The Mistrust of Science and Scholarship

[Siegmund]

This ties in nicely with the "rejection of Sklansky" thread. People see scientists having a constructive debate -- for instance, about whether average temperatures will rise 2 or 4 degrees in the next century -- and conclude that since they can't even agree with each other they must not have anything worth the rest of us listening to. Or they hear scientists admit that something isn't completely certain to be right, and instead of hearing that there's a 99% chance of something being right, they say "either its right or its not, oh see, an idiot professor flipping a coin."

It's a fundamental problem, IMO, with the way almost all non-scientific argument is conducted. Political discussions, sermons, votes, legal trials, and a bunch of other things are conducted adversarially, each prsenter deliberately presenting convenient half-truths and concealing inconvenient half-truths. Some fool, ages ago, decided the having people from opposite positions take turns presenting half-truths was a good way of bringing the full truth to light, which it isn't.

People have no experience with the process of bringing a full and balanced truth to light. They don't see it happening around them, and they are not taught to do it - in fact, starting around age 10 or 12, people are taught that good articles/papers/etc must have a "thesis" as opposed to sticking to the facts. It's not just a mistrust of science, it's a flaw in how the vast majority of people, even thinking people, present information and expect to see it presented.