[apu]

So you mean John Q. Public is as qualified to speak about science as people who spend several years of their life learning about all the necessary background in their field of study, and then spend the rest of their lives contributing original research in that field? Or are the latter merely charlatans and frauds?

[mattmaroon]

That's the ultimate way of dismissing anything, just attack the very concept of credibility. It's downright idiotic to say there's no such thing as a scientist. That's like saying there's no such thing as a dentist.

Sure, there's some semantic considerations, and the word means different things to different people and may sometimes be used incorrectly, but there is a such thing as a scientist.

[kingkongrevenge]

Experimental physicist is to dentist as "scientist" is to ...?

"Scientist" is a meaningless word. Knowing that someone is called a scientist tells you absolutely nothing about their qualifications.

[mattmaroon]

Knowing that someone is a dentist tells you little. They could be a good one or a bad one. They could have not practiced in a long time. It doesn't mean "dentist" is not a word. Scientist is a rather general one, but still means anyone to whom it is rightfully applied is many orders of magnitude more likely to have intelligent feedback on global warming than the general populace.

[kingkongrevenge]

Who said anything about the general populace?

[mattmaroon]

The term exists to delineate between a subset of the general populace and the rest. Just like dentist. Dentists are the subset of the population that you see when your tooth aches, and scientists (especially a few specializations) are the ones you ask when you want to know why the glaciers are melting.

When someone say scientists agree on global warming, its like saying dentists agree on the causes of cavities. It's useful because it's talking about people in the know who are more apt to make such conclusions.

That's why you apologists try to demean the term. If nobody is a scientist then nobody has any more valid opinion than yours.

[kingkongrevenge]

> say scientists agree on global warming, its like saying dentists agree on the causes of cavities

Not even close. I really hope you can stop and think about this analogy and see how both the professional labels and the questions differ dramatically.

> If nobody is a scientist then nobody has any more valid opinion than yours

Nobody is a "scientist" because there's no such thing. There are etymologists and geologists and chemists and so on, just as there are plumbers and linguists, each qualified in their domains. As best I can tell all that unifies the "scientific professions" is that the paychecks are mostly from academia, because the work isn't commercially viable. That's not a slight at all, it's just to throw light on how ridiculous the distinction is. Any high IQ job involves problem solving and theory.

[kingkongrevenge]

"Scientist" does not indicate a field of expertise. It's a magic word.

[mattmaroon]

That's like saying "doctor" is a magic word. There are all sorts of doctors. Heart Surgeons, pediatricians, ER doctors. They all specialize in very different things.

But they all have a very strong base level of training in medicine. You could ask a psychiatrist about your back problem, and while he's clearly not an orthopedic surgeon, he can probably give you useful feedback. And if he put a little time into research, he could tell you a lot. That's because he's highly trained to do so.

It's the same with scientists. Sure someone with a PhD in physics might not be as knowledgeable about global warming as a geologist. But they're still pretty capable of figuring out, especially with a little effort. Their opinion is considerably more useful than a lay person, which is why people are fascinated with their thoughts on the topic of global warming.

[kingkongrevenge]

To a certain extent I have to agree with you that doctor IS another magic word. It's a title of prestige that doesn't necessarily carry a lot of meaning.

> You could ask a psychiatrist about your back problem, and while he's clearly not an orthopedic surgeon, he can probably give you useful feedback.

This is flat out untrue. Most doctors do not know very much outside their specialties. Many do not even know the state of the art within their specialty. I have professional experience in dealing with this through the pharmaceutical industry. For a huge chunk of medical problems an intelligent person is going to do betterl consulting the CDMT and merck manuals than by going to a randomly picked doctor.

> PhD in physics ... geologist

What about a sociologist or a working industry economist? Plenty of modeling and stat experience. How about one of those high falutin research farmers? He's probably just as smart, too.

Again, who said anything about lay people? You're attacking a strawman.

I was making a little tangential one-off point and this whole discussion is in fact moot, because "scientists" do not in fact agree on the issue of global warming.

[Retric]

Few lay people understand what the merck manuals says. Understanding statistics is one of many basic requirements for understanding science and medicine that most people lack. Another is a basic understanding of logic etc.