Ask HN: Is scientific facts more important than scientific thinking?

[3g4o53g4o5]

Scientific Fact: Up-to-date science discoveries that absolutely excludes ancient knowledge like astrology or metaphysics.

Scientific Thinking: How you think when you can't do experiment about the matter at the moment. While the seemingly like term of "scientific method" is defined to be the almost same thing but when you are doing/can do experiment at the moment.

I think knowing scientific facts is more important because people are just gathering pseudo-facts and that leads to the wrong conclusion all the time.

[rprospero]

I would completely disagree. One scientific fact can lead to many more with proper scientific thinking. Start with the Schrödinger equation and you get Newtonian mechanics, the uncertainty principle, Fermi's Golden rule, etc.

On the reverse side, no amount of scientific knowledge helps if the person doesn't have a scientific mindset. My partner had a doctor perform 27 blood sugar tests, each of which returned a perfectly healthy blood sugar level. The doctor then prescribed diabetes medication that exacerbated the anaemia that the doctor had NOT diagnosed. I don't question the doctor's education - she knows more about the human body than I ever will. She knew that the blood sugar reading had ruled out a diagnosis of diabetes. But she lacked the scientific thinking to move on to a new hypothesis after her original had been rejected.

[Lycanthropos]

"Scientific fact" is a political buzzword and inherently contradictory. The scientific worldview doesn't allow for so-called scientific facts to be a thing. Sure, there is expert consensus or whatever, but that's precisely what it is: expert consensus, not fact.

Experts have been wrong in the past, and there's nothing that guarantees they're not wrong now. In fact, if we take historical science into account, the chances that our experts are correct are very very slim.

There are logical/mathematical/philosophical facts, but not scientific facts. Science is about experimentation and observation, which are inherently flawed and imperfect.

[d--b]

Here is a controversial one: there is no scientific “fact”.

Science has been so successful that scientists have forgotten that their method doesn’t unearth truths, but models.

This is very annoying in astro physics. If you visit a planetarium, they’ll tell you all about dark energy as an absolutely certainty of the universe without ever mentioning that it’s a giant thorn in the butt of physics. No one will tell you: “hey remember that 9th planet we told you about in school, yeah that’s not a thing anymore!”

Obviously there are things in the models that work perfectly, so you could say that it’s a fact that people with three chromosome 21 have dawn syndrome.

But overall few scientific models work as well as genetics, and even there, discoveries in epigenetics seem to make things not as black or white as we used to think.

My opinion is that the current distrust in science comes from the extreme cockiness of some scientists (and stupidity of science journalism), just imposing their views by stating “it’s been scientifically proven”, when they actually mean: “it’s not been scientifically disproved”.

The rna-based vaccination is a great example. The fact is that no one knows the long term effects of an rna-based vaccination. People are fairly confident that there are none, but there is no proof whatsoever that this is safe long term (disclaimer I think it is safe and I am vaccinated).

While Rna-based vaccination is a gigantic achievement stemming from decades of immense progress in molecular biology, it is an insult to intelligence to tell people that it is safe.

Anyways, just my thoughts…

[Lycanthropos]

It is crazy that you have to clarify that you're vaccinated and that you think it safe so that you won't be labelled as a conspiracy theorist for saying what is essentially a logical fact

[aristofun]

> Up-to-date science discoveries that absolutely excludes

You imply that there is such thing as absolute fact or absolute truth. Which is not the case unfortunately. Because what you call facts always go with interpretation and understanding.

Sometimes (usually on macro scale and in well known areas) it’s easy to come to agreement. But more often — it’s not.

Your post looks like an oversimplification and presents false dilemma (it’s not apples to apples, to put it simply).

[Lycanthropos]

>You imply that there is such thing as absolute fact or absolute truth. Which is not the case unfortunately

Is this not an absolute fact or an absolute truth? You're making an absolute universal claim even though you just rejected the notion of a absolute universal fact.

[aristofun]

I am not claiming that my point is absolute fact either.

And yes, real world is full of paradoxes like this.

It actually supports my point )

[tacostakohashi]

> How you think when you can't do experiment about the matter at the moment.

That's not 'scientific thinking', that's philosophy, economics, social science, and various other things that are not and cannot be scientific for the reason you identified (inability to conduct controlled experiments).

[mikewarot]

The scientific method is a mechanism for building a model of the world around us, in spite of the experimenter, and whatever bias they have. We've gotten pretty far with it.

The application of the knowledge thus gained, must be wisely used. This is where we're falling down as a society.

[muzani]

Most of the misleading stuff is pseudo-science, which is built off the facts. Vaccines work, therefore homeopathy works.

A good pseudoscientist builds a chain of facts like a Ponzi scheme. A is surprising but checks out. B is surprising but checks out. C is surprising but checks out. By the time you're at D, you believe whatever this person says.

If a medical journal says that homosexuality is a mental illness, many will believe them because they've published nothing but science facts so far. Or someone who doesn't want to believe it attacks past studies instead of the one they think is inaccurate.