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473 points Bostonian | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.893s | source
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underseacables ◴[] No.42178934[source]
I grew up believing that science was the search for truth and fact, and that it should be constantly challenged to further that. What has happened I think, is that there has been a great polarization of science as government and groups have used and twisted it to fit a political agenda. Which essentially stops that search for truth. Challenging scientific conclusions should be encouraged not cancelled.
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jpmattia ◴[] No.42184911[source]
> Challenging scientific conclusions should be encouraged not cancelled.

Vaccines are on the docket for cancellation, which to be fair, will last only as long as a swath of the population sees their kids incapacitated by some completely preventable virus infection. But do we really have to go through an epidemic (again!) to understand that the science of vaccines is solid?

There is such a thing as settled science.

There is also such a thing as people too uneducated and non-expert to understand what science is settled.

There should be such a thing as not listening to non-experts about settled science.

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1. Veen ◴[] No.42185782[source]
The science on vaccines is solid, but there are potential side effects (that's also solid science). So when it comes to, for example, giving kids the vaccines, we have to balance the likelihood of serious side effects with the necessity of preventing the disease. In the case of COVID, the disease's risk to kids is extremely low, but they are still vaccinated. That is a political decision, and it is perfectly reasonable to dispute it.

That's a particularly clear cut example. There are many more complex scenarios where "trust the scientific experts" is dubious because science has a limited domain of applicability. When you pretend that non-scientific decisions must be made on a scientific basis, people see through it and become sceptical.

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2. jpmattia ◴[] No.42186202[source]
> That is a political decision, and it is perfectly reasonable to dispute it.

"Political decision" as a euphemism for allowing non-experts to decide how to minimize deaths? The same non-experts who couldn't even get the Monty Hall problem right, let alone the complexity of medical probability and statistics of [false | true] [positives | negatives] in Bayesian scenarios?

Good luck with that.

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3. Veen ◴[] No.42186533[source]
There's the problem with naive utilitarianism. The experts want to minimize deaths across the population. I want to minimize the risk to my otherwise healthy children (hypothetically. I don't have children and I am vaccinated). These legitimate desires can and do conflict. Who has precedence is entirely political, not scientific.

And plenty of medical experts get the Monty Hall problem wrong.

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4. jpmattia ◴[] No.42187361{3}[source]
> And plenty of medical experts get the Monty Hall problem wrong.

Then they're not experts on prob and stats in medicine, and you shouldn't choose them to guide policy making when prob and stats in medicine are relevant. The alternative is to choose those who aren't experts in prob and stats in medicine, which results in policy bred from ignorance of the relevant math and science.

Choosing people who are ignorant of the relevant math and science over those who are knowledgeable is certainly one way to make policy, and it seems that is what folks want, so I guess we'll see how well that it works out.