Psychologists ask: What makes some smart people so skeptical of science?

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by paddoboy, Jan 27, 2017.

  1. river

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    If is the key word pad .
     
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  3. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Yet other then your silly one liners, you have yet to offer anything invalidating any mainstream theory...funny that.

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  5. river

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    IF implys doubt pad .

    You have doubt about mainstream conformity , obviously .
     
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2017
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  7. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Science, and mainstream science is always a discipline in progress...In that progress the quackery, and nonsense, is mostly weeded out.
     
  8. river

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    IF , you have doubts about mainstream conformity that you have admitted .
     
  9. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Wrong river...Perhaps the fact that science easily weeds out your nonsensical claims for which you are known, is the reason why you are unable to accept the fact that science is always a discipline in progress...eg: GR is correct within its zone of applicability...but a future QGT will extend that zone, while still dismissing the nonsense such as Plazma/Electric universe nonsense.
    Keep trying though.

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  10. river

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    paddoboy said:
    If conformity is closer to reality, then so be it...rather more crazy and ridiculious to be anti mainstream just for the sake of it and wearing it like some badge of honour..

    From your post #21
     
  11. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, certainly. Are you having a problem with comprehension?
    Let me explain it again. The nature of science and the scientific method, means that it is a discipline in continued progress.
    And of course If conformity is closer to reality, then so be it...rather more crazy and ridiculious to be anti mainstream just for the sake of it and wearing it like some badge of honour...
     
  12. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps river being river, the above should be explained in simpler terms.
    Every theory at this time that conforms with the mainstream thinking, was at one time simply just speculation and hypothetical. But hard work, continued gathering of data, and more research, saw these hypotheticals accepted as best explanations for a particular scenario and consequently advanced to scientific theory stage.
     
  13. river

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    If pad , IF .
     
  14. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    All accepted scientific theories were at one time speculative river. Can you understand that?

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  15. river

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    Can you ?
     
  16. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    No scientific theory other than evolution is certain...You have been told that many times. But they do grow in certainty over time, as they continue to make and predict successfuly.
     
  17. river

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    No I haven't

    And yet you do nothing but knock down any theory that does not conform to mainstream thinking .
     
  18. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    You can't. You can't even spot the more clownish of the climate denialists - you post from them.

    Generally: It doesn't look like a dramatic and contrasting bipolar situation. There is not a body of universally well-educated and deeply as well as widely informed scientists on the one hand, and a population of completely unlearned and incapable laymen on the other - it's more of a continuum, with laymen of widely varied experience and information bridging the gap, scientists contributing to the public discussion outside their special fields, and people like mathematicians and technically educated intellectuals weighing in.
     
  19. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Yes you have most certainly, and besides, it is really common knowledge that one would expect that you should know.


    No, I attempt to knock down hypotheticals that do not invalidate or falsify the incumbent theory.
    And in two present ongoing threads, I am encouraging continued research into NASA and JPL alternate drive technologies, and also research into metallic Hydrogen.
     
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2017
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    That is how it should be, of course.

    But there are other issues here. For one: the occasional - common, in fact - practice of not replacing the easily knocked down hypothetical as put forward by the layman with what a better informed layman would have proposed, and addressing it.

    The failure being one of due diligence, with "science" as having a professional responsibility.

    So we saw the protests against nuclear power expansion into earthquake and tsunami zones dismissed by carefully and repeatedly distinguishing between bombs and power plants, repeating the fact that a nuclear power plant cannot explode like a nuclear bomb. We even saw that as recently as Fukushima, where the scientific experts I watched on the major TV news programs spent the majority of their bandwidth on exactly that.

    And we saw the paranoid fears of artificial sweeteners and colors dismissed by pointing to the scientific evidence that they did not poison or give cancer to lab rats within 90 days. We see that right now with GMOs.

    And we still see the fears of vaccination - which had involved, before all the fuss, a ten-fold increase in the amount and frequency with which children were being injected with mercury compounds and immune system manipulations, almost completely unstudied - dismissed by proof that they did not directly cause the current wave of autism.

    Those of us who think that promotion of a scientific "consensus" involves a responsibility to form that consensus in good and careful and attentive faith, and be honest about it, have many such to point at.

    Meanwhile, one can make a rather long list of matters in which the consensus of science as it directly impinged on daily life - and conflicted with "common sense", btw - has not only been amended, but completely reversed, within the adult lives many affected people. And in many cases actual laws - regulations enforced by the government - remain in place from the earlier consensus.

    Peanut allergies, flame retardants, artificial colors and sweeteners, eggs, bug spray, margarine, disinfectants, wooden cutting boards, reading light levels - even ordinary people remember this stuff. The somewhat more interested or diligent can also call to mind tobacco smoke, leaded gasoline, pesticides, asbestos, formaldehyde in building materials, and similar examples of the darker side of poorly supported scientific "consensus".

    And these involve largely medical harms - damage to people's health. In the economic and ecological arenas, the history is worse.
     
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2017
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  21. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    They're skeptical of science, I thought they are skeptical in science.
     

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