this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
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Science

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General discussions about "science" itself

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[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 22 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Hyde says that the problem is that, although scientific facts are taught at school, the facts "about" science are not taught well enough.

Bingo. They do a poor job teaching people:

  • That failures are not only expected, but welcome; they'll guide future successes.
  • That conflicts of interest do happen, and peer reviewing is a way to address them.
  • That the current leading theory on something is simply the current best explanation, not some immutable truth.
  • That science doesn't say "trust me"; it shows you the data, and asks you to find a better way to explain it.

We (people all around the world, I think?) also do a poor job at teaching ourselves basic rationality:

  • That you should get suspicious of any institution or group that only shows the good parts - they're likely hiding shit.
  • Why "trust me" is an insult towards the hearer's intelligence.
  • Why people shouldn't vomit certainty on things they cannot reliably know.
[–] Redfox8@mander.xyz 6 points 3 days ago

Vomiting certainty... I like that turn of phrase!

[–] obbeel@mander.xyz 1 points 2 days ago

Nothing pushes the pursuit of Truth more than being lied to.

[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 19 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

The study revealed that, while transparency about good news increases trust, transparency about bad news, such as conflicts of interest or failed experiments, decreases it.

Yes, that's generally how a Bayesian agent would determine the extent to which an institution is trustworthy. A failed attempt to hide "bad news" would be stronger evidence that an institution is not trustworthy than a frank admission is, but that frank admission is still a reason to revise one's estimate of trustworthiness downwards.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The missing piece is that hiding bad news should be harder. For example, if you're a researcher and all you claim from your research are the good news, people (and the ideal Bayesian agent) should immediately suspect "maybe they're hiding the bad news".

[–] dumnezero@piefed.social 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The problem is that average people don't know what significance to attach to the "negative transparency". Which is why this is necessary:

Hyde is calling for a renewed effort to teach the public about scientific norms, which would be done through science education and communication to eliminate the "naïve" view of science as infallible.

Which is a different way of saying that the society suffers from the value of "obedience to authority" and the bad habit of cognitive offloading (having others think for you). This is the source of a lot of problems...

[–] MTK@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

No shit. If you tell people what they want to hear, they trust you more.

The sad thing is that as a society we are stupid, as individuals we are (possibly) the smartest living beings, and this means that the smart get stuck either respecting the dumb as adults and being honest with them (which leads to where we are now) or treat them like children that can't yet handle reality as it is (which probably leads to other issues)

We are at the tipping point where we now find out that giving all adults the same treatment leads to the smart enough ones can abuse and manipulate the not smart enough ones to go against their own interests and against the really smart ones

[–] obbeel@mander.xyz 2 points 2 days ago

People working together can't be beaten. If you were on your own, you couldn't possibly find out all that humanity has found. I think the grudge people have against science is that they think people who want to think on their own think they are 'stars' and better than everybody else. We need to push everyone together forward and not let certain individuals do whatever they wish. This is what democracy is about.

As a final argument to the person who thinks "but I want to do whatever I wish": the probability of you being the person who can do what you wish is really slim.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

dont you mean entrust in pseudoscience. telling stem research for what it is, often dont reach laypersons expectation, so some of them fall for pseudoscience that seems to have an answer for everything.

an example would chronic lyme, which is a real disease, many people believe it solely because they have unexplained symptoms that may resemble some some symptoms of lyme disease. Also snakesoilman MDs, and industry around lyme reinforces these beliefs.

[–] Bonesince1997@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Oh yeah? We've got a lot of anti-vaxxers now, due in part to the lies told during the pandemic. I'm not seeing a lot of trust these days.

[–] fartographer@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

They trust the lies

[–] ogmios@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I had actually just started working in nanotech when the pandemic hit, so I had just studied the subject of genetic therapy in quite a bit of detail. I was so disgusted by what I saw during Covid that I left the industry entirely. Student dept be damned, I won't be party to such outrageous dishonesty.