ive been getting a lot "science was wrong before" arguments from tbm's ive been talking to and i found a good page that talks about this fallacious argument:
http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/11/science_wrong.html

highlights:
the argument that "science has been wrong before" is flawed. "the scientific method is self-correcting. And it is always scientists who have unearthed new evidence who do the correcting, never people who ignore the scientific method......Error recognition and correction is a strength of science. "

part of the scientific method is trying to prove one's own claim to be incorrect, whereas religious apologists "can put endless spin on any apparently contradictory data."

the difference between science and religion is that science, when confronted with NEW evidence, can and does adjust, whereas religion does not. science has nothing to do with belief. religion is based upon belief of things you cant prove or see (and jesus teaches that as if that is a good thing), and then claims that such things are true. whats to respect about that? i dont respect religion, but i can understand that other people think differently.

In fact, that's the main point that makes science so much more truthful. The self-correcting method.

Yeah, I get that from TBM family. And it's easy to debunk simply by stating: By learning from mistakes rather than hide them, science saves more lives and enriches more people than anything religion has ever done.

It is, for good scientists.

But scientists are humans, after all.

For example:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269

***THOUGH SCIENTISTS AND science journalists are constantly talking up the value of the peer-review process, researchers admit among themselves that biased, erroneous, and even blatantly fraudulent studies easily slip through it. Nature, the grande dame of science journals, stated in a 2006 editorial, “Scientists understand that peer review per se provides only a minimal assurance of quality, and that the public conception of peer review as a stamp of authentication is far from the truth.” What’s more, the peer-review process often pressures researchers to shy away from striking out in genuinely new directions, and instead to build on the findings of their colleagues (that is, their potential reviewers) in ways that only seem like breakthroughs—as with the exciting-sounding gene linkages (autism genes identified!) and nutritional findings (olive oil lowers blood pressure!) that are really just dubious and conflicting variations on a theme.

Most journal editors don’t even claim to protect against the problems that plague these studies. University and government research overseers rarely step in to directly enforce research quality, and when they do, the science community goes ballistic over the outside interference. The ultimate protection against research error and bias is supposed to come from the way scientists constantly retest each other’s results—except they don’t. Only the most prominent findings are likely to be put to the test, because there’s likely to be publication payoff in firming up the proof, or contradicting it.

But even for medicine’s most influential studies, the evidence sometimes remains surprisingly narrow. Of those 45 super-cited studies that Ioannidis focused on, 11 had never been retested. Perhaps worse, Ioannidis found that even when a research error is outed, it typically persists for years or even decades. He looked at three prominent health studies from the 1980s and 1990s that were each later soundly refuted, and discovered that researchers continued to cite the original results as correct more often than as flawed—in one case for at least 12 years after the results were discredited.***



Certainly the idea of the Scientific Method and Peer Review is good, there's no question about that. But like all ideas, including religious ideas, it is executed by humans. Scientists are no less and no more subject to Human Folly than the rest of us.

For my part, I say Praise Folly.

Human

Awhile back I read a quote that pertains to the topic at hand. My apologies for not recalling who said it. It goes something like this.

"The goal of science is to make as many mistakes as possible as fast as possible without making the same mistakes twice."

What many people do not understand is the process of experimentation, trial-and-error, that is at the heart of doing good science. By the process of elimination the truth (facts, proof, etc.) is eventually attained. Lots of mistakes are made along the way.

And the fact that Science demands the courage of investigators to hold to the truth of the process, rather than their own pet thoeries and former conclusions is what it makes it more honorable than those who cling to the theories of the Bronze Age.

And the only way you know science was wrong is that it self corrected as soon as possible when new information was found.

How does religion handle new information, like say the emerging theory that gays are born, not made?

Religion ignores the new information because it conflicts with what they had claimed as irrefutable fact - Good's eternal word.

Now they have to go on ignoring or denying those damnable new facts but eventually have to find a way to pretend they knew it all along.

As new evidence becomes available or until claimed results cannot be repeated, scientific theories change or become scrapped altogether. The conclusions follow the evidence.

Religion on the other hand, doesn't rely on evidence for its conclusions. It has relied on the evidence of science and has often resisted it until the evidence becomes so overwelming or until younger leaders comfortable with change take over and institute a change in the religious policy.

When they are particularly sneaky, religious leaders make it seem as if no change has taken place. They may fool those who most wish to believe, but they don't fool everyone. In this way, we can also say that religion has been wrong before as well because they also change. Religion is simply resistent to change. There may be some benefit in this as well as determent.

When new science advances on an idea proposed by "old science" does that make the "old science" wrong? Often not, I think.

Models of the atom have advanced over time due to refinement. The first idea of an "indivisible lump" idea of an atom, I think, goes back to ancient Greeks. This advanced through the "plumb pudding" model, the "electrons orbiting a nucleus" model, to today when the more advanced models seem more like mathematical abstractions than a concept I can visualize. Did these advances make the old models wrong? No; they can still be useful depending on what you are doing. Trying to teach a fifth grader a mathematical abstraction would be useless. Some of the intermediate models are useful in chemistry.

As others in this thread have stated science continually re-examines itself and improves itself. Religion tends to perpetuate stories invented by stone age shepherds and consider these stories ultimate truth.

She knows I read online allot and I've had my Dennett and Sagan books out lately.

What kills me is that I do exactly what you should, take a representative sample from the whole population, as large as is practical. She seems to think that the more I read, the more misinformed I am. Now I guess I can see per point, since that's common. But, the irony is that I'm NOT just believing everything I read. The whole point is that I first DOUBT it, then actively, skeptically, try to falsify it, "anti" claims as well as TBM claims (BTW/FYI, I just read that the infamous Carthage rescue order letter is a fake). It is the repeated attempt to falsify a theory that distinguishes it as good science, NOT repeated attempts to verify it.

Thus it is with Mormonism.

It only lasts if you don't try and falsify it. As SOON as you shine the heat of scrutiny on it, it melts. It only has the illusion of truth if you engage in self-validating circular-logic fallacy, like ANY other junk science or superstition.

A parable:
Theory: snowballs were created by God in their eternal form and His decrees cannot be altered.

True test: put a snowball in the oven.

False test: put it in the freezer.

Mormon: I put my snowball in the freezer according to the commandments and it has lasted 30 years in there. Even if I didn't know the gospel is true, it's sure holding up well on it's own.

Exmo: I put my snowball in the oven (or the power went out and the freezer shut off) and the darned thing melted.

Mormon: No it didn't, you're lying, the devil told you to say that to destroy my faith.

Exmo: No, honest, it just melted, try it yourself.

Mormon: I won't tempt God. Without faith it it impossible to please him.

Exmo: But dude, the snowball theory is demonstrably false. really, the thing really just melts, no trick.

Mormon...either looks or refuses to look at the brazen serpent. Some never will.

Faith is just too big of a lying loophole. It's not only your right to test claims, it's your DUTY!

Where has science been proved "wrong"? Let's take Newton. He was sort of wrong in his theories, not because he was mistaken, but because he was too limited. Einstein came along and expanded on Newton. Newton's laws are limited to our frame of reference and break down at higher speeds and different scales.

Darwin is the one religious folk hate the most, but he has not been disproven. In fact, his ideas have been reinforced. When he published "Origin of Species", no one knew what mechanisms caused evolution. DNA was discovered and now we have a better idea of how evolution happens. DNA has not only proved that we are 98.5% chimp, but it has also proven that the Book of Mormon is fiction. DNA is so widely accepted that your DNA is better than fingerprints in court.

I think what confuses people is pop science, especially nutrition, that the media perpetuates. They take studies that most scientists would say are only evidences, not proof, and extrapolate that they are the new Gospel.

Religious non-scientists are used to saying "I believe in Catholicism, Judaism, etc." and taking that as moral equivalents. They think that science is just another sect, when in fact science is not a belief system but a method of research. The Renaissance and Enlightenment were based on moving past the scholasticism of religious thinking to the trial and error of the scientific method.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/2010 06:59PM by axeldc.

...the supernatural, superstition or religion. Meanwhile, religion keeps getting increasingly wrong.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/2010 08:34PM by Stray Mutt.

Someone said, I forget who, maybe on this board, that science made space shuttles and got men on the moon, but religious zealots flew jet planes into the twin towers to kill about 3,000 people.

Hmmm. Which one will I put my faith in, science or religion?

derrida Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Someone said, I forget who, maybe on this board,
> that science made space shuttles and got men on
> the moon, but religious zealots flew jet planes
> into the twin towers to kill about 3,000 people.
>
> Hmmm. Which one will I put my faith in, science
> or religion?

I'm in the space launch business. It's called "science" when it works and "engineering" when it goes wrong.

:) Bob, the grumpy engineer.