Not all questions are created equal and not all questioning of science is scientific in nature. And if you’re not writing down results and using controls, your questuons aren’t really coming from a place of scientific intrigue.
Just asking questions
Submitted 6 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/609aa978-6699-4cc9-b1d5-faf45e790f3a.jpeg
Comments
rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
Ahem, no. Science is a method to find answers with some metholody behind it. Not just any random questions and everything is the same.
prex@aussie.zone 6 months ago
True.
But being a child saying “but why?” until your parent flips their wig isn’t.
fossilesque@mander.xyz 6 months ago
Why not?
snooggums@midwest.social 6 months ago
But why?
stembolts@programming.dev 6 months ago
prex@aussie.zone 6 months ago
I had completely forgotten about Animaniacs. Now I’ve got something to look up on the telly - cheers!
I_am_10_squirrels@beehaw.org 6 months ago
I am also old and appreciate the reference
UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Questioning it before you understand the body of work of your predecessors isn’t science.
Especially if you turn towards the less educated to sell your pseudo-science.
LesserAbe@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Pedant patrol reporting in: one type of questioning science is science
Draconic_NEO@mander.xyz 6 months ago
It’s only science if you’re willing to accept the conclusion the observations lead you to even if they prove your idea wrong, because the point of science is to learn and gain understanding, and that is done by being wrong about things and investigating to find the correct answer.
It’s no longer science if you’re not willing to accept the conclusions because they prove your idea false, which ultimately is the problem that happens with science deniers, they are unwilling to accept being wrong.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Yeah, as long as you have the qualifications to question said science. This meme is what conspirationists believe.
nexguy@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Questioning science in that you are questioning the idea of taking observations and testing hypothesis? Then no.
Kalkaline@leminal.space 6 months ago
Questions are of far less value than quality experiments with good documentation.
CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Question is one of the first steps in the scientific process.
What the fuck you gonna study/experiment on without asking a question first?
Kalkaline@leminal.space 6 months ago
It needs to be paired with quality experiments, and when that data shows consistent results, those results should be accepted. Asking things like “is the Earth flat” or “does the Covid vaccine kill people” without accepting the wealth of data that’s already out there is of little value.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I mean not necessarily. You might just have an observation, and your just like, eh that’s kinda funny.
Figuring out how to ask a scientific question from something you’ve observed can take years.
OpenStars@discuss.online 6 months ago
Anything at all under an authoritarian regime.
SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I’m not a fan of phrase “trust the science” without any further explanation. Like okay we obviously don’t know everything in your field but you can at least attempt to explain like we’re 5. Otherwise it’s just “trust me bro, you’re too dumb to understand” and that’s not good for everyone.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
There’s a reason why science communicators exist and most times they’re not the ones doing the science. If you’re asking the actual scientists there’s a good chance they’re better off just saying “Trust me, I understand that better than you do” instead of trying to dumb things down to a layman’s level.
Entropywins@lemmy.world 6 months ago
If they explain it like your 5, it’s just a longer way of saying trust the science… if you go and verify experiments, recreating them and do all the maths, then you would also just be trusting the science…
I am not willing to study biology and zoology, but I will read scientific research published in reputable journals or newspaper articles based on those studies, especially if it’s about pandas!
magic_lobster_party@kbin.run 6 months ago
Not all things can easily be explained to the general public. Scientists have spent years of training to get where they are, and even then they’re only trained to communicate with peers in their field.
Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Not every short quippy explanation is correct…
That’s half the problem we face - people equate simplicity with absolute correctness or they internalize things as universal when something is drowning in nuance and situationality. Half of how science has changed in the last half century is a change from trying to understand perfect absolutes to getting down and dirty and figuring out and embracing spectrums and variations. The desire for simplicity does not serve. The catch all explanation is at best a placeholder that is incorrect but better than nothing and at worst it’s a siren song that leads you to damn yourself into believing a very untrue picture of the world.
driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 6 months ago
Im listening to this podcast “History of philosophy without any gaps” and in various points in History a group of people starts arguing against philosophy, but you can’t really argue that philosophy is dangerous or useless, without seeing yourself doing philosophy for that.
model_tar_gz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Questioning the science that generated the science is science. See also: recursion.
therealjcdenton@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
That’s just true, not a real shock
Twinkletoes@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Question reality 🫠
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 6 months ago
No, science is science. Science is structured questioning of anything, as long as you accept the data and reform your hypothesis. Sitting in a barcalounger with your thumb in your belly button, complaining about gay frogs and vaccine shedding is not science.
dohpaz42@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Pretty sure OP was not referring to those pseudo-science nut jobs.
I, for one, do not understand a lot of things and will (in good faith) question scientific principles to help better my understanding of things. I hope that does not label me as a belly-button-thumb-poker-gay-frogs-vaccine-shedding complainer.
ZapBeebz_@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The better phrasing is definitely “Questioning science in good faith is science”
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Nutjobs and charletains often hide behind “I’m just asking questions” rhetoric, and pretend that their inquiries are equally valid to actual science.
The most famous scientists of all time are remembered for challenging, and changing, the assumptions that everyone took for granted. Questioning science is always important, as long as the questioning is sincere. So no, I wouldn’t immediately assume you were a nutjob or charletain simply for asking questions. The critical differentiator is how receptive you are to the answers.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Ehhhh, data isn’t necessarily sacrosanct. Bad methodology, bad equipment, or bad presentation can lead to biased or misleading data. Hell, every once in a while purely fabricated data slips through the cracks.
It’s still the best guide we have, and mountains of date from disparate sources should be very suggestive indeed, but science involves being able to question even well-accepted hypotheses, on the slim-but-not-zero chance that all that data was based on some common methodological flaw. If the hypothesis is correct, it’ll stand up to scrutiny.
Yeah, you’ll get some whackadoos with their thumbs in their navels, but those whackadoos are an important part of the scientific ecosystem; random mutations in scientific evolution which every once in a long while turn out to be useful, of only in getting serious scientists to look at a program from a new angle. Stagnation’s a bitch.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah but even data sits in the context of a culture that sets up the experiment and sample design to get the data.
And most data is expensive AF. I did a recent calculation to figure out how much it cost us to get around 3000 samples of a particular data type. The answer was in the tens of millions, over decades,.and multiple careers. and it’s still not remotely enough to capture the variation we know exists.
I wrote.om this the other day, but it’s something the op.is alluding to, but maybe didn’t quite hit. Every scientific statement of fact must have some epsilon of uncertainty associated with it, and this includes our data. Did they GPS unit lie to you about where you where? was there some other source of interference with the instrument? How much confidence do you have in the voltage it was actually detecting? How about the physical principles the instrument is based on? How confident are we in those?
It’s epsilons the way down. But that’s actually fine And important. The facts and the data need to be able to be rejected when they are wrong. If we haven’t left even a tiny hole of uncertainty we can escape out of, it’s left the realm of science and has become dogma
anti_antidote@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
Funnily enough, math is also not science
disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Math is the golden thread of science.
Bertuccio@lemmy.world 6 months ago
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_science
OpenStars@discuss.online 6 months ago
Nor is engineering, so they get their own letters in STEM.
magic_lobster_party@kbin.run 6 months ago
All models are wrong, but some are useful.