Questioning the Science

Re: the meme here, a reader notes: unfortunately this concept has been disregarded for the last couple of years.

Obviously, science “happens” when people with the appropriate background and training call into question today’s beliefs and offer new hypotheses for testing. The results of these experiments are peer-reviewed, and, if they stand up, they are published as “what science now believes on xyz subject.”

Unfortunately, what we have now are car salespeople, plumbers, real estate agents, grocery store clerks, and baseball coaches who say they’re “questioning science.” That’s actually not what they’re doing at all; they’re really simply parroting someone’s disinformation campaign.

This is counter-productive; it does absolutely nothing to forward scientific inquiry, while harming our society’s capacity to deal with lethally dangerous conditions.