Anecdotal Evidence

[bennyboy]

Ok.... I don't agree, that it is only media and such though.   Science has it's dogma and cultural bias's too.   And sometimes they can be difficult to surmount.   Not everything is black and white and certainty levels vary.

Fair enough. There's science, the philosophical approach to learning about the world we live in, and then there's the scientific institution-- Universities, ambitious researchers trying to demonstrate their theories, etc. Even Einstein resisted new information and interpretations because they just didn't fit in with how he viewed the universe.

But when truly bad science hits popularity, it's always the media. The cases I mentioned were individual studies, and not very good ones, that got reprinted by media and entered the mainstream culture. MSG, for example, is perfectly innocuous so far as we know, but some people will refuse to eat Chinese food because they think it will give them Alzheimer's or something.

As for Nature, I don't know it, but I would certainly agree that repeatability is a problem is some areas.  You cannot, for example, repeat the smell that original diggers reported upon opening King Tut's tomb or whatever, and must take verbal reports at face value.


[quote]I think that example is a little simple (although not all science is repeatable; ie investigative sciences)  And part of the problem is pressure to get published.   It's also difficult to get money to redo existing and well liked research.   For your Reference here are the articles I was referring to.  
http://www.nature.com/news/reality-check...ty-1.19961
http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scienti...ty-1.19970

Fair enough. Scientists themselves are very open to scrutiny of the process, and they talk about stuff like this at conventions all the time. I can also think of some scientific endeavors that are NOT repeatable-- for example, data collected when a satellite is smashed into a passing comet.

But when they talk about repeatability, or visibility, or whatever the standard, everyone is really talking about a very basic principle-- I need to have some way to verify that what you say is true. I need some information that I trust well enough to go through the effort of reorganizing my world view.