I find that surprising. My wife used to work as a lab tech in microbiology research and from what I heard there they were very openly questioning a lot of published research and there seemed to be a culture of challenging claims in papers.

I think the general public is more impacted by the problem. Especially with the "heresy" part, especially in public forums with lots of mildly interested but not-too-deep-into-it laypeople, like reddit, for example, outside maybe of heavily moderated places like /r/science or /r/AskHistorians.

There its more about reputation of a source than the actual facts, because few have the ability to evaluate the latter. Actually, if they spent even a little bit of time and thought they might actually be able to, it's just that almost nobody does. When the interest in "science" is to read publications for the general public, but never touch any of the by now quite numerous deeper equally easily available resources e.g. in the form of courses. For example, sooo many people interested in quantum physics articles - how many bother, even after years, to just go e.g. to edx (https://www.edx.org/learn/quantum-physics-mechanics -- or, archived, https://www.edx.org/course/quantum-mechanics-for-everyone specifically) and just take a course?

I remember a physicist saying that those folks do show up in classes and start the class talking about how excited they are to learn about QM, and they disappear after a few weeks and drop the course.

there should be a class that is just low-math "implications of QM on natural philosophy" to satisfy those with the curiousity but not the inclinations towards heavy math.

At the very least the class should be able to get through the two-slit experiment, EPR, and Bell's tests with a clear point being that nobody currently understands "how" entanglement works at the physical level.

Yeah, I agree with the GP comment, but QM is a bad example. It is not an approachable subject by any means. I don't say that as somebody who knows it, I know people with physics PhDs than confirm that a layperson is just not going to be able to learn anything useful about it without doing the equivalent work of a degree/masters etc.

It might have been just Modern Physics (3rd semester in my university). The student should have had the prereqs at least.

"Modern Physics" is a much better name for it. At my university it was called "Physics for Engineers" and was a mix of quantum mechanics and relativity.

I always found the name weird because it didn't seem particularly geared towards engineering needs.

The average person is unlikely to have even a basic grasp of college algebra, let alone be able to understand complex valued wave functions/matrices.

Your comment is seriously trivializing that experience. Studying quantum mechanics is a multi year effort of serious study for them, not just taking a course on edx.

Why do you even bother to comment when you you don't bother to actually read what I wrote? That alone would have been sufficient, but I also posted this link specifically: https://www.edx.org/course/quantum-mechanics-for-everyone

> ...the basic ideas of quantum mechanics with a method that requires no complicated math beyond taking square roots

A 6 week online course, taken at your leisure.

Please do read comments before you reply, next time. I don't need another reddit.

It's not about putting in years of effort for a Master in Physics - it's about using the effort already invested, but instead of always not-learning, just START taking even the most basic course. I linked one, and such are very easy to find.

Sorry, but such an arrogant reply makes me a bit mad. I provided good links and you ignored everything - thereby helping to support exactly my point. People are lazy, even with good resources available at their fingertips, or even in front of them, not reading what the author wrote but what their own brain after lots of processing and filtering very freely interprets into it.

> the basic ideas of quantum mechanics with a method that requires no complicated math beyond taking square roots

False^

From the faq:

> Q: What level of math is needed for this class?

> A: High school algebra and trigonometry.

the average person does not have this level of mathematics mastered

I’m sure the content is good, but I have no way to evaluate that without actually going through the course. I still highly doubt it’s claim that you’ll learn qm “better than Einstein” from it.

There is a difference between a a random person calling bullshit on a topic on which they're entirely uninformed in and a person which has studied the topic for years.

The people that complain about scientific findings being held in to high esteem usually have no clue about the topic they're talking about and are petulant that their uninformed opinion based on their feelings isn't taken seriously.

Definitely. Scientists can't function (literally aren't working at the professional level yet) unless they can read critically. The scientific literature is full of holes, mistakes, irrelevant junk, work that the authors don't even realize is 40 years out of date ... all kinds of nonsense. That's always been the case, and it works fine.

The people who insist that anything "peer reviewed" * must be / needs to be gospel are outside science, almost by definition. A few have credentials but are not functioning professionals; some see themselves as lay champions of science; others see themselves as wise lay critics of science. None of them have almost anything relevant to say about how science is doing, because they literally don't know what's under the hood.

*OMG

Challenging claims is a process best done with delicacy and foresight. In particular, it's best to pretend to be humble, collect lots of data, show your work/thinking in detail, and understand the psychology of your adversary.

Be prepared for disappointment; be prepared for vicious attacks. Expect that the power structures of the establishment will make things uncomfortable to you. But continue on, humbly collecting your data and showing your thinking.

I've watched several key paradigms fall after 20-30 years of dogged work.

Microbiology is a STEM subject, a 'hard' science, where you have fairly stringent criteria for evaluating the reproducability of truth claims.

Fields that lack reproducability, replace this (i.e. truth) by community consensus which is enforced, in parts, by threats.

its what you get when you have a culture of "I belive in science"

Sure, or even slightly worse, a culture of "I don't believe in science."