I don't know what parent meant exactly, but I personally think that scientific methods are only useful for people who are smart/educated enough to interpret them.
There were so many studies for example about cancer along the lines of "eating apples reduces cancer by 5%" and then you see people start eating apples for this reason. Somebody wrote a paper to get a publication with questionable results and people blindly believe in the power of science.
Don't forget that a lot of the papers are also written in unintelligible scientific jargon and that scientists would massage numbers because their writings directly affects their job prospects and salaries.
Religion didn't necessarily start from being a highly politicised power-hungry beast it became in middle ages. Bible says a lot about being a better human being. So is science - the scientific method does allow us to learn new things; but academia is a political entity which is only going to be growing in it's power and thus corruption.
> There were so many studies for example about cancer along the lines of "eating apples reduces cancer by 5%" and then you see people start eating apples for this reason. Somebody wrote a paper to get a publication with questionable results and people blindly believe in the power of science.
This is the problem with interpreting results... you can set up a study witn n=100k people, and find out that people who eat apples die 5% less from cancer, correlation is shown, and somewhere in the conclusion "more research is needed to find exact cause".
In practice, people who eat more fruits probably take care of themselves better, eat better diet,... etc.
I understood the parent as people believieng in something, without actually looking at data itself, thinking about it, considering other posibilities, and of course, declaring others (opposers) as heretics... for example, spring, last year, my government (and our scientists, and probably yours too, depending on where you live) said that masks are useless for fighting covid, even detrimental, so "believers" called the people who bought and wore them fearmongering paranoics.... then a random saturday came, masks became mandatory "from monday on", and those same people called the "antimaskers" conspiracy-theorists and worse for not wanting to wear masks.
Reality is of course a mixed bag... cotton masks prevent you from spitting everywhere, but don't actually block a lot of virus in the air. Surgical masks were practically impossible to buy back then. Masks outside, away from people are useless. etc.
There were so many studies for example about cancer along the lines of "eating apples reduces cancer by 5%" and then you see people start eating apples for this reason. Somebody wrote a paper to get a publication with questionable results and people blindly believe in the power of science.
Don't forget that a lot of the papers are also written in unintelligible scientific jargon and that scientists would massage numbers because their writings directly affects their job prospects and salaries.
Religion didn't necessarily start from being a highly politicised power-hungry beast it became in middle ages. Bible says a lot about being a better human being. So is science - the scientific method does allow us to learn new things; but academia is a political entity which is only going to be growing in it's power and thus corruption.