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It's... I'd hope it's not bait, because he's correct.
Science isn't some done deal, and it (almost assuredly) never will be. Science is making observations, making models and predictions that try to explain those observations, then seeing if those models and predictions hold up in new, previously-unobserved situations.
Along with that, you have to be willing to accept that you're wrong. That one counterexample can bring the entire edifice of your understanding of the universe to-date come tumbling down, that at any moment you could have to start again from base principles.
The issue is that today, lots of people don't seem to get this. The whole "climate science" deal is the exemplar of this problem: if you question the "accepted" model, you're ostracized from the community. This means that only people who believe - and "believe" is the right fucking terminology, here - in the model get to be part of that community, and thus will do everything in their power to twist data, ignore evidence, and otherwise anything that would prove them wrong.
Part of the problem, too, is scientific literacy in the general population, and journalists especially. Look at all the hullabaloo over the Higgs Boson, often referred to as "the god particle:" most people can't tell you what the fucking thing does, much less the context for the joke name (the guy in question was calling it "that goddamn particle," because it would be a bitch to find if it even existed, but quite a bit was riding on whether or not it did). Most journalists have no idea what the fuck a p-value is or its significance, or why the fact that outside of physics a p-value of .05 is considered sufficient should absolutely be a major concern.
Gravity isn't science at all, it's a phenomenon.
I feel like you're being a little pedantic, here. No, gravity isn't "science," but it is within the purview of scientific endeavor and, as a natural phenomenon, it falls to science to investigate it. It's not "settled" in the sense that while we've got pretty good models of how gravity works, that work for most cases we're likely to run into in our daily lives, there are some aspects of gravity that are really fucking bizarre, and we're not quite sure why it works the way it does in the edge-cases.
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[–] geekpuk2 3 points 2 points 5 points (+5|-3) ago
Evolution is not settled science. Gravity is not settled science.
[–] [deleted] 1 point 1 point 2 points (+2|-1) ago (edited ago)
[–] ThirteenthZodiac ago
It's... I'd hope it's not bait, because he's correct.
Science isn't some done deal, and it (almost assuredly) never will be. Science is making observations, making models and predictions that try to explain those observations, then seeing if those models and predictions hold up in new, previously-unobserved situations.
Along with that, you have to be willing to accept that you're wrong. That one counterexample can bring the entire edifice of your understanding of the universe to-date come tumbling down, that at any moment you could have to start again from base principles.
The issue is that today, lots of people don't seem to get this. The whole "climate science" deal is the exemplar of this problem: if you question the "accepted" model, you're ostracized from the community. This means that only people who believe - and "believe" is the right fucking terminology, here - in the model get to be part of that community, and thus will do everything in their power to twist data, ignore evidence, and otherwise anything that would prove them wrong.
Part of the problem, too, is scientific literacy in the general population, and journalists especially. Look at all the hullabaloo over the Higgs Boson, often referred to as "the god particle:" most people can't tell you what the fucking thing does, much less the context for the joke name (the guy in question was calling it "that goddamn particle," because it would be a bitch to find if it even existed, but quite a bit was riding on whether or not it did). Most journalists have no idea what the fuck a p-value is or its significance, or why the fact that outside of physics a p-value of .05 is considered sufficient should absolutely be a major concern.
I feel like you're being a little pedantic, here. No, gravity isn't "science," but it is within the purview of scientific endeavor and, as a natural phenomenon, it falls to science to investigate it. It's not "settled" in the sense that while we've got pretty good models of how gravity works, that work for most cases we're likely to run into in our daily lives, there are some aspects of gravity that are really fucking bizarre, and we're not quite sure why it works the way it does in the edge-cases.
[–] 16419319? [S] ago
I was thinking more along the lines of Boasian anthropology or Climate science.
[–] SaveTheChildren 4 points 0 points 4 points (+4|-4) ago
Gravity doesnt exist. Only density and bouyancy.
[–] chuckletrousers 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
And what's responsible for bouyancy? Gravity, duh.