Back to basics for the rest of us

Welcome to the board, Doceth.

I'm not convinced that any real scientists post here. The board's participants seem to me to largely be laypeople who are interested in science. (Nothing wrong with that, I count myself among them.) Unfortunately, a few participants seem to worship science and attack anyone they see as threatening the faith.

And they get plenty of opportunity. The board attracts its share of cranks. So there's always kind of a war going on and that's where the insults come from.

Some sciences, physics particularly, deal in general principles, the so called 'laws of physics'. Unfortunately, it appears to be impossible to prove the universal truth of such things deductively from finite sets of empirical evidence. (The famous 'problem of induction'.) So you won't find your proof there.

It's true that physics is highly mathematized and there are no end of mathematical demonstrations of various conclusions in physics. That creates the impression among most laymen and not a few physicists, that the conclusions of physics are logically proven and certain. But what's really happening is that conclusions are being deduced from initial premises and the conclusions are only as certain as the premises. If we assume A, then B necessarily follows.

If we interpret 'proven' to mean 'deductively proven from premises that are logically certain and can't possibly be false', then I'm doubtful that we will encounter such a thing anywhere in human life, including in science.

Maybe.

If you are looking for absolute certainty, you probably are.

But if you are just looking at everything with a skeptical eye, thinking 'how do they know that?' when people tell you things that you are just exprected to believe, then you are being intelligent.

 

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Don't be daft. It is plain that plenty of the contributors have qualifications in science.

 

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You're not talking about the science of medicine. You're criticizing the humans that work in that field. There's not much money in physics. Honestly I know nothing about the medical science literature but if it's as self serving as you depict do something about it. Start citing the nonsense.

 

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Daecon hit the nail on the head. Nothing in science is really proven. Although please note, a scientific theory is far more than some would define at first glance. Although scientific theories are always open for modification, alterations and just plain old scrapping, scientific theories also grow in certainty over time. eg: No one can really logically dispute Evolution. But as yet, we do not know how or why that first vestige of life really got started.
We are pretty confident that the BB theory describes how our Universe/spacetime evolved, but we are as yet unable to say what made the BB bang in the first place.
Worth noting that evidence pointing to the validity of the two theories mentioned, are also recognised by the Catholic church.
From that point though, the Catholic church depart from science and invoke a omnipotent deity, while science keeps on searching, gathering data, and theorising as to the why's of those two theories.
SR/GR are also two more theories that are near certain in their application to the Universe around us, but exactly why curving/warping the geographical topology of spacetime should cause gravity we as yet cannot truly say.

I certainly hope that bruce's bullshit/crank detector [

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] is slightly off with regards to you, but you must remember that this being a public forum, we are often inundated with cranks, anti science trolls, religious freaks, and simply those that are suffering from delusions of grandeur, claiming accepted mainstream theory is wrong and that they have rectified our collective ignorance on science.
eg: In my short time here we have had 4 "theory of everything" TOE's.
You see these forums are the only outlet these sort of people have. They are unable to adhere to the scientific methodology and appropriate peer review and see themselves above that.
Newton said, "I see as far as I do, because I stand on the shoulders of giants"

 

Science isn't perfect. Ask yourself, where do scientists come from? The same place as Politicians come from!
Overall though the scientific method and peer review will eventually lead to the most productive, knowledgable outcome possible.
If you talk about agendas, you also need to remember a little thing called "tall poppy syndrome" and how and why all those would be's if they could be's that I spoke of, would dearly love to tear down some of the scientific giants.
We have plenty of them here, recognised by their failure to adhere to the scientific method and peer review, and the concerted effort to degrade those giants of the present and past.

 

When I started here, I had no idea how far behind I had gotten. They saved me, but I understand, this is rare. Read as much mainstream stuff as you can. These days, it is more difficult than ever to find information and be certain it is reliable, but it sounds like you may be used to that also. That being the case, remember that you only get so much out of reading, and usually that is a lesser amount than known by those who wrote it, and who may have their own prejudices and agendas concerning what they are willing to write about.

There was evidently a lot of disinformation that was taught to us as if it was established science, even when I went to school, and this was perhaps the biggest shock to overcome. It's probably more than you think you know. Members here can attest, some critical information was not taught to me at all, and this reflects the prejudice of curricula or lack of time to teach it or sometimes both.. Teachers must put in two hours of lesson planning in order to teach one hour, and depending on the difficulty of the subject matter, sometimes a great deal more. You will only retain a tiny fraction of what they try to teach you. I guarantee it.

Try to keep an open mind, but don' t try opening it more with a power drill. This is also something much harder to do in practice than you may think.

Good luck.