Faith in Science
Am I the only one who is starting to get peeved off with these catchphrases? It's like Science is the new Religion.
The fact is, science can be done wrong. Methodologies can be faulty. Scientists can fall in love with their theories and manipulate data. You see it all the time in bio-medical research, especially observational studies.
According to Dr. John Ioannidis, who has spent much of his career examining other people's studies, "as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed.", and "80 percent of non-randomized studies (by far the most common type) turn out to be wrong, as do 25 percent of supposedly gold-standard randomized trials, and as much as 10 percent of the platinum-standard large randomized trials."
So while yes, the scientific method is better than anything else we have, and yes, peer-review is theoretically great, unless people read the studies and think for themselves, all you get is a bunch of blind faith that the studies are correct, resulting in the morass of bad health advice given out over the past 50 years by governments and health "officials". And the peer-review process can be used to squelch opposing opinions or competing fringe theories.
Scientific "experts", no different in their human nature from anyone else, are trusted as much as priests in a religion. This is nothing more than faith in Authority, just of a slightly different kind. The same problem exists in the economics profession.
And things only get worse when the subject matter is politicized, because at this point a lot of power and money become involved in the results of the research.
The Nobel prize in economics, a relatively new invention of a central bank, just so happens to be given out mostly to supporters of central banking. I'm sure there are no conflicting interests there.
And vegetable oil, one of the most harmful substances ingested by man, is almost universally labeled as a healthy alternative to saturated animal fats. Why? Because it's an $80 billion industry, most of which, above 80%, comes from edible vegetable oils.
But the main reason such bad advice persists is because people refuse to look at the studies and judge for themselves. If they did, nobody would continue to prattle on about cholesterol being the main cause of heart disease. It isn't! Inflammation is.
What's the point of replacing the altar of religion with one labeled science, and not developing any critical thinking skills along the way?
Are these catchy lines really how you're going to convince religious people that you're correct? And is it worth sacrificing the truth to do it?
What happened to healthy skepticism?