is crucial to science—in the version we call curiosity or healthy skepticism, it drives science forward—but it also makes science vulnerable to misrepresentation.

Are scientists responsible for what they created?

Are scientists morally responsible for the uses of their work? To some extent, yes. Scientists are responsible for both the uses that they intend with their work and for some of the uses they don’t intend. It should be obvious that the intended outcomes of our work are within our sphere of moral responsibility.

Is trust necessary in science?

However, trust in science reaches far beyond such incidents: trust is of much more fundamental importance for science. Clearly, trust is pivotal in doing science, since researchers in their everyday practice rely on the knowledge produced by other experts with different specialization and expertise.

Why should we trust scientists Ted?

Scientific knowledge is therefore a model of consensus by the experts. We should trust science, but not blindly – it should be based on evidence. This means scientists need to be better at sharing their reasons for knowing something, but also that we as a community need to be better at listening.

Is scientism a real thing?

Scientism is a rather strange word, but for reasons that we shall see, a useful one. Though this term has been coined rather recently, it is associated with many other “isms” with long and turbulent histories: materialism, naturalism, reductionism, empiricism, and positivism.

Why is doubt a good thing?

Good doubt motivates us to test things out; bad doubt stops us from doing that. Shakespeare said of the latter: “Our doubts are traitors, / And make us lose the good we oft might win, / By fearing to attempt.”

Is doubt necessary?

Doubt of conventional beliefs or a framework of thought can also open up new insights and paradigms of thought. Thus, reasonable levels of doubt is important for human thought and critical thinking. Skepticism is a philosophical position which denies some epistemic conditions necessary to attain certainty of knowledge.