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[–] shrink 1 point 8 points (+9|-1) ago 

They are correct in this article when they say "there's no such thing as settled science." Something might be temporarily settled for now, but anything at all can be opened back up with the introduction of new information. That applies to anything, although there are plenty of things that scientists consider "settled" just because the evidence for them is so overwhelming.

This, however, doesn't give everyone and anyone full reign to say "nuh uh! It may very well not be that way!" simply because they subjectively do not like a scientific conclusion. A problem shows up when people attempt to contradict a scientific conclusion not because they have genuine information or evidence that isn't explained by such a conclusion, but because it runs counter to something they WANT to believe, and so they go looking for something, anything, they can use to try and contradict it. This occurs on both the right and the left; for the right the most obvious example is creationism, and for the left the most glaring issue is the gender bullshit. You cannot perform good science when your motivation for attempting an explanation at all is based on a conclusion you wish to reach.

That being said, the biggest part of the problem that this article gets at is something that's been known in the scientific community for a long time: there's no middle man. There's no translator. There's no method of information transference from the realm of the scientific community to the rest of society, other than the media. And the media, as if no one has noticed, is completely rife with agenda. They will misrepresent things, report on some things, and neglect other things, all in the effort of suiting an agenda. Even when they attempt to accurately represent a scientific article, they can rarely do it correctly. So it's no surprise that articles finding positive or supportive "studies" done by extremely liberal psychology university departments find widespread coverage, yet anything that runs counter to the agenda gets buried. Sometimes things go so far as to retract an article (that was good science) from an actual journal, due to political pressure (I wish I could remember which example this was and what it was about).

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[–] 16393295? 0 points 4 points (+4|-0) ago 

correct, however some branches of science have become so politicized and set in their ways, such as climate science, that it becomes difficult to know what is actually backed up by the data and what's not

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[–] Ken_bingo2 ago 

"Climate science" isn't any more of a legitimate science than 'social science'. Adding the word 'science' does not make it science. Just like cutting their dicks off doesn't turn men into women.

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[–] Dortex ago 

The sources, when read by someone with some training, shed light on the actual heart of any issue being studied. Most people don't have the training or the smarts though, so they're forever doomed to get their information from people with agendas. If you'd like something close-enough to neutral, i suggest Potholer54