(June 29, 2013 at 7:12 pm)orogenicman Wrote:(June 29, 2013 at 4:36 pm)InevitableCheese Wrote: Geez, that's ridiculous. Didn't see that one on there. That's one thing that I hated about Christians these days. They just take everything they hear at face value, and believe it. If only they'd look at actual science the same way.
I would prefer that no one take the science at face value. That is not what science is about. I prefer that people take the time to learn how science works and then take the time to comb through the actual evidence.
Agreed. Unfortunately, so much is going on in science that it'll take too much time for any one person to know everything in detail completely. Even scientists are only fluent within their own field. But if you understand how science works, with some basic knowledge, interpreting results and evidence that science churns out shouldn't be too hard. Critical thinking is key when it comes to new research.
Especially for things like, research shows people who _______, live longer, the first reaction should always be: what experiment was it, who did they conduct it on, what's their sample size, and then keep in mind that correlation =/= causation.
Most importantly, something which the pseudoscience movement has never grasped, is that there is a difference between textbook science and frontier science. Research that hasn't made it into the textbooks are generally speculative because it needs to be repeated many times over before it's prudent to take it as fact.
