Replication is a major pilar of science. However, some say that there is a replication crisis in natural and social sciences. In a 2016 Nature survey more that 70% of researchers tried, but failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiment results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis. And there is more to the confidence in science story. Even with all of the measures taken to reduce it as much as possible, bias in science remains an issue. You can reduce it, but not remove it as it is “baked into” us from early childhood and plays a predominant role in all of our undertakings. https://biasinsideus.si.edu/online-exhibition/the-science-of-bias. Continuing in the same vein, false positives and false negatives also unintentionally inject false results in science False positives and false negatives - Wikipedia. Data dredging is an issue Data dredging - Wikipedia, and misconduct prevalent in science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_misconduct.

With all of this being said, should we maintain our absolute faith in science as some of us do?

Edited October 11, 20241 yr by Luc Turpin

Correction - With all of this being said, should we maintain our unconditional faith in science as some of us do?

34 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

Correction - With all of this being said, should we maintain our unconditional faith in science as some of us do?

Who, specifically, to whom do you refer? And you say “us” so you must count yourself among that group, but your posts urging folks to consider something beyond science, do not convey unconditional faith in it. 

 

1 hour ago, Luc Turpin said:

Replication is a major pilar of science. However, some say that there is a replication crisis in natural and social sciences

Yes, natural and social sciences, not science in general. It points to a lack of rigor and possibly poor framing of questions, among other issues. Don't paint with such a broad brush.

1 hour ago, swansont said:

Who, specifically, to whom do you refer? And you say “us” so you must count yourself among that group, but your posts urging folks to consider something beyond science, do not convey unconditional faith in it. 

"us", including myself to try and keep it polite

1 hour ago, swansont said:

Yes, natural and social sciences, not science in general. It points to a lack of rigor and possibly poor framing of questions, among other issues. Don't paint with such a broad brush.

Natural and social sciiences is large segment of science.

19 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

Natural and social sciiences is large segment of science.

Counterpoint: social science? not so much. There’s a reason social science and natural science are in separate categories.

 

 

2 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

hould we maintain our unconditional faith in science as some of us do?

Yes, we should. It's a wonderful methodology.

However, we should not have unconditional faith in measurements, people who conduct experiments, scientific papers, theories, etc. since they are all subject to flaws. But then, I don't know anyone who has unconditional faith in those anyway.

Edited October 11, 20241 yr by zapatos

6 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Yes, we should. It's a wonderful methodology.

We should have faith in the methodology, but not unconditional faith.

7 minutes ago, zapatos said:

However, we should not have unconditional faith in measurements, people who conduct experiments, scientific papers, theories, etc. since they are all subject to flaws. But then, I don't know anyone who has unconditional faith in those anyway.

Unconditional agreement to all of your statements.

33 minutes ago, swansont said:

Counterpoint: social science? not so much. There’s a reason social science and natural science are in separate categories.

Agree!

1 minute ago, Luc Turpin said:

We should have faith in the methodology, but not unconditional faith.

This is yet another reason I use the word "trust" instead of faith wrt science. Faith is for religion, where the sources are unobservable so belief needs to ignore conditions. Trust always has conditions when it comes to what you believe.

48 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

 Trust always has conditions when it comes to what you believe.

If trust always has conditions, then it is a better word than faith for science.

As Ronald Reagan used to say, "trust but verify". And I wil add, never take it a 100% full face value, because it's not!