[elcritch]

I think of this stuff when folks say “trust the science!”. It’s all trust the science until that science conflicts with some broader agenda of a federal agency or a doctor’s whims about risks to their license.

Medicine really has a bad problem with groupthink. To get the best healthcare you have to both trust physicians and be critical of them.

Then the DEA seems to consider stimulants as a moral failing.

I’ve been off Concerta for 3-4 years now because it was so difficult to keep my productivity up when the pharmacies near me ran out due to the unpublished extra-legal DEA caps on stimulants.

Luckily even have been on Concerta has helped me learn how to manage my ADHD a bit better. It also gave me the chance to heal some of the worst traumas due to undiagnosed ADHD.

[graemep]

I think "trust the science" is a stupid slogan anyway. Not all science is equally well proven. Who represents the "science" when scientific opinion i divided? Even when there is a consensus there are plenty of examples when a strong consensus has been wrong.

The end result is that i tends to make the public regard science as something that they are told by experts, so then it becomes a matter of which experts they trust. This ultimately undermines trust in science because some expert opinions turn out to be wrong.

We really need better science communication, which will not happen when the media want sensation, politicians want spin, and the public believe either the media or ChatGPT or some random nutcase on Tiktok.

[adastra22]

"Trust the science" is anti-science. The whole point of science is that you don't have to "trust" it.

[graemep]

You need to trust the data, of course, and the process is carried out honestly.

Non-specialists in any field cannot understand everything, but I think good communication could still do a lot of effective explaining of evidence.