Comment by bccdee

Comment by bccdee 2 days ago

> for her, certain numbers are unspecific and she also is not coming to a clear conclusion in sense of climate change yes, no, bad, good.

Climate chance is settled science. To claim that "certain numbers are unspecific, so I can't say whether climate change is real or not, or whether it's good or bad" (which, based on your paraphrasing, is what it sounds like she said) is an unacceptable position. It's muddying the waters.

I'm not going to go watch her content about trans people, but it sounds like the same thing: Muddying the waters by Just Asking Questions about anti-trans "social contagion" talking points.

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EDIT: Okay I went back and watched some clips of her anti-trans video. She takes a pseudoscientific theory based on an opinion poll of parents active on an anti-trans web forum and suggests we take it seriously because "there is no conclusive evidence for or against it," as if the burden of proof weren't on the party making the positive claim, and as if the preponderance of evidence and academic consensus didn't overwhelmingly weigh against it. It's textbook laundering of pseudoscience. You've significantly misrepresented her position.

toolz 2 days ago

There's no such thing as "settled science". You can not prove that any scientific consensus has no flaws in the same way you can't prove the absence of bugs in any software. It's unproductive to treat science as anything more than an ongoing, constantly improving process.

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bccdee 2 days ago

Yes there is. Germ theory is settled science. Is it theoretically possible that we'll overturn it? Sure. Is it likely? No. In the absence of any groundbreaking experimental results, it worth wasting time entertaining germ theory skepticism? Also no.
> It's unproductive to treat science as anything more than an ongoing, constantly improving process.
It's unproductive to constantly re-litigate questions like "is germ theory true" or "is global warming real" in the absence of any experimental results that seriously challenge those theories. Instead, we should put our effort into advancing medicine and fixing climate change, predicated on the settled science which makes both those fields possible.

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- toolz 2 days ago
  
  > Germ theory is settled science. Is it theoretically possible that we'll overturn it? Sure.
  You need to understand that every single theory will be improved upon in the future. That means they will change and it's impossible to predict if these improvements will have consequences in different contexts where people incorrectly claim the science is settled.
  > It's unproductive to constantly re-litigate questions like "is germ theory true" or "is global warming real"
  Can you think of any cases where the science had nearly full consensus and it was useful to re-litigate? Galileo isn't the only example. I can think of many.
  
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  mrguyorama a day ago
  
  Newtonian physics is still settled science even though we have relativity to give more accurate results in domains where Newtonian mechanics fails. It still holds in all the same places it used to.
  You don't seem to understand how scientific models and theories work.
  In fact, germ theory of medicine is much the same way. Germ Theory does not explain or predict or account for ALL disease, for example PTSD, and if you build a useful theory for mental illnesses that aren't caused by little creatures of some sort, that doesn't overturn germ theory, it compliments it. A person creating a new theory of how Long Covid hurts people for example may not stick strictly to germ theory, but that would STILL not overturn germ theory.
  >Can you think of any cases where the science had nearly full consensus and it was useful to re-litigate? Galileo isn't the only example.
  Galileo isn't an example of the science being "settled" and someone radically overturning it. Nobody believed in geocentrism due to "Science", which is also why Galileo had so much difficulty, it was literally a religious matter. Kepler was about as close as we had to any sort of consistent theory to how the heavenly bodies moved, and it was not at all settled, and yet he was still basically right
  In actuality, there are remarkably few times where a theory was entirely overturned, especially by a new theory. When we know little enough about a field that we could get something so wrong, we usually don't have much in the way of "theory" and are still spitballing, and that's not considered settled science. If you want a good feeling for what this looks like, go read up on the debates science had when we first started looking at Statistical Mechanics and basics of thermodynamics. There were heated(lol) debates about the very philosophy of science, and whether we should really rely on theories that don't seem like they are physical, and that mostly went away as it continued to bear high quality predictions. The problems and places where theories are not great are usually well understood by the very scientists who work through a theory, because understanding the parameter space and confidence intervals for a theory are a requirement of using that theory successfully.
  "Human CO2 and other pollutants are the near totality of the cause of the globe warming" is settled science.
  "The globe is warming" is settled science
  "Global warming will cause changes in micro and macro climates all over" is settled science
  "A hotter globe will result in more energetic, chaotic, and potentially destructive weather" is settled science and obvious
  "Global warming is going to kill us all in a decade" is NOT settled science. There is no settled science for how bad climate change will make things for us, who will be worst affected, who might benefit, etc. There is comprehensive agreement among climate scientists that global warming is harmful to our future, and something we have to try and reduce the effect of, prepare for the outcomes of, and adapt to the consequences of, and something that, whether we do anything to combat it, will be immensely costly to handle.
  
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  toolz a day ago
  
  > Newtonian physics is still settled science even though we have relativity to give more accurate results..
  You've proved my entire point in your very first sentence and then go on to say I don't seem to understand how scientific models and theories work.
  > Nobody believed in geocentrism due to "Science"...
  This isn't a serious argument. Feel free to look up the works of Aristotle, who is sometimes called the first scientist.
  I don't have the energy to address the rest of your incorrect conjecture.
  
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- Matthyze 2 days ago
  
  Spot on. Reminds me of that old approach by evangelicals to frame scientific consensus as 'just a theory.'
  
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  barbazoo 2 days ago
  
  “Just a theory” is simply a signal that they have no clue about basics of scientific process.
  
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  toolz 2 days ago
  
  Ironically, it's often attributed to religion that they claim settled truths that can't be proven.
  
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- srid 2 days ago
  
  We understand very little about human microbiota (therapies like fecal microbiota transplant, however, are promising) yet germ theory is "settled science"? Interesting.
  
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