How possible is it that science could be seriously wrong about some things?

[monavis]

@Lumpy

Could any of the things that we now consider almost certainly true turn out to be false? I mean major paradigm-breaking revisions of currently accepted fact. Like, maybe the dinosaurs were big because gravity actually was lower back then. Or the Great Sphinx is really nearly 9,000 years old. Or black holes don’t really exist, there exist instead “gravistars”. Or the red shift is caused by something other than the expansion of space. (not that I believe or consider any of those examples likely).

I would suppose the answer is one of three things: Very low but finite possibility; virtually impossible given the facts we possess; or impossible to say- we can’t know what we don’t know.

The one thing that makes me respect Scientists is that they will admit when they are wrong and are constantly searching for truth.

Monavis

[smiling_bandit]

Most likely, science and scientists are spectacularly wrong about SOMETHING important. But they are very likely quite close to the mark about most things, and probably very accurate about any one thing. And this is very normal. Look at human knowledge throughout all of history: most things people knew were quite close to being correct. They were, however, incomplete. They were quite correct to suppose that large, rocky boens lying around belonged to ancient giants. They were only wrong to suppose the giants were manlike.

Scientists believe, for example, that many seemingly primitive medical practices (blleding, traditional herbal remedies, leeches) are or were quite useful, and though they may have been used erroneously at times due to lack of other knowledge, the concept was not incorrect.

In fact, many ideas which we hold in common now (the earth revolves around the sun) are not, as scientists will tell you, inherently more accurate than older ideas (the Sun revolves round the Earth). They are more useful to understanding how systems work. but no body in space is inherently the center; they all orbit each other. It’s simply much easier to understand the relative positions of other bodies (like the planets or far away stars) with the heliocentric or galacti-centric model. But neither is really correct, either.

[_bolding_mine]

Re: "How possible is it that science could be seriously wrong about some things? "
Scientists are people of their times. Take Darwin. Brought up religious, in an age where it seemed nature was perfect, a religious concept, he proposed evolution and also survival of the fittest. The first is clearly true - animals change. But as to becoming more perfect, that’s still debatable. The algae of the world are not deposed by their “more perfect” descendents.

[Fear_Itself]

@lekatt

Could any of the things that we now consider almost certainly true turn out to be false? Yes, most of them.

The same can be said about spirituality. The only difference is, science can be proven wrong. That is the strength of the scientific method, and will allow it to survive and grow, long after other approaches to interpreting the universe have been cast aside.

[KGS]

@'[bolding mine

']The algae of the world are not deposed by their “more perfect” descendents.

Actually, the algae of the world are perfectly suited for their particular environment. We know this because no animal has evolved to displace them from the biosphere.
Evolution is not so much “perfect” as it is “works well enough for now.”

[Measure_for_Measure]

@BrainGlutton

Different answers for different sciences. E.g., I very much doubt any “paradigm-breaking” discoveries remain to be made in chemistry; our basic knowledge of how atoms and molecules interact is pretty much complete and research remains to be done only in the details. In physics, paradigm-breaking discoveries are always possible. In biology – well, until we discover and study some extraterrestrial life-forms we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible. And the social sciences, if they count as sciences, are still in their infancy (and might remain so forever).

…and we don’t even have a decent model of consciousness yet, so psychology is probably wide open.

I know, psychology might be called a social science: I still think the point deserves emphasis.

[Shalmanese]

Science doesn’t work by proving things to be right, how science works is that it proves that certain explainations are almost certainly wrong. Of all the ones that are not almost certainly wrong, scientific consensus generally tries to pick the best one, that is, the one that is the most parsimonious and is consistent with available data. Thus, science actually subtly splits hypotheses into 3 categories, ones which we think are probably right, ones which we think are probably wrong but we haven’t ruled them out and ones that we’re almost certain are wrong.

Whenever we talk about major scientific revisions, in almost all the cases, we’re talking about how new evidence meant that one of the potentially right theories is now far more likely. What almost never happens is what was previously thought of as almost certainly wrong is now right.

This is an important distinction to make when people claim that science is regularly overturned so scientists shouldn’t be so close minded about their pet theory.