It has become all too common to base our opinions based on scientific evidence. The scientific method is undoubtedly the best tool we have to understand the world. The problem is that not all scientists follow the same practices. Scientists are human beings, much like any one of us. They can be biased, make errors, have wrong assumptions and most importantly, they can be manipulated either financially or ideologically. Another major issue is that scientific evidence cannot produce facts. Ever.
Bold statement, right? Allow me to explain myself. When we do a google search and we end up with a research paper that (of course) supports our argument, we are just witnessing the tip of the iceberg. We have no idea about the methodology, funding procedures, ideological frameworks or even whether all those references at the end of the paper belong to a never-ending peer-review circle jerk.
When an experiment is performed we test only a hypothesis. At best, it can demonstrate that in a specific time frame and under those controlled factors, something happens. The "fact" that occurs can only exist in that limited realm which we have allowed it to exist. If for example we examine the rate of accumulation of fat in rats that have been bred in a particular context and have been tested under a specific drug prepared from a lazy grad student then what we will get will be a 'fact' that can be associated only with those constituents.
The reason we see so many drugs producing so many side effects is because each human possesses an entirely different physiology. A chemical compound will react different on them. A rat's DNA, although extremely close to the human genome, cannot by any means be compared. A follow-up human control trial is also dodgy. Most of the tests are produced on poor students that have turned self experimenting into a part time gig. Their physiology cannot be an objective standard.
We like to think of facts as irrefutable truths that most likely are produced from scientific endeavors. This perception though is only but a cultural meme. There are no facts about anything. Everything we know and experience exists under a narrow spectrum of factual relativism.
Scientists might collect evidence that supports or goes against their predictions. They can go on repeating similar processes over and over again in order to see whether or not the same thing occurs. Others can step in and do replication studies so that the findings can be upgraded into theories or laws. This is how we have things like gravity or evolution. At no point though anything has been proven.
Although science has helped us extend our lives with the art of medicine or the applications of engineering, none of those findings are facts. If history has taught as anything is that we are always wrong about what we assume as facts — at least to a degree. What we have have so far is that we make brush generalizations and when we add the human factor our predictions can be way off. Just 100 years ago smoking was considered healthy. Heck, doctors recommended it. Radiation was also considered healthy. 2000 years ago people still believed the earth was the center of everything and the sun went around it. All these past 'facts' used their own line of methods that rhymed in many ways with the one we use today.
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If our understanding about the world can always be improved then how we can possibly base our opinions on scientific facts? Why do we feel the necessity to do so? Are we performing the experiment? Are we present in the replication study? Why would anyone believe a random person that issues a paper based on the approval of another group? Isn't this how historically the Church and the State controlled information? How can we know if something applies or not when all the evidence in our disposal is nothing but hearsay?
We are so ignorant about some things that our findings are ever more confusing. For example, in regards to food and cancer, everything causes...and prevents cancer. Depends which study one examines. I know, ridiculous but this is as far as our methods can go up to today.
Karl Popper introduced the idea of falsifiability — the equivalent of bullshit-control in science —in order to examine whether an idea can withhold its ground. Falsifiability is the idea that any of those claims can be refuted because there is always an inherent possibility that they could be wrong. Scientific evidence can be assumed as falsifiable if an observation can be made that negates the statement in question.
What we call today as "soft" sciences such as sociology and psychology are bullshit because there is no way to falsify them. Heck, there is no way one can even make proper replication studies. Remember the example with the rat experiment? Now imagine someone volunteering for an experiment in order to evaluate depression. First year he shows up in the morning. The day before he had a fight with his girlfriend and a month earlier his cat died. The same person shows up next year for a replication study. Heck, we can even assume that the same exact "major" events took place but before the experiment he looked at the red tapestry in his new apartment and melancholy took over because it reminded him of his grandma's house. When it comes to people's studies we can never have evidence for anything. Just extremely overgeneralized assumptions.
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Most of what we call science today is nothing but testing our own conclusions, aka, the opposite of the scientific method. Astrobiology, cosmology, economics and even weather science work much like delusions in plato's cave. We observe something, formulate an idea, and then try to construct an experiment around it so it can confirm our hypothesis. That's similar to finding a hole in the wall and working meticulously to set up a gun with the right diameter, bullets and fire power to replicate that hole effect — an event that could have been made from a drill or someone slowly carving it with erosive chemical compounds.
Do yourself a favor. Next time you are in an argument, try to use your own rational mind in order to speak about something. Unless you were the one making the experiment, anything you say is no different than blind belief in some "lab authority". Claiming "facts" is the equivalent of a spoiled brat that demands approval for no reason whatsoever. Not only they can be refuted with equally abstract evidence, but you end sounding like a cult member reciting from a holy book. Let us not turn science, one of the best tools in our disposal, into a meme of entitlement.
