[aharrison]

In my experience, when most engineering-oriented people use the word truth, they (wittingly or unwittling) mean the pragmatic definition of "allows us to make stronger-than-previous predictive models about something". Most of the argument in philosophy of science circles strikes me as meta-interesting, not eminently relevant to the practice of science.

Especially when dealing with psychology, a lot of those "what, exactly, is an electron" sort of deeply epistemological statements are not really asked, because we have enough trouble with the simplistic models we have.

So yeah, my recommendation (for what it is worth) is to always assume "most predictive model available" when someone says truth, and be aware that you are making that assumption and that simplification.

[pnathan]

That's a reasonable approach when talking with people who have sort of day to day experience with data and systems. Unfortunately, this doesn't per se hold true when talking with people from other disciplines. Some people hold truth as a platonic thing: it's either true or not true, and new research disproving old things implies falsehood, not a less accurate model. Tackling the elephant in that room, I'm not even talking about religious discussions, just normal discussions on physics research being found out.

A historian could speak more pertinently to this, but my understanding is that in 50s-60s "middle" USA, scientists were pretty much treated as oracles of divinity by a great deal of the common population.

[aharrison]

I agree and have run into that problem myself. Unfortunately, fixing that impression takes time and to my knowledge there isn't any real way to explain the problem with "Platonic truth" as a tangent off of a discussion around research journals, for instance. It requires a full step back and a couple hours of discussion to explain it at all, if you haven't been exposed to it before.

If anyone has any recommendations on that front, I am all ears.