Inference and its role in NS (General)

by dhw, Sunday, January 16, 2011, 12:59 (4870 days ago) @ romansh

ROMANSH: I think you misunderstand what Matt/xeno and perhaps what I are trying to say.-Perhaps. Or perhaps you misunderstand me. Matt tells me that a scientific theory is one that has been repeatedly demonstrated to be true (verified) but will most likely turn out to be untrue (which apparently is different from its being an explanation whose truth has not been proved). In the meantime, farmers, doctors, teachers, governments may have acted upon these scientific theories (after all, they have been "repeatedly verified") ... sometimes with disastrous results ... but as science is an ongoing process, this according to both of you should NOT (your emphasis) be seen as a weakness but as a "huge strength". And according to Matt the public are to be blamed for their naivete in swallowing what the experts tell them, because they should know that science is not about coming up with final answers.-I have no dispute with you over the ongoing process. That's how it is, and that's how it has to be: as in all walks of life, we learn from experience. The gist of my complaint is hinted at in your closing parenthesis: "Scientists are not immune to being dogmatic". You can't separate science from scientists, scientists are as fallible as the rest of us, and they are as responsible as the rest of us for what they say and do. (I'd like to think that most scientists would agree.) The fact that the process is ongoing is both a weakness and a strength, and I would have thought this was obvious not only to agnostics but to theists and atheists as well! Advances, e.g. in technology and medicine, are triumphs for scientists; blunders over misinformation are disasters for scientists, and sometimes for the rest of us too, so let us praise scientists for what they get right, and damn them for what they get wrong.