Dr.Naomi Oreskes Colloqium:”Why we should trust science (most of the time)”
Professor of Science History at Oxford
10/26/2015 @HUB,Penn State
Trust in science? Why?
How do we know when to trust science?
Vaccine/GMO/climate change ### Uncertainty in science - To some uncertainty seems to be ground for doubting science - Exploit uncertainty to attack sciences they don’t like
Belief or Faith?
- Pascal’s wager: Prove the existence of God /”Better safe than sorry”
- Is science a leap of faith?
- Risks of accepting science is smaller
- Not just to ordinary people (scientists outside certain field)
Should we trust science?
- Traditional view: scientific method (hypothetic deductive method)
- Relativity and astronomy observation (Deductive nomological model: searching for law of nature)
- Problem: fallacy of affirming the consequent (any other reasons)
- False theories could make true prediction: Ptolemy‘s universe
- 2nd problem: auxiliary hypothesis
- Treat Other assumptions as true
- Indirectly trust in our instruments
- stellar parallax
- Auxiliary hypothesis 1: earth orbit is large
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Auxiliary hypothesis 2: telescope sensitive enough
- Oversimplified picture of science
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Science that doesn’t follow deduction
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Inductive science: generalization (Sherlock Holmes)
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Mid 20th century: thought inductive out of fashion >”stamp collecting”-Rutherford
- Charles Darwin- testing nothing at first
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**Both way can work **
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Modeling: physical/computer simulations (Attribution of gases in greenhouse effect)
- Paul Feyerabend “anything goes”
What is in common: Evidence
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Evidence is the key element of scientific method
- Who judges evidence?
- How do scientists decide when they have enough evidence?
- By Consensus
- Scientific knowledge are claims that have been argued upon by experts
- Supported by sufficient evidence
- Appeal to authority?
- Authority of group, not individuals
- Jury of scientific peers
- Crowd sourcing (Internet becomes a problem for science)
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Collective work, accumulating of expertise and experience (as your car)
- Science as a process
- By and large it mostly works
How do we judge a particular claim?
- Trust is not faith
- Trust a process, not thinking it is infallible
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We don’t abandon trust when it makes mistakes (friends and families)
- Fads and fashions: journalists (e.g. Cold fusion) -wait and see, replication comes in
- Hype: over promised (James Watson: Human Genome tells us that what it is to be human; God particle)- extreme ( famous man raising money or out of bound of the field of investigation)
- Nonsense: critical positivity ratio- not abandon common sense, counter intuitive or ridiculous
- Corruption: funding effects (desired of funders), sometimes subconscious (study design) (other people would be influenced but we can’t lol) peer review is necessary but not sufficient (tobacco industry)- disclosure of funding source (altered to potential bias to both readers and scientists) as a form of epistemic hygiene
- Racial and gender bias: criminal types linked with race/limited energy theory (brain and uteri) “seepage” (cultural pressures)like ESLD scientists- Diversity as epistemic insurance
- Simplifying assumptions and anchoring effects: forget that they are assumptions (Hayford Spheroid:earth crest is uniform depth of compensation, latter considered fact but incompatible with continent drift) simplification is necessary but could cause problem
- Over generalization and over reach: broadly applicable GMOs. GMO is safe: over generalized (what do you mean? Safe to eat or safe to environment? Are they a good idea?)
Final Words
Take no drug on market less than seven years
- clinical trials take time
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Peer review is the first step
- Truth is a process rather than result
Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth by William James
- Relative consequence of accepting false vs rejecting true?
- Climate change: dire future
