• surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      Yes it does. Most people can’t read a case study, and fewer can understand it.

      To them, science requires trust in humans and faith that no one is lying.

      • Geodad@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        Most people can’t read a case study, and fewer can understand it.

        This is the problem.

        • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          Eh… yes and no. I’ve got an engineering degree, I’ve learned how to design studies and do science properly, and I still struggle when a study is on topics I’m less familiar with. I can’t imagine most people going through these. They’re not accessible.

          And if you’re just reading the abstract and conclusion, or worse a science article, you’ve got to hope they’ve interpreted things properly. Which articles are particularly bad at because they need to sound like news.

          • Geodad@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            Or they need a competent journalist to translate the findings without being sensational.

            • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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              1 hour ago

              But then they still need to rust the journalist. And considering how much crap science gets published even in supposedly high quality journals, and how little quality peer review happens, even the journalists don’t have a scientific basis for much of science reporting.

              • Geodad@lemmy.world
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                27 minutes ago

                Part of the problem is the “publish or die” mentality.

                Personally, I think the Journal of Negative Results needs more love.

    • jimmy90@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      most people need belief and faith in science because they’ll never understand it

      • Geodad@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        They don’t need belief and faith, they need to trust it. Something that both Republicans and Democrats have eroded because it didn’t fit their narrative.

          • Geodad@lemmy.world
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            28 minutes ago

            Faith specifically refers to religion. Allowing them to use it in regards to science is where we got these loons claiming that science is a religion.

    • Steve
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      24 hours ago

      I think you mean faith. Faith has nothing to do with science.
      But belief absolutely does. Science is all about convincing people (scientists) to believe or disbelieve some idea.

        • Steve
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          21 hours ago

          You shouldn’t. They’re entirely different.
          There are many paths to believing something, or accepting it as true.
          The least reliable is faith. It’s just “wishing makes it true.” Another, is personal experience. But that’s easily biased, and even fooled by our limited and faulty senses. Actual repeatable evidence is the best we have so far.

          • Geodad@lemmy.world
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            21 hours ago

            The evidence should convince people.

            Scientists are failing to adequately communicate with the public.

              • Geodad@lemmy.world
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                5 hours ago

                Then said public should not reap the benefits of scientific research.

                Ship them off to an island and let them live without science.

                • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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                  5 hours ago

                  It’s like vaccines. Sure it sounds nice to say that, but denying it to these dipshits is going to get me hurt

            • Crankenstein@lemmy.world
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              15 hours ago

              There is only so much “dumbing down” you can do to scientific research about topics until you lose all contextual nuance or become too long winded for a layperson to understand without being overloaded with information.

              Then there is the issue with secondary and tertiary sources using simple language that causes confusion because it lacks the contextual nuance necessary to convey the correct interpretation.

            • Mobiuthuselah@lemm.ee
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              20 hours ago

              Agreed. There’s definitely a gap in how conclusions are communicated to the public.

              It’s crazy to me that so much of the general public don’t understand that science is just a protocol of observing, recording, testing, and analyzing results.

              • Crankenstein@lemmy.world
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                15 hours ago

                Eh, mostly not the scientists’ fault but the media sensationalizing the data in secondary and tertiary sources.

                And, as you said, general ignorance of how science works internally. That is a problem with education though, again not the fault of the scientists.

      • Mobiuthuselah@lemm.ee
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        21 hours ago

        One of the first things I learned in bio lab in college is that you never believe anything in science. You accept or reject based on evidence.

        • Steve
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          21 hours ago

          Accept or reject, are just different words for believe or disbelieve. The evidence guides your belief.

          • Mobiuthuselah@lemm.ee
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            21 hours ago

            Maybe to you. Scientific terms often include terms that have other connotations elsewhere, for example, significant or correlation.

            Nothing in science is based on belief.

            • lemmyingly@lemm.ee
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              10 hours ago

              You still have to believe the author and the peer reviewers did the correct thing through the process. You have to believe the results presented are real and accurate. Etc, etc.

              For example, one of the many scandals of recent times is Franchesca Gino at Harvard publishing false research papers that present false data. People believed it was all real and genuine until a group of people started to do a deep dive into her research.

            • Steve
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              20 hours ago

              Do you accept that, or believe it? What is the difference scientifically?

              Webster definition 3C of Accept “to recognize as true” seems to be what I’m talking about here. Is that different than what you mean?

              3C then points to Believe as a synonym. The transitive definition 1B, or intransitive 1A, seems to correlate with what Accept definition 3C means, hence the synonym nature of them. Can you clarify exactly where I’m wrong?

              • Mobiuthuselah@lemm.ee
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                20 hours ago

                Beliefs are subjective. They can be held without evidence.

                Scientific acceptance is the opposite.

                I likely won’t be able to change your mind because you believe they mean the same thing. I assure you they don’t. You can’t come to a scientific conclusion based on conviction. You have to accept or reject the null hypothesis based on evidence which even then doesn’t necessarily verify your hypothesis. You also have to run everything through statistical analyses to be sure that the results couldn’t occur randomly. Everything can change with new evidence and stronger tests (larger sample sizes, double blinds, etc.) Webster’s won’t teach you that. It records vernacular.

                • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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                  10 hours ago

                  It records vernacular.

                  And vernacular is how people understand each other. When you say, “Science has nothing to do with belief,” then most people are going to interpret that according to the common-use meaning. If I say, “I believe I turned off the oven,” I’m not expressing a faith-based conviction to the idea that I turned it off, I’m saying that based on my best recollection of the evidence, I did turn it off.

                  If you want to communicate in a way that people will understand, then I don’t think you should going around using the word “belief” to mean this nonstandard, technical definition without qualifications or explanation. And I definitely don’t think that you should assume that anyone who disagrees with statements made with that nonstandard definition is simply committed to rejecting reason and evidence, as opposed to the much more obvious and reasonable interpretation that they’re simply interpreting the word in the standard, common use way.

                • Steve
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                  19 hours ago

                  Vernacular is literally what we’re talking about. The definition of words.

                  You seem to be wrapping a number of ideas around the word Believe. Most notably the idea that a belief is fixed. When I say believe, I literally mean only and exactly “Accept as true”, or “To hold as true”, nothing more. It’s literally the 1st definition. And more or less what all the other definitions are wrapped around.

                  What we hold as true can change at any time, and for a number of reasons. The study of them is called Epistemology. Yes. It’s a real branch of science.

                  It’s possible what you’re trying to get across, is the idea that science accepts nothing as “true”. It can only reject ideas as “false”. And the ideas that remain un-rejected as false, are accepted, not as true, but as the best explanation we have so far. In which case I can see your point. However, remember that beliefs aren’t fixed. They can also be rejected when new conflicting data is collected. That still sounds like what you mean by accept. Am I wrong?

    • Bonesince1997@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      There’s a little bit in a hypothesis, but I take your point. It just requires good faith approaches and conclusions.

      • Geodad@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        There’s a little bit in a hypothesis

        Not in a properly formed hypothesis.

        You shouldn’t have faith in anything in science.

    • Angry_Autist (he/him)@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Really? Because half a nation of ignorant hayseeds NOT believing in science kind of got us to where we are now.

      How about instead of posting pithy uselessness you actually think about things for a moment

      • Geodad@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        Science doesn’t require belief.

        The problem is that people believe in religion, and their religious leaders have a vested interest in keeping them dumb.

  • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    In that case, I’m switching to ghosts, ufos, government cover ups, and the zodiac.

    Take that science.