| It's about something else than just having to work out who to trust - that just sounds like a restatement of the relativization. Not everyone can be scientifically literate. And I agree, there are many things masquerading as scientific literacy - including picking out single papers while being clueless of the wider stream of knowledge in that field. Yes, it really is much better to ask someone in the field - for example - what does this paper mean when you see it in context, and so on. That's what the good science journalists use to do. But, we can't just give up. We can't be perfectionists in the sense that - "either you're an expert and know the field or you just don't know anything". We can all be curious and humble about what we don't know, while still trying to understand things in their context and fit them into our model of the world. > We’re not just an environment where we need to make sure people aren’t making mistakes. It’s also highly adversarial. Here I'm a bit unsure what you mean. Maybe, if I do: I don't think 0 mistakes is the goal. Mistakes are allowed. The differentiator is always, how we handle and correct our mistakes. |
By the last bit I mean people are not just making mistakes they are also deliberately lying by making things that lead people to making mistakes.