Is saying "...so I know how science works." likely to convince people?

[Dr H]

1. Science is based on absolute proofs which are unscientific to doubt.
Sometimes, as in mathematics, it's possible to do that.

Math, in fact, may be the only field in which it is possible to have that kind of proof.

3. If people behave like all the scientists agree on something, that means they actually agree on that. In other words, that what journalists write about science and what our textbooks write about science is true to a very high degree.

The corollary to that assumes that valid scientific explanations are determined by popular vote.  The old "4 out of 5 dentists agree" approach, which always makes you wonder why that 5th dentist so obstinately refused to accept the truth.  If argumentum ad populum were an indicator of validity, we'd have perpetual motion machines, since so many people seem to believe they can build them.

One dead giveaway is the statement "science proves . . ." followed by pretty much any positive assertion.

Yeah, you get the point.

As you know, it can by significantly more difficult to set up properly controlled, blinded experiments in the social sciences than the "hard" sciences.

Well, yes, but think of what the physicists are currently studying. Studying subatomic particles is incredibly hard, both because they don't behave (as far as we know) completely predictably (the only laws we have about them talk about probabilities) and because of the complicated machinery needed to study them.

True, but complicated equipment and difficulty of experimental design aren't the same sort of problems as not being allowed to do certain experiments due to ethincal concerns.  If you want to study photon/pion interactions at one of the big accelerators, and have published plausible preliminary work and can raise sufficient financial backing, you get on the waiting list, and it will probably happen.

If you want to find out if hunger is a significant factor in motivating child neglect by selecting an at-risk population and withholding food stamp benefits from half of them, you're probably going to have a tough time getting that one off the ground.

Also, not all natural sciences rely on experiments. Doing experiments in astronomy or in meteorology is obviously either completely impossible or impractical, yet their conclusions are quite certain.

It stretches the definition of "experiment", for sure, and a lot of it comes down to creative meta analysis of huge amounts of data.  But experiments can be done, even in astronomy.  A lot of them rest on the axiomatic assumption that physical interactions observable locally would necessarily be the same under similar conditions, anywhere in the universe.  But once that's done, predictions can be made that are testable -- that's certainly an experiment.

Whether that's productive or not, is another question, and probably depends on context.

I mean, like, is it likely to convince people that I understand how science works better than they do? Because many people on the Internet seem to have this idea that social scientists don't really know how science works.

Some of them, maybe.  Not most, probably.  Those already inclined to think critically about things will appreciate the credentials, so they know you're not just plucking things out of the air.  Those who don't think critically... it probably won't make any difference with them.

I spent several years in a discussion forum largely populated by a crowd of true believers, with a spattering of scientists, engineers, technologists, etc. thrown in.  We debated everything from astral projection to homeopathy.  People held to some ideas -- "higher consciousness", comes to mind -- with literally religious fervor.  Nothing I could say was going to change their mind, any more than my reading from one of Richard Dawkins' books is going to convert and evangelical Bible-thumper on my doorstep to atheism.  That I knew from the onset.

What I hadn't counted on, but quickly learned, was that people who believed other forms of woo often thought they were supported by science and logical in their beliefs.  Homeopathy was an excellent example of this.  It's whole premise is ridiculous -- I'd even say, superstitious -- and it flies in the face of rationality.  It has been tested scientifically, many, many times, and been found completely wanting and bogus.  Yet true believers will cite their own "scientists", experiments, and journals, and any hard evidence I could bring up counter to it was dismissed as propaganda put out by a conspiracy of mainstream science.

In effect, despite my background -- and those with far more impressive backgrounds than mine, including doctors and research biologists -- and 150 plus years of peer reviewed experimentation, the homeopathists were maintaining that they were better scientists than the rest of us.

What can you do?  
After a while, one gets tired of arguing with the wall, finds the door in it, and leaves.

Anyway, what do you guys here think about the hierarchy of sciences? Most of you haven't said anything about it. Do you think that idea has any merit today?

I think it's something that concerns philosophers of science more than scientists, per se.

Certainly there are some issues with Comte's original construct that views astronomy as one of the simplest and most general sciences.  Trying to reconcile the enormous complexities of relativistic physics on the galactic or universal scale with the enormous complexities on the quantum scale is the holy grail of modern physics.  As we've moved down the hierarchy we've only begun to discover how much we missed on our way down.

Basically, I think it's an overly simplistic view.  It's like Newtonian mechanics:  good enough to get you to work every day, maybe eve good enough to get you to the moon and back.  But if you want to get to the stars your going to need Einstein, at least.

The sciences are organized more like a neural network than a hierarchy.