Surely, there was a time when the germ theory of disease was considered quite radical.
There were people who dismissed it out of hand. There were those saying, "Whoa, let's not rush into anything".
But the evidence kept mounting.
There may be parallels to controversies today,,,,,,

Perhaps I am from Missouri as well.

 

I dunno, the boiling point of water at sea level seems pretty well defined.

Don't see a lot of revision to the theory of gravity going on.
 

I must say that I am well aware of the fact that scientific inquiry is unending, and that new things are discovered over time. I consider that to be obvious.  I expect it to be so. In fact, science wouldn't be worth much if it was stagnant. In fact, if that were ever to happen, science would cease being science, and become dogma.

But, I can see that the provisional nature of science is something that some people have trouble with, and some people exploit to their own ends.

Some people state that the fact that a handful of scientists worried about a new ice age in the 1970s is enough to discredit the entire theory of manmade climate change. The argument here is that, since some scientsits were wrong about something, we can never trust anything they say. Think about the flaw in that reasoning. Doctors once believed that an unbalance of "humors" caused disease. Does the fact that they were wrong justify disbelief in the small pox virus?

Some people, let's call them the SINS's (Science is never settled) group, point out that we don't know everything about the thing that they are denying (Climate change, vaccination, evolution), and that sometimes the consensus about a certain accepted truth can change.

This is, at face value, true. However, the SINS's try to draw a straight line from "We don't know everything", to "we don't know anything, and all points of view are equally valid,". 
And this is simply not supported. For example, I admit that we don't know everything there is to know about the moon. But it is highly unlikely that it is made of cheese.
In other words, while we don't know everything, neither are we stuck, for all time, at step one on the path of understanding..


Science is more than a body of facts. Science is a method for deciding whether what we choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not. So, one can choose to believe that the measles vaccine causes autism if they wish. But, they should acknowledge that science has determined that this belief is without basis as determined by scientific inquiry.

Last edited by Goose (2/17/2015 9:39 am)

Goose wrote:

I must say that I am well aware of the fact that scientific inquiry is unending, and that new things are discovered over time. I consider that to be obvious.  I expect it to be so. In fact, science wouldn't be worth much if it was stagnant. In fact, if that were ever to happen, science would cease being science, and become dogma.

But, I can see that the provisional nature of science is something that some people have trouble with, and some people exploit to their own ends.

Some people state that the fact that a handful of scientists worried about a new ice age in the 1970s is enough to discredit the entire theory of manmade climate change. The argument here is that, since some scientsits were wrong about something, we can never trust anything they say. Think about the flaw in that reasoning. Doctors once believed that an unbalance of "humors" caused disease. Does the fact that they were wrong justify disbelief in the small pox virus?

Some people, let's call them the SINS's (Science is never settled) group, point out that we don't know everything about the thing that they are denying (Climate change, vaccination, evolution), and that sometimes the consensus about a certain accepted truth can change.

This is, at face value, true. However, the SINS's try to draw a straight line from "We don't know everything", to "we don't know anything, and all points of view are equally valid,". 
And this is simply not supported. For example, I admit that we don't know everything there is to know about the moon. But it is highly unlikely that it is made of cheese.
In other words, while we don't know everything, neither are we stuck, for all time, at step one on the path of understanding..


Science is more than a body of facts. Science is a method for deciding whether what we choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not. So, one can choose to believe that the measles vaccine causes autism if they wish. But, they should acknowledge that science has determined that this belief is without basis as determined by scientific inquiry.

I am certainly not a science denier. I toatlly believe in what science has done for us (and sometimes to us), but at the same time I am a believer that there are virtually no scientific principles that are unchallengeable.