[JoeAltmaier]

So we think that is a dangerous thing? Believing the best, tested results of experiments (science) is not superior to random religious tracts written thousands of years ago?

The critical difference between treating science as a religion, and treating religion as a religion, is that the science people have a good chance of being right.

Its rational and reasonable to be uncritical of scientific results - the scientist has already been critical for you. That's kind of the whole point.

[mdpopescu]

Just look at this statement:

_Its [sic] rational and reasonable to be uncritical of scientific results_

I do not believe that this person is sarcastic; I say that because I have talked to hundreds of people with the same opinion. People actually believe this. My authority is better than yours so you uncritically accepting your authority is wrong, me uncritically accepting mine is not only right but obviously so.

Ignoring the absurdity of the statement, and the mind-numbing appeal to authority - this also shows a lack of knowledge of history. When people used Aristotle as an authority 500 years ago, they did it using this same rationale: Aristotle had already done all the thinking, who are you to claim to know better?

This is just painful.

[nitrogen]

It's not an argument from authority, just a statement of the implied Bayesian priors. One who gives greater weight to scientific papers than to religious pronouncements is entirely rational in doing so. That is the entire well-argued thesis of the Relativity of Wrong essay we are discussing.

[RodericDay]

Unthinking faith in "the institution of science", particularly the denial that it can be co-opted for certain policy goals, and influenced by funding, and lack the foresight to control for important environmental variables, has and will continue to lead into stuff like eugenics, craniology, and austerity.

I'm still reeling from "Its rational and reasonable to be uncritical of scientific results"- smh.

[nitrogen]

Nobody used the words "unthinking" or "faith", or anything remotely resembling them. Nobody said it was ideal to be uncritical of scientific results, only that it was rational. Rationality is not binary, at least as it appears to be used in a charitable interpretation of the commenter's position. It can be more rational to be uncritical of scientific results (which we can define for the sake of argument any way we like, but probably involving peer review and replication) than to be uncritical of unscientific pronouncements.

Given the available time and energy (or lack thereof) for most of us to examine every scientific result in detail, it can even be more rational (as in best allocation of personal resources) to accept some scientific results uncritically than to study them in detail. I'll note that I would argue for tentative acceptance, with growing confidence over time myself, but the original statement isn't wrong. It's just being interpreted through different vocabularies.

P.S. This next part is not a response to you specifically, just a general comment. I'm really disappointed by the polarizing tone of this thread, the uncharitable readings of others comments, the implications of guilt by association, and the emotionally motivated downvote brigades. HN used to be better; we've discussed this essay before and it wasn't nearly so bad. So I'm disappointed, and I'm disappointed in myself for participating, but feel I must because of how much I like the essay and how important it is for people to understand the concept of the relative wrongness of science.

[voronoff]

He's right. It's an low cost way to be mostly right. There are much worse tradeoffs to be made.

Assuming that science news corresponds to scientific results will get one in trouble though.

[gizi]

The essence of science is its method: Setting up experiments in order to look for counterexamples for a scientific statement. Therefore, anybody who is uncritical of scientific results and does not desire to find counterexamples, is not engaging in science but in anti-science, which in turn is a dangerous and counterproductive ideology. The science-as-religion people do not have a good chance of being right. They are always completely wrong.

[JoeAltmaier]

Advocating positions shown likely true by science does not require a scientist at all. We don't all have to be in the lab, testing every conclusion. We have people for that.

The rest of us will do very, very well to believe the results of science. Because its the only game in town that's actually trying to get it right.

[jmaygarden]

This is painful to read. It leads to a statement like the following.

"The foremost scientific authority claims that the Earth is flat. There is no need to be critical of this scientific finding. All opposing viewpoints must be shunned, and proponents of those contrarian ideas ridiculed and ruined."

[nitrogen]

Science has an ongoing process for correcting itself. This is a false slippery slope ("leads to").

[jleyank]

Check out the referred-to video on Youtube re: accepting things without reflection. Here's a discussion of it:

http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/04/24/jacob-bronowski-asce...

Beware of dogma.