I believe you understand that there are good scientists and bad scientists. There are good doctors and hopefully fewer bad doctors. But yes, they exist.
Bad scientists are less likely to last long because the of the peer review process and the entire Scientific Method. I forget how long ago, but maybe 20 years ago a couple of scientists made worldwide headlines with their discovery of “Cold Fusion.”
The trouble was that nobody else could recreate what they did. It was probably the most recent version of the Piltdown Man fraud.
But it wasn’t church ladies who exposed the Piltdown Man fraud, keyboard warriors who exposed the Cold Fusion fraud. It was other scientists. The scientific method not only expects, but demands that your conclusions be checked and verified by other experts in the same field, published for comment and then perhaps accepted as a new finding.
Doctors kind of are subject to Board and State investigation if they get enough complaints, so it’s not the same process at all.
Your red wine example is an interesting one, because you’re right about how the discussion went.
But keep in mind that it is very hard for the public, much less our stupid MSM, to detect a true scientific conclusion from a “rent a guy with a science degree” and an opinion to issue a press release. Having a science degree doesn’t mean that you even agree with the scientific method. It means you got the answers right on the test questions you were given.
At any given time, there is bad science out there. This is especially true in any BRAND NEW TOP OF THE NEWS HOUR thing that will interest you. Hence your red wine example.
Parts of the Einstein’s Theory of Relativiy are being tweaked today, and that’s been around over 100 years, but the tweaks are at the edges. Nobody has blown a hole through it, and it’s mostly been confirmed. The Theory of Evolution is older than that, and the same is true.
That’s an uncomfortable fact for some to accept, but it is what it is. I have trouble understanding how I could travel at the speed of light from earth for 20 years, and return, and it would be (oh, I’m going to screw up here...) maybe 50,000 years after I left. But the Theory of Relativity shows that to be true (but probably not my dates).
Once something has been out there for decades and subjected to rigorous examination by people much more specialized in the various aspects of this, we need to say, it is what it is, even if we don’t understand it fully, or we’re not entirely happy about it.
Yes, I can’t disagree with any of that, only add that as infallable imperfect human beings, we simply HAVE no way to verify, through our understanding, if scientific principles are truly “accurate” in the end. It may well be just the best we can do.
Take the scientists that believed the earth was flat.
We knew it was round long before we could take pictures of it from space to determine it was round. Same for the sun rising in the east, setting in the west. I don’t think anything will happen in the future EVER to change our knowledge of an earth that revolves around the sun, or comes up in the east, sets in the west.
But how could we ever know we completely misread something considered definitive, agreed upon, concensus of science and just got it all wrong because, not by any bias or “bad” scientists but because of inherent human limititatons?
Like a dog that watches television and barks at a cat he sees on TV, he’s convinced the cat is actually somewhere behind the screen, in the box...SOMETHING more tangible, yet forever limited to ever know there’s no cat in the vicinity.
God may well have created far more intelligent beings that might look at us like we look at dogs & chuckle that, I don’t know, can’t understand we’re traveling back and forth in time, but simply aren’t aware and never going to BE aware of it! Perhaps we’re able to do such a thing in our dreams...and are actually DOING it, but can’t ever understand that we are, because we’re always dreaming and unconscious when we do and there will never ever be any possible way to overcome that limitation.
Something like that knowledge would turn virtually all we know about science on it’s ear!
We MIGHT uncover new data or understanding or whatever, but there’s no guarantees that we ever will, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t so either. We’re perhaps just designed to never understand so much out there that exists, not in this life, or ever, and we have to accept THAT possibility as well! We not only don’t know it all, we might NEVER!
It would be logical to assume that 1000 years from now, assuming we don’t destroy ourselves, or be destroyed, that we’ll learn some things that will make something we think of as common agreement that will seem alot like the flat earth scenario, because we simply learn as we go along.
Maybe we regain ancient lost science and levitate?
Sounds nuts, but a kid in the 1800’s dreaming of space travel sounded insane and foolish too.
What if we were created to experience 3 dimensions and no more, but other life forms are?
I just think it’s impossible to assume what is or isn’t science, pseudo-science, science fiction, etc.; based on the limted knowledge we now exhibit we know of it!
I don’t think it’s so much good or bad scientists or doctors as much as it is flawed, imperfect human ones, with various opinions and perceptions, biases, and limitations, etc.
True for all human endeavors, philosophy, religion, science, and for all we know are still in their ultimate infancy.
I could be way off and we’re nearing the end too.
Time will tell, but probably long after we’re gone.
Yes, it is what it is, as we NOW understand it. I guess my whole point is limited human understanding sure isn’t perfect and never will be, and subject to change from one moment to the next.
Red wine, is it good for you?
Regardless of the MSM, it’s still the scientists telling us if it is or not, which is the whole point...influenced by alot of things other than science! It’s hard indeed to tell what’s science with a few people able to answer questions correctly and get science degrees, our instant gratification society WHICH IS MY POINT! Defining science is still too much all about concensus or who has what degree, who ha what motive or how pure it is...there’s simply NO WAY TO AGREE!
I’ve often told patients I could tell them I might feel differntly tomorrow about their pain control based on newly gathered data, or even how something strikes me in a different way, which is difficult for people to grasp...just like when a patient yanks out a catheter and one nurse might put it right back in while another won’t, but there’s no “right” or “wrong” in coming to such a decision either way, you could make a choice either way, based on experience, or all kinds of variables and things, or outside influences.
Indeed we often hear nursing, medicine itself is a combination of art and science! Yet they are science degrees, not art agrees!
We even have a relatively new branch in nursing called “pastoral nursing”, because believers have been able to improve their well being, comfort etc. based on their faith and belief system and prayer.
There’s ceratinly enough data supporting it, and people might cringe if that’s called science, but hey, whatever works for people, and I doubt if they care if others are adamant about that not being science!
I also wouldn’t think there’d be alot of success in trying to get “science in nursing degrees” changed to “art or religious degrees in nursing” for pastoral care nursing either!