# Non-Experts and Science **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 17, 2017, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866 "2017-08-17T11:41:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/41 "2017-08-18T18:48:48Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > I don’t think you’re correct about this. > > Why don’t you wait until I make some reference to supposed global cooling predictions before announcing that I’ve been misled by them? > > Just trotting out stock refutations to things that have never been said, like some wind-up doll which can utter a few pre-set phrases whenever you pull the string, is not productive. I said that that 70’s bit was one of them, **not necessarily that you dwell on it**. In any case it is one item that was reportedly driving Trump until some brave soul in his administration told him to not use that myth as he had been taken many times before by his sources. Point being that the example was brought because it relates very strongly to the OP. You may not like it, but the reality is that there are many groups that do help the Non-Experts to grow and influence people in power by repeating those myths. So you have to clarify: what is the item they told you that was not predicted accurately or closely regarding climate science? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/42 "2017-08-18T19:01:36Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > It’s not clear what you think I’ve said that you’re purporting to contradict. > > As to your own comment, it’s worth noting this [observation from Max Planck](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck#Quotes): > > [Quote=Max Planck] > > A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. [/quote] I need to say that Planck’s observation is a truism about humans generally. Since scientists are human, it also applies to them - but not as a special case. I can easily come up with a list of areas of scientific consensus that needed a generation before the scientists and their textbooks and the public awareness of them faded away. Any of you surely can as well. That is not, even so, the equivalent of saying that no scientists ever change their minds or acknowledge faults. Some do, some do to a certain extent, some do on a particular issue. Again, this is general for humans on all subjects. Science operates by consensus. This is a wholly good thing. No advancement could be made without that base of understanding. Global climate change depends on consensus about a million small matters of measurement techniques, geologic history, atmospheric conditions, satellite imagery, computer programming, and the multitude of individual subdisciplines that feed more overarching models. All of them contain scientific truths that others reliably draw upon. No hypothesis about future climate change could be made without these. The alternative is not individual truths but sheer chaos. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/43 "2017-08-18T19:09:45Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > I said that that 70’s bit was one of them, **not necessarily that you dwell on it**. You said that it “continue[s] to mislead many like you”. > [@](#): > > In any case it is one item that was reportedly driving Trump until some brave soul in his administration told him to not use that myth as he had been taken many times before by his sources. Point being that the example was brought because it relates very strongly to the OP. You may not like it, but the reality is that there are many groups that do help the Non-Experts to grow and influence people in power by repeating those myths. > > So you have to clarify: what is the item they told you that was not predicted accurately or closely regarding climate science? If you want to debate Trump or people in his administration then you need to wait until they post here. If you want to insist that “they told” me something, wait until I post that someone told me something. It’s not worthwhile for me to discuss things with someone persists in debating claims that I’ve not made simply because they fit in with his rigid “us vs them” worldview. All the best. **Exapno Mapcase** , I don’t think I disagree with anything in your most recent post. Not sure if your intention was to dispute anything, though. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/44 "2017-08-18T19:17:14Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > You said that it “continue[s] to mislead many like you”. > > If you want to debate Trump or people in his administration then you need to wait until they post here. If you want to insist that “they told” me something, wait until I post that someone told me something. > > It’s not worthwhile for me to discuss things with someone persists in debating claims that I’ve not made simply because they fit in with his rigid “us vs them” worldview. All the best. Again what you said was: [QUOTE=Fotheringay-Phipps] OTOH it’s also extremely rare that a theory that regularly makes accurate predictions becomes controversial and subject to attack by non-experts. Generally the fields which feature these are those which either don’t make regularly make accurate predictions, either because they make few predictions to begin with or because their predictions tend to be inaccurate (climate change comes to mind). [/QUOTE] It was not just me the one that is asking for you to clarify what was the predictions that failed, **wolfpup** was first, if you want to stand with the point you said later that “ **I have no idea about any of this** ” Then I suggest that indeed there is a need to drop climate science from the column of “not making accurate predictions.” ---
**Author:** ![Itself](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d07c76/32.png) [@Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Itself)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/45 "2017-08-18T19:23:32Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > OTOH it’s also extremely rare that a theory that regularly makes accurate predictions becomes controversial and subject to attack by non-experts. Are you serious? Cranks are obsessed with relativity and quantum mechanics, and special relativity and QED make extraordinarily precise and correct predictions. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/46 "2017-08-18T19:23:49Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I need to say that Planck’s observation is a truism about humans generally. Since scientists are human, it also applies to them - but not as a special case. > > I can easily come up with a list of areas of scientific consensus that needed a generation before the scientists and their textbooks and the public awareness of them faded away. Any of you surely can as well. > > That is not, even so, the equivalent of saying that no scientists ever change their minds or acknowledge faults. Some do, some do to a certain extent, some do on a particular issue. Again, this is general for humans on all subjects. > > Science operates by consensus. This is a wholly good thing. No advancement could be made without that base of understanding. Global climate change depends on consensus about a million small matters of measurement techniques, geologic history, atmospheric conditions, satellite imagery, computer programming, and the multitude of individual subdisciplines that feed more overarching models. All of them contain scientific truths that others reliably draw upon. No hypothesis about future climate change could be made without these. The alternative is not individual truths but sheer chaos. Well said. I have to point out that even in 10 year old text books the basics of climate science is being taught nowadays in the schools. Indeed it has been more than a generation when a consensus was reached on that issue. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/47 "2017-08-18T19:35:44Z")
> [@Itself](#): > > Are you serious? Cranks are obsessed with relativity and quantum mechanics, and special relativity and QED make extraordinarily precise and correct predictions. I have to add to your post here the observation that one big explanation to the OP about what can help the current situation is that we should also deal somehow with the groups that finance and keep going the presence of crank ideas. [https://www.desmogblog.com/climate-denial-activists’-parallel-anti-relativity-movement-1920s](https://www.desmogblog.com/climate-denial-activists%E2%80%99-parallel-anti-relativity-movement-1920s) > [@](#): > > Jeroen van Dongen of the Institute for History and Foundations of Science at Utrecht University in Holland, writing in a recent edition of the journal, ‘Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics,’ describes the effectiveness of the movement that grew up to oppose Einstein’s theory. > [@](#): > > Van Dongen highlights: > > ``` > “Anti-relativists… built up networks to act against Einstein’s theory in concert. This led to some success. For instance, the clamor about the theory in Germany contributed to the Nobel Committee’s delay in awarding its 1921 prize to Einstein and to the particular choice of subject for which he finally did receive it: his account of the photo-electric effect, instead of the controversial theory of relativity.” > > ``` > > He continues: > > ``` > “Anti-relativists were convinced that their opinions were being suppressed. Indeed, many believed that conspiracies were at work that thwarted the promotion of their ideas. The fact that for them relativity was obviously wrong, yet still so very successful, strengthened the contention that a plot was at play.” > > ``` So, it does not matter indeed what branch of science, if a good number of people do see a threat to their understanding or biases they can and did help crank ideas to continue well beyond their expiration dates. Nowadays I have seen concerted attacks against relativity coming from religious groups. They do confuse the relativity in physics with the relativity in a social or moral setting. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/48 "2017-08-18T20:29:41Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > **Exapno Mapcase** , I don’t think I disagree with anything in your most recent post. Not sure if your intention was to dispute anything, though. Many people had disputed the quote and I wanted to clarify the point, which nobody seemed to get quite straight. If I had wanted to dispute anything, I would have started with this post: > [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > OTOH it’s also extremely rare that a theory that regularly makes accurate predictions becomes controversial and subject to attack by non-experts. Generally the fields which feature these are those which either don’t make regularly make accurate predictions, either because they make few predictions to begin with or because their predictions tend to be inaccurate (climate change comes to mind). My earlier post talked about the long history of math cranks. You can’t more accurate than an actual proof. Cranks love anything with the imprimatur of experts. They do not in any way, shape, or form avoid fields that make accurate predictions. That huge mistake hurried your slide down the rabbit hole of climate change predictions. One false belief inevitably leads to others. ---
**Author:** ![BeepKillBeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/49 "2017-08-18T20:38:37Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Scientists ourselves are at least partly to blame. A lot of scientists seem to take the attitude that they have to tell the public _something_, and that if the truth is too complicated for the public to understand, then the next best thing is an untruth that’s easier to understand. And so we get things like the molasses analogy for the Higgs field, which throws science all the way back to the Aristotelian concept of mass as impeding motion. That’s not at all how the Higgs field works, and it explains exactly nothing about the real behavior of the Higgs field, and serves as a useful analogy for exactly nothing about it, too. But people can understand it, and so science popularizers who ought to know better keep repeating it, without caring how untrue it is. I had hoped the thread wouldn’t become about a specific scientific theory, e.g. climate change, although I kind of thought it might go that way. Climate change is a good example of what Chronos is talking about. For non-experts, which includes me although I try to stay informed by reading journal papers on it, the way climate change is reported to the public does the actual research no justice. All of the depth and rigor is lost resulting in a shallow representation that is attacked by climate change deniers. Additionally, climate change, much more so that the Higgs field, suffers from being politicized making the situation much worse. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/50 "2017-08-18T20:40:10Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > My earlier post talked about the long history of math cranks. You can’t more accurate than an actual proof. Cranks love anything with the imprimatur of experts. They do not in any way, shape, or form avoid fields that make accurate predictions. That huge mistake hurried your slide down the rabbit hole of climate change predictions. One false belief inevitably leads to others. I wasn’t talking about cranks, just lay non-experts. Cranks tend to be nuts with mental issues, and all bets are off. (In addition, I wasn’t talking about mathematical proof, but about successful predictions, but that distinction is not tremendously important.) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/51 "2017-08-18T20:48:48Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Well said. I have to point out that even in 10 year old text books the basics of climate science is being taught nowadays in the schools. Indeed it has been more than a generation when a consensus was reached on that issue. The notion that the Earth was entering an ice age is not a good example of scientists needing to cast off a consensus because it was never a consensus. It was a media construct, built by media who love to talk about catastrophes. The edifice was mostly built around one book, _The Genesis Strategy_ by Stephen Schneider. While it does discuss cooling and even glaciation, Schneider later reviewed and updated the research and came to the opposite conclusion. Climate skeptics are required to ignore that, but they also have to ignore a far greater irony, as reported in [Time’s obituary of him](http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2036683_2036477_2037001,00.html). > [@](#): > > The last major article that climatologist Stephen Schneider wrote was a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finding that some 97% of climate researchers believed in man-made climate change — and that the few who didn’t weren’t up to academic snuff. It was controversial and opinionated and was attacked by global-warming skeptics. In other words, vintage Schneider. He’s the 97% guy! If that doesn’t warm the cockles of your heart (an anatomical region adrift just off the Iles of Langerhans) then you have no love for the awesome power of facts. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/52 "2017-08-18T21:07:06Z")
Stephen Schneider was a great scientist and a great human being, a man of integrity who was deeply concerned about the impacts of climate change on the future well-being of mankind on this planet. This “global cooling” thing from the 70s was indeed a fabrication of an irresponsible media, the same kind of media that today promotes the idea of a “controversy” about what is actually incontrovertible evidence for anthropogenic climate change. The facts actually demonstrate the opposite of what climate skeptics bloviate about: the facts demonstrate the _ **humility** _ of science and its quest for evidence and truth, because back then the National Academy of Sciences was proposing funding for major climate research to answer those very questions, and indeed to even formulate the questions, because as one key report said (paraphrased from my memory), “right now, we don’t even know the right questions to ask [about climate change]”. So no, scientists weren’t “making claims” that they then changed their minds about. Science, in its usual objective fashion, assessed that there was a critical lack of information on a potentially very important topic. ---
**Author:** ![Chopsticks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cab0a1/32.png) [@Chopsticks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chopsticks)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2017, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/53 "2017-08-18T21:56:59Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > One of the more conservative areas of science, in my experience, is the study of hunan evolution. Is that the theory that “more chiles is mo better”? 😉 Personally, if I was trying to make a new discovery in science, I’d look at the equations for ‘zero over zero’ cases. Renormalization: scientists saying ‘we don’t know what happens there exactly, but we have an answer as long as you don’t get too close’ ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/54 "2017-08-19T06:15:31Z")
> [@Chopsticks](#): > > Personally, if I was trying to make a new discovery in science, I’d look at the equations for ‘zero over zero’ cases. Renormalization: scientists saying ‘we don’t know what happens there exactly, but we have an answer as long as you don’t get too close’ I think we’re at a stage with science where identifying what things we don’t know / where to look is often half the battle. ---
**Author:** ![abashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c6cbf5/32.png) [@abashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abashed)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/55 "2017-08-19T06:15:39Z")
It should be borne in mind that even ‘experts’ disagree about various scientific theories unless these are well substantiated by evidence, and even then not everyone will subscribe to them. When mathematical theories are erected it doesn’t matter how beautiful or rigorous they seem to be, the real test is whether they can provide consistent solutions to phenomena and usually they’re incomplete and need revision. So any expert worth his/her salt will never claim to to ‘know’ the answers - only know about the current research and have tentative solutions to what is quite often subtle questions. Also, a _real_ expert will be open to more than one interpretations to data, providing they seem viable and sensible. ---
**Author:** ![abashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c6cbf5/32.png) [@abashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abashed)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/56 "2017-08-19T06:20:47Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I think we’re at a stage with science where identifying what things we don’t know / where to look is often half the battle. Yes, we have to\* look\* because nothing else can. How can scientific discoveries come about by themselves? This is where consciousness come in. It’s quite simple really, yet many people find this difficult to understand. I mean, how many scientific theories were about in the age of the dinosaurs, for example? Not many. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/57 "2017-08-19T12:00:00Z")
I would be a good example of a lay person who will follow a conversation here on physics the best I can ( maybe 2%) and then walk away and form a theory. I don’t actually believe my theories to be true I just hypothesize. I think the reason we do this is because we have no choice, we absolutely have to have some kind of resolution. ``` The one that really through me for a loop and I am sure I just latched on to the one thing that caught me ear was how matter and anti matter will annihilate one another and that there are approximately equal amounts on opposite sides of the universe. This had my head spinning for months. This upset my entire concept of reality. No matter how hard I tried I could not accept annihilation. In the 5 or 6 years it has been since I first heard this there has been an almost involuntary need to make sense of it resulting in numerous theories that I am sure would make no sense to someone that actually knows the math. ``` ---
**Author:** ![BeepKillBeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/58 "2017-08-19T12:02:17Z")
> [@abashed](#): > > Also, a _real_ expert will be open to more than one interpretations to data, providing they seem viable and sensible. And non-experts often have ideas that are neither viable nor sensible, but their lack of expertise keeps them from seeing it. So in keeping with this thread (to keep things on track since you seem to be trying to merge your “Quantum Mechanics and Mind” thread based on this and your next post), do you have any suggestions for how an expert can help a non-expert understand their error? ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/59 "2017-08-19T12:24:09Z")
> [@abashed](#): > > Yes, we have to\* look\* because nothing else can. How can scientific discoveries come about by themselves? This is where consciousness come in. It’s quite simple really, yet many people find this difficult to understand. I mean, how many scientific theories were about in the age of the dinosaurs, for example? Not many. 😉 I’m not sure if that was intended as diagreeing with me. Yes of course we have to look, but what I mean is, in the early days of science you could pretty much throw a coin in a random direction and whatever it landed on would be a fruitful thing to study… Now, it’s much harder. The big picture is a lot of phenomena we understand very well, and a few high-profile mysteries like dark matter and consciousness that thousands of the world’s smartest people are already focused on. It’s not that those high-profile mysteries are all we have left to explain, just that seeing the gaps in our knowledge is increasingly hard. ---
**Author:** ![BeepKillBeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2017, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/60 "2017-08-19T12:31:50Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I’m not sure if that was intended as diagreeing with me. > Yes of course we have to look, but what I mean is, in the early days of science you could pretty much throw a coin in a random direction and whatever it landed on would be a fruitful thing to study… I think it is just **abashed** bringing the “Quantum Mechanics and Mind” conversation into here. > [@Mijin](#): > > Now, it’s much harder. The big picture is a lot of phenomena we understand very well, and a few high-profile mysteries like dark matter and consciousness that thousands of the world’s smartest people are already focused on. > It’s not that those high-profile mysteries are all we have left to explain, just that seeing the gaps in our knowledge is increasingly hard. I mentioned this in the OP, but you express it very well, that one thing non-experts don’t understand, is the process of finding the gaps in literature. And you’re right, research is becoming increasingly specialized and deep into various research domains because all the surface material has been well-explored. As mentioned earlier though, it is this surface material that non-experts often feel like they can overturn (and often without math). I believe that the reason for this is they don’t know how deep the research and with it the understanding goes. So this was a two-fold effect, first, you can only target what you know about (obviously) and, second, the lack of expertise means they don’t understand just how well-established the surface material is from years and years of use. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866.md?page=4)