Why Should We Believe In Science
canada goose coats Hey, Naomi, can you just canada goose factory sale quickly introduce yourself? canada goose coats
NAOMI ORESKES: I am Naomi Oreskes. I’m the professor of the history canadian goose jacket of buy canada goose jacket science and affiliated professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University.
ORESKES: Right. The history of science is the history of the development of knowledge about the natural world. I study scientists. I study Canada Goose online the processes by which they collect evidence.
RAZ: Which means Naomi gets to ask the metaquestions about how we know what we know.
Canada Goose Jackets ORESKES: Say science is evidence based, but what’s evidence? How do we judge whether some evidence is good or bad? Canada Goose Jackets
RAZ: And lately, Naomi’s been trying to answer one very big question, which is why should we trust in science at all?
canada goose ORESKES: Scientists tell us that the world is warming. Scientists tell us that buy canada goose jacket cheap vaccines are safe. But how do we know if they’re right? Why should we believe the science? canada goose
Canada Goose sale RAZ: Here’s Naomi Oreskes on the TED canada goose coats stage. Canada Goose sale
ORESKES: The fact is many of us actually don’t believe the science. Public opinion polls consistently show that significant proportions of the American people don’t believe the climate is warming due to human activities, don’t think that there’s evolution by natural selection and aren’t canada goose store persuaded by the safety of vaccines. So why should we believe the science? Well, scientists don’t like talking about science canada goose as a matter of belief. In fact, they would contrast science with faith. And they would say belief is the domain canada goose clearance of faith. Now, the fact is though for most of us, most scientific claims are a leap of faith. We can’t really judge scientific claims for ourselves in most cases. And indeed, this is actually true for most scientists as well outside of their own specialties.
canada goose deals So if you think about it, a geologist can’t tell you whether a vaccine is safe. Most chemists are not experts in evolutionary theory. A physicist cannot tell cheap Canada Goose you whether or not tobacco causes cancer. So if even scientists themselves have to make a leap of faith outside their own fields, then why do they accept the claims of other scientists? And should we believe those claims? canada goose deals
canadian goose jacket So what I’d like to argue is yes, we should but not for the reason that most of us think. Most of us were taught in school that the reason we should believe in science is because of the scientific method. We were taught that scientists follow a method and that this method guarantees Canada Goose Parka the truth of their claims. canadian goose jacket
canada goose black friday sale RAZ: So the scientific method right? You have a hypothesis. You do some experiments. You make some observations. And. canada goose black friday sale
Canada Goose Parka ORESKES: If the observations work or the experiment works, you say your hypothesis is confirmed, and you go on http://www.canadagoosecanadaoutlet.com and do the next thing. Canada Goose Parka
RAZ: But, Naomi says, the scientific method is just a starting point.
ORESKES: The scientist can’t just say OK, I confirmed my hypothesis. Now I go do the next thing. That by itself is not sufficient.
canada goose store RAZ: So if that’s not sufficient, what is? canada goose uk outlet How do scientists decide what’s right and wrong? canada goose store
ORESKES: And this is really, I think, the most important part of science that many people don’t understand and that isn’t in the high school textbook.
Canada Goose Outlet RAZ: Consensus is the key, and building consensus takes a long time. Somebody comes up with a scientific conclusion. Those conclusions are then vetted canada goose black friday sale by other scientists. If they check out, they’re published. And then even more scientists canada goose uk shop review those results and ask their own questions. Canada Goose Outlet
ORESKES: If it turns out that when they try to use my data or my idea and it doesn’t work, then they will publish a paper saying well, hold on a second. So my claim could end up being discredited. Sometimes, critics of science will point to papers in the journal that were subsequently disproven and say oh, see, look. You can’t trust science because that paper you know, that got published, but then we realized that that was nonsense.
cheap Canada Goose Well, that’s not evidence of what’s wrong with science. That’s actually evidence of canada goose uk black friday what’s right with science because the claim got disproved and then we know, OK, you know, Naomi’s an honest person. It was a good idea. We tried it, but it didn’t work. So we now reject it and we move on. cheap Canada Goose
RAZ: So how do you Canada Goose sale know when you’ve reached consensus?
canada goose coats on sale ORESKES: So imagine now I’ve published my paper. My colleagues have picked up on my idea and my data, and they’ve used and they’ve worked with it. And they say yes, our Canada Goose Online data are consistent with this. And now other people do the same. And eventually, we all conclude that my claim was right, and that’s what scientific knowledge is. It’s that moment when we all say, yeah, this appears to be right, and then we stop discussing it. cheap canada goose uk The whole reason why science can progress is because there are points at which we all agree the data is secure. The data is sufficient. It’s settled. We have a consensus, and we move on to the next question. canada goose coats on sale
buy canada goose jacket cheap RAZ: In just a moment, when we come back, Naomi Oreskes on why scientists revisit old questions, even ones you thought were settled. Today on the show, Ideas About The Spirit Of Inquiry. buy canada goose jacket cheap
Canada Goose online I’m Guy Raz, and you’re listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Canada Goose online
canada goose clearance RAZ: It’s the TED Canada Goose Jackets Radio Hour from NPR. I’m Guy Raz. And on the show today the Spirit of Inquiry, how questions lead to new ones and unexpected answers. And we were just hearing from science historian Naomi Oreskes. canada goose clearance
In Canada Goose Outlet recent years, she’s been talking a lot about science and trust, and she argues it’s the very process of inquiry that should make us trust science. Here’s Naomi on the TED stage.
ORESKES: Scientists judge by judging evidence, and they have to subject it to scrutiny. And this led the sociologist Robert Merton to focus on this canada goose coats on sale question of how scientists scrutinize data and evidence. And he said they do it in a way he called organized skepticism. And by that, he meant it’s organized because they do it canada goose outlet collectively. They do it as a group and skepticism because they do it from a position of distrust. That is to say the burden of proof is on the person with a novel claim. And in this sense, science is intrinsically conservative.
buy canada goose jacket It’s quite hard to persuade the scientific community to say, yes, we know something, this is true. What we find is that actually really major changes in scientific thinking are relatively rare in the history of science. At the end uk canada goose of the day, what science is what scientific knowledge is is the consensus of the scientific experts who through this process of organized scrutiny, collective scrutiny have judged the evidence and come to a conclusion about it either yea or nay. So we can think of scientific knowledge as a consensus of experts. canada goose clearance sale We can also think of science as being a kind of a jury, except it’s a very special kind of jury. It’s not a jury of your peers. It’s a jury of geeks buy canada goose jacket.
