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No, science is science. Science is structured questioning of anything, as long as you accept the data and reform your hypothesis. Sitting in a barcalounger with your thumb in your belly button, complaining about gay frogs and vaccine shedding is not science.
Pretty sure OP was not referring to those pseudo-science nut jobs.
I, for one, do not understand a lot of things and will (in good faith) question scientific principles to help better my understanding of things. I hope that does not label me as a belly-button-thumb-poker-gay-frogs-vaccine-shedding complainer.
The better phrasing is definitely “Questioning science in good faith is science”
Nutjobs and charletains often hide behind “I’m just asking questions” rhetoric, and pretend that their inquiries are equally valid to actual science.
The most famous scientists of all time are remembered for challenging, and changing, the assumptions that everyone took for granted. Questioning science is always important, as long as the questioning is sincere. So no, I wouldn’t immediately assume you were a nutjob or charletain simply for asking questions. The critical differentiator is how receptive you are to the answers.
Very well said. Thank you!
as long as you accept the data
Ehhhh, data isn’t necessarily sacrosanct. Bad methodology, bad equipment, or bad presentation can lead to biased or misleading data. Hell, every once in a while purely fabricated data slips through the cracks.
It’s still the best guide we have, and mountains of data from disparate sources should be very suggestive indeed, but science involves being able to question even well-accepted hypotheses, on the slim-but-non-zero chance that all that data was based on some common methodological flaw. If the hypothesis is correct, it’ll stand up to scrutiny.
Yeah, you’ll get some whackadoos with their thumbs in their navels, but those whackadoos are an important part of the scientific ecosystem; random mutations in scientific evolution which every once in a long while turn out to be useful, if only in getting serious scientists to look at a problem from a new angle. Stagnation’s a bitch.
Yeah but even data sits in the context of a culture that sets up the experiment and sample design to get the data.
And most data is expensive AF. I did a recent calculation to figure out how much it cost us to get around 3000 samples of a particular data type. The answer was in the tens of millions, over decades,.and multiple careers. and it’s still not remotely enough to capture the variation we know exists.
I wrote.om this the other day, but it’s something the op.is alluding to, but maybe didn’t quite hit. Every scientific statement of fact must have some epsilon of uncertainty associated with it, and this includes our data. Did they GPS unit lie to you about where you where? was there some other source of interference with the instrument? How much confidence do you have in the voltage it was actually detecting? How about the physical principles the instrument is based on? How confident are we in those?
It’s epsilons the way down. But that’s actually fine And important. The facts and the data need to be able to be rejected when they are wrong. If we haven’t left even a tiny hole of uncertainty we can escape out of, it’s left the realm of science and has become dogma
Funnily enough, math is also not science
Math is the golden thread of science.
Nor is engineering, so they get their own letters in STEM.
All models are wrong, but some are useful.
Not all questions are created equal and not all questioning of science is scientific in nature. And if you’re not writing down results and using controls, your questions aren’t really coming from a place of scientific intrigue in the first place.
Ahem, no. Science is a method to find answers with some metholody behind it. Not just any random questions and everything is the same.
(So yes, questioning science is good practice and a big part of a scientists job… Yet, you need to follow the scientific method if you do it, or you’re just making (wrong) stuff up.)
True.
But being a child saying “but why?” until your parent flips their wig isn’t.
Why not?
But why?
Since I’m old and a lot of you aren’t I’ll explain the reference.
Mindy’s defining traits seem to be her curiosity and her obliviousness. Mindy likes to chase things that interest or intrigue her, and though she usually has a single-minded focus on her target, she will sometimes stop her chase to question passersby about what they are doing– one repeated joke is that she will ask people “Why?” until they give up on the conversation; usually this takes about three "why"s, and she will end the conversation with her customary “Okay, I love ya, buh-bye!”
I had completely forgotten about Animaniacs. Now I’ve got something to look up on the telly - cheers!
I am also old and appreciate the reference
We need the opposite of the ‘fellow kids’ meme.
Pedant patrol reporting in: one type of questioning science is science
Questioning it before you understand the body of work of your predecessors isn’t science.
Especially if you turn towards the less educated to sell your pseudo-science.
It’s only science if you’re willing to accept the conclusion the observations lead you to even if they prove your idea wrong, because the point of science is to learn and gain understanding, and that is done by being wrong about things and investigating to find the correct answer.
It’s no longer science if you’re not willing to accept the conclusions because they prove your idea false, which ultimately is the problem that happens with science deniers, they are unwilling to accept being wrong.
Yeah, as long as you have the qualifications to question said science. This meme is what conspirationists believe.
Questioning science in that you are questioning the idea of taking observations and testing hypothesis? Then no.
Questions are of far less value than quality experiments with good documentation.
Question is one of the first steps in the scientific process.
What the fuck you gonna study/experiment on without asking a question first?
It needs to be paired with quality experiments, and when that data shows consistent results, those results should be accepted. Asking things like “is the Earth flat” or “does the Covid vaccine kill people” without accepting the wealth of data that’s already out there is of little value.
I mean not necessarily. You might just have an observation, and your just like, eh that’s kinda funny.
Figuring out how to ask a scientific question from something you’ve observed can take years.
Anything at all under an authoritarian regime.
I’m not a fan of the phrase “trust the science” without any further explanation. Like okay we obviously don’t know everything in your field but if you know enough you should at least be able to explain it like we’re 5. Otherwise it’s just “trust me bro, you’re too dumb to understand” and that’s not good for anyone.
Aside from a very loud, very small minority, most people are willing to learn and understand, but won’t follow blindly.
If they explain it like your 5, it’s just a longer way of saying trust the science… if you go and verify experiments, recreating them and do all the maths, then you would also just be trusting the science…
I am not willing to study biology and zoology, but I will read scientific research published in reputable journals or newspaper articles based on those studies, especially if it’s about pandas!
There’s a reason why science communicators exist and most times they’re not the ones doing the science. If you’re asking the actual scientists there’s a good chance they’re better off just saying “Trust me, I understand that better than you do” instead of trying to dumb things down to a layman’s level.
Not all things can easily be explained to the general public. Scientists have spent years of training to get where they are, and even then they’re only trained to communicate with peers in their field.
Not every short quippy explanation is correct…
That’s half the problem we face - people equate simplicity with absolute correctness or they internalize things as universal when something is drowning in nuance and situationality. Half of how science has changed in the last half century is a change from trying to understand perfect absolutes to getting down and dirty and figuring out and embracing spectrums and variations. The desire for simplicity does not serve. The catch all explanation is at best a placeholder that is incorrect but better than nothing and at worst it’s a siren song that leads you to damn yourself into believing a very untrue picture of the world.
Im listening to this podcast “History of philosophy without any gaps” and in various points in History a group of people starts arguing against philosophy, but you can’t really argue that philosophy is dangerous or useless, without seeing yourself doing philosophy for that.
That’s just true, not a real shock
Questioning the science that generated the science is science. See also: recursion.
Question reality 🫠
