Please, God, confirm what I already believe!

[Sisyphus]

It's not quite the same, though. Even if you don't understand what the smart Russian scientists are talking about, you can understand the scientific method and thus have confidence in it, and have you can have confidence those smart Russian scientists are abiding by it because you know a lot of people who do know what they're talking about have looked it over. Not as good as understanding it yourself, of course, but hardly blind faith.

 

And even further, even if you have no idea how science as a whole works, you can at least see that it gets results, which is itself a reason to go by what "science" is saying as the best available information.

[vordhosbn]

Absolutely, i only want to point out that the crowd mentality is prone to accepting facts, based on authority only.

For example, on this video after 3:35 Peter deMenocal talks how his name appeared on a list with 500 scientists that do not accept the global scientific position on climate change. Clearly a fabrication, but people really do not care to check facts, and instead just think "Ok, so 500 really smart scientists says it's a fraud! That must be true." Here obviously another factor comes to play - people are very likely to accept emotionally a scenario where someone lies to them, because... well nobody wants to be deceived. Ironically outrageous straight lies, sometimes are presented as scientifically proven facts, and for the most people this has the same weight as peer reviewed research publications, if not more.

I think the discussion has gone a lot off topic, but i hope you see my point.

[Sisyphus]

I do see your point, and thanks for clarifying. You're not disputing the value of listening to expert opinion, just pointing out that apparent expert opinion is not always real expert opinion. Right?

[vordhosbn]

Yes. And apparent expert opinion is used very often to promote political, economical or personal interests. So in that way, blind belief in science is no better than blind belief in religion. I think you can get pretty good examples from some of the topics in these forums for people using some pseudo scientific "theories" trying to promote their brilliant debunking of the laws of physics.

 

Sorry for not being so descriptive at my first post, now as I read it, I get why people misunderstood me.

Edited December 18, 2009 by vordhosbn