[sgift]

No scientist expects anyone to trust studies or the institutions producing them. So, that's wrong from the beginning. The expectation of refuting something is just a bit higher than "I don't believe it!", e.g. read the study and show flaws in it - or make a counter study which shows different results. Maybe combine both.

Comparing this to faith where from the start you cannot check anything doesn't make any sense (if you know that something is true or false it isn't faith anymore, that's the point).

[ironmagma]

That's not really true. Scientists do (and expect others to) respect "established" and "trusted" journals that group studies together in some kind of authentication process. Even open journals like Sci-Hub are like this.

Otherwise, you could believe any PDF you can find on Google and know it to be true and representative. What if someone wrote a net to generate 10,000,000 studies on the same set of topics and scattered them throughout the Internet? Given a random study, you wouldn't know whether it's real or generated, without the "authority" aspect of a journal.

Now, whether or not the journals actually do a good job at authenticating the studies is another question. But, the principle stands that they are what we trust as consumers of science (a role which scientific researchers themselves play as well).

[mthoms]

I agree with what you're saying. However, I think the parent's point is that people without education or a good understanding of the scientific process feel like they are accepting it (or not) based on faith.

I think this total lack of understanding of how the scientific process works is one of the biggest problems facing America today.

[marcus_holmes]

and yet if you dare to disagree with a scientist (as we see in the comments here) you can expect to be shouted down because SCIENCE!