[tathougies]

So here's the issue. There is a segment of the population that is skeptical and a segment of the population that is not. When the skeptical segment expresses distrust of a scientific paper and names specific grievances, oftentimes the unskeptical population will accuse them immediately of being 'anti-science'. This is a major problem, because when -- inevitably -- some problem in a paper is acknowledged by the wider 'science' community, the unskeptical 'pro-science' people who have framed the entire issue as being 'for' or 'against' science automatically make the less educated skeptical people all the more skeptical of science, until they actually become the caricature they were believed to be.

The solution to this of course is for everyone to remain more skeptical when it comes to science, and -- for the times when you do have reason to believe particular studies -- to respond in good faith to other skeptics, rather than to resort to name calling. If you are unable to defend why a certain piece of research should be believed, you should probably either accept that you are not educated enough to be able to comment and thus are also not doing 'science', or that the guy you disagree with may have a good point and the researcher in question bears the burden of proof.

On it's own, I think scientists making bad research and then retracting it would not cause people to distrust science. The 24-hour pop science news cycle combined with the massive rise of scientism as a religion (and the skeptics the equivalent of a medieval atheist) has.

[mbell]

> There is a segment of the population that is skeptical and a segment of the population that is not.

I think you missed the biggest segment: not paying attention. It's for these folks where terminology and clarity is important.

[greggman2]

I'd divided the world into more than that. For me most of the world is superstitious (I realize that's my judgement). In my experience 95% of the people I meet believe in homeopathy, acupuncture, aroma therapy (not just that things smell nice but they they have strong medicinal benefits), spirits, ghosts, astrology, blood type personality, supreme beings, MSG causing headache, changes in weather causing colds, airconditioning making people sick, blowing fans causing sudden death, and a million other discredited things. Some of those people overlap with the type of skeptics you mention but most are not