Why “Trusting the Science” Is Complicated

Re:Why “Trusting the Science” Is Complicated by ethbr0 on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @10:58AM (#28852988)

To me, it seems like there's a failure to differentiate bad-faith skepticism.

There's malicious "I know what I'm saying is a lie / broken argument, but I'm willing to make it because my righteousness / beliefs justify winning." (Fixable with... nothing?)

But there's also ignorant "I don't understand the foundations of this information, and so arrive at an erroneous conclusion." (Fixable with education)

One of the failures of scientific proponents (especially pop scientific proponents) has been to treat the second group as synonymous with the first.

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Re:Why “Trusting the Science” Is Complicated by hnaccount141 on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @01:50PM (#28855241)

This is a great point, and one that I wish was more widely understood. In my anecdotal experience at least the latter group by far outnumbers the former, and treating the "good faith but poorly informed" group as you would the bad faith group is nearly always counterproductive.

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