The American Public vs. AAAS Scientists

Quote:

When pressed, a scientist should be able to acknowledge that scientific knowledge is always tentative and open to revision with the addition of new data.

Scientists do this. For example in the anti-science Ebola outbreak (an example that obviously frustrated me) the scientists did say that an epidemic in western countries is impossible. They said that it is extremely unlikely. This is the responsible thing to say.

But understand that extremely unlikely accurately portrays the risk as insignificant. This is also correct.

... and the point is?

Yep. But creationists and wingnuts sometimes have scientists among them, like Ken Ham. So when Ken Ham-like scientists make claims of absolute certainty, they're not being scientific.

Looking more closely with a different orbital telescope, a planet originally found by the Kepler orbital telescope appears to be a rocky, earth-like planet, which is two and a half times larger than the earth.

That means I would two and a half times heavier there. At the rate I'm going I don't think I could handle that.

No it doesn't. It is 17.5 times more massive. You would be a lot heaver than 2.5 times.

It is pretty easy with high school math to come up with your result.

FBM wrote:

For me, that means that I don't take what anybody - scientists or otherwise - as 100% certain. I do tend to trust scientific conclusions over those of laymen, though, in the same way that I don't go to a podiatrist for my toothache or to the florist to find out why my motorcycle won't start.

In the past, you would have been better served to seek the help of a florist to cure your hypothetical wife's nervous condition than the help of a trained psychiatrist. Flowers would have done her more good than a lobotomy.

It is possible I made a mistake or mistyped.

I am sure you are about to provide a link to prove that I was wrong. I am looking forward to seeing it. I have no problem admitting my mistakes.

THAT'S my point. Scientists are made out to be ******* gods and they aren't.

Consensus said you were right. And if smart people like those at a2k can officially let something like that go, how much easier must it be to miss errors in material on the cutting edge of science?

My only point on thread is that there is nothing special about atheists as a group.

I am only saying that other that not believing in any god, atheists are no different than any other human being. On this thread you seem to disagree with that statement.

See you all in April, when hopefully people will have forgotten about this.

There is a scientific process that is transparent and rigorous. Every finding is reviewed and must be reproducible to be accepted by the scientific community. Every conclusion is peer reviewed and open to challenge.

We should bear in mind that the studies performed by industry to support the release of GMOs on the market are usually not peer-reviewed at the time the GMO is commercialized.