As long as you call it SCIENCE, there’s no way to argue with it. Cuz, SCIENCE.
Anti-vaxxers and folks who were resistant to some of the official response to COVID point to the evolution of answers, etc. as a reason to not “trust the science”, and they will tend to invoke the phrase while connoting or even outright listing ways in which scientific guidance has evolved.
There is a point to be made that, on some topics, the mass communication of science tends to convey the idea that it is supposed to be perfect and absolute, thus instilling skepticism when scientific guidance evolves. It’d be better if the uncertainties could be communicated, along with the notion that scientific knowledge and guidance evolves (with some experts moving through that evolution at different speeds)…but that doesn’t fit neatly into clickbait headlines and 30 second video shorts.
Among the anti-vax and anti-COVID-measure crowds, they view the dismissal of their concerns (stereotypically with someone saying “trust the science” because that someone didn’t want to argue with their craziness anymore) as a form of oppression by the powers that be.
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They misspelled USSR
Scientists are very often wrong. Especially doctors. A cursory review of medical history would give you countless examples of doctors and prescribers confidently doing horrible things to people, and folks going along because “Trust in science!”
The problem is we don’t have any alternative. People who distrust science immediately turn to pundits and quacks.
Same with distrusting the media.
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Shouldn’t there be more people in the Trump line?
These days media = pundits and quacks.
If you mean Fox and Twitter, sure. If you mean NYT and Reuters, then nah. It’s the same as it was 50 and 100 years ago. People are just hyper-aware of their biases and errors these days, and completely unaware of how bad they have been for generations.
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100 years ago. Wasn’t that close to the time the NYT had a reporter who got a Pulitzer for reporting how great Stalin was and how much the communists were helping people?
What was that phrase that was spawned from that? “Useful idiot” wasn’t it?
Them being the same sounds about right.
Yes. I suspect actually the MSM is the best it’s ever been. Due to the fact that we have a lot more reporters, more statisticians, more international communication, and a whole lot more recorded data.
But instead of taking satisfaction that things are so much better, we feel like they are so much worse because we see each error as it unfolds, live-streaming from a phone.
Anyway, medicine is the same way. Best it’s ever been, but plenty to be critical of. So better inject yourself with ivermectin, double-up on placebos, and lick all the led paint you can find.
Actually had a discussion with my doctor about Cologuard vs colonoscopy. (I’m that age.)
He forgot who he was dealing with for a while. Tried to steer me without information at first. Then I talked about my reading on the subject and asked about sensitivity levels. Then he gave me the type of information I was looking for to make my decision. Turns out the remote tests have a high sensitivity and accepted high false positive rate in order to minimize false negatives. Also turns out that studies are showing colonoscopies aren’t quite as good as we thought due to human error. That may be fixed in the the next 10 years or so by having AI review the video.
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Last year, an ex-girlfriend from college call me out of the blue, and told me she had a certain serious condition. She had access to the best surgeon in her country. But she was reasonably terrified by hospitals and surgeons and of her own body, and trusted me as a neutral smart person who understood her values.
So I spent like 30 hours furiously researching every study and meta-study and treatment and side-effect in the past 50 years, digesting all of the possible statistics. So, yes, I get wanting to make up your own mind, and having the power to do so. But (supposing it’s a good idea at all) people like us are few and far between.
My latest thinking is that actual information is irrelevant. The existence of X and MSM only support biases, and the quality of information from either is useless. People voted in Trump mostly because they didn’t feel good about the price of things and they were more familiar with one of the candidates. We could have donated a few billion in money spent on the campaign to better causes and just skipped to the conclusion.
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Wasn’t talking about Trump, but I agree. AFAIK, the media has not (much) argued that Trump is going to fix inflation, or that he is an okay human being. People assume Trump will “fix” prices because blind-faith. And people ignore he’s a bad guy because they are weak.