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from the I'll-never-close-my-eyes-again dept.
Scott Adams of Dilbert fame writes on his blog that science's biggest fail of all time is 'everything about diet and fitness':
I used to think fatty food made you fat. Now it seems the opposite is true. Eating lots of peanuts, avocados, and cheese, for example, probably decreases your appetite and keeps you thin. I used to think vitamins had been thoroughly studied for their health trade-offs. They haven’t. The reason you take one multivitamin pill a day is marketing, not science. I used to think the U.S. food pyramid was good science. In the past it was not, and I assume it is not now. I used to think drinking one glass of alcohol a day is good for health, but now I think that idea is probably just a correlation found in studies.
According to Adams, the direct problem of science is that it has been collectively steering an entire generation toward obesity, diabetes, and coronary problems. But the indirect problem might be worse: It is hard to trust science because it has a credibility issue that it earned. "I think science has earned its lack of credibility with the public. If you kick me in the balls for 20-years, how do you expect me to close my eyes and trust you?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by CirclesInSand on Wednesday February 04 2015, @05:08PM
I prefer to see the evidence, or a sequence of links leading to the evidence, of any claim. There is a tendency for people to believe that "scientists" (or any other kind of specialist) are people who give conclusions. I prefer people who present arguments.
Even if I don't personally have to the time check the data, the fact that the evidence is made public to be checked is essential for me to even consider a person's position.
An example is global warming. Lots of claims are made, but rarely is the data (which could be bittorrent demanding gigabytes) or the source code to the climate models made public. Anyone who says "trust me" on any part of their presentation is immediately blacklisted for my part.
Every part of an argument has to be up for audit.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 04 2015, @06:03PM
You just made an argument, so let's audit it.
This is a claim. Please show me the underlying data. What was the research method you used to determine the fraction of cases where the data was made public/not made public? What is the actual percentage you got (with error estimate, if appropriate)? What are the possible sources of errors (esp. systematic errors) in your estimation?