“Trust the science” has always bothered me for two reasons: 1) science is frequently not black and white and anyone who has done hard science research knows there are plenty of competing opinions among scientists and 2) while scientific facts are facts, we still need to decide on how to act on those facts and that decision making process is most certainly political and subjective in nature.
I trust that most research is done in good faith and at least some of it is useful. Saying 'Trust the science' might as well be saying 'Trust in God'
Hopefully this is hyperbole. Any faith I have is separate from, for example, if I cancer, I am going to trust the science on the next steps of treatment.
In the past, many cultures had priests doing most of the science as well.
Ultimately it all boils down to trust. The common man doesn’t have time nor intellect to evaluate “the science”. When scientists display obvious bias, they lose trust, since they claim to be impartial. It’d be better if they didn’t claim to be impartial.
> Medicine is extremely complex and medical errors are the 4th leading cause of death in the US.
Do you have the source for this? I have never seen it on the list of leading causes of death. For example:
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/9728/to-err-is-hum...
Since then there have been positive system changes in terms of things like quantitative care quality measures and use of checklists. But it's still a huge problem. Whether it's the 4th leading cause of death is unclear, it depends on how you analyze the data and what assumptions you make.
Still not clear to me how they are generating the numbers for putting it at 3rd or 4th. I might have to read the paper rather than listen the author interview in my link above.
That said 98,000 dead from medical error in 2000, from the first link, would put it at 9th in the list that I linked:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db492-tables.pdf#4
from 2020. So even with that lower estimate it would put it in the top ten.
The definition of a death caused by medical error from [1] seem too board from the likely simplified explanation at least:
"Medical error has been defined as an unintended act (either of omission or commission) or one that does not achieve its intended outcome,"
That "or does not achieve its intended outcome" seems like it would count cases I would not want in a statistic like this. For example surgery to remove cancer to save the patients life did not achieve the intended outcome of saving the patients life so it is counted as death via medical error.
Probably have to look at the full paper to see how they applied the standard, but the pdf is not free on the site I linked. I might come back later and look for a free copy or another source.