
Trust Me, I'm a Scientist - revorad
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=trust-me-im-a-scientist
======
bluekeybox
There is something very important that is missing from this post and from most
of the discussions of this issue.

Who are these scientists? What exactly do they say? How do we know that what
we hear that "scientists say" is not actually what the media wants us to hear?
Most people never talk to scientists directly. Everything they hear is through
the media. Most people are not stupid and understand that what the media says
is not always to be trusted (not necessarily because the media is corrupt or
because it intentionally tries to mislead, but simply because the way the
media works is that it focuses on the most popular and controversial topics to
receive the most views).

TL;DR: The perceived distrust of scientists by the public could well be a
distrust of media reporting of most issues in general, not necessarily a lack
of belief in the scientific method.

~~~
rauljara
While I have seen plenty of news reports that mangle scientific findings, in
all the internet debates I've witnessed on vaccines and global warming, I've
never seen someone attack the scientific conclusions on the basis that they're
being misreported by media. The attacks I've run across have generally been ad
hominem (accusing the scientists of being motivated by something other pursuit
of truth), with some direct questioning of evidence / methodology.

You present an interesting idea, but I believe the reason this issue is
missing from the debate is that there just aren't very many people who feel
that way. Or if there are, they are remarkably unvocal about it.

~~~
bluekeybox
> I've never seen someone attack the scientific conclusions on the basis that
> they're being misreported by media

Well I've seen examples of bad, exaggerated, sometimes completely misleading
media reporting of scientific findings nearly everywhere. Now I have a
scientific background and I can tell that those reports should be taken with a
grain of salt, but how can people without such background filter out the
signal from the noise?

I bet that many people assume that a reporter publishing something in "The
Daily Galaxy" is actually the scientist. How would they ever trust him or her?

~~~
rauljara
Ah. This makes more sense. In this comment you seem to be arguing that some
mistrust of science is caused by poor reporting. Which I wouldn't disagree
with.

From your first comment, I thought you were saying that there was no mistrust
of science, just of reporters, from this line "The perceived distrust of
scientists by the public could well be a distrust of media reporting of most
issues in general, not necessarily a lack of belief in the scientific method."

Apologies if I had misunderstood.

------
wccrawford
"Why do people say that they trust scientists in general but part company with
them on specific issues?"

Because, for once, they aren't being mindless sheeple? Presented with
something that can be proven or disproven, they actually want that to happen,
unlike other subjects which don't have any hard lines that can be drawn, and
they simply follow.

The essence of the scientific method is to trust nothing that hasn't been
proven, with evidence, and peer reviewed. Then scientists go to the public and
expect people to take their word for it. They really can't see why that
doesn't work?

People are going to trust their experiences and pre-conceptions before the
word of a stranger, no matter how many letters are after his name. If that
stranger happens to line up with their existing knowledge, they believe him
without question ONLY because their existing knowledge says the same thing.
They don't believe the scientist, they believe in themselves.

That's how most people work, anyhow. There's a few who go beyond that and
challenge even things they have always believed to be true.

~~~
karamazov
It's great to be suspicious of results in a field in which you're an expert,
but physicists and biochemists hardly ask their doctor for peer-reviewed proof
that his advice is correct. At any rate, people who are so inclined can look
up actual research done; but most people won't have the expertise to
understand it anyway, which is completely normal outside of your own field.

To constantly question everything, or to go with one's preconceived notions
irrespective of how much evidence there is against them, is both dangerous and
stupid - professional scientists might be wrong about some things, but if the
vast majority of them agree on something that you're not qualified to discuss,
you can and should assume that they're probably right. A good litmus test for
this is asking what evidence you would need to be convinced that you're wrong;
if you don't know or if the answer is there is no evidence, you don't know
what you're talking about.

~~~
realitygrill
Maybe they _should_ ask their doctor, given the recent spate of articles on
ineffectiveness of medical treatment:

<http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/294/2/218.abstract>
[http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/the-ideology-of-
hea...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/the-ideology-of-health-care/)
(If someone could find a British metastudy containing a nice graph indicating
~50% of current standard medical treatments has no evidence of effectiveness,
I would appreciate it - have had much trouble locating it.)

But of course, doctors are not scientists.

~~~
Alex3917
"If someone could find a British metastudy containing a nice graph indicating
~50% of current standard medical treatments has no evidence of effectiveness,
I would appreciate it - have had much trouble locating it."

I haven't seen that study, but if you look up any given common medical
condition, for many of them there are studies about what percentage of those
diagnosed are being treated in accordance with best practices. And for most
conditions it's usually not more than a third. Doctors usually just prescribe
whatever is advertised the most regardless of whether or not it's even
remotely effective or safe, e.g.
<http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/99/15/2055>

~~~
realitygrill
Interesting. I hadn't thought of that.

The study also indicated a small percentage of treatments evidenced as
actually harmful, so that in the end only a third of the treatments were
efficacious.

My own experience in a clinical setting showed that most doctors (say, outside
a university health system) have trouble keeping up with the research in their
field.

~~~
Alex3917
"My own experience in a clinical setting showed that most doctors (say,
outside a university health system) have trouble keeping up with the research
in their field."

There is a study somewhere about what percentages of doctors can name at least
one finding from their medical field within the last year, and it was some
abysmally low figure. Do you happen to know what I'm referencing? I am looking
for the cite for something, but can't find it unfortunately.

------
syllogism
Most people think the scientific consensus is right, say, 90% of the time.
This is reasonable. They then go ahead and pick 10% of issues to disagree with
the scientific consensus on. This is NOT reasonable.

People fall into the same trap in many other situations. If you give someone a
guessing game where a red card is shown 80% of the time, and a black card is
shown 20% of the time, they'll usually start guessing red 80% and black 20%.
They'll still do this even if they're given money for correct guesses. They'll
even do this if they're told the game is totally random, and that red occurs
more often!

You of course maximise your correct predictions by always guessing the
majority class, unless you're more accurate than the prior distribution. So if
you can't guess the next card >80% accurately, you should always pick red.

Likewise, if you can't know _when_ the scientists are wrong with >90%
accuracy, you should just shut up and trust the scientists _always_. But, of
course, this is not what people do.

~~~
Alex3917
"Likewise, if you can't know _when_ the scientists are wrong with >90%
accuracy, you should just shut up and trust the scientists _always_. But, of
course, this is not what people do."

The problem is that it's trivially easy to find MAJOR errors in the
methodology or interpretation of many or even most journal articles, and
whatever passes for the scientific consensus is usually based directly off a
very shallow reading of the abstracts and conclusions of these articles
without taking any of their flaws into account, let alone questioning the
epistemology behind them. There are probably fields where this isn't true, but
they're definitely the minority. When the scientific consensus changes it's
rarely because of brilliant new research, but rather because the flaws in old
research gradually get publicized and so the old conclusions get replaced by
the conclusions of new research that's also flawed, but where the flaws aren't
yet widely known. But there's no reason why you can't actually figure out what
these flaws are, it's not difficult at all, it's just that most people
(including scientists) are too lazy to read the actual papers and think
critically about them.

The point is that people who buy into scientific consensus wholesale aren't
actually the rational skeptics they market themselves as being, but rather are
just as dumb and ignorant as the worst of the religious fundamentalists.

~~~
syllogism
That's true of a lot of the "science" that makes its way into the media
spotlight. Much of that is actually just PR: "Hershey's scientists find
chocolate is better than sex!", etc. I don't think you'll find that true at
all of serious, impactful papers that actually have an influence on consensus
in a field.

If that were true, then the figure for scientific consensus being true would
be much lower than 90%. But I don't believe that. I'd have to wonder what
these scientists were doing, that I could just waltz in and blow them away
with my wits and reason. I mean, what are the other scientists in this
hypothetical field _doing_? Are they that incompetent or corrupt, that I can
just blow a hole in their field based on casual observation? Why can't they
see the same things I can?

This brings me back to that journal benchmark. Do you think you could write a
summary paper discounting a substantial body of research for exhibiting
various flaws? If so, do you think it would be accepted? I suggest there are
few fields where it's really that easy.

~~~
Alex3917
"If that were true, then the figure for scientific consensus being true would
be much lower than 90%."

I think if you actually look at research about the historical validity of
science, you'll in fact find that the 90% figure is a wild overestimate. There
are dozens of disciplines where virtually every single scientific consensus in
the entire field has been overturned.

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all)

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/11/lies-
damne...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-
and-medical-science/8269)

~~~
aterimperator
"There are dozens of disciplines where virtually every single scientific
consensus in the entire field has been overturned."

You seem to be arguing that since mankind once thought the world was flat and
was wrong, and then mankind thought the world was round and was wrong (more
oblate spheroidal), and then mankind thought the world was oblate spheroidal
and was wrong, we definitely can't trust the scientific consensus that the
world is approximately oblate spheroidal with a very slight bulge south of the
equator. Indeed, maybe the earth will turn out to be cubical tomorrow, and a
taurus the day after that.

"Wrong" is a relative statement. Saying the earth is flat is more wrong than
saying the earth is a sphere, and saying the earth is a sphere is more wrong
than saying the earth is oblate spheroidal. Yes they're all wrong, just as
newtonian mechanics was, strictly speaking, "wrong", yet no one looks at a car
and says "that was built using newtonian mechanics, and therefore can't
possibly work".

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tcOi9a3-B0>

------
tomjen3
Maybe but you are also interested in grant money, in getting published and (as
a human being) have your own biases and pet theories.

~~~
cagey
++! "Scientists" are people, having all the same flaws, biases, and impure
motivations found in the greater population. I certainly don't unquestioningly
trust as 100% truth anything following "Scientists say...". Certainly not
about how the climate is going to be in 10 years (awful!) unless we let the
government (or the UN) control and tax what goes in and out of every bodily
orifice, and every movement we make outside our home.

Science by itself; ok, I'm willing to listen and pay attention with an open
mind. "Science" in league with _government_ (the only agency which can legally
point a gun at my head and demand my compliance to ANYTHING)? I have EXTREME
skepticism in this situation. Because such alliances can easily lead to
totalitarianism in the name of science. Power-hungry bureaucrats and do-
gooders see "scientists" as the key to getting the population at large to give
up freedoms (to have a "safer" future). And few "scientists" will walk away
from millions of dollars in grant money dangled in front of their noses. And
if they want to get the next grant (what else are they going to do?), don't
you suppose there's just a little bias injected into the activities sponsored
by the current grant? It strains credulity to think that such biases don't
exist. Most commenters on HN seem to think that such biases only arise in
situations where "science" is funded by private business, but I see the
potential for trouble as being much higher when "science" and governments join
forces. You can almost always ignore or dodge something a corporation does,
but dodging the government is basically impossible. The entirely miserable
track record of "scientists" who've predicted "the world will end unless we
all ..." over the past century reinforces my comfort in holding a skeptical
position.

Basically, the (US) government today is in the business of controlling the
behavior of citizens. The more ways they can control citizen behavior, the
more bureaucracies there will be, and the bigger the existing bureaucracies
will get. The ultimate expression of this will be "single payer" (a.k.a. 100%
government controlled) health care. This will be the justification for total
in-detail control of individual/personal behavior.

Think I'm paranoid? Let's just see what happens...

------
chernevik
"Science may not be the only way of organizing and understanding our
experience, but for accuracy it fares better than religion, politics and art.
That’s the lesson."

Really?

"it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of
things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently
equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to
demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs." Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
(<http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ari/nico/nico003.htm>).

------
mduerksen
"Why do people say that they trust scientists in general but part company with
them on specific issues?"

I don't think that's necessarily the case. The cited study only suggests that
people trust scientists _more_ than leaders of business or government. That
might not be a very high level of trust.

I would rather suppose that people do not trust _anybody_ very much unless
they know them personally. To really convince a person of the contrary, he
must grasp or experience it for himself.

The problem with scientific publications is that a lot of prior knowledge,
preparation and _work_ is required to really understand the reasoning behind
the findings. Only that way, one can confidently reject or approve the
scientific statement. Alas, most people are untrained and too disconnected
from the subject.

------
bugsy
Obviously there is no correlation between false results and a profit
connection between the research and the researcher.

Or is there.

[http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7915-most-
scientific-p...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7915-most-scientific-
papers-are-probably-wrong.html)

------
Tichy
I don't think scientists should be trusted. There is a lot of shoddy "science"
being produced on a daily basis.

------
aristidb
Science is based on reasoning (EDIT: and evidence), not trust. Asking people
to trust scientists is an anti-science statement, IMHO.

(Of course, vaccines are pretty obviously a great thing, and there is no
reason to believe they cause autism.)

~~~
simpleTruth
Science is based on _evidence_ NOT reasoning.

Thinking about problems don't provide new information. It's the same basic
fallacy as assuming a really really powerful AI could deduce QM from a few
minutes of webcam footage.

~~~
tel
That's sort of a technical non-sequitur, no? I would imagine that a
sufficiently advanced AI could deduce QM from a few seconds of real time,
given that it could ask questions of any resolution. Or, equivalently, a large
amount of webcam footage.

In either case, the emphasis is on conclusions being bought in the currency of
experience.

~~~
simpleTruth
I brought it up because people actually believe it. As you noticed both
resolution and time are important limitations. You don't get to arbitrarily
examine things at any resolution or for any length of time. Stick a AI up to a
webcam at 648x480 @ 30 cycles per second pointed at a brick wall and it's not
going to be able to say comment on politics in the middle east.

Or in a more down to earth example, if we stop building ever higher energy
particle accelerators there are things we simply don't get to know.

------
gityou
"Vaccines cause autism." "Vaccines do not cause autism." This is a
contradiction.

I think the public has good right to be skeptical of scientists' statements
here.

~~~
jokermatt999
You're lumping all scientists in together, when there are clearly two
different groups here. Furthermore, later evidence has shown how terrible the
evidence was for "Vaccines cause autism". The study that started this
controversy was ridiculous. It used a ridiculously low sample size, the
scientist conducting it (Andrew Wakefield) had severe conflicts of interest
that basically lead to fraud, and to top it all off, the journal that original
posted the paper retracted it.

------
drstrangevibes
using the scientific method to prove the value of the scientific method, is
like trying to bite your own teeth

