| > The problem is how to explain this to the non scientific people. Most people can't understand the difference between the scientific evidence behind quantum entanglement and Bigfoot. Everything that is in a newspaper is true. Yes, sad but true. That's a problem with education -- the kind of education that tells people what to think but doesn't teach how to think. And in a society like this one, the skepticism necessary for science comes into conflict with its diametric opposite, religious faith. > It's a good sign that the story the source is someone from a well known university. No, that's false -- if that were true it would replace understanding with an empty respect for authority, but authority has no standing in science. "Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion." — Richard Feynman In science, evidence means everything, reputation means nothing. The greatest amount of scientific eminence is trumped by the smallest amount of scientific evidence. It's important to understand the role of the null hypothesis in scientific thinking. The null hypothesis is a precept that assumes a claim is false until evidence forces us to a different conclusion. This contradicts the more common unscientific outlook, in which things are true unless proven false. > And even if you have a scientific background, you can't retest every result, so you must evaluate and weight the sources. But without a direct understanding of a claim and its background, educated people don't just abandon skepticism, they remain skeptical of everything they can't personally investigate. The motto of the Royal Society, the world's oldest scientific society, is "Nullius in Verba" -- don't take anyone's word for it. |