Science is Drokking Fantastic Because...

[Colin YNWA]

Ray Harryhausen knew the score!

Complete fossilised T-Rex skeleton found locked in battle with Triceratops.

Wow that I'd never heard of this, yet know details of the WAGatha Christie case is a shocking indictment of what I pay attention to and what the mainstream media hold to be important.

[Greg M.]

One day, future palaeontologists will find a complete fossilised Coleen Rooney skeleton locked in battle with Rebekah Vardy.

[JayzusB.Christ]

That's amazing. (The dinosaurs, that is, not the footballers' wives.) Also never knew that the Triceratops' surname was 'Horridus'.

[Mardroid]

That's amazing. (The dinosaurs, that is, not the footballers' wives.) Also never knew that the Triceratops' surname was 'Horridus'.

Me neither. Makes me thing of the Grizzly bear’s moniker (Ursus Horribillis). I don’t understand Latin in general, but I think I understand that.  (Not entirely fair on the bear. We humans will leave tasty morsels in our rubbish dumps and wander into their territory.)

[The Legendary Shark]

In philosophical mood, I ask: what does "trust the science" actually mean?

Trust the scientist? Well, scientists are only human. Most just do their thing to pay the bills and feed their children. They go where the money is, do what the money says, just like the rest of us. And, just like the rest of us, they often disagree - on everything from the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Theory to climate change to virology. So, trust all the scientists or some of them? Which ones? Why? If so, trust the science translates to trust some of the science. With no disrespect to scientists in general, I'm not sure I like that.

Trust the scientific results? Again, what to do when the results conflict or have multiple possible interpretations? Which results to trust? Again, I'm left with trust some of the science, and again I'm not sure I like it.

Trust the scientific projections? I see the same problem only moreso - predicting the future has never been a particularly fruitful area of endeavour, save for fundamentals like physical processes governed by natural laws - and even this is not perfect, as several lost Mars probes adequately demonstrate. Trust some of the science. Nope.

By this point it seems to me that "trust the science" is a political slogan designed to win arguments and avoid questions.

But there is one more possibility.

Trust the scientific method. This is based on relentless testing and questioning, recording and interpreting results and, most importantly, that the current dominant theories in any given discipline are simply our best and most educated guesses. These educated guesses have a lot to support them, which is why they serve as current models or frameworks, but some result or discovery or interpretation could come along at any moment to radically alter or even sweep them away. The scientific method is the same for us all. And there's the definition of trust the science I can almost go for.

It's arguably the most important tool we've ever developed, we must never allow it to be reduced to a political slogan or, worse, a religion.

[The Legendary Shark]

Ignore me.

I am currently engaged in a repeat experiment involving the addition of certain chemically interesting fluids to my general biological mass.

[Mister Pops]

It's arguably the most important tool we've ever developed, we must never allow it to be reduced to a political slogan or, worse, a religion.

I 100% agree. Maybe I've only started to notice this during the pandemic, but politicians when politicians say "Trust the Science" or "Follow the science" they use the word "science in the same way their predecessors might have used the word "bible".

As for everything else you've put there....

Are you familiar with the term JAQing off?

[Funt Solo]

In philosophical mood, I ask: what does "trust the science" actually mean?

It's probably better than trusting polemic.

[Dandontdare]

You already reached the answer that I would have given - don't trust the scientist trust the method - unbiased, repeatable experiments with peer-reviewed methodology, and the core belief that We Don't Know Everything - every piece of research strengthens some theories, demolishes other, but the end result is a continually improving understanding. The word science simply means 'knowledge'

[Tiplodocus]

And trusting the method, 97% of them agree on climate change beingreal and man made. So I wouldn't say there is any significant number that disagree there.

[The Legendary Shark]

Are you familiar with the term JAQing off?

Ha! No, I wasn't - that's brilliant! Please tell me there's also one called FAQing about...

Tips, even if that 97% figure is entirely accurate, unbiased and uncomplicated, it has no bearing on the science itself. It is a political argument, a logical fallacy (appeal to the majority/appeal to authority), to say that 97% of S believe in ACC therefore ACC is true.

What we should say, rather, is that ACC is probably true. Because the word "probably" is where the science lives. Science is all about the probabilities, which is a problem for politics, which prefers certainties.

So, what about the remaining 3% of scientists? If all the scientists polled fell within broadly similar parameters (and if they didn't, the whole study's meaningless anyway), what makes this minority so worthy of scorn and ridicule? Why should the gospels data of the believers be deified and the gospels data of the non-believer damned?

I mean, call me old fashioned but I'd like to think that if two climatologists disagreed they'd study their conflicting data together in order to reach a more accurate understanding of reality's probable state and not just call one another "ignorant tw*ts" on Facetube.

Anyway - Go science!

[JayzusB.Christ]

What we should say, rather, is that ACC is probably true

I'm going to quote you on that.

[The Legendary Shark]

:-D

[paddykafka]

My new go-to excuse for why I do not partake of any form of exercise: "I'm not a lazy git! I could actually die from exercise-induced anaphylaxis!" 

https://www.livescience.com/can-people-be-allergic-to-exercise.html

[TordelBack]

Great enjoyed the Perseverance landing last night. Very genuine low-key Mission Control coverage from NASA made for a nail-biting watch, but the best bit was the radiant joy on every single person"s face, even through their masks. You don't see a lot of that these days, it was a tonic.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1362625946549846019

They seem to have really nailed the sky-crane method, it was mere minutes from orbital de-coupling of what they adorably called the Crew Stage to wheels on the ground, no stress about entangling chutes/balloons or opening panels.

Can't wait to see that drone-copter in action, it feels like the start of something wonderful.

(even if it is just the Silver Surfer to Musk's off-world slave-empire Galactus).